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What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?
- empressplay 11y agoIt's unlikely Facebook would fire anyone without the complainant having enough of a case to be legally actionable. Thus, it's safe I think to assume that there was a pattern of unsolicited advances towards an individual. I admit this is conjecture, but it's a common story and as such makes a valid theory for what happened here.
- nkrisc 11y agoNowhere is it implied the reason for firing was related to harassment, but instead the rules relating to that were only used as an example to illustrate a point.
- lazyant 11y agoif (s)he broke a written rule or policy that's all they need, (s)he admitted to breaking a rule that (s)he thought was minor, like jaywalking, explicitly said it was not like harassment.
- roymurdock 11y agoThe only thing she was interested in was whether I had done the action that was held against me, and whether somebody had asked me to do it. Think again of what I did as jaywalking. Yes I did it, and nobody made me. I was working on a special project with a VP at that time, and he had nothing to do with it. She asked me why I did it, and I explained - jaywalking takes you from point A to point B faster, it's not a conspiracy to create a traffic jam. In other words, in what I did there was no damaged caused, no intention to harm anyone, and no way for me to profit from it. If a week prior, I had typed a few different keystrokes, I would never have been in that room. Sounds like they took a code shortcut, possibly violating NDA/privacy agreements or using unapproved/a competitor's 3rd party tools. Does not sound like harassment.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoI gotta wonder what that anon guy did to get fired.
- littletinman 11y agoThis is another one of those "I got fired but I won't tell you why" posts. There was another post on here not too long ago about a guy, who for very vague reasons, got fired from Google. I don't understand why you wouldn't disclose why you got fired if you are going to write a post about how you feel after getting fired. It doesn't help anyone else because we don't know what mistake you made that we should avoid. It ends up feeling like the post is very one sided and IMO discredits the presented "feelings". My 2 cents for you. :-) *edited: spelling
- fulafel 11y ago> I don't understand why you wouldn't disclose why you got fired if you are going to write a post about how you feel after getting fired. He wrote "I won't go into what it was to protect my identity and that of all involved." So the person thinks it would be easy for Facebook or his former coworkers to identify the case if he told us what specific policy violation (s)he was fired for.
- jh123908 11y agoHe thinks it would be easy to identify him from the cause, even though according to the post many people in the company do it routinely
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jmuguy 11y agoYeah he's already been fired, if its such a simple little thing what's the worst that could come from actually stating it.
- littletinman 11y agoTo one extreme, this could be a case of "an unsolicited pat on the rear" being perceived by the offender as "a high five" and to the offended "a disturbing invasion or personal space." On other extreme it could be he "chucked a tennis ball and it broke an office window." Everyone's perception these days of the extent/effect of any offense seems to broad that without details... what's the point of articles like these?
- empressplay 11y agoThe hiring process is so onerous that I don't think it's believable when someone says they were fired over a single incident. Generally there's a pattern of counter-productive behaviour.
- throwaway049 11y agoHow does a high five morph into a pat on the rear? Even if my co-worker was about 10 feet tall that's still terrible hand eye coordination.
- littletinman 11y agoLOL! My comment is more on the perception disconnect that can take place. When I was a teenager I didn't yet have the experiences (being told what is or isn't appropriate and why) to know what was not ok like that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- forgetsusername 11y ago>For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.
- empressplay 11y agoGenerally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Edit: People who get fired want to believe that they did one "stupid" thing and it was "unfair" they were fired. Hiring a new person and training them up isn't exactly cheap, easy or straightforward. I realise there are exceptions but logic would tend to suggest that in most cases businesses don't fire people for one-off mistakes.
- afandian 11y agoGoing by the way the rules were applied in the (somewhat mysterious original post) there's no reason to believe the rules are applied in this way.
- empressplay 11y agoThe perspective of the post is from the person who was let go though. And I don't think that from their perspective they're lying or obfuscating, but perspective is a curious thing: it's different from person to person, and by necessity it favours the person who has it.
- ebola1717 11y agoFiring employees for minor things is bad for morale & causes high turnover. Especially in software, a company wouldn't want to fire engineers arbitrarily, since it's hard to train new ones & transfer an engineer's knowledge of the codebase. That makes me really doubt his claim that this was "like jaywalking."
- empressplay 11y agoEspecially if they're shown the door immediately and thus aren't available to train up their replacement. You lose domain knowledge and have to rely on a co-worker or manager to train up a new employee which isn't ideal.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoAt a previous job, I had a Sys Admin who once wrote a guy up because he used telnet instead of SSH to connect to a client's server. All I could think while reading the article was, "He must've used telnet..."
- empressplay 11y agoshoulda fired whoever left telnet running on the client's server first?
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoThe client themselves would often leave the telnet service running because their employees would use it to connect to the server internally. Our clients were not the most tech-savy individuals, either, so if it was an issue where we needed to fix something and they hadn't bothered to turn the SSH service on, we could either call them and bounce around personnel until we found someone with root access whom we could convince to turn on the SSH daemon...or we could use telnet. This, to my mind, mirrors the "jaywalking" metaphor. It was bad practice, but it was either "Fight the client and force them to improve their own security so that we can safely assist them," or, "Do something we know is unsafe in order to get the job done quickly so that the client will stop bitching at us while paradoxically making it more difficult for us to help them."
- maxwellito 11y agoOn Facebook, you never get a notification when somebody unfriend you. It feel the same about being fired from Facebook. :(
- hoopism 11y agoIf you are considering writing a post like this ask yourself: "Am I comfortable telling people the cause". If the answer is no then you shouldn't write a post like this. I know he mentions that it's for "privacy reasons"... but any rational person is going to conclude that you are not disclosing the reason because it reflects poorly on you and undermines your gripe. Now if you are comfortable disclosing the cause, then perhaps there is some value to be gained in raising the issue. But not disclosing is a no-win situation... right or wrong you will be perceived to be in the wrong. EDIT: Funny that I get downvoted, yet most comments are basically "Clearly this person did something worse than they realize..."
- chris11 11y agoIt could just be that he didn't want to make a post with personally identifiable information. I know if I was in his position I wouldn't really want my former coworkers to immediately think I was the person who wrote that post.
- slowernet 11y agoIt's not unlikely that they signed a non-disparage, non-disclose in exchange for some/marginal severance.
- ececconi 11y agoCorrect. There's absolutely no clarity to what happened.
- ska 11y agoIt seems a little bizarre to me to think of being fired as being very meaningfully company specific. How is the answer not: "Largely like many other places of a similar size and structure"? In a place with a particularly interesting corporate structure or decision making process it might be unusual, but Facebook?
- dnate 11y agoI would be interested in what constitutes as "jaywalking" in a software company. Something everyone does but can be grounds to termination? Can anyone tell me about specific cases?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lazyant 11y agomaybe login in with somebody else's credentials? or some other security-related or procedural stuff that he bypassed to make things easier? using non-authorized (personal) equipment or software? just speculating
- xyzzy4 11y agoOne time when I was an intern, I got screamed at by an old-timer technician when he found out I connected a few computers in a lab room to the Internet. Because an Internet connection causes viruses.
- daemin 11y agoWell one certain way to have security on a computer is to have an air gap, i.e. do not connect it to any other network. (And yes air gap made more sense when all networking was with cabled, not with wifi.)
- xyzzy4 11y agoHis concern made sense but I thought he overreacted.
- daodedickinson 11y agoI can definitely think of many labs, for example at universities, where connecting them to the internet should result in termination.
- nkrisc 11y agoWhen I first read this on Quora I couldn't help but think we don't actually know that what the fired employee did was actually as common and benign as they claim, since we don't know what it was. That might sort of change the story.
- finnyspade 11y agoSo having interned at Facebook, I find this post confusing. They made it very clear to us during HR onboarding that the only zero tolerance policy was on unauthorized access to user data. The harassment stuff isn't a zero tolerance thing. They even told us to go ahead and ask out other employees if you're interested, but just don't press if you get a no. It's pretty clear he accessed data he shouldn't have, and for that a zero-tolerance policy makes total sense.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- FD3SA 11y agoYes, it's a bit of a massive story to digest without knowing what he actually did. If it was accessing user data, of course he should be fired.
- kelukelugames 11y agoIt sounds like he violated a privacy issue. Probably looked up a friend or celebrity. At my last job, a company that sells houses, people looked up each other's data for fun. I was kind of annoyed that one of the college hires found how much I paid for my house but that was the norm. Okay, I should probably specify that I didn't tell anyone my address. People don't even know my legal name. I worked at and bought my house through Redfin. Redfin gets my info from my Redfin account. A little different than looking up an address on Zillow.
- lutefisk 11y agoHousing data is public after you close on your house. What's there to be annoyed about?
- kelukelugames 11y agoI worked at and bought my house through Redfin. He didn't know where I lived until he looked it up. In their defense, privacy policy is probably better now.
- jamisteven 11y agoIf I were his current boss ide fire him just for writing this article. Seriously, shit or get off the pot.
- an4rchy 11y agoThis post is just a person's account of something they have experienced. Why is everyone so bent on getting them to identify the issue or saying it might be other reasons they got fired etc. Take it for what it is, just like any other story, article or blog post on the Internet. It might just be method to vent or something fictional. I still don't think it's a valid reason to start making accusations about what might or might not have happened
- NotSammyHagar 11y agoHopefully this reminds people, especially if you are working in your first job at some all encompassing place like amazon, google, facebook, whatever, that they don't love you. Maybe they give you food, a phone, a ride to work, but you have to have your own life outside work. Keep your resume up to date. Even awesome google is not a place that everyone stays at forever.
- cglee 11y agoLove and loyalty to individuals, not institutions.
- uniformlyrandom 11y agoThat actually applies for any job at any company. Identifying yourself through your job is dangerous and unhealthy, although good for your career short-term.
- wdmeldon 11y agoThe difference is that most other jobs don't pretend to love you. They're fairly upfront about that fact.
- zerr 11y ago> Many companies do PIPs (performance improvement plans) Isn't this a first signal when one should start looking for a new job asap?
- ska 11y agoNot necessarily. As a manager if you have an employee who you believe is basically a good fit but has a performance issue you would really rather they turn this around than have to hire again. Particularly with junior people this can often work well. I realize that some organizations often use PIPs for legal converage reasons and in that case it may be a foregone conclusion.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoBut you don't know which is that case when its assigned to you.
- ska 11y agoIf you know your company and/or your manager you have at the very least strong hints.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoI disagree - the impetus for it may come from outside anyone you know.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoYes.
- brohee 11y ago"Every morning, I'd get up, hop in the shuttle, and that's when my day began. Getting breakfast, seeing all my friends" Confusing friends and colleagues, possibly having no life outside of work. "She's never at her desk, and she routinely cancelled our regular 1:1 meetings because she has no other choice" Stockholm syndrome "My boss's voice was devoid of emotion, even though we had gone through a lot together (at least from my point of view)." The first step is seeing you are delusional... Am I alone thinking that for this person getting fired is extremely positive and the opportunity to start anew with a healthier work/life balance?
- slowernet 11y agoDefinite elements of cultishness. In my experience it's best to remember that employers need people like you more than you need any one of them.
- kough 11y agoYeah, the whole part about missing all the notificaions once they were no longer an employee, and about spending all day on facebook, had my skin crawling.
- JonnieCache 11y agoNah, this post made working at facebook sound super weird, even without the disciplinary aspect. The "omnipresent alcohol" bit is really odd too. Now weed is legal in california, are you also allowed to roll a spliff at your desk and go and smoke it on your lunchbreak? 420 deploy code every day? I mean, we have beer o clock on friday afternoon, but generally programming is pretty hard, and while it may be fun to do all-night coding sessions while intoxicated at the weekend, getting smashed at work is surely not conducive to actually getting stuff done, especially in a team? All the espresso is bad enough...
- S4M 11y agoYes, one thing I believe is bad is to mix professional and private life, but he seems fine with it. Well I'm probably not a good fit for Facebook, which is fine.
- unwind 11y agoModerators: the title is obviously missing the word "like", as in "What does it feel like [...]", please fix. Thanks.
- propellerhat 11y agoMy opinion: This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. This person did not have the proper level of access on their own account to perform this action, so they used someone else's (likely the "VP" who they were working with on that project). This would/should get you fired at many places.
- forgottenpass 11y agoThis person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. [...] This would/should get you fired at many places. You mean that thing that happens all the time at every office? I have a post-it note on which my boss wrote his password for me, specifically because he was sick of my asking whenever I needed to be granted access to new things. I can't think of a single job I've that involved computers where I wasn't given access to user accounts that were not mine for reasons of expediency in the face of inflexable permissions systems.
- propellerhat 11y agoWhich company do you work for?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jccc 11y agoI would imagine at a place the scale of Facebook, where logging and accountability trails are as important as they must be at Facebook, this kind of transgression is categorically different from the one you describe.
- trhway 11y ago>I have a post-it note on which my boss wrote his password for me, thus it means explicit (and in writing! - good for you :) approval by the boss, and the boss bears primary responsibility here. In case of the original article it is pretty clear that the author didn't bother to get at least even informal approval from the higher-ups (even just mentioning that he is going to perform the task in that specific way in a conversation with that VP would go a long way) - that is a basic skill(or even i'd say "instinct") of covering your own lower behind one has to apply while working at a BigCo, be it Facebook or IBM.
- EC1 11y agoThis person sounds like a complete doormat. Can't even tell the taxi driver he prefers silence. Also it sounds absolutely awful working at Facebook, but then again I am extremely adamant to mix business and personal life. Nobody at work really knows me at all. This is the problem with investing yourself and your identity in your work. When things change, you get crushed. I hope OP's coffee tastes better the next morning, the air fresher, and the sky brighter. >At Facebook, you see posters everywhere that ask you what would you to if you weren't afraid, that prompt you to proceed and be bold, and remind you that this is the hacker company. Almost gagged reading this.
- LukeB_UK 11y ago> I felt stupid for not planning that I would have to give up my devices, which were my primary devices and hadn't been backed up in a while. I had a lot of personal things there that I never got back. Don't rely on your employer's devices as your personal primary devices. Things like this may happen, or they might want to claim ownership of everything done on those devices. Hell they could even be tracking what you're doing on them. Same goes the other way, your devices are yours, if you need a computer/phone/tablet for your job, your work should provide one. I see too many people happy to use their own devices at work so they don't have to ask for things.
- daodedickinson 11y agoI'm glad to see that unauthorized access to user data has a zero tolerance policy. I've met a lot of extremely skilled, hauntingly sociopathic programmers who will hack themselves free purchases and then cold call the companies they've stolen from expecting a bounty. One guy who did this also hacked the university ID / meal plan card to add fake money to his card and considered it a public service. There was a major extended power outage here and many emergency service generators were stolen and this guy opined loudly and unabashedly that this was "beautiful". He was by far the most talented programmer in my class year and it makes me afraid to connect to the internet.
- junto 11y agoI had a similar situation whilst working at a PC manufacturer. The underlying reason was due to a number of colleagues starting a company on the side. More specifically, we had registered a company to do some web development for a "Mom & Pop" type company. However, the project never got off the ground and we didn't actually do anything productive with the company. The company we registered was unrelated to the business of selling PCs, but the end result was that I was escorted from the building along with another colleague who was also involved. Two more of my other colleagues involved in the aforementioned side-enterprise got written warnings. It became apparent afterwards that we had been given an ethics workshop some months before that hinted that we should declare any outside company interests, and those interests would be judged as to whether they were conflicts of interest or not. Sadly, we neglected to mention it. Two further colleagues who were not involved with us were also removed on the same day. I have no idea for what reason. Several months later half the team got made redundant. The dismissal process itself is familiar to the Quora description, except I also had a guy from legal in the room. He looked exactly like Marsellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction, but wearing a $3000 Armani suit rather than a ball gag. His opening gambit was to slam a huge pile of A4 on to the VP's conference room solid mahogany table. As he glared at me, he told me that this was every single email that I'd ever sent or received while working for said company. It became clear that they had been monitoring all internet traffic in and out of the workplace. Whether that was legal at the time in my country is dubious, but it wasn't worth fighting at the time. On my dismissal letter I had a strange reason given for the dismissal. It stated that I had been dismissed "for misusing company resources during work hours". It was related to the use of work email to organise the handful of times we got together as a group outside of work. "Hey shall we get together this evening for a few beers and program a bit?" kind of thing. The others who got warnings had something different noted on their warning letters. It specified that they had not declared outside interests in an external company and that this was against company ethics rules. After leaving the company I started up a web development company. I continued to use the company that we had registered and continued to use it for several years. Several years later I tried to update my company director record because I had changed my home address. A letter came back, stating that I had never actually been registered as a company director. They enclosed the initial application form from three years previous. The form was completed, but I had neglected to sign it. Oh the irony. It suddenly became clear that they had probably checked the company records and noted that I wasn't registered as director. They probably thought that on top of everything I was trying to be a wise guy. Sadly, it was just incompetence. Lots of lessons learned, but the golden rules are: - Never do anything on your work computer that is not related to your work - Always pay attention to ethics workshops and your employment contracts. - Always be aware that if a company wants to cut head count then heads will roll. It is cheaper to fire people than make them redundant. - Marsellus Wallace has a new job slamming conference tables with piles of A4. - After completing a form, always remember to sign and date it!!
- jgalt212 11y agoIs it just me or does it seem like many questions on Quora are about working at either Google or Facebook?
- exodust 11y ago"I did a bad thing, a very very bad thing" "Everyone does it routinely". So... everyone who works at Facebook routinely does this bad thing they would be fired for if caught? Scandalous! We simply must know what this bad thing is. On the other hand, the post was self-indulgent, boring, empty crap. I'm putting my money on the author's lack of anything interesting to say, getting in the way of anything interesting to say.
- derptron 11y agoI only feel bad for this person because of how heavily invested they were in their job. People really need to have something outside of work to focus on.
- stirner 11y agoIf, as many people in these comments are speculating, the author got fired for accessing private user data, the question remains: why doesn't Facebook have built-in security measures that prevent this sort of access?
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoI haven't seen this thought so far: Zero tolerance policies must be justified much more strenuously than they are. Strictly speaking, there should be no zero tolerance policies. Things that are subject to zero tolerance should be strictly controlled to where those policies can't be violated. Depending on a memo being broadcast to "fix" it won't work. At work, if there is a zero tolerance policy and someone asks me to do something that even causes me to look at a zero tolerance policy, I bring that up and negotiate the ... something down. "We can't do that because..." I'm not here to debug your policy suite ( unless you ask nicely ) . If it's in writing, I won't violate it - period. If stuff doesn't get done, then that's been already decided to be less costly than violating the policy.