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I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence". In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what
by nsainsbury 6y ago
I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence".
In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opinions, you deserve to be fired.
- _rn 6y agoYeah this is a strange and pretty misleading headline. Here’s the primary source tweet: https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680?s=21 https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680?s=21
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI really think it crosses the line to being a dishonest headline. Reuters has to know that people will misunderstand it as an accusation that the employee was fired because he protested.
- dekhn 6y agoThis is the MO of news journalism (well, at least a subset). There's a narrative that sells ("big corp = bad, fire person for complaining to zuck") but they still typically include a little detail in the article ("actually fired for harrassing coworker") below the lede. I don't think I've ever seen a newspaper that hasn't done this. [edit: if you want to see some articles about misleading headlines, see https://daily.jstor.org/the-incredibly-true-story-of-fake-headlines/ https://daily.jstor.org/the-incredibly-true-story-of-fake-he... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/youll-cry-when-you-realize-how-easily-media-can-manipulate-you-180953183/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/youll-cry-when-you... ]
- underwater 6y agoThe original tweet is more telling. https://mobile.twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057 https://mobile.twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057
- bsamuels 6y agoThe first few replies are even more telling. When someone tells him that calling out a coworker is in bad taste, you get this gem >oh no Arthur thinks I'm rude, how will I recover https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267927023596400642?s=20 https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267927023596400642?s=20
- whateveracct 6y agoWhat a petulant response lmao
- scarmig 6y agoI love that in, another Tweet, someone is giving Arthur shit for... not having his pronouns in his bio. ETA: apparently the user giving Arthur shit is just trolling
- fault_lines 6y agoThe user doing that is a right wing troll. They don't actually think that people should have to list pronouns in their bio.
- waheoo 6y agoHe took it serious and apologised before updating his profile.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoAgree completely. This whole harass people for not being vocal enough in their endorsement of the cause smacks of authoritarianism and I think will backfire spectacularly. People resent being made to say something out of fear.
- JBReefer 6y agoI feel like “will” in that statement should be “has”
- mgleitub 6y agoIndeed -- here is some additional context that the article doesn't provide: The fired employee Tweeted today: >In the interest of transparency, I was let go for calling out an employee’s inaction here on Twitter. I stand by what I said. They didn’t give me the chance to quit [0] He then specifically cited [1] the Tweet in question that was the cause: >I asked @Vjeux to follow @reactjs's lead and add a statement of support to Recoil's docs and he privately refused, claiming open source shouldn't be political. >Intentionally not making a statement is already political. Consider that next time you think of Recoil. [2] This is specifically targeting an individual front-end engineer at FB, which in my own estimation crosses the line from criticism of executives or general policy, to specifically trying to instigate public outrage against a co-worker. If such actions were directed at me, I would definitely consider it as contributing to a hostile work environment. It all strikes me as a modern-day example of "Havel's greengrocer" [3]. [0] https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680 https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680 [1] https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271531477209976832 https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271531477209976832 [2] https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057 https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1267895488205869057 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Havel's_greengrocer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...
- rubber_duck 6y agoHe decides because he believes something strongly it permits him to publicly attack someone he works with... Imagine having to deal with this guy in a team when he has a strong opinion on something the team disagrees with ...
- holler 6y agoAgree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.
- dlp211 6y ago> where mob rule is becoming the status quo. The Government of the US is currently (mostly) controlled by a party that received fewer votes.
- PiggySpeed 6y agoI'm starting a new job soon and I'm trying to figure out how I'll handle these "silence is complicit" characters. My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dvtrn 6y agoKill em with kindness. “Thanks for letting me know how you feel about this, I consider this a valuable opinion and think deeply on it”. Then go ahead and do whatever you were going to do anyway, but at least let them know you’ve heard and acknowledged what they had to say. Sometimes folks just want to be acknowledged, that doesn’t seem like too much of a burden.
- PiggySpeed 6y agoI this this is a good approach that I've used before. I think it starts to crumble when people start to demand you to do stuff like posting on your social media or showing them donation receipts.
- pnako 6y agoWhy not just ignore them?
- dvtrn 6y agoIt’ll crumble if you allow them to continue pushing the matter and imposing upon you, enforce your personal boundaries and if they continue intruding, probably HR time or at least sidebar with your manager. Good luck in your new job otherwise!
- nickff 6y agoI think the unfortunate reality is that some people are intolerant of others who are insufficiently supportive of certain causes, and the only way to deal with those people is not to deal with them. The subject of this thread seems to be one of those people.
- underwater 6y agoHe called out a colleague, and then when the colleague reached out to him privately so they could discuss, called him out again for not conversing in public on Twitter. I'm sympathetic to his motivations, but his behaviour was unprofessional and unwarranted.
- baddox 6y agoIt's a public open-source project. Why shouldn't the response of an open-source project toward a current important movement be conducted in public? It seems to me that the fact that both people are Facebook developers is not particularly relevant. If the other person had not been a Facebook employee, should Facebook have fired this person?
- jackcodes 6y agoBecause it’s a private discussion between two people of opposing views. Same reason you can still text your friends even if you work in public office.
- baddox 6y agoIf you had any suggestion for the website of an open source project, wouldn't you discuss that publicly? I don't think you would privately contact the single person who is in control of the project's website, at least not initially.
- kjksf 6y agoSuggesting changes to the website was not a problem. Trying to mobilize Twitter mob against a person that declined your suggestion was a problem.
- baddox 6y agoI don't see any attempt to mobilize a Twitter mob against a person, unless you just consider all disagreements on Twitter to inherently imply a desire for a Twitter mob to come to your side.
- daenz 6y agoThis is the world we're moving towards. People have been more outspoken in these past few years about demanding "hard conversations" from family and peers. This mindset taking root in the workforce is the logical next step. You can't shut it down or else you're "part of the problem." You can't ignore it and be silent or else you're "part of the problem."
- mansion7 6y agoAnd you can't disagree with me, or you're part of the problem. The only way to not be "part of the problem" is to do what I want at all times. BTW, being "part of the problem" means you're a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Nazi and I will take every action I can to get you fired from your job, harassed in public, defamed, banned from social media, etc.
- whymauri 6y agoI think this wins the prize for the largest strawman in this entire thread.
- mansion7 6y agoIf there culprit wasn't trying to get their victim publicly ostracized, they would have kept their concerns private. And they did it by framing their victim as complicit, via silence. After all, as we've recently been lectured to, silence is violence. There is literally no other justification for their actions (apart from possibly some form of mental illness, but I'm not a doctor and unqualified to guess at that)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mv4 6y agoGlad you pointed this out. Interestingly, the topic (don't harass your co-workers) was specifically discussed internally last week.
- baron816 6y agoThe “silence is complicit” stuff does really annoy me. Shaming people for not having the same political beliefs is already one thing. But shaming them for having those beliefs, but not sharing them in arenas they’re not comfortable sharing them in is quite extreme.
- waheoo 6y agoSounds like you have something to hide ... The irony.
- caseysoftware 6y agoThis is interesting to consider in combination with the xkcd "showing you the door" free speech comic. If staying silent is unacceptable and saying something "wrong" is unacceptable, then it's in your own self interest to learn the "acceptable views" (whether you agree or not) and mouth them whenever the Powers that Be demand it. That's quite twisted.
- mshroyer 6y agoI love XKCD, but that strip is philosophically and historically ignorant. Free speech isn't the First Amendment. Free speech is a broad foundational principle of liberalism, and the First Amendment is just an encoding of this principle in the context of the U.S. government. But go back to Mill's "On Liberty" and you'll find that he was just as concerned about threats to free speech stemming from social disapprobation as those from the government. Anyway, I prefer this modified version of the strip: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECqxDQGVAAAXUgK?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECqxDQGVAAAXUgK?format=jpg&name=...
- umvi 6y ago> then it's in your own self interest to learn the "acceptable views" (whether you agree or not) and mouth them whenever the Powers that Be demand it. Wow, that sounds eerily like 1984: "In the Two Minutes Hate [Winston] could not help sharing in the general delirium ... Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him." Basically, if you have to do that, it means there is some implementation of thought police around you that you are hiding from.
- marta_morena_24 6y agoYep. This guy is the textbook definition of toxic. There is nothing worse than people who want to inflict their own opinion on others. Yeah you can think of Trumps tweets what you want, censorship is a big thing too you know... The problem is not Trumps tweets, its that 40% of Americans are supporting Trump that should worry us. But then again, you can't inflict your own opinion on others. The only way to do something useful here is to educate people about how wrong they are in supporting Trump.
- cameronbrown 6y ago> 40% of Americans are supporting Trump that should worry us Hmm, mob rule and "educating people why they are wrong" does one thing - it sends these people underground and it's why Trump might win again: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/03/secret-donald-trump-voters-speak-out https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/03/secret-donal... I'd rather have these ideas out in the open where people can defeat the arguments properly without ad-hominem, rather than shouting them down. And hell, maybe even learn something new.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DenisM 6y ago>The only way to do something useful here is to educate people about how wrong they are in supporting Trump. The only way? How about reconsidering your own position and offering people something they would like better?
- rumanator 6y ago> The only way? How about reconsidering your own position and offering people something they would like better? What if people like the police having free reign to assault and even commit murder arbitrarily because of false associations with, say, safety?
- dang 6y agoOk, since the article says both that the employee "wrote on Twitter that he was dismissed for publicly scolding a colleague" and "Facebook confirmed [this] characterization of his dismissal", I think we can syllogize our way to "Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague" as a fact that both sides have confirmed.
- koheripbal 6y agoBullying. It's just adult bullying. ...and there is an uncomfortable number of people that are ok with it because the offender happens to be on "their side" politically. This is the decay of modern political discourse.