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Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of the details. While I 100% disagree with him on marriage equality I don't understand why he was driven from his role that h

Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of the details. While I 100% disagree with him on marriage equality I don't understand why he was driven from his role that has nothing to do with Proposition 8. Why did his freedom to support a cause with his own money result in him having to resign, seems anti-democratic to me.

ahelwer 6y ago
I don't know, man. It's easy to get all abstract with phrases like "support a cause" but we live in a concrete world. Mozilla employs a lot of gay people. Prop 8 was viciously homophobic, both in concept and especially in execution of its campaign. How would you feel going to work knowing your boss's boss thinks you don't deserve rights?
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Doesn't basically everyone feel they are being denied some basic human rights all the time? Progressives are being denied healthcare rights. Libertarians are being denied property rights. etc.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    A textbook 'whataboutism' comment.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      "Do you know what X feels like?" "Yes" "That's just whataboutism!"
    - akamaka 6y ago
      Isn’t it more of a slippery slope argument?
- mynameishere 6y ago
  Proposition 8 just confirmed 1000s maybe 10s of 1000s of years of conventional thinking about marriage. If that's "viciously" anything, you're going to have to get used to some degree of viciousness. Gay marriage is quite an anomaly.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Marriage as an institution is about 4500 years old. The tax advantages and other advantages conferred on married people are much more recent. So this was far more about withholding something from a group than it was of granting something to that group. Either way, on the total age of humanity that is an eyeblink and fortunately we are not above progressing. At least, not all of us.
    - mynameishere 6y ago
      On the total age of civilization it's pretty close to 100 percent. Shrug. Just be ready for the regression to the mean.
- dmingod666 6y ago
  Looking at from the other side of the globe, as a non-american. I get the impression that in silicon valley, technology is all about skin color, what you have between your legs and what you want to do with what you have between you legs - end of story. Those are the really important bit. Everything else is just the details. It looks like pure politics, keep conservatives out and keep liberals in. His fault wasn't the donation. His fault was being outed as a conservative. I think someone should try wearing a trump hat to work at a technology company for a week and see how long they last in the organization.
  - ksec 6y ago
    Yes. I sometimes wonder if there any conservatives in Silicon Valley.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      Considering the number of libertarians in technology. I'd say yes, there are many. They're just not the bible-thumping kind that you're thinking of.
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    If you aren't in America, and you're frequenting (largely) American discussion boards, you're going to see the topics that get a lot of discussion - things where not everyone is on board with one side or the other. This of course tilts heavily toward culture issues. Some people like to wax poetic about getting along with people with whom you disagree. But there's a difference between disagreeing on, say, tabs vs. spaces or fiscal policy or something, and disagreeing about what sort of people do or do not deserve rights. This situation clearly falls in the latter category and attempts to conflate it with the former are very unconvincing.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Gay marriage is not an office work issue.
      - 6y ago
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Better then not going to work because the CEO chosen for her politically correct identity destroyed the organizer. Mozilla employees did NOT support the firing of Eich. Don't use them as human shields for your assault on civility.
  - hacker_newz 6y ago
    Facts beg to differ: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/?comments=1&post=26524117 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil...
    - nullc 6y ago
      A few people commenting is not widespread support. I was at Mozilla at the time and I didn't get the impression that the views you linked were broadly representative.
      - nullc 6y ago
        And FWIW: I didn't personally feel the backlash at Brendan was appropriate, but given that it existed the outcome was probably unavoidable. I say this as someone who, while living in Virgina and having never lived in California at the time prop 8 was on the ballot (I moved here a few years later), I donated to opposition to CA prop 8 and decided to not get married to my (opposite sex) partner out of solidarity with gay people who couldn't get married in our state. I never felt that I should be or would be persecuted at Mozilla (which employed a lot of christians, and particularly Catholics), if it had become public that I funded opposition to prop 8. Nor, by the same token, did I think it was appropriate for Brendan to come under fire for funding support for it. I have sympathy for the theoretical argument that it might be difficult to work for someone with personal views incompatible with yours or your identity, but in practice Mozilla was an an extremely open and inclusive place that employed people of all kinds and treated them with respect. (In other words, a theoretical problem which wasn't in this instance a practical problem by any report I heard.) Although I don't have any actual knowledge, if I had to speculate I would guess there were other Mozilla employees who supported prop 8 (many?). -- especially considering that prop 8 _passed_ with >52% support. Even though I strongly disagreed with him on this subject (apparently! not that I'd have any way to know other than the media coverage of this), the incident made me feel slightly less safe and welcome there-- because clearly your lawful and constitutionally protected outside-of-work personal/political/religious views were potentially subject to scrutiny. Although not very much so, because it appeared clear to me that the events were primarily being driven by public noise, and not by some internal wrong-think witchhunt.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  In my experience it's been about a half-and-half split between managers I respect and those that I don't. It's certainly not my preference but I have worked for people who don't really respect me and, very likely, didn't believe I deserved all sorts of things (a living wage being among them). That said, Mozilla works in a competitive environment. Perhaps it would have made more sense to wait for valuable employees to start leaving before dismissing their CEO. While I find his position on Prop 8 offensive, as others have pointed out, they are entitled to their beliefs.
- zimablue 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8
- roenxi 6y ago
  If I earn $100,000 am I allowed to ask for people advocating for tax increases to be ejected from the company for being wealthophobes? That isn't as idle a question as you might think on first glance. Denying someone marriage rights is waaay down the list of ways voters can screw each other over through government policy. Most high income earners are in companies with co-workers who literally argue that they should be less well off. Being anti-gay-marriage is more stupid because the upside is unclear, but we expect people in the same company to put up with bigger differences of opinion on a routine basis. Different religions have gone to war in the past. I don't think many battles have been fought over official marriage rights.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    Are you seriously comparing civil rights to a tax increase? Spend 10 minutes today learning about marriage and the rights it includes. I used to think it wasn't a big deal until I actually learned about it. Marriage includes hundreds of legal rights that have a huge impact on a couple's life (and death).
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    This is Cali. You can be castigated for saying 那个 too much.
  - 6510 6y ago
    I one time notice that strict job descriptions are incredibly rare. I've only really seen them on factory floors. For laughs I ask a bunch of people in the same function to describe their job. Having asked this a few times it was fun to chat about how different their idea was from their colleagues. Some of them were surprisingly clueless. They thought their job was the stuff that currently consumed most of their time. I think in programming we've learned (the hard way) that fuzzy input should be rejected. Stuff should do exactly what it says on the can. No mather how sophisticated, if a date object returns political opinion they are not parsed. Perhaps one day we can do modular job descriptions or functional employment. Accurate task descriptions with actual specs. Well formed execution and response text. The most professional people I've worked with were already strict about what everyone's job was.
- LGNUITLZCJ 6y ago
  By that definition, Obama was viciously homophobic[0]. How many people who wanted Eich fired voted for Obama in 2008? [0] https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-marriage-is-between-man-and-woman-011026 https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-...
bipson 6y ago
How is this anti-democratic? Democracy means the reign of the people - nothing in that concept involves that corporations can't remove someone (pressure someone to step down) because of his views/actions. To be more precise: In a democracy corporations can still be concerned with their public image and distance themselves from (particularly high-ranked) employees, if they consider them detrimental for their business.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  It is democratic. It is however illiberal.
stevehawk 6y ago
I'd say the answer to that is the same reason why there was a front page article the other day about which was more important: revenue stream or culture. Comments almost made it feel like people would gladly ride a company to the grave so long as they could feel good about what they haven't accomplished (making money).
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  I missed that article. Do you have a link? I’d like to read the comments.
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24543510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24543510
reaperducer 6y ago
Why did his freedom to support a cause with his own money result in him having to resign It used to be that it was OK to know and be friends with people who had different views than you. It was called "being an adult." Now we're all in these ever-shrinking thought bubbles where if someone's views don't line up with yours 100%, they're the devil. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia couldn't be farther apart on most issues. But they were the best of friends. We're all children by comparison.
rowanG077 6y ago
It's a sad state of affairs for society. When you don't agree with the status quo you get "canceled". Even if it has nothing to do with your function.

ahelwer 6y ago

I don't know, man. It's easy to get all abstract with phrases like "support a cause" but we live in a concrete world. Mozilla employs a lot of gay people. Prop 8 was viciously homophobic, both in concept and especially in execution of its campaign. How would you feel going to work knowing your boss's boss thinks you don't deserve rights?

Consultant32452 6y ago
Doesn't basically everyone feel they are being denied some basic human rights all the time? Progressives are being denied healthcare rights. Libertarians are being denied property rights. etc.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  A textbook 'whataboutism' comment.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    "Do you know what X feels like?" "Yes" "That's just whataboutism!"
  - akamaka 6y ago
    Isn’t it more of a slippery slope argument?
mynameishere 6y ago
Proposition 8 just confirmed 1000s maybe 10s of 1000s of years of conventional thinking about marriage. If that's "viciously" anything, you're going to have to get used to some degree of viciousness. Gay marriage is quite an anomaly.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Marriage as an institution is about 4500 years old. The tax advantages and other advantages conferred on married people are much more recent. So this was far more about withholding something from a group than it was of granting something to that group. Either way, on the total age of humanity that is an eyeblink and fortunately we are not above progressing. At least, not all of us.
  - mynameishere 6y ago
    On the total age of civilization it's pretty close to 100 percent. Shrug. Just be ready for the regression to the mean.
dmingod666 6y ago
Looking at from the other side of the globe, as a non-american. I get the impression that in silicon valley, technology is all about skin color, what you have between your legs and what you want to do with what you have between you legs - end of story. Those are the really important bit. Everything else is just the details. It looks like pure politics, keep conservatives out and keep liberals in. His fault wasn't the donation. His fault was being outed as a conservative. I think someone should try wearing a trump hat to work at a technology company for a week and see how long they last in the organization.
- ksec 6y ago
  Yes. I sometimes wonder if there any conservatives in Silicon Valley.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    Considering the number of libertarians in technology. I'd say yes, there are many. They're just not the bible-thumping kind that you're thinking of.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  If you aren't in America, and you're frequenting (largely) American discussion boards, you're going to see the topics that get a lot of discussion - things where not everyone is on board with one side or the other. This of course tilts heavily toward culture issues. Some people like to wax poetic about getting along with people with whom you disagree. But there's a difference between disagreeing on, say, tabs vs. spaces or fiscal policy or something, and disagreeing about what sort of people do or do not deserve rights. This situation clearly falls in the latter category and attempts to conflate it with the former are very unconvincing.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Gay marriage is not an office work issue.
    - 6y ago
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Better then not going to work because the CEO chosen for her politically correct identity destroyed the organizer. Mozilla employees did NOT support the firing of Eich. Don't use them as human shields for your assault on civility.
- hacker_newz 6y ago
  Facts beg to differ: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/?comments=1&post=26524117 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil...
  - nullc 6y ago
    A few people commenting is not widespread support. I was at Mozilla at the time and I didn't get the impression that the views you linked were broadly representative.
    - nullc 6y ago
      And FWIW: I didn't personally feel the backlash at Brendan was appropriate, but given that it existed the outcome was probably unavoidable. I say this as someone who, while living in Virgina and having never lived in California at the time prop 8 was on the ballot (I moved here a few years later), I donated to opposition to CA prop 8 and decided to not get married to my (opposite sex) partner out of solidarity with gay people who couldn't get married in our state. I never felt that I should be or would be persecuted at Mozilla (which employed a lot of christians, and particularly Catholics), if it had become public that I funded opposition to prop 8. Nor, by the same token, did I think it was appropriate for Brendan to come under fire for funding support for it. I have sympathy for the theoretical argument that it might be difficult to work for someone with personal views incompatible with yours or your identity, but in practice Mozilla was an an extremely open and inclusive place that employed people of all kinds and treated them with respect. (In other words, a theoretical problem which wasn't in this instance a practical problem by any report I heard.) Although I don't have any actual knowledge, if I had to speculate I would guess there were other Mozilla employees who supported prop 8 (many?). -- especially considering that prop 8 _passed_ with >52% support. Even though I strongly disagreed with him on this subject (apparently! not that I'd have any way to know other than the media coverage of this), the incident made me feel slightly less safe and welcome there-- because clearly your lawful and constitutionally protected outside-of-work personal/political/religious views were potentially subject to scrutiny. Although not very much so, because it appeared clear to me that the events were primarily being driven by public noise, and not by some internal wrong-think witchhunt.
cmiles74 6y ago
In my experience it's been about a half-and-half split between managers I respect and those that I don't. It's certainly not my preference but I have worked for people who don't really respect me and, very likely, didn't believe I deserved all sorts of things (a living wage being among them). That said, Mozilla works in a competitive environment. Perhaps it would have made more sense to wait for valuable employees to start leaving before dismissing their CEO. While I find his position on Prop 8 offensive, as others have pointed out, they are entitled to their beliefs.
zimablue 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8
roenxi 6y ago
If I earn $100,000 am I allowed to ask for people advocating for tax increases to be ejected from the company for being wealthophobes? That isn't as idle a question as you might think on first glance. Denying someone marriage rights is waaay down the list of ways voters can screw each other over through government policy. Most high income earners are in companies with co-workers who literally argue that they should be less well off. Being anti-gay-marriage is more stupid because the upside is unclear, but we expect people in the same company to put up with bigger differences of opinion on a routine basis. Different religions have gone to war in the past. I don't think many battles have been fought over official marriage rights.
- driverdan 6y ago
  Are you seriously comparing civil rights to a tax increase? Spend 10 minutes today learning about marriage and the rights it includes. I used to think it wasn't a big deal until I actually learned about it. Marriage includes hundreds of legal rights that have a huge impact on a couple's life (and death).
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  This is Cali. You can be castigated for saying 那个 too much.
- 6510 6y ago
  I one time notice that strict job descriptions are incredibly rare. I've only really seen them on factory floors. For laughs I ask a bunch of people in the same function to describe their job. Having asked this a few times it was fun to chat about how different their idea was from their colleagues. Some of them were surprisingly clueless. They thought their job was the stuff that currently consumed most of their time. I think in programming we've learned (the hard way) that fuzzy input should be rejected. Stuff should do exactly what it says on the can. No mather how sophisticated, if a date object returns political opinion they are not parsed. Perhaps one day we can do modular job descriptions or functional employment. Accurate task descriptions with actual specs. Well formed execution and response text. The most professional people I've worked with were already strict about what everyone's job was.
LGNUITLZCJ 6y ago
By that definition, Obama was viciously homophobic[0]. How many people who wanted Eich fired voted for Obama in 2008? [0] https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-marriage-is-between-man-and-woman-011026 https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-...

bipson 6y ago

How is this anti-democratic? Democracy means the reign of the people - nothing in that concept involves that corporations can't remove someone (pressure someone to step down) because of his views/actions. To be more precise: In a democracy corporations can still be concerned with their public image and distance themselves from (particularly high-ranked) employees, if they consider them detrimental for their business.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
It is democratic. It is however illiberal.

stevehawk 6y ago

I'd say the answer to that is the same reason why there was a front page article the other day about which was more important: revenue stream or culture. Comments almost made it feel like people would gladly ride a company to the grave so long as they could feel good about what they haven't accomplished (making money).

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
I missed that article. Do you have a link? I’d like to read the comments.
- stevehawk 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24543510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24543510

reaperducer 6y ago

Why did his freedom to support a cause with his own money result in him having to resign It used to be that it was OK to know and be friends with people who had different views than you. It was called "being an adult." Now we're all in these ever-shrinking thought bubbles where if someone's views don't line up with yours 100%, they're the devil. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia couldn't be farther apart on most issues. But they were the best of friends. We're all children by comparison.

rowanG077 6y ago

It's a sad state of affairs for society. When you don't agree with the status quo you get "canceled". Even if it has nothing to do with your function.