7 ms·

Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free

90 points by lando2319 5y ago

sgammon 5y ago
completely asinine. imagine telling on yourself like this
raxxorrax 5y ago
> Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” > It’s trapped trying to please the mob. That is exactly what many people connect to DIE. It was predictable, it is about PR, it is dishonest and you don't want to work at a corporation that has such a position. Money well spend in my opinion. At some point the brand will feel that, it is only a matter of time. It will not be the cool jeans it tries to be. It will be a compliant and fearful corporation that is dishonest in its self presentation.
otterley 5y ago
Whether you agree with her or not, when you are responsible for a multi-billion dollar brand based in San Francisco, appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News without your employer’s consent is a career-limiting move.
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  The point it shouldn’t be. When did SF become so intolerant?
- jterrys 5y ago
  It was also probably a career limiting move going around in 2020 trying to rally against school closures as literally the rest of the country was shutting down. You might have empirical data now, and you feel that your gut feeling was correct, but merely trying to justify this now with the knowledge of hindsight feels ironically shortsighted.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    "Then, in October 2020, when it was clear public schools were not going to open that fall, I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco." October 2020 -- not like it was April. Much of the country had at least some in-person schooling going on. It should have been at least discussable without saying she's racist and doesn't care if all the minority children die.
  - hiram112 5y ago
    > You might have empirical data now, and you feel that your gut feeling was correct, but merely trying to justify this now with the knowledge of hindsight feels ironically shortsighted. This doesn't sound like something a health society would want to embrace. This woman publicly went against the establishment narrative, which is a dangerous play in modern America (see Joe Rogan e.g.). Well, turns out, her views were generally CORRECT. She was right. The mob was wrong. Or at least, her opinions were as valid as the rest of us, since we're watching in real time as the last two year's of covid hysteria are memory-holed now that they're deemed a political liability in the next election. IOW, "Trust the Science" has, therefore, been shown to have been mostly bullsh*t. A healthy society would generally reward someone who was proven to be right, especially when they risked so much calling out that the emperor was naked. But it seems like we've entered a period where, even if you're later proven to have been correct, the mere act of defying the mob, is enough to permanently cancel you. It is an unforgivable sin.
    - otterley 5y ago
      There’s a pretty wide gulf between having controversial opinions on hot-button issues and expressing them to your friends and family, and being in the line of succession for CEO (as well as the current brand owner) at one of the most well-known companies in America and going on Laura Ingraham without your employer’s consent to talk about your views. There’s an old saw about “you can be right, or you can be married.” Being right isn’t everything. Perceptions, relationships, and influence matters - and the higher you are in the career ladder, the most impact you have. You have to think about that impact with all the stakeholders in mind. It’s not just about you - it’s about your fellow employees and others who you influence, directly or indirectly (to the point of being able to put food on the table) by your actions.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  We need to change our society to make that not the case. The status quo is completely unacceptable. Allowing a small number of people complaining on Twitter to silence opposing political views of people through pressuring their employer, is a stain on our culture and we need to find a way to change it.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    It’s not just the extreme left which is most frequently engaged in mob mentality of suppression, cancel culture is also from extreme right: Carhartt’s boycott for instituting vaccine policy. I have started seeing people that camp out in these echo chambers as uncompassionate, immoral and fundamentally dangerous people. Dangerous in the sense that they’re toxic for a peaceful democracy.
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      The "extreme left" is not doing this. Those of us who are over here are deeply concerned about civil liberties even of people we don't like. Just like the ACLU used to be, defending Nazis because if you take away their speech, who's next? The suppression is coming from "moderate" liberals. They're the ones who captured the ACLU when they suddenly got lots of money and grew and became the anti-Trump league. I'm not a Trumper, but he's much less of a threat to civil liberties than those moderate liberals. In the same way the ACLU has flipped, perceptions of a simple left/right divide need to change. Old labels don't make sense.
    - jimbokun 5y ago
      > It’s not just the extreme left which is most frequently engaged in mob mentality of suppression, cancel culture is also from extreme right: Agree 100%. This is a bipartisan issue and our discourse is being dictated more and more by the political fringes.
  - mpalmer 5y ago
    You've chosen maybe the worst example to make this particular point. When you are responsible for the brand image of a company, making unauthorized media appearances is absolutely actionable, regardless of the reaction on Twitter.
coding123 5y ago
One of the things the internet has done is make it so that if you have 1 conservative view (even if it's not really even conservative) you're suspected of having ALL of the views. You suddenly become one of the deplorables. Now the deplorables do exist, but not everyone that has right leaning views ought to be labelled that. This used to not be the case. It feels like each year that goes by there's a gap wider than our inflation pushing the two parties further from each other. That has to stop.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  As far as my experience goes, this applies exactly as well when conservatives are observing a person with a liberal view. Not to diminish what you're saying - in fact I think I'm elevating what you're saying to further heights of direness. The internet in general streamlines some of humanity's worst social tendencies.
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    > As far as my experience goes, this applies exactly as well when conservatives are observing a person with a liberal view. Absolutely. This issue is bi-partisan and affects everyone.
  - dpark 5y ago
    It’s not just the Internet. Political views and beliefs have become wildly more polarized in the last few decades. People broadly hate the “other party” far more than they like “their” party now.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Don't know why this is downvoted. Ironically this is a pretty apt observation. Granted, it is true for the other political isle too. There are only the good guy and the bad guys.
- otterley 5y ago
  99% of conservatives make the other 1% look bad.
terminatornet 5y ago
every disingenuous "open the schools" asshole always stops right there. Can we mandate masks in schools? No. Can we at least make a plan to improve ventilation? No. Can we improve contact tracing and testing? Also no. None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  When I watched the Superbowl, I saw plenty of celebrities and politicians socializing without masks. But on Monday morning, all of the kids had to wear masks at school. If the politicians think that masks are so important, the least they can do is wear them when they're going to be filmed in public.
  - dimator 5y ago
    Monday yes but Tuesday maybe not. The mask mandate is supposedly being lifted on the 15th in California.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  This feels like a strawman to me. I can only speak for myself, but I don’t conform to your statements above. Surely I’m not alone. I want to see schools opened. I oppose state and federal mask mandates, but if a school wants to mandate them, that’s their business. One of the big takeaways for me from COVID is that we should be doing more as a rule to consider airflow and ventilation in all public spaces. I’ve not gone to great lengths to validate my instinct with data, but I strongly suspect doing so would result in a significant decrease in the spread of many airborne illnesses. Schools should absolutely work to improve in this area. I oppose mandatory contact tracing, but if an individual wants to opt in to one of the schemes, by all means go for it! I wouldn’t even be philosophically opposed to a scheme implemented and/or “blessed” by a government - as long as it’s opt-in. > None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours. Yeah, about that… we homeschool. Our children have never been enrolled in a government school, and they will never be - with the possible exception of is they decide they want to be and have a reasonable justification for it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions about government policy.
phkahler 5y ago
She writes really well, but this one sentence required me to back up when I knew I was misreading it: "This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist." The section set between - hyphens - is too long, so the before and after got separated in my mind. The result was reading the later part as: "I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist" which struck me as comically incorrect, so I had to back up to put it together correctly.
- ariendj 5y ago
  The thought of that is hilarious, thanks for sharing this brainfart.
- browningstreet 5y ago
  Em dashes like this work like parentheses.
- dpark 5y ago
  The problem is the injection of this at the beginning of a list. This loses the comma that should be there to separate the list items, but also it just flows weirdly. Parentheses would have been much clearer here.
- coding123 5y ago
  I also thought for a second that one of her black sons was a eugenicist and the other was a QAnon. Read it again and it made more sense.
- emerged 5y ago
  I thought having a QAnon son was an odd way to prove you’re not racist.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Reproducing with someone of a given race is also a weird way to prove that, though.
- 5y ago
casion 5y ago
I find it strange that someone in this position, regardless of their beliefs, does not recognize that as a (potential) CEO - they speak for the company. It doesn't matter if you're on or off the clock. What you say in public is a reflection on the company. It doesn't matter if you think that your personal identity and professional identity should be separate. At that level, at this point in history, in this specific business culture, they are not separate. Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Very true but I believe this is changing for the better and people learn to differentiate. Maybe not today, but it is on its way. Although it does not seem to work for journalism ironically. Any opinion article is seen as the opinion of the whole journal. But I don't see her as unfit for the role. Sometimes you have to accept the things like they are and sometimes you have to take a stand. To generally criticise this behavior would be wrong as it would promote CEOs that are braggarts. I also think this will damage the brand image and that is not because of the CEO.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  I think her point is that the company takes many explicitly political stances all of the time. So why not this one? In this case, there's a mob of people willing to demonize her and the company. Should mobs rule dominate company politics?
  - casion 5y ago
    Alternatively: she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation. Should mobs rule? Probably not. Should a "Brand President" be capable of dealing with situations like this: absolutely. Should a CEO be capable of doing so? Yes.
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      > she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation. It sounds like the obverse of this may be true: the roel was unfit for her because it did not allow her sufficient choice in how to manage the situation. A brand manager for a major brand should be able to influence what policies the brand takes a position on and what policies it does not. It sounds like that has been the case to this point, but in this case one of two things happened: either the latitude that she was given in the position was curtailed, or it was the first time where her personal beliefs diverged from the positions of the rest of the company. In the interest of exposing my own biases, I stopped financially supporting Levi’s in 2018 after their CEO publicly came out in support of additional, stricter gun laws: https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-parkland/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-par...
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. She can't possibly be that naive.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  The principle does very well exclude repercussions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech Of course that does not mean that companies don't violate the principle in favor of PR. But in a dialogue it is seen as a weakness and inability to discuss if you threaten consequences for an opinion. And rightly so.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  If there are severe consequences for speech, to what extent can you say it's "free"? It may fit a narrow legal reading of the First Amendment, but that's not necessarily the same as the ideal of "Free Speech".
  - terminatornet 5y ago
    What consequences were there for her exactly? She got offered a million dollar payoff, turned it down, and is now clearly gearing up to try and be some conservative grifter. The consequences don't seem that bad to me.
  - dbbk 5y ago
    The severe consequence in this case was an offer of $1 Million and the ability to walk into another executive role at another company with none of the details of her firing being made public.
ur-whale 5y ago
jansen555 5y ago
She is brave and principled. Got guts. But unfortunately the world we live in wont tolerate her. Levi can easily be intimidated by minority few same as with our justice system particularly scotus last year. Meanwhile FBI is busy opening cases related to China while local enforcers scared as usual.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
She's blaming the company for something they have no real control over. There's a global pandemic on. People are scared. The world doesn't know how to fix this. This is the wrong approach to a topic that scares people and with good reason.
slowhand09 5y ago
Good article. Who is so afraid multiple viewpoints that they have to flag this? Evidently "My side or the highway" is acceptable to some here.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

90 points by lando2319 5y ago

completely asinine. imagine telling on yourself like this

> Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” > It’s trapped trying to please the mob. That is exactly what many people connect to DIE. It was predictable, it is about PR, it is dishonest and you don't want to work at a corporation that has such a position. Money well spend in my opinion. At some point the brand will feel that, it is only a matter of time. It will not be the cool jeans it tries to be. It will be a compliant and fearful corporation that is dishonest in its self presentation.

otterley 5y ago

Whether you agree with her or not, when you are responsible for a multi-billion dollar brand based in San Francisco, appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News without your employer’s consent is a career-limiting move.

throwaway1777 5y ago
The point it shouldn’t be. When did SF become so intolerant?
jterrys 5y ago
It was also probably a career limiting move going around in 2020 trying to rally against school closures as literally the rest of the country was shutting down. You might have empirical data now, and you feel that your gut feeling was correct, but merely trying to justify this now with the knowledge of hindsight feels ironically shortsighted.
- LanceH 5y ago
  "Then, in October 2020, when it was clear public schools were not going to open that fall, I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco." October 2020 -- not like it was April. Much of the country had at least some in-person schooling going on. It should have been at least discussable without saying she's racist and doesn't care if all the minority children die.
- hiram112 5y ago
  > You might have empirical data now, and you feel that your gut feeling was correct, but merely trying to justify this now with the knowledge of hindsight feels ironically shortsighted. This doesn't sound like something a health society would want to embrace. This woman publicly went against the establishment narrative, which is a dangerous play in modern America (see Joe Rogan e.g.). Well, turns out, her views were generally CORRECT. She was right. The mob was wrong. Or at least, her opinions were as valid as the rest of us, since we're watching in real time as the last two year's of covid hysteria are memory-holed now that they're deemed a political liability in the next election. IOW, "Trust the Science" has, therefore, been shown to have been mostly bullsh*t. A healthy society would generally reward someone who was proven to be right, especially when they risked so much calling out that the emperor was naked. But it seems like we've entered a period where, even if you're later proven to have been correct, the mere act of defying the mob, is enough to permanently cancel you. It is an unforgivable sin.
  - otterley 5y ago
    There’s a pretty wide gulf between having controversial opinions on hot-button issues and expressing them to your friends and family, and being in the line of succession for CEO (as well as the current brand owner) at one of the most well-known companies in America and going on Laura Ingraham without your employer’s consent to talk about your views. There’s an old saw about “you can be right, or you can be married.” Being right isn’t everything. Perceptions, relationships, and influence matters - and the higher you are in the career ladder, the most impact you have. You have to think about that impact with all the stakeholders in mind. It’s not just about you - it’s about your fellow employees and others who you influence, directly or indirectly (to the point of being able to put food on the table) by your actions.
jimbokun 5y ago
We need to change our society to make that not the case. The status quo is completely unacceptable. Allowing a small number of people complaining on Twitter to silence opposing political views of people through pressuring their employer, is a stain on our culture and we need to find a way to change it.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  It’s not just the extreme left which is most frequently engaged in mob mentality of suppression, cancel culture is also from extreme right: Carhartt’s boycott for instituting vaccine policy. I have started seeing people that camp out in these echo chambers as uncompassionate, immoral and fundamentally dangerous people. Dangerous in the sense that they’re toxic for a peaceful democracy.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    The "extreme left" is not doing this. Those of us who are over here are deeply concerned about civil liberties even of people we don't like. Just like the ACLU used to be, defending Nazis because if you take away their speech, who's next? The suppression is coming from "moderate" liberals. They're the ones who captured the ACLU when they suddenly got lots of money and grew and became the anti-Trump league. I'm not a Trumper, but he's much less of a threat to civil liberties than those moderate liberals. In the same way the ACLU has flipped, perceptions of a simple left/right divide need to change. Old labels don't make sense.
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    > It’s not just the extreme left which is most frequently engaged in mob mentality of suppression, cancel culture is also from extreme right: Agree 100%. This is a bipartisan issue and our discourse is being dictated more and more by the political fringes.
- mpalmer 5y ago
  You've chosen maybe the worst example to make this particular point. When you are responsible for the brand image of a company, making unauthorized media appearances is absolutely actionable, regardless of the reaction on Twitter.

coding123 5y ago

One of the things the internet has done is make it so that if you have 1 conservative view (even if it's not really even conservative) you're suspected of having ALL of the views. You suddenly become one of the deplorables. Now the deplorables do exist, but not everyone that has right leaning views ought to be labelled that. This used to not be the case. It feels like each year that goes by there's a gap wider than our inflation pushing the two parties further from each other. That has to stop.

happytoexplain 5y ago
As far as my experience goes, this applies exactly as well when conservatives are observing a person with a liberal view. Not to diminish what you're saying - in fact I think I'm elevating what you're saying to further heights of direness. The internet in general streamlines some of humanity's worst social tendencies.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  > As far as my experience goes, this applies exactly as well when conservatives are observing a person with a liberal view. Absolutely. This issue is bi-partisan and affects everyone.
- dpark 5y ago
  It’s not just the Internet. Political views and beliefs have become wildly more polarized in the last few decades. People broadly hate the “other party” far more than they like “their” party now.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Don't know why this is downvoted. Ironically this is a pretty apt observation. Granted, it is true for the other political isle too. There are only the good guy and the bad guys.
otterley 5y ago
99% of conservatives make the other 1% look bad.

terminatornet 5y ago

every disingenuous "open the schools" asshole always stops right there. Can we mandate masks in schools? No. Can we at least make a plan to improve ventilation? No. Can we improve contact tracing and testing? Also no. None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.

xhkkffbf 5y ago
When I watched the Superbowl, I saw plenty of celebrities and politicians socializing without masks. But on Monday morning, all of the kids had to wear masks at school. If the politicians think that masks are so important, the least they can do is wear them when they're going to be filmed in public.
- dimator 5y ago
  Monday yes but Tuesday maybe not. The mask mandate is supposedly being lifted on the 15th in California.
Ancapistani 5y ago
This feels like a strawman to me. I can only speak for myself, but I don’t conform to your statements above. Surely I’m not alone. I want to see schools opened. I oppose state and federal mask mandates, but if a school wants to mandate them, that’s their business. One of the big takeaways for me from COVID is that we should be doing more as a rule to consider airflow and ventilation in all public spaces. I’ve not gone to great lengths to validate my instinct with data, but I strongly suspect doing so would result in a significant decrease in the spread of many airborne illnesses. Schools should absolutely work to improve in this area. I oppose mandatory contact tracing, but if an individual wants to opt in to one of the schemes, by all means go for it! I wouldn’t even be philosophically opposed to a scheme implemented and/or “blessed” by a government - as long as it’s opt-in. > None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours. Yeah, about that… we homeschool. Our children have never been enrolled in a government school, and they will never be - with the possible exception of is they decide they want to be and have a reasonable justification for it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions about government policy.

phkahler 5y ago

She writes really well, but this one sentence required me to back up when I knew I was misreading it: "This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist." The section set between - hyphens - is too long, so the before and after got separated in my mind. The result was reading the later part as: "I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist" which struck me as comically incorrect, so I had to back up to put it together correctly.

ariendj 5y ago
The thought of that is hilarious, thanks for sharing this brainfart.
browningstreet 5y ago
Em dashes like this work like parentheses.
dpark 5y ago
The problem is the injection of this at the beginning of a list. This loses the comma that should be there to separate the list items, but also it just flows weirdly. Parentheses would have been much clearer here.
coding123 5y ago
I also thought for a second that one of her black sons was a eugenicist and the other was a QAnon. Read it again and it made more sense.
emerged 5y ago
I thought having a QAnon son was an odd way to prove you’re not racist.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Reproducing with someone of a given race is also a weird way to prove that, though.
5y ago

casion 5y ago

I find it strange that someone in this position, regardless of their beliefs, does not recognize that as a (potential) CEO - they speak for the company. It doesn't matter if you're on or off the clock. What you say in public is a reflection on the company. It doesn't matter if you think that your personal identity and professional identity should be separate. At that level, at this point in history, in this specific business culture, they are not separate. Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Very true but I believe this is changing for the better and people learn to differentiate. Maybe not today, but it is on its way. Although it does not seem to work for journalism ironically. Any opinion article is seen as the opinion of the whole journal. But I don't see her as unfit for the role. Sometimes you have to accept the things like they are and sometimes you have to take a stand. To generally criticise this behavior would be wrong as it would promote CEOs that are braggarts. I also think this will damage the brand image and that is not because of the CEO.
xhkkffbf 5y ago
I think her point is that the company takes many explicitly political stances all of the time. So why not this one? In this case, there's a mob of people willing to demonize her and the company. Should mobs rule dominate company politics?
- casion 5y ago
  Alternatively: she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation. Should mobs rule? Probably not. Should a "Brand President" be capable of dealing with situations like this: absolutely. Should a CEO be capable of doing so? Yes.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    > she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation. It sounds like the obverse of this may be true: the roel was unfit for her because it did not allow her sufficient choice in how to manage the situation. A brand manager for a major brand should be able to influence what policies the brand takes a position on and what policies it does not. It sounds like that has been the case to this point, but in this case one of two things happened: either the latitude that she was given in the position was curtailed, or it was the first time where her personal beliefs diverged from the positions of the rest of the company. In the interest of exposing my own biases, I stopped financially supporting Levi’s in 2018 after their CEO publicly came out in support of additional, stricter gun laws: https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-parkland/ https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-par...

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. She can't possibly be that naive.

raxxorrax 5y ago
The principle does very well exclude repercussions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech Of course that does not mean that companies don't violate the principle in favor of PR. But in a dialogue it is seen as a weakness and inability to discuss if you threaten consequences for an opinion. And rightly so.
jimbokun 5y ago
If there are severe consequences for speech, to what extent can you say it's "free"? It may fit a narrow legal reading of the First Amendment, but that's not necessarily the same as the ideal of "Free Speech".
- terminatornet 5y ago
  What consequences were there for her exactly? She got offered a million dollar payoff, turned it down, and is now clearly gearing up to try and be some conservative grifter. The consequences don't seem that bad to me.
- dbbk 5y ago
  The severe consequence in this case was an offer of $1 Million and the ability to walk into another executive role at another company with none of the details of her firing being made public.

ur-whale 5y ago

jansen555 5y ago

She is brave and principled. Got guts. But unfortunately the world we live in wont tolerate her. Levi can easily be intimidated by minority few same as with our justice system particularly scotus last year. Meanwhile FBI is busy opening cases related to China while local enforcers scared as usual.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

She's blaming the company for something they have no real control over. There's a global pandemic on. People are scared. The world doesn't know how to fix this. This is the wrong approach to a topic that scares people and with good reason.

slowhand09 5y ago

Good article. Who is so afraid multiple viewpoints that they have to flag this? Evidently "My side or the highway" is acceptable to some here.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]