18 ms·

That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

207 points by luu 3y ago

josephcsible 3y ago
If you publicly make personal attacks against employees of your employer's biggest customer, isn't firing you a completely reasonable thing for your employer to do?
- grimgoldgo 3y ago
  Is saying "the blood never washes off" the hands of this DoD employee really a personal attack? I mean, it certainly seems like a consistent and reasonably widely held belief that military industrial complex jobs cost lives. There's of course the opposite opinion too. I'm not interested in trying to demonstrate that one opinion is right or wrong, just that like, is this really an attack?
  - SuchAnonMuchWow 3y ago
    Considering the previous tweet said "fuck you", yes it is an attack.
    - grimgoldgo 3y ago
      "Fuck you" has so many different tones, and is so ubiquitous. It can be playful, jocular, intense, deadly serious, all over the place. Fuck you is not, by default, a personal attack, imo. It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.
      - yuliyp 3y ago
        This is incredible mental gymnastics. Unless it's clear otherwise, especially in public, it's a personal attack.
      - kristiandupont 3y ago
        I find it very hard to believe that you are arguing in good faith at this point.
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I have had a different life from you. I've been homeless, I've been wealthy, I've lived in many cultures and communities from suburbs to communes. I've worked tech I've worked as day labor moving soil by hand. I guarantee you that language (and especially the use of curse words), varies wildly.
        kristiandupont 3y ago
        I have lived in many countries and had a wide variety of jobs and life situations as well. You are not impressing anyone with your knowledge about cultural nuance, everybody knows that any sentence can be interpreted in many different ways. And everybody that argues in good faith also knows that saying "fuck you" on Twitter, to someone that you don't have any rapport with, is going to be interpreted as an insult.
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I disagree, I think of tweets as nothing - air, fluff, someone expressing themselves without thinking. If someone tweets fuck you at me I'm not insulted, it's such a low effort post why would it ever even be parsed by me into anything meaningful? It's like being insulted because someone farted at the hotel you were staying at. It's of so little consequence it cannot possibly be an insult. It's incredible to see HN lose their minds because someone sent a two word tweet with a curse word in it, lol. A tweet.
        blindriver 3y ago
        Fuck you. EDIT: Just to clarify, I didn't mean that pejoratively, I actually meant it in the supportive context as in: "Fuck you, I support you."
        3y ago
      - galkk 3y ago
        Let me guess, you're of those people who say that phrases like "kill all men" do NOT mean "kill all men", but something <wall of text here>? At best this is extreme playing with words, and at worst this is just mental gymnastics Fuck you is fuck you, this is rude and as personal as it gets.
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        It's really, really not. Fuck you has a huge range of meaning. Carlin built several comedy bits around the word Fuck specifically because it was used colloquially so many ways.
        galkk 3y ago
        Did he took some person, in audience or otherwise public and built entire bit around saying "Fuck you" addressing that person? Carlin's sketches (at least ones that come to my mind, as I really loved to watch Carlin about 10-7 years ago) is irrelevant. When Carlin said "fuck you" he was speaking about phrase, not to someone in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4 There could be different Carlin bits that I don't know about, and I'm sure that he said a lot of fuck yous to all presidents at a time in same way as op did to DoD guy, but no, I don't buy your comment saying that Carlin's fuck you and screenshot from the post are same things. Especially given what followed. Very rough analogy, just to illustrate the point and how I see your arguing (as, at this time, I'm already believe that you're arguing in bad faith). You cannot say: "this guy is not guilty in a murder, as murders are happening in nature all the time. Dragonflies are killing flies, birds killing dragonflies, humans killing birds, humans killing humans, ergo no one is guilty, those are just facts"
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I do believe I'm at least attempting good faith here, I just do not find "fuck you" as a tweet, even levelled against me, to be particularly aggressive. Especially such a short message. I'm likely more terminally online, more cynical, or more desensitized, but I see the two word "fuck you" to be such low effort that it doesn't even rise to the level of notice. Like, an insult that specifically called out my behaviors or appearance or something and said fuck you? That feels meaningful, that's personal. But like, autocompleting two words flippantly into a tweet is like... Nothing?
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        You're not even wrong, but the problem is that when you post on Twitter, any and all context and nuance is immediately lost and all that's left is a string of ASCII spelling out "fuck you".
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        That's fair, but also, Twitter culture is definitely it's own culture, and I've largely seen quickly slammed out "fuck you"s to be emotionally equivalent to the rolling eyes emoji or the "wanking" hand gesture.
      - King-Aaron 3y ago
        I am truly astounded.
  - medellin 3y ago
    Incredible mental gymnastics
  - siliconpotato 3y ago
    Of course it is an attack, and they tagged him in the tweet too. There were plenty of opportunities to keep the job after this point (deleting the tweets, not being a massive douchebag in every interaction with the company) but they gave the company no choice.
    - grimgoldgo 3y ago
      > Of course it is an attack.. I mean the question I was raising was basically, "it's not clear this is an attack?" specifically because it's not "of course" to me. Can you explain a bit more why it's obviously an attack?
      - tzekid 3y ago
        Use common sense. "[..] blood on your hands [..]" implies he's indirectly a murderer at least. Calling someone a murderer is in the best case defamation or an insult.
  - yuliyp 3y ago
    Yes. There's a difference between saying "I would like to avoid you because your industry costs lives" and "I'd shake your hand, but, y'know, the blood never washes off". They're both basically statements about the same thing, except one is an attack while the other is merely expressing disapproval.
    - grimgoldgo 3y ago
      It's rude, sure, but I still fail to see how that rises to the level of attack? What harm is intended or possible from a comment like that? Are all rude comments attacks?
      - hnfong 3y ago
        Intentionally saying something rude when there are better way to convey the same meaning is a kind of personal attack.
      - Omatic810 3y ago
        Accusing someone of having blood on their hands is generally an attack to mean that the accused has caused unjustifiable death. To contrast, if person A saves person B from a mass shooter by killing said shooter, it'd be odd for person B to say to A "You have blood on your hands!" (unless it's literally true). "You have committed unjustifiable harm." is clearly an attack. People who commit unjustifiable harm are generally supposed to be shunned, penalized, or killed according to how human societies have operated across the world (various things can get in the way of this, but this is the baseline). So now we're at "My employer's client is someone who should be shunned, penalized, or killed. (and I'm going to post it publicly in a way to make it possible for said client to be able to see it!)". Finally, a lot of business runs on vibes. Having employees that attack your clients in public sends bad vibes. Even if it's just a 'rude comment', why endanger your business for someone who so deeply fails the vibe check?
  - inertiatic 3y ago
    It certainly reads like an attack, and that's to someone who agrees with the sentiment. And as an observation, in professional contexts you can generally be poetic and figurative when talking about good things ("Gary is such a godsent and a genius for showing us the way to restructure our department"), but it's in bad taste to do it to express negative things ("I worked with Gary and he's an absolute mouth-breather and defecated all over our infrastructure").
  - furyofantares 3y ago
    The author has some captions on the screenshots of the tweets if it helps you here: "I don’t even usually swear much" "Anger does not really become me, but boy was I mad."
- camillomiller 3y ago
  Tell me again how corporate capitalism is compatible with personal freedoms, then.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    If your clown persona is incompatible with corporate culture, then you’re the one who’s in the wrong. They just corrected their original error of hiring the person.
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    Freedom and loyalty are not incompatible. You shouldn’t want to harm your employer’s relationships.
- 3np 3y ago
  Depends. If you do it from your private account, which doesn't contain any links to or mentions of you being part of your employer, outside of working hours? The employer shouldn't even be mentioning it. If you do it from your fused-personal-and-work-persona while repping your employer on a conference, on working hours? You have it coming. In one, you speak purely as a private person while in the other you are acting on behalf of your employer, like it or not. There's a vast gray area in-between. One of many good reasons to keep your identity small and your personas segregated. If you need to live-tweet no-filter-hot-takes from kubecon, you shouldn't be attending on company time.
jasmer 3y ago
Yeah, if you don't know why you weren't going to keep your job after that, then well, that's not good. Plenty of places you can work with opinions like that. Also be wary that others will then voice their opinions about you. This reads 'immature borderline toxic' I can't imagine having to work with this kind of drama.
dcreater 3y ago
Good on you! I'd have done the same
- redroyal 3y ago
  I would’ve fired him on the spot for the blood tweet
  - hoffs 3y ago
    Cringe
constantly 3y ago
I would have fired this person as soon as humanly possible for basically (actually) telling customers of the company to go F themselves, and making horribly insensitive and inappropriate jokes at their expense. imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  It makes them look so bad. Also that bit about their friend live-tweeting the private meeting with the VP??! I had to scroll up and check this wasn't fiction.
  - ralfd 3y ago
    And did I understand it right, that the first “witness” who “lightly live tweeted” didn’t even work there?
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Totally agree. The author seems so incredibly obnoxious and insufferable, I don't understand how anyone could work with them. This should have been a lesson on the toxic and pointless nature of social media, but the author seems to have misread the situation entirely.
  - oefrha 3y ago
    All the fist bumps and cheers in these social media echo chambers won’t help them reflect. Unlike the OP who casually tagged some tech guy on Twitter and said “I’d shake your hand but the blood never washes off” (what the actual fuck), reasonable people won’t engage them on social media and tell them how incredibly toxic they are.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
mock-possum 3y ago
Wow. What a rats nest of drama to wander into. I feel like there is something - not necessarily something legal - about the fact that the author was attending the convention on behalf of her employer; she was tweeting ‘on the clock,’ if I understand correctly. Otherwise, I’m not sure how that kind of policy could possibly be reasonable. People get to hold their own opinions, and they get to hold forth on those opinions if they choose. I don’t think anyone reasonable would confuse her statements with some sort of official policy position on the part of her employer… … but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  > … but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful. Taking “blood” money and complaining about doesn’t make you a freedom fighter, it makes you a hypocrite.
- parineum 3y ago
  > People get to hold their own opinions The oft-repeated "The first amendment doesn't apply to corporations!" slogan when defending the banning of people from various social media applies here. The company she works for doesn't have to employ her if they disagree with her opinions. Isn't that the goal of all these doxxing Twitter mobs when they find someone who said the n-word on video?
spondylosaurus 3y ago
Nice read, thanks for sharing. It's interesting (to say the least) that they more or less used a "no talking about politics" clause to fire this woman, even though the other guy's statements about DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political. But he's an Air Force guy, she's a dissident, he's establishment, she's counterculture, so he got to push her out of a job for meeting him on his playing field, so to speak. Always illuminating to see what gets cast as "political" and what gets cast as merely neutral.
- fake-name 3y ago
  Anything that isn't explicitly supporting the status quo = "politics". This is also true of a large portion of HN commenters.
- comprev 3y ago
  The key element is the poster was essentially _representing_ their employer at a tech conference. This would be no different than wearing the uniform of a supermarket and going on a political rant with a megaphone.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case? I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct mouthpiece for the company?
    - galkk 3y ago
      It was literally written in 2nd sentence of the post I was attending KubeCon on behalf of my then-employer, VMware.
      - spondylosaurus 3y ago
irjustin 3y ago
Whether you agree or disagree with how VNWare followed up the tweet, he was very prudent in handling. Lawyer up, witnesses everywhere.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  *She, I believe, but absolutely. I'd have never thought to bring a witness to that sort of meeting. Keeping that one in my back pocket just in case.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    The flag was likely HR. HR is the sort of thing you never interact with unless something's up.
    - spondylosaurus 3y ago
      Ha, yes! It's a perfect time to bring your own witness, honestly... otherwise HR gets to be judge, jury, and executioner :P
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Bringing witnesses to all these meetings is likely what got them fired. The VP was going to just accept their apology for insulting a customer but the combativeness turned it into a bigger problem.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
The_Amp_Walrus 3y ago
why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views" seems easier than firing someone
- wiseowise 3y ago
  Why would you want to keep toxic person in a company?
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    Then they should be fired for being toxic, not for stepping on the wrong guys toes.
    - kristiandupont 3y ago
      I think that's exactly what happened.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views" Because: 1. It wasn't private, it was public and tagged the subject of the abuse directly. 2. "This employee" was on company time and actively representing the company at the time. It doesn't matter what role you are, you are always at risk of getting fired if you embarrass your employer.
comprev 3y ago
Arrogance got them fired, nothing else. If you are at a tech conference, likely on company time, then you are in effect representing your employer. This includes the content of the constant stream of tweets.
King-Aaron 3y ago
> Being as I’m not an idiot Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? It is factual that one person was touting instruments of war, but by most comments here that’s seen as “the right” because it’s representing “business”. What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression, by contract, by law and so on. So if that is always true as many commenters seem to believe, I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom.
  - King-Aaron 3y ago
    If you have signed an employment contract, then it's perfectly normal to be required to restrict your personal opinions when you are representing your employer. This isn't some dystopian concept. This is how grownups behave. You are welcome to be an edgelord on your own time anonymously.
    - Yizahi 3y ago
      It is quite dystopian in general. We are in an early stages of a corporate dystopia all across the world. Very polite and grownup dystopia. For instance it only took 8 years for my employee to stop working with an aggressor country, responsible for killing tens of thousands in those 8 years. And they were both fulfilling contracts for customers from that country and employing contractors there. Neither me nor practically anyone else in the company could speak out against this (and like half of the contractors in the company were from the country being massacred). But we were definitely very polite and all grownup. Great for the business, yeah? :) I'm not against capitalism, or pro some rebellion, or pro insulting people on twitter. But on the other hand I do realise that the corporate dystopia is only ever increases, because of of the immense power imbalance between individual humans and corporations.
reflexco 3y ago
So their employer pays for them to go to a conference and they don't see anything wrong with embarrassing their employer with inflammatory tweets against an arm of the government? How would they react if it was the megacorp playing stupid by ignoring all common-sense and respect, and pointing at minutia in written guidelines to justify sociopathic actions?
cmdli 3y ago
> "Being as I’m not an idiot, I elect to bring a witness of my own (@lizthegrey ). She slightly livetweeted that conversation until VP VMware tells her to stop. " This, I think, is the point that caused the firing. It's pretty clear that if you choose a witness who then posts everything publicly that you are not discussing in good faith. Like, it's your right to speak your mind, and maybe you think you are in the moral right, but if you intentionally antagonize the people you work with you won't be working with them for much longer.
- neonsunset 3y ago
  [flagged]
- grimgoldgo 3y ago
  You are allowed to discuss workplace conditions. That's like, protected concerted activity 101. If the business was uncomfortable with their treatment of their employees being public, maybe that activity wasn't ethical.
  - cmdli 3y ago
    There's a difference between speaking publicly about workplace conditions and livetweeting the details of an individual conversation in a (likely) mocking tone. At that point, the only thing standing between you and being fired is whatever legal defense you can muster, because no reasonable person is going to want to work with you after that.
    - grimgoldgo 3y ago
      What's your source for the mocking tone? Is lizthegrey known for tweeting about hr proceedings in a moving tone? Also, what is tweeting if not "speaking publicly"? And what are workplace conditions if not "how I am disciplined at work"?
      - 1000bestlives 3y ago
        In short, yes. If you're unfortunate enough to be involved in a conversation with that individual, prepare to be insulted
pengaru 3y ago
smh
swarnie 3y ago
Flaming business partners on the internet can lose you your job? Surely not.... This is why we use semi-anonymous services to post criticism.
berkle4455 3y ago
I'd have fired them too. You don't get to represent my company at a conference and be a total fucking bellend.
lynx23 3y ago
Really? On first meeting they brought a witness who sort of livewteeted the meeting? This is so weird, I wonder what is going on with author that they dont see by themselves what they are doing here? Feels like a case of totally missing any sort of self-reflection.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  That’s terminal case of social media brain if I’ve ever seen one.
- yungporko 3y ago
  this was most likely the only time they had ever had to deal with the consequences of their own actions.
almucentaret 3y ago
[flagged]
- grimgoldgo 3y ago
  Can women be brony's?
- ClassyJacket 3y ago
  I wish this site had a downvote button.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    It does.
  - swarnie 3y ago
    It unlocks after a certain number of upvotes on your account, 500ish from memory.
bigbacaloa 3y ago
What this post really highlights is the complete lack of ethics that prevails in US business hiring practices. All these clauses are coercive. It should be impossible to sign away what should be rights.
basicoperation 3y ago
We’ve all worked with these people. Nice to see the company just get rid of one for once.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - basicoperation 3y ago
    Firing employees who publicly abuse people is in no way similar to committing genocide. To imply that it is is grossly offensive.
    - camillomiller 3y ago
      [flagged]
Rapzid 3y ago
Surely this is satire?
galkk 3y ago
That person should've been fired, and it happened. Good riddance. So what did I see "Fuck you" for slide where army officer praises Kubernetes and calls to join them. Then accusing him for blood on his hands. Then also connecting inability to negotiate better severance package when firing happened with Trump era... My opinion always is: if in any shape or form your posts are related to work (e.g. that person was tweeting about conference attendance, that conference attendance was on behalf of her employer, for fucks sake), then you should have separate account and strictly separate your opinions. The things that I read both in post and in referenced tweets, actually, did remind me about Timnit Gebru and her story with Google (opinion below is my own and in no means reflect anything else, as Google is my employer). I was curious about Gebru and read her twitter for some time after her departure. God lord, the toxicity is over the top. I even learned a bit of the anti-white racist dictionary such as "white aligned". But, of course, as I'm eastern European immigrant, I still speak from the historical position of patriarchal white privilege, so my opinion doesn't matter.
- gordian-not 3y ago
  If you’re truly curious and a Google employeee you should open moma and see how toxic she really was and how she was handled with kid gloves
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    What's moma?
    - galkk 3y ago
      Internal home page/search engine.
techcontractor 3y ago
I’m an IT contractor working in gov, and I’ve worked in a huge number of autocratic governments around the world that would be considered “the bad guys”. Many of the regimes that mistreat their citizens and workers. And you know who’s always there with big contracts and consultants? That’s right: VMware (and oracle and others…) If one were to start virtue signaling (which I’m clearly not prone to do given my work history) I think it’s hard to argue that the DOD is worse than VMWare.
theobeers 3y ago
She was right to speak out, and her employer was within its rights to fire her. As long as she subsequently found a job at a company that comes closer to sharing her values, it sounds like a win-win.
- kome 3y ago
  indeed! and kids remember: VMware likes to work with merchants of death.
- swarnie 3y ago
  Speak out against what exactly? Defence is one of the most vital sectors in a countries continued existence, coming just after food and water.
  - the-printer 3y ago
    There is something of a paradox that I feel exist, at least in the US, with regards to the defense sector. I don’t agree with its ethics or morals as they exists in the country, but I’m curious how others reconcile their privileges in comparison to other regions with the fact that said privileges can be attributed to the US’s tremendous military scale domestically and globally. One could even argue that defense even precedes food and water at this stage also.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      Exactly. The only reason so many Western countries are able to spend so little on defense without being conquered is that the US is spending enough to pick up all of their slack at once.
  - theobeers 3y ago
    The screenshot of the DoD recruitment pitch from the conference set off a little "military-industrial complex alarm" in my mind. To be clear, I wouldn't have tagged the guy in a mean tweet. I would have just frowned and gone on with my day. But I think it's crucial that the voices of people like this blogger be present in tech communities.
xupybd 3y ago
I'm pro free speech and hate when people get cancelled for their beliefs. I don't think firing was appropriate based on the story told in the article, but also recommend not acting like the author. Not to avoid being fired but to follow the basic life rule "don't be a dick".
- josephcsible 3y ago
  I wouldn't call this being "cancelled". IMO, getting fired can only mean being cancelled if it was for something not work related.
  - xupybd 3y ago
    Yeah I think you might be correct. I used the wrong term but I guess what I don't like is the idea of calling someone's boss to get them fired for saying something mean online. On the other side I'd not want people on my team to represent my work place like this. If I was a coworker I'd rather see them removed. Those tweets were gratuitously unprofessional in the setting of a work conference.
  - Yizahi 3y ago
    It wasn't work related, no? She wrote from the personal account, not from the @vmware or something. I'm not pro insults on twitter. But I think much bigger problem than the insults is the way corporations try to claim everything as "work related". If that specific account or whole media (Twitter) had been explicitly mentioned as her job responsibilities, then I guess corporation was in the right, claiming that it was for work. But just trying to blanket control whole human lives during the employment period is bad. Bad for us, employees.
    - iLoveOncall 3y ago
      She attended the conference on behalf of her employer (literally the first line on her post), and insulted people at this conference, this is 100% work related.
Demotolo 3y ago
[dead]
6nf 3y ago
Insta-fire
imjonse 3y ago
I agree she's obnoxious (as is anyone tweeting too much), and tweeting that is kind of rude, but would she get more positive reviews here if she were a Tencent/Yandex employee and had tweeted the equivalent of FU at a presentation of a Chinese/Russian military tech representative?
thom 3y ago
Shame about their financial package but it feels like the system mostly works. People should be free to be their whole selves at work and in public and they shouldn’t want to work anywhere that fires them for that. Obviously many people don’t have the privilege to live that way, and more’s the pity.
yumraj 3y ago
This sounds exactly like the person who first does something stupid, then instead of accepting their mistake doubles down on it and takes several steps to make it much much worse, and then when has to face the consequences blogs about it with a straight face while trying to get public sympathy. Is there a word for this kind of behavior? For what it’s worth, IMHO, VMWare comes across as extremely mature.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
  This person came from the Pivotal acquisition, which is saturated with toxic people who don't produce much of value.
  - ojhughes 3y ago
    They were ex-Heptio I believe.
    - x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
      Ahh, both were rolled into the same BU, which has acquired the mentioned reputation.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  > Is there a word for this kind of behavior? Mental illness.
Pannoniae 3y ago
For me, as someone not an American, this level of polarisation and abrasivity is almost unimaginable for me. Like, intentionally provoking people then painting them as dicks when they get enough of it. Like, this wasn't even about tweeting political opinions and then being fired for it (which is way less black-and-white than this and I could absolutely have sympathy if that happened), this was straight-up telling "fuck you" to someone when representing the employer at a personal event.
- throwoutway 3y ago
  Most Americans would see this person's behavior as polarizing and abrasive, and most employers would seek to fire anyone exhibiting this behavior, and especially with the subsequent actions. This post is just doubling down and shows they have not learned anything. The community of commenters/friends are reinforcing the negative behavior
wolframhempel 3y ago
I very much agree with the general sentiment here, but I want to make a separate point about tech's relationship to defense which is also portrait in these tweets. Much has been written about the DoD's funding of early Silicon Valley companies - but today, this relationship has been largely severed with giants like Google refusing to provide their tech for defense and military purposes. I THINK THIS IS A MASSIVE MISTAKE. War exists. It is as old as humankind. We could wish it wouldn't, but it does. And history has shown again and again that the way to avoid war is not in de-arming, appeasing or otherwise refusing to participate, but in obtaining a level of military and economic strength that makes it unattractive for others to attack you. Silicon Valley has the potential to generate this overwhelming strength, but it declines to do so. And the few companies that do, such as Palantir or Anduril are often shunned by their peers. I believe that Silicon Valley could play a unique role in ensuring a lasting global peace and is held back by shortsighted sentiments. Or, to put it into fancy Latin: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
- rmetzler 3y ago
  So your view is that the military power of the US brings peace to the rest of the world?
  - wolframhempel 3y ago
    That is too absolute a statement. But generally, yes, I believe that a militarily strong US that has an interest in global trade makes war much less likely. Of course, one of the inherent problems of having a strong military is the temptation to use it - and the US has certainly done so multiple times in ill-advised fashion in Irak, Kuwait or Vietnam to name just a few. But having a military superpower like the US that's more interested in economic and cultural expansion than in direct land grabs is certainly an important counterweight to Russian or Chinese ambition. I believe a world with a militarily weak US would have seen much less "Pax Americana" and much more aggressive, expansionary wars since 1945.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    Absolutely, yes. A tiny fraction of western weapons allowed Ukraine to hold against Russian war machine and even have prospects of counter offensive. I can’t imagine the hell on earth if it kicked in full force and went to war against anyone.
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
This has been upvoted by many people on HN, so I guess it has some value for folks here, but can anyone enlighten me as to how this outrage porn is supposed to result in curious conversation? (For anyone wondering, I flagged it.)
- newaccount74 3y ago
  It's an interesting insight into work place politics inside a big tech company. It's certainly interesting to hear that even though you may be a well paid professional, your employment is still at the whims of a bunch of spineless execs who'd prefer to fire an employee that they paid a lot of money to hire, rather than finding a way to deal with Twitter drama in a reasonable way. I found it especially interesting that the DoD dude apparently had a history of using his position to get people fired who insulted him on Twitter (or at least trying to do so).
- tzekid 3y ago
  That's disingenuous of you. This article sparks conversations about workplace boundaries and corpo vs personal ethics and rights, as can be clearly seen by the other comments.
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately important topics like these are typically flagged on HN and quickly disappear from the front page. I understand why -- they tend to lead to flamewars. But I'm not sure if hiding issues like this is a good choice. (Aside: I think it's telling that the apparent majority on HN is on Goliaths side in this case. Usually we're more on the side of the underdog. I wonder if that's just the latent misogyny showing, or if it's because OP is left leaning, or because of the pink homepage with the ponies.)
    - galkk 3y ago
      Could it be nothing of that but disregard for toxic behavior of op who either doesn’t have clue about tone, causes and consequences of the actions or refuses to own it. With the way how the post is written, and I find the end especially toxic, with points about trump era, throwing shade on a guy with hints of racism, I cannot see that this was just some unfortunate misunderstanding. omg your possible explanations: misoginy, ponies, anti left - you seem to forgot to add transphobia and tech bros to the same sentence to have flesh royal
afiori 3y ago
I do not understand what the closign remark is meant to say > And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.” Given its place it feels like it has a very clear subtext, but I cannot figure out what it could be.
luispauloml 3y ago
Had the HR deparment said something like We became aware that you dislike one of our clients, and that you have strong beliefs that we shouldn't do business with them. Given that, we decided that you should not work with us because you think we shouldn't do business the way we do. what would have happened? Could this clear and direct justification still be used as basis for a lawsuit from the employee?
dustypotato 3y ago
> . And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.” I invite you to draw your own conclusions about this guy. I don't know anything about this guy, but if this is an attempt to portray him as a racist, it's a pathetic one at that.
yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
Zero sympathy for this person. The behaviour described is unprofessional, immature, and frankly quite toxic. Not to mention a fairly stupid opinion; some of my colleagues arguably have the US DoD to thank for not being victims of russia's genocide. I couldn't imagine my colleagues having to deal with this drama bullshit on top of sheltering from missile attacks on civilians. How depressing.
yungporko 3y ago
sounds like their employer was being more than fair. honestly the thumbnail tells you all you need to know about this person lol.
apexalpha 3y ago
This would even be grounds for firing in the Netherlands, which has the most rigorous employee protections on the planet. I mean in what world do you go to a conference on company time, as a representative of that company and then type "Fuck you" to one of your biggest customers?
icu 3y ago
This situation is complicated and I've noticed most of the top posters saying they would fire the employee immediately. However, the behaviour expectations weren't communicated properly post acquisition and it's really the company's management who are responsible for protecting the company from these situations. Imho the situation is something like, it's the employee's fault, but not their responsibility. Management should have done a lot more to prevent this happening and communicate to all employees expectations in a clear way. Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally. This whole sacrificial 'fire the employee' thing makes the company and the VP look weak and pathetic. It's much harder to meditate and communicate towards an amicable resolution.
- 000ooo000 3y ago
  Is this a defense of tweeting "fuck you" at a customer based in the company not having said "don't tweet 'fuck you' at customers"? Is there some ambiguity at play here, like in some cases employees are encouraged to tweet fuck you at customers? I'm puzzled
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Presumably there are companies that consider your social media part of your personal life and beyond the purview of corporate scrutiny. Maybe the reason why the author felt entitled to act this way was because their company permitted them to tweet like this prior to the VMWare acquisition.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  > Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally. This is exactly what happened. But when communicating the policy the poster flat out refused to follow it and brought their bud to the meeting to insultingly live tweet it. Insulting the VP and refusing to follow the policy after that meeting is what got them fired.
Ylmaz 3y ago
[flagged]
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
Not being able to comply with “Avoid topics involving age, sex, race, religion, ethnicity, politics or disabilities.” is pretty odd, but then again I guess this is your average Twitter user.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Not even Hacker News can avoid those topics these days, especially politics. The world is Twitter now, partly because of Twitter.
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    Pretty easy to just not engage on those topics. Just don't comment.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      And yet, here we both are.
      - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
        A) pretty sure this post is about someone getting fired for misconduct. That has nothing to do with the listed topics. At best it could be mildly political since they were allegedly fired for political views, but that is not the main discussion. B) the rules only tell to avoid C) at least I do not have such rules places upon me all in all, nice try, but you have no argument
        Apocryphon 3y ago
        I never had an argument, honestly. I was just tut-tutting about how everything, including HN, is overpoliticized these days.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
fennecfoxy 3y ago
Lmao, this is like the time the furry posted about getting a job at NASA and excitedly told someone to "suck their dick and balls" and that person turned out to be on the NASA council (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nasa-internship-twitter-controversy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nasa-internship-twitte...). It worked out in the end as he correctly surmised that she was just young, dumb and excited and tried to work to get her the position back. However the crappy side of furries (well anybody online) targeted the poor dude even though he was completely correct to call her out on her language. As a furry myself I completely separate it from work, why someone would ever mention work or any other professional part of their lives on a "I like cartoon animals" account is beyond me. It's easy to be necessarily vicious and reactive/emotional online and I do it all the time myself, but I never involve my job. Perhaps it's a context problem, being used to particular environments, say professional & unprofessional, when someone makes the mistake of being unprofessional in their unprofessional environment (their personal Twitter) but there are links to the professional environment (colleagues on Twitter) then trouble happens. OP was big-headed and was posting all this conference shit from their personal Twitter account looks like. They should've been posting it from a work account and not gone off the rails. If they want to bitch about the DoD fine, I can totally understand, but do it on personal account and don't involve your work/job in any way. Explain what you don't like about the DoD rather than "fuck you".
brassening 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RickJWagner 3y ago
There's too much insensitivity these days. People think it's perfectly fine to state their opinion as fact and be completely rude to anyone else. I believe it should stop. So I'm sorry for this individual, but glad it happened. It needs to happen more.
deleted 3y ago
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BossHogg 3y ago
These comments are suspiciously light on anti-cancel culture rants. Wonder why.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  Because it's not cancel culture when the reason you got fired is work-related.
BasedAnon 3y ago
telling the DoD to fuck off is pretty based, but yeah losing your job is a likely outcome of that
1000bestlives 3y ago
Hope her new job fires her after reading this. They clearly missed red flags in the interviews
- josephcsible 3y ago
  I wouldn't go that far. You'd basically be stooping to the cancel mobs' level with that.
gusfoo 3y ago
I would have fired this person immediately. Gross misconduct -> instant dismissal.
cantsingh 3y ago
Yeah, I agree with the author's moral stances, but I'd fire them too.
tonnydourado 3y ago
Y'all are really telling on yourselves by shitting on OP. It's all about defending freedom of speech until the speech is a gay furry communist telling the army to fuck off. Should OP have tweeted as they did, specially while attending an event *on behalf* of their employer? Yeah, it is asking for trouble. Yeah, the company does have a right to fire them. What should be extremely grinding y'all gears though is: 1. A government employee should NEVER be the initiator of such an event. Even if it's legal, smells A LOT like the government trying to silence citizens. 2. The minute the company says "we'll accept your resignation" and tried to get out of paying what OP was owed, they become the bad guys, doesn't matter how obnoxious OP might be. If you wanna fire someone, have the balls to actually fire them and pay up whatever was agreed to in the contract. I'll give a bit of a pass on 2, because a lot of HN commenters are Americans, and Americans are brainwashed by their shitty work laws, they lost perspective of what is fair in an employer/employee relationship. But 1? Reverse the ideologies and this post would've been front page for 3 weeks.
irrational 3y ago
> I pointed out the social media guidelines were basically impossible to follow Can someone explain why they are impossible to follow? Just… don’t tweet (or use other social media) and you are following them, right? Apparently I’ve been doing the impossible since forever.
smsm42 3y ago
So, we have here: A person that publicly curses out the military, while on a job conference paid by her employer, and while the military is their client, and adds vile personal attacks to that. The justification for it - "I was mad". Sure, then of course it makes it ok, of course if you're mad the rules no longer apply to you, sorry we even asked. Refuses to promise she wouldn't keep doing it, while having the gall to "propose to improve" the guidelines so that they suit her personally. Probably adding "all the above doesn't apply if the employee feels mad at DoD for existing". Refuses to admit there's anything wrong about inflammatory offensive cussing (I'm not talking about serene or even heated political debate, "fuck you" is not that) - again, while being on the job, and repeatedly being suggested by hr that it's not how things are done. Signing the NDA, because sweet sweet money. Violating the NDA as soon as she's sure they won't ask for the money back, because agreements are for other people to follow. Somehow making it all Trumps fault because sure, that's what Trump was doing for 4 years, personally ensuring this person could not tell her bombshell story. Looks like a nice person to work with, yep.
iJohnDoe 3y ago
I wonder if they are posting themselves out of a job again.
sizzle 3y ago
Why do people gloss over the fact that they signed a contract stating their employment is “at will” meaning they can be let go for a multitude of reasons outside of being in a protected class. This person’s entitlement is on another level. They aren’t guaranteed a job and insulting high ranking officials will get you sacked 99% of the time, on top of the thousands of other reasons your employer can let you go.

207 points by luu 3y ago

If you publicly make personal attacks against employees of your employer's biggest customer, isn't firing you a completely reasonable thing for your employer to do?

grimgoldgo 3y ago
Is saying "the blood never washes off" the hands of this DoD employee really a personal attack? I mean, it certainly seems like a consistent and reasonably widely held belief that military industrial complex jobs cost lives. There's of course the opposite opinion too. I'm not interested in trying to demonstrate that one opinion is right or wrong, just that like, is this really an attack?
- SuchAnonMuchWow 3y ago
  Considering the previous tweet said "fuck you", yes it is an attack.
  - grimgoldgo 3y ago
    "Fuck you" has so many different tones, and is so ubiquitous. It can be playful, jocular, intense, deadly serious, all over the place. Fuck you is not, by default, a personal attack, imo. It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.
    - yuliyp 3y ago
      This is incredible mental gymnastics. Unless it's clear otherwise, especially in public, it's a personal attack.
    - kristiandupont 3y ago
      I find it very hard to believe that you are arguing in good faith at this point.
      - grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I have had a different life from you. I've been homeless, I've been wealthy, I've lived in many cultures and communities from suburbs to communes. I've worked tech I've worked as day labor moving soil by hand. I guarantee you that language (and especially the use of curse words), varies wildly.
        kristiandupont 3y ago
        I have lived in many countries and had a wide variety of jobs and life situations as well. You are not impressing anyone with your knowledge about cultural nuance, everybody knows that any sentence can be interpreted in many different ways. And everybody that argues in good faith also knows that saying "fuck you" on Twitter, to someone that you don't have any rapport with, is going to be interpreted as an insult.
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I disagree, I think of tweets as nothing - air, fluff, someone expressing themselves without thinking. If someone tweets fuck you at me I'm not insulted, it's such a low effort post why would it ever even be parsed by me into anything meaningful? It's like being insulted because someone farted at the hotel you were staying at. It's of so little consequence it cannot possibly be an insult. It's incredible to see HN lose their minds because someone sent a two word tweet with a curse word in it, lol. A tweet.
        blindriver 3y ago
        Fuck you. EDIT: Just to clarify, I didn't mean that pejoratively, I actually meant it in the supportive context as in: "Fuck you, I support you."
        3y ago
    - galkk 3y ago
      Let me guess, you're of those people who say that phrases like "kill all men" do NOT mean "kill all men", but something <wall of text here>? At best this is extreme playing with words, and at worst this is just mental gymnastics Fuck you is fuck you, this is rude and as personal as it gets.
      - grimgoldgo 3y ago
        It's really, really not. Fuck you has a huge range of meaning. Carlin built several comedy bits around the word Fuck specifically because it was used colloquially so many ways.
        galkk 3y ago
        Did he took some person, in audience or otherwise public and built entire bit around saying "Fuck you" addressing that person? Carlin's sketches (at least ones that come to my mind, as I really loved to watch Carlin about 10-7 years ago) is irrelevant. When Carlin said "fuck you" he was speaking about phrase, not to someone in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4 There could be different Carlin bits that I don't know about, and I'm sure that he said a lot of fuck yous to all presidents at a time in same way as op did to DoD guy, but no, I don't buy your comment saying that Carlin's fuck you and screenshot from the post are same things. Especially given what followed. Very rough analogy, just to illustrate the point and how I see your arguing (as, at this time, I'm already believe that you're arguing in bad faith). You cannot say: "this guy is not guilty in a murder, as murders are happening in nature all the time. Dragonflies are killing flies, birds killing dragonflies, humans killing birds, humans killing humans, ergo no one is guilty, those are just facts"
        grimgoldgo 3y ago
        I do believe I'm at least attempting good faith here, I just do not find "fuck you" as a tweet, even levelled against me, to be particularly aggressive. Especially such a short message. I'm likely more terminally online, more cynical, or more desensitized, but I see the two word "fuck you" to be such low effort that it doesn't even rise to the level of notice. Like, an insult that specifically called out my behaviors or appearance or something and said fuck you? That feels meaningful, that's personal. But like, autocompleting two words flippantly into a tweet is like... Nothing?
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      You're not even wrong, but the problem is that when you post on Twitter, any and all context and nuance is immediately lost and all that's left is a string of ASCII spelling out "fuck you".
      - grimgoldgo 3y ago
        That's fair, but also, Twitter culture is definitely it's own culture, and I've largely seen quickly slammed out "fuck you"s to be emotionally equivalent to the rolling eyes emoji or the "wanking" hand gesture.
    - King-Aaron 3y ago
      I am truly astounded.
- medellin 3y ago
  Incredible mental gymnastics
- siliconpotato 3y ago
  Of course it is an attack, and they tagged him in the tweet too. There were plenty of opportunities to keep the job after this point (deleting the tweets, not being a massive douchebag in every interaction with the company) but they gave the company no choice.
  - grimgoldgo 3y ago
    > Of course it is an attack.. I mean the question I was raising was basically, "it's not clear this is an attack?" specifically because it's not "of course" to me. Can you explain a bit more why it's obviously an attack?
    - tzekid 3y ago
      Use common sense. "[..] blood on your hands [..]" implies he's indirectly a murderer at least. Calling someone a murderer is in the best case defamation or an insult.
- yuliyp 3y ago
  Yes. There's a difference between saying "I would like to avoid you because your industry costs lives" and "I'd shake your hand, but, y'know, the blood never washes off". They're both basically statements about the same thing, except one is an attack while the other is merely expressing disapproval.
  - grimgoldgo 3y ago
    It's rude, sure, but I still fail to see how that rises to the level of attack? What harm is intended or possible from a comment like that? Are all rude comments attacks?
    - hnfong 3y ago
      Intentionally saying something rude when there are better way to convey the same meaning is a kind of personal attack.
    - Omatic810 3y ago
      Accusing someone of having blood on their hands is generally an attack to mean that the accused has caused unjustifiable death. To contrast, if person A saves person B from a mass shooter by killing said shooter, it'd be odd for person B to say to A "You have blood on your hands!" (unless it's literally true). "You have committed unjustifiable harm." is clearly an attack. People who commit unjustifiable harm are generally supposed to be shunned, penalized, or killed according to how human societies have operated across the world (various things can get in the way of this, but this is the baseline). So now we're at "My employer's client is someone who should be shunned, penalized, or killed. (and I'm going to post it publicly in a way to make it possible for said client to be able to see it!)". Finally, a lot of business runs on vibes. Having employees that attack your clients in public sends bad vibes. Even if it's just a 'rude comment', why endanger your business for someone who so deeply fails the vibe check?
- inertiatic 3y ago
  It certainly reads like an attack, and that's to someone who agrees with the sentiment. And as an observation, in professional contexts you can generally be poetic and figurative when talking about good things ("Gary is such a godsent and a genius for showing us the way to restructure our department"), but it's in bad taste to do it to express negative things ("I worked with Gary and he's an absolute mouth-breather and defecated all over our infrastructure").
- furyofantares 3y ago
  The author has some captions on the screenshots of the tweets if it helps you here: "I don’t even usually swear much" "Anger does not really become me, but boy was I mad."
camillomiller 3y ago
Tell me again how corporate capitalism is compatible with personal freedoms, then.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  If your clown persona is incompatible with corporate culture, then you’re the one who’s in the wrong. They just corrected their original error of hiring the person.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Freedom and loyalty are not incompatible. You shouldn’t want to harm your employer’s relationships.
3np 3y ago
Depends. If you do it from your private account, which doesn't contain any links to or mentions of you being part of your employer, outside of working hours? The employer shouldn't even be mentioning it. If you do it from your fused-personal-and-work-persona while repping your employer on a conference, on working hours? You have it coming. In one, you speak purely as a private person while in the other you are acting on behalf of your employer, like it or not. There's a vast gray area in-between. One of many good reasons to keep your identity small and your personas segregated. If you need to live-tweet no-filter-hot-takes from kubecon, you shouldn't be attending on company time.

jasmer 3y ago

Yeah, if you don't know why you weren't going to keep your job after that, then well, that's not good. Plenty of places you can work with opinions like that. Also be wary that others will then voice their opinions about you. This reads 'immature borderline toxic' I can't imagine having to work with this kind of drama.

dcreater 3y ago

Good on you! I'd have done the same

redroyal 3y ago
I would’ve fired him on the spot for the blood tweet
- hoffs 3y ago
  Cringe

constantly 3y ago

I would have fired this person as soon as humanly possible for basically (actually) telling customers of the company to go F themselves, and making horribly insensitive and inappropriate jokes at their expense. imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.

squeaky-clean 3y ago
It makes them look so bad. Also that bit about their friend live-tweeting the private meeting with the VP??! I had to scroll up and check this wasn't fiction.
- ralfd 3y ago
  And did I understand it right, that the first “witness” who “lightly live tweeted” didn’t even work there?
WheatMillington 3y ago
Totally agree. The author seems so incredibly obnoxious and insufferable, I don't understand how anyone could work with them. This should have been a lesson on the toxic and pointless nature of social media, but the author seems to have misread the situation entirely.
- oefrha 3y ago
  All the fist bumps and cheers in these social media echo chambers won’t help them reflect. Unlike the OP who casually tagged some tech guy on Twitter and said “I’d shake your hand but the blood never washes off” (what the actual fuck), reasonable people won’t engage them on social media and tell them how incredibly toxic they are.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago

mock-possum 3y ago

Wow. What a rats nest of drama to wander into. I feel like there is something - not necessarily something legal - about the fact that the author was attending the convention on behalf of her employer; she was tweeting ‘on the clock,’ if I understand correctly. Otherwise, I’m not sure how that kind of policy could possibly be reasonable. People get to hold their own opinions, and they get to hold forth on those opinions if they choose. I don’t think anyone reasonable would confuse her statements with some sort of official policy position on the part of her employer… … but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful.

wiseowise 3y ago
> … but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful. Taking “blood” money and complaining about doesn’t make you a freedom fighter, it makes you a hypocrite.
parineum 3y ago
> People get to hold their own opinions The oft-repeated "The first amendment doesn't apply to corporations!" slogan when defending the banning of people from various social media applies here. The company she works for doesn't have to employ her if they disagree with her opinions. Isn't that the goal of all these doxxing Twitter mobs when they find someone who said the n-word on video?

spondylosaurus 3y ago

Nice read, thanks for sharing. It's interesting (to say the least) that they more or less used a "no talking about politics" clause to fire this woman, even though the other guy's statements about DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political. But he's an Air Force guy, she's a dissident, he's establishment, she's counterculture, so he got to push her out of a job for meeting him on his playing field, so to speak. Always illuminating to see what gets cast as "political" and what gets cast as merely neutral.

fake-name 3y ago
Anything that isn't explicitly supporting the status quo = "politics". This is also true of a large portion of HN commenters.
comprev 3y ago
The key element is the poster was essentially _representing_ their employer at a tech conference. This would be no different than wearing the uniform of a supermarket and going on a political rant with a megaphone.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case? I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct mouthpiece for the company?
  - galkk 3y ago
    It was literally written in 2nd sentence of the post I was attending KubeCon on behalf of my then-employer, VMware.
    - spondylosaurus 3y ago

irjustin 3y ago

Whether you agree or disagree with how VNWare followed up the tweet, he was very prudent in handling. Lawyer up, witnesses everywhere.

spondylosaurus 3y ago
*She, I believe, but absolutely. I'd have never thought to bring a witness to that sort of meeting. Keeping that one in my back pocket just in case.
- re-thc 3y ago
  The flag was likely HR. HR is the sort of thing you never interact with unless something's up.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    Ha, yes! It's a perfect time to bring your own witness, honestly... otherwise HR gets to be judge, jury, and executioner :P
HDThoreaun 3y ago
Bringing witnesses to all these meetings is likely what got them fired. The VP was going to just accept their apology for insulting a customer but the combativeness turned it into a bigger problem.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

The_Amp_Walrus 3y ago

why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views" seems easier than firing someone

wiseowise 3y ago
Why would you want to keep toxic person in a company?
- newaccount74 3y ago
  Then they should be fired for being toxic, not for stepping on the wrong guys toes.
  - kristiandupont 3y ago
    I think that's exactly what happened.
lelanthran 3y ago
> why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views" Because: 1. It wasn't private, it was public and tagged the subject of the abuse directly. 2. "This employee" was on company time and actively representing the company at the time. It doesn't matter what role you are, you are always at risk of getting fired if you embarrass your employer.

comprev 3y ago

Arrogance got them fired, nothing else. If you are at a tech conference, likely on company time, then you are in effect representing your employer. This includes the content of the constant stream of tweets.

King-Aaron 3y ago

> Being as I’m not an idiot Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.

camillomiller 3y ago
Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? It is factual that one person was touting instruments of war, but by most comments here that’s seen as “the right” because it’s representing “business”. What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression, by contract, by law and so on. So if that is always true as many commenters seem to believe, I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom.
- King-Aaron 3y ago
  If you have signed an employment contract, then it's perfectly normal to be required to restrict your personal opinions when you are representing your employer. This isn't some dystopian concept. This is how grownups behave. You are welcome to be an edgelord on your own time anonymously.
  - Yizahi 3y ago
    It is quite dystopian in general. We are in an early stages of a corporate dystopia all across the world. Very polite and grownup dystopia. For instance it only took 8 years for my employee to stop working with an aggressor country, responsible for killing tens of thousands in those 8 years. And they were both fulfilling contracts for customers from that country and employing contractors there. Neither me nor practically anyone else in the company could speak out against this (and like half of the contractors in the company were from the country being massacred). But we were definitely very polite and all grownup. Great for the business, yeah? :) I'm not against capitalism, or pro some rebellion, or pro insulting people on twitter. But on the other hand I do realise that the corporate dystopia is only ever increases, because of of the immense power imbalance between individual humans and corporations.

reflexco 3y ago

So their employer pays for them to go to a conference and they don't see anything wrong with embarrassing their employer with inflammatory tweets against an arm of the government? How would they react if it was the megacorp playing stupid by ignoring all common-sense and respect, and pointing at minutia in written guidelines to justify sociopathic actions?

cmdli 3y ago

> "Being as I’m not an idiot, I elect to bring a witness of my own (@lizthegrey ). She slightly livetweeted that conversation until VP VMware tells her to stop. " This, I think, is the point that caused the firing. It's pretty clear that if you choose a witness who then posts everything publicly that you are not discussing in good faith. Like, it's your right to speak your mind, and maybe you think you are in the moral right, but if you intentionally antagonize the people you work with you won't be working with them for much longer.

neonsunset 3y ago
[flagged]
grimgoldgo 3y ago
You are allowed to discuss workplace conditions. That's like, protected concerted activity 101. If the business was uncomfortable with their treatment of their employees being public, maybe that activity wasn't ethical.
- cmdli 3y ago
  There's a difference between speaking publicly about workplace conditions and livetweeting the details of an individual conversation in a (likely) mocking tone. At that point, the only thing standing between you and being fired is whatever legal defense you can muster, because no reasonable person is going to want to work with you after that.
  - grimgoldgo 3y ago
    What's your source for the mocking tone? Is lizthegrey known for tweeting about hr proceedings in a moving tone? Also, what is tweeting if not "speaking publicly"? And what are workplace conditions if not "how I am disciplined at work"?
    - 1000bestlives 3y ago
      In short, yes. If you're unfortunate enough to be involved in a conversation with that individual, prepare to be insulted

pengaru 3y ago

smh

swarnie 3y ago

Flaming business partners on the internet can lose you your job? Surely not.... This is why we use semi-anonymous services to post criticism.

berkle4455 3y ago

I'd have fired them too. You don't get to represent my company at a conference and be a total fucking bellend.

lynx23 3y ago

Really? On first meeting they brought a witness who sort of livewteeted the meeting? This is so weird, I wonder what is going on with author that they dont see by themselves what they are doing here? Feels like a case of totally missing any sort of self-reflection.

wiseowise 3y ago
That’s terminal case of social media brain if I’ve ever seen one.
yungporko 3y ago
this was most likely the only time they had ever had to deal with the consequences of their own actions.

almucentaret 3y ago

[flagged]

grimgoldgo 3y ago
Can women be brony's?
ClassyJacket 3y ago
I wish this site had a downvote button.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  It does.
- swarnie 3y ago
  It unlocks after a certain number of upvotes on your account, 500ish from memory.

bigbacaloa 3y ago

What this post really highlights is the complete lack of ethics that prevails in US business hiring practices. All these clauses are coercive. It should be impossible to sign away what should be rights.

basicoperation 3y ago

We’ve all worked with these people. Nice to see the company just get rid of one for once.

camillomiller 3y ago
[flagged]
- basicoperation 3y ago
  Firing employees who publicly abuse people is in no way similar to committing genocide. To imply that it is is grossly offensive.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    [flagged]

Rapzid 3y ago

Surely this is satire?

galkk 3y ago

That person should've been fired, and it happened. Good riddance. So what did I see "Fuck you" for slide where army officer praises Kubernetes and calls to join them. Then accusing him for blood on his hands. Then also connecting inability to negotiate better severance package when firing happened with Trump era... My opinion always is: if in any shape or form your posts are related to work (e.g. that person was tweeting about conference attendance, that conference attendance was on behalf of her employer, for fucks sake), then you should have separate account and strictly separate your opinions. The things that I read both in post and in referenced tweets, actually, did remind me about Timnit Gebru and her story with Google (opinion below is my own and in no means reflect anything else, as Google is my employer). I was curious about Gebru and read her twitter for some time after her departure. God lord, the toxicity is over the top. I even learned a bit of the anti-white racist dictionary such as "white aligned". But, of course, as I'm eastern European immigrant, I still speak from the historical position of patriarchal white privilege, so my opinion doesn't matter.

gordian-not 3y ago
If you’re truly curious and a Google employeee you should open moma and see how toxic she really was and how she was handled with kid gloves
- IshKebab 3y ago
  What's moma?
  - galkk 3y ago
    Internal home page/search engine.

techcontractor 3y ago

I’m an IT contractor working in gov, and I’ve worked in a huge number of autocratic governments around the world that would be considered “the bad guys”. Many of the regimes that mistreat their citizens and workers. And you know who’s always there with big contracts and consultants? That’s right: VMware (and oracle and others…) If one were to start virtue signaling (which I’m clearly not prone to do given my work history) I think it’s hard to argue that the DOD is worse than VMWare.

theobeers 3y ago

She was right to speak out, and her employer was within its rights to fire her. As long as she subsequently found a job at a company that comes closer to sharing her values, it sounds like a win-win.

kome 3y ago
indeed! and kids remember: VMware likes to work with merchants of death.
swarnie 3y ago
Speak out against what exactly? Defence is one of the most vital sectors in a countries continued existence, coming just after food and water.
- the-printer 3y ago
  There is something of a paradox that I feel exist, at least in the US, with regards to the defense sector. I don’t agree with its ethics or morals as they exists in the country, but I’m curious how others reconcile their privileges in comparison to other regions with the fact that said privileges can be attributed to the US’s tremendous military scale domestically and globally. One could even argue that defense even precedes food and water at this stage also.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    Exactly. The only reason so many Western countries are able to spend so little on defense without being conquered is that the US is spending enough to pick up all of their slack at once.
- theobeers 3y ago
  The screenshot of the DoD recruitment pitch from the conference set off a little "military-industrial complex alarm" in my mind. To be clear, I wouldn't have tagged the guy in a mean tweet. I would have just frowned and gone on with my day. But I think it's crucial that the voices of people like this blogger be present in tech communities.

xupybd 3y ago

I'm pro free speech and hate when people get cancelled for their beliefs. I don't think firing was appropriate based on the story told in the article, but also recommend not acting like the author. Not to avoid being fired but to follow the basic life rule "don't be a dick".

josephcsible 3y ago
I wouldn't call this being "cancelled". IMO, getting fired can only mean being cancelled if it was for something not work related.
- xupybd 3y ago
  Yeah I think you might be correct. I used the wrong term but I guess what I don't like is the idea of calling someone's boss to get them fired for saying something mean online. On the other side I'd not want people on my team to represent my work place like this. If I was a coworker I'd rather see them removed. Those tweets were gratuitously unprofessional in the setting of a work conference.
- Yizahi 3y ago
  It wasn't work related, no? She wrote from the personal account, not from the @vmware or something. I'm not pro insults on twitter. But I think much bigger problem than the insults is the way corporations try to claim everything as "work related". If that specific account or whole media (Twitter) had been explicitly mentioned as her job responsibilities, then I guess corporation was in the right, claiming that it was for work. But just trying to blanket control whole human lives during the employment period is bad. Bad for us, employees.
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    She attended the conference on behalf of her employer (literally the first line on her post), and insulted people at this conference, this is 100% work related.

Demotolo 3y ago

[dead]

6nf 3y ago

Insta-fire

imjonse 3y ago

I agree she's obnoxious (as is anyone tweeting too much), and tweeting that is kind of rude, but would she get more positive reviews here if she were a Tencent/Yandex employee and had tweeted the equivalent of FU at a presentation of a Chinese/Russian military tech representative?

thom 3y ago

Shame about their financial package but it feels like the system mostly works. People should be free to be their whole selves at work and in public and they shouldn’t want to work anywhere that fires them for that. Obviously many people don’t have the privilege to live that way, and more’s the pity.

yumraj 3y ago

This sounds exactly like the person who first does something stupid, then instead of accepting their mistake doubles down on it and takes several steps to make it much much worse, and then when has to face the consequences blogs about it with a straight face while trying to get public sympathy. Is there a word for this kind of behavior? For what it’s worth, IMHO, VMWare comes across as extremely mature.

x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
This person came from the Pivotal acquisition, which is saturated with toxic people who don't produce much of value.
- ojhughes 3y ago
  They were ex-Heptio I believe.
  - x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
    Ahh, both were rolled into the same BU, which has acquired the mentioned reputation.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
> Is there a word for this kind of behavior? Mental illness.

Pannoniae 3y ago

For me, as someone not an American, this level of polarisation and abrasivity is almost unimaginable for me. Like, intentionally provoking people then painting them as dicks when they get enough of it. Like, this wasn't even about tweeting political opinions and then being fired for it (which is way less black-and-white than this and I could absolutely have sympathy if that happened), this was straight-up telling "fuck you" to someone when representing the employer at a personal event.

throwoutway 3y ago
Most Americans would see this person's behavior as polarizing and abrasive, and most employers would seek to fire anyone exhibiting this behavior, and especially with the subsequent actions. This post is just doubling down and shows they have not learned anything. The community of commenters/friends are reinforcing the negative behavior

wolframhempel 3y ago

I very much agree with the general sentiment here, but I want to make a separate point about tech's relationship to defense which is also portrait in these tweets. Much has been written about the DoD's funding of early Silicon Valley companies - but today, this relationship has been largely severed with giants like Google refusing to provide their tech for defense and military purposes. I THINK THIS IS A MASSIVE MISTAKE. War exists. It is as old as humankind. We could wish it wouldn't, but it does. And history has shown again and again that the way to avoid war is not in de-arming, appeasing or otherwise refusing to participate, but in obtaining a level of military and economic strength that makes it unattractive for others to attack you. Silicon Valley has the potential to generate this overwhelming strength, but it declines to do so. And the few companies that do, such as Palantir or Anduril are often shunned by their peers. I believe that Silicon Valley could play a unique role in ensuring a lasting global peace and is held back by shortsighted sentiments. Or, to put it into fancy Latin: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

rmetzler 3y ago
So your view is that the military power of the US brings peace to the rest of the world?
- wolframhempel 3y ago
  That is too absolute a statement. But generally, yes, I believe that a militarily strong US that has an interest in global trade makes war much less likely. Of course, one of the inherent problems of having a strong military is the temptation to use it - and the US has certainly done so multiple times in ill-advised fashion in Irak, Kuwait or Vietnam to name just a few. But having a military superpower like the US that's more interested in economic and cultural expansion than in direct land grabs is certainly an important counterweight to Russian or Chinese ambition. I believe a world with a militarily weak US would have seen much less "Pax Americana" and much more aggressive, expansionary wars since 1945.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  Absolutely, yes. A tiny fraction of western weapons allowed Ukraine to hold against Russian war machine and even have prospects of counter offensive. I can’t imagine the hell on earth if it kicked in full force and went to war against anyone.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago

This has been upvoted by many people on HN, so I guess it has some value for folks here, but can anyone enlighten me as to how this outrage porn is supposed to result in curious conversation? (For anyone wondering, I flagged it.)

newaccount74 3y ago
It's an interesting insight into work place politics inside a big tech company. It's certainly interesting to hear that even though you may be a well paid professional, your employment is still at the whims of a bunch of spineless execs who'd prefer to fire an employee that they paid a lot of money to hire, rather than finding a way to deal with Twitter drama in a reasonable way. I found it especially interesting that the DoD dude apparently had a history of using his position to get people fired who insulted him on Twitter (or at least trying to do so).
tzekid 3y ago
That's disingenuous of you. This article sparks conversations about workplace boundaries and corpo vs personal ethics and rights, as can be clearly seen by the other comments.
- newaccount74 3y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately important topics like these are typically flagged on HN and quickly disappear from the front page. I understand why -- they tend to lead to flamewars. But I'm not sure if hiding issues like this is a good choice. (Aside: I think it's telling that the apparent majority on HN is on Goliaths side in this case. Usually we're more on the side of the underdog. I wonder if that's just the latent misogyny showing, or if it's because OP is left leaning, or because of the pink homepage with the ponies.)
  - galkk 3y ago
    Could it be nothing of that but disregard for toxic behavior of op who either doesn’t have clue about tone, causes and consequences of the actions or refuses to own it. With the way how the post is written, and I find the end especially toxic, with points about trump era, throwing shade on a guy with hints of racism, I cannot see that this was just some unfortunate misunderstanding. omg your possible explanations: misoginy, ponies, anti left - you seem to forgot to add transphobia and tech bros to the same sentence to have flesh royal

afiori 3y ago

I do not understand what the closign remark is meant to say > And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.” Given its place it feels like it has a very clear subtext, but I cannot figure out what it could be.

luispauloml 3y ago

Had the HR deparment said something like We became aware that you dislike one of our clients, and that you have strong beliefs that we shouldn't do business with them. Given that, we decided that you should not work with us because you think we shouldn't do business the way we do. what would have happened? Could this clear and direct justification still be used as basis for a lawsuit from the employee?

dustypotato 3y ago

> . And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.” I invite you to draw your own conclusions about this guy. I don't know anything about this guy, but if this is an attempt to portray him as a racist, it's a pathetic one at that.

yakshaving_jgt 3y ago

Zero sympathy for this person. The behaviour described is unprofessional, immature, and frankly quite toxic. Not to mention a fairly stupid opinion; some of my colleagues arguably have the US DoD to thank for not being victims of russia's genocide. I couldn't imagine my colleagues having to deal with this drama bullshit on top of sheltering from missile attacks on civilians. How depressing.

yungporko 3y ago

sounds like their employer was being more than fair. honestly the thumbnail tells you all you need to know about this person lol.

apexalpha 3y ago

This would even be grounds for firing in the Netherlands, which has the most rigorous employee protections on the planet. I mean in what world do you go to a conference on company time, as a representative of that company and then type "Fuck you" to one of your biggest customers?

icu 3y ago

This situation is complicated and I've noticed most of the top posters saying they would fire the employee immediately. However, the behaviour expectations weren't communicated properly post acquisition and it's really the company's management who are responsible for protecting the company from these situations. Imho the situation is something like, it's the employee's fault, but not their responsibility. Management should have done a lot more to prevent this happening and communicate to all employees expectations in a clear way. Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally. This whole sacrificial 'fire the employee' thing makes the company and the VP look weak and pathetic. It's much harder to meditate and communicate towards an amicable resolution.

000ooo000 3y ago
Is this a defense of tweeting "fuck you" at a customer based in the company not having said "don't tweet 'fuck you' at customers"? Is there some ambiguity at play here, like in some cases employees are encouraged to tweet fuck you at customers? I'm puzzled
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Presumably there are companies that consider your social media part of your personal life and beyond the purview of corporate scrutiny. Maybe the reason why the author felt entitled to act this way was because their company permitted them to tweet like this prior to the VMWare acquisition.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
> Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally. This is exactly what happened. But when communicating the policy the poster flat out refused to follow it and brought their bud to the meeting to insultingly live tweet it. Insulting the VP and refusing to follow the policy after that meeting is what got them fired.

Ylmaz 3y ago

[flagged]

nextlevelwizard 3y ago

Not being able to comply with “Avoid topics involving age, sex, race, religion, ethnicity, politics or disabilities.” is pretty odd, but then again I guess this is your average Twitter user.

Apocryphon 3y ago
Not even Hacker News can avoid those topics these days, especially politics. The world is Twitter now, partly because of Twitter.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  Pretty easy to just not engage on those topics. Just don't comment.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    And yet, here we both are.
    - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
      A) pretty sure this post is about someone getting fired for misconduct. That has nothing to do with the listed topics. At best it could be mildly political since they were allegedly fired for political views, but that is not the main discussion. B) the rules only tell to avoid C) at least I do not have such rules places upon me all in all, nice try, but you have no argument
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        I never had an argument, honestly. I was just tut-tutting about how everything, including HN, is overpoliticized these days.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

fennecfoxy 3y ago

Lmao, this is like the time the furry posted about getting a job at NASA and excitedly told someone to "suck their dick and balls" and that person turned out to be on the NASA council (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nasa-internship-twitter-controversy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nasa-internship-twitte...). It worked out in the end as he correctly surmised that she was just young, dumb and excited and tried to work to get her the position back. However the crappy side of furries (well anybody online) targeted the poor dude even though he was completely correct to call her out on her language. As a furry myself I completely separate it from work, why someone would ever mention work or any other professional part of their lives on a "I like cartoon animals" account is beyond me. It's easy to be necessarily vicious and reactive/emotional online and I do it all the time myself, but I never involve my job. Perhaps it's a context problem, being used to particular environments, say professional & unprofessional, when someone makes the mistake of being unprofessional in their unprofessional environment (their personal Twitter) but there are links to the professional environment (colleagues on Twitter) then trouble happens. OP was big-headed and was posting all this conference shit from their personal Twitter account looks like. They should've been posting it from a work account and not gone off the rails. If they want to bitch about the DoD fine, I can totally understand, but do it on personal account and don't involve your work/job in any way. Explain what you don't like about the DoD rather than "fuck you".

brassening 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RickJWagner 3y ago

There's too much insensitivity these days. People think it's perfectly fine to state their opinion as fact and be completely rude to anyone else. I believe it should stop. So I'm sorry for this individual, but glad it happened. It needs to happen more.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

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BossHogg 3y ago

These comments are suspiciously light on anti-cancel culture rants. Wonder why.

josephcsible 3y ago
Because it's not cancel culture when the reason you got fired is work-related.

BasedAnon 3y ago

telling the DoD to fuck off is pretty based, but yeah losing your job is a likely outcome of that

1000bestlives 3y ago

Hope her new job fires her after reading this. They clearly missed red flags in the interviews

josephcsible 3y ago
I wouldn't go that far. You'd basically be stooping to the cancel mobs' level with that.

gusfoo 3y ago

I would have fired this person immediately. Gross misconduct -> instant dismissal.

cantsingh 3y ago

Yeah, I agree with the author's moral stances, but I'd fire them too.

tonnydourado 3y ago

Y'all are really telling on yourselves by shitting on OP. It's all about defending freedom of speech until the speech is a gay furry communist telling the army to fuck off. Should OP have tweeted as they did, specially while attending an event *on behalf* of their employer? Yeah, it is asking for trouble. Yeah, the company does have a right to fire them. What should be extremely grinding y'all gears though is: 1. A government employee should NEVER be the initiator of such an event. Even if it's legal, smells A LOT like the government trying to silence citizens. 2. The minute the company says "we'll accept your resignation" and tried to get out of paying what OP was owed, they become the bad guys, doesn't matter how obnoxious OP might be. If you wanna fire someone, have the balls to actually fire them and pay up whatever was agreed to in the contract. I'll give a bit of a pass on 2, because a lot of HN commenters are Americans, and Americans are brainwashed by their shitty work laws, they lost perspective of what is fair in an employer/employee relationship. But 1? Reverse the ideologies and this post would've been front page for 3 weeks.

irrational 3y ago

> I pointed out the social media guidelines were basically impossible to follow Can someone explain why they are impossible to follow? Just… don’t tweet (or use other social media) and you are following them, right? Apparently I’ve been doing the impossible since forever.

smsm42 3y ago

So, we have here: A person that publicly curses out the military, while on a job conference paid by her employer, and while the military is their client, and adds vile personal attacks to that. The justification for it - "I was mad". Sure, then of course it makes it ok, of course if you're mad the rules no longer apply to you, sorry we even asked. Refuses to promise she wouldn't keep doing it, while having the gall to "propose to improve" the guidelines so that they suit her personally. Probably adding "all the above doesn't apply if the employee feels mad at DoD for existing". Refuses to admit there's anything wrong about inflammatory offensive cussing (I'm not talking about serene or even heated political debate, "fuck you" is not that) - again, while being on the job, and repeatedly being suggested by hr that it's not how things are done. Signing the NDA, because sweet sweet money. Violating the NDA as soon as she's sure they won't ask for the money back, because agreements are for other people to follow. Somehow making it all Trumps fault because sure, that's what Trump was doing for 4 years, personally ensuring this person could not tell her bombshell story. Looks like a nice person to work with, yep.

iJohnDoe 3y ago

I wonder if they are posting themselves out of a job again.

sizzle 3y ago

Why do people gloss over the fact that they signed a contract stating their employment is “at will” meaning they can be let go for a multitude of reasons outside of being in a protected class. This person’s entitlement is on another level. They aren’t guaranteed a job and insulting high ranking officials will get you sacked 99% of the time, on top of the thousands of other reasons your employer can let you go.