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> 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 inflammator

> 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.
    - eusto 3y ago
      "early stages of corporate dystopia". If anything, we're on the other side of it where companies are being held to some ridiculous standard that we don't even hold elected officials to. Remember Netflix having to fire Kevin Spacey for being accused of something that the president of the United States actually admitted to? How does this fit into the dystopian medium you think you live in? I'm obviously not condoning abusive behaviour, I'm using this as an example of how much scrutiny there is on these corporations. It's the same in this case: you're taking the view that a company should allow itself to be dragged into politics by the employee who publicly represents it. Surely that's wrong, isn't it? Companies should not be involved in politics. That's specifically what you are against when you call them dystopian. This person, who I assume is an US citizen, is absolutely allowed to criticise the army, but they should do it as a citizen. Ultimately, the army serves the citizens and corporations serve customers.
      - Yizahi 3y ago
        Again - I'm not supporting this person in the OP, not supporting her insults and don't support doing this to customers in general. I'm also rather grateful to the US army and citizens enabling it, because they are #1 factor today why me and my family and friends are alive. Regarding corporate dystopia, I politely disagree with you. Some isolated cases where corporations are a tiny little bit affected are a drop in ocean of the reverse situations. Also notice that in your example a person (Spacey) is unilaterally abused by the corporation, outside of any due process. This is actually an example for my idea, I think :) . And in general the trend is obvious - corporations are rapidly increasing in size, they destroy free market (or rather it works as expected) by demolishing any competition, bribe and subvert weak governments to push their agenda and lock all customers to their products/services. They blatantly exfiltrate money to the tax free offshores and avoid abiding by any laws (which matter). They deliberately stall any regulation by government of any new areas they are controlling (ads, ISP, media, communication and so on). They are like a rapidly growing tumor, for now mostly benign, but metastases has already started. And anti-monopoly government bodies of all countries are spectacularly impotent over past decades, sitting on their hand and doing nothing that matters.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    If being a grown up means being an inhuman robot then I'd rather not be a grown up.
    - valval 3y ago
      Don’t worry, it doesn’t. Being a grown up is amazing.
- inertiatic 3y ago
  >you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom Isn't it obvious? You're literally giving away more than a third of your life working these jobs to do things that you don't personally want or benefit from. You think the more restrictive thing that is being really imposed on you is being unable to tweet "Fuck you" instead of spending like half of your waking time away from your family and loved ones? I'm personally not a fan of capitalism conceptually, not just the corporate kind, but it always strikes me as weird how other leftists think that's the unthinkable part, that someone would fire you for speaking out of line while still acknowledging that the other party is part of an organization that kills thousands and suppresses nations for oil for example.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    Very good points. In fact the reality is the lack of alternative. But this is really what I don’t understand about thousand and thousand of talented people working for Meta, for example.
- yuliyp 3y ago
  This isn't anything particularly corporate. If you worked at a mom and pop restaurant and mouthed off with this level of vitriol about the customers you should expect to be fired. I don't think there's any discussion about whether the OP had the right to make such comments. The employer also had a right to no longer employ them. Nobody's personal expression rights were violated, just the expression had consequences.
- parineum 3y ago
  > I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom. Nah, she should have quit and exercised her personal freedom to work for an employer she doesn't think is a war criminal. _That's_ how capitalism works, vote with your labor/dollar. Instead, she fought tooth and nail to keep that corporate job and the blood money that came with it.
  - Osmose 3y ago
    Yes, the implication here is that having to give up something that is comparatively very valuable to you (your livelihood) while the consequences to the company of plucking it away from you are tiny (a line item on a budget somewhere) in order to exercise your freedom is a flaw of capitalism.
    - King-Aaron 3y ago
      What alternatives do you propose?
      - Osmose 3y ago
        I can't think through all the flaws but "criticism of the government is protected speech for employees" broadly seems achievable, which of course has tons of annoying details like "when is an employee speaking for a company vs for themselves, are personal twitter accounts an employee's own speech" or "what is a government entity" or "what is criticism" or "what is an allowed disciplinary response to grey areas" and so on.
        King-Aaron 3y ago
        This wasn't even 'criticism of the government' at the end of the day, it was wholly unprofessional communication and blatantly rude. Honestly I cannot believe people are bending over backwards to support the actions of the blog author.
        3y ago
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Considering that this person was happily collecting a paycheck from a company that supplies DoD, I'd personally not make the "personal beliefs are more important than business" argument.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  > Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? But it must. If an employer at Starbucks signs off every order with “Heil Hitler,” we should expect them to be fired. Companies don’t have to afford employees free speech when they are on company time.
  - Osmose 3y ago
    There already are protected forms of speech in the workplace, including discussion of workplace safety, unionizing, as well as speaking out against harassment and discrimination. And the NLRB has already ruled that some of those are protected even when made on social media, even if it's alongside profainty[1]. Perhaps criticism of the government or government representatives should be added to the list? [1] National Labor Relations Board v. Pier Sixty, LLC, 855 F.3d 115 (2d Cir. 2017)., via the second footnote on https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/first-amendment-rights-at-work/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/first-amendment-rights-at-...
    - Gareth321 3y ago
      Fair opinion. I might agree, but the manner of this “disagreement” was clearly outside the bounds of any reasonable code of conduct. I would not support such a law if it permitted workplaces to turn into places where screaming obscenities at each other over government policies were considered protect speech.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  >Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? Yes, businesses exist to do business not be a place where you can discuss your feelings.
- easyThrowaway 3y ago
  A full frontal attack is not always the best strategy while facing an opponent, ideological or not. Just saying. They could've just posted asking if something as controversial and politically-biased as the DoD was the best fit for an international conference and if there had been any political interference and it would've carried the same weight.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    I like this reply, thanks.
- jzb 3y ago
  The sticking point here for me is that this person was attending an event on the company dime. They were literally being paid to make the company look good by attending. I’m still on the fence about this, I also think there’s probably context that we don’t have. Tagging the speaker was also needlessly antagonistic. That IMO escalated it from snarking to picking a fight. If they were at an event paying their own way, I’d be in agreement with you - but they were there to represent the company.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > 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 Rather, it's the right to freely associate yourself with whoever you want. Not above freedom of expression but certainly not below either. I wouldn't want to associate with certain people because of what they say and do. There are people who wouldn't want to associate with me either. This is fine. It gets a bit duplicitous when money and power are involved but that's to be expected.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    This freedom you all tout as a counterargument is a lie. You’re all repeating it as if it’s a commonly held piece of common sense, but have you stopped for one second if it actually makes sense? What is the alternative this freedom enables, if you have a skillset for which you need to be employed to make a living? For there to be a freedom, there would need to exist an alternative. As Mark Fisher already brilliantly pointed out before that devoured him to the core, the alternative is not even thinkable.
- TheRoque 3y ago
  I don't see the issue with this one. If you are working for the company in the first place, you're making an agreement to give your energy, and contribute to this company. It doesn't make much sense to willingly enroll in a company to then criticize its clients and business. The fact that they now represent this company is also quite obvious... This employee of course has the freedom to express its discontent with the company, but then the company is also free to fire this employee for not fitting the culture. If both disagree, it makes sense that they part ways in the end.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    The problem comes before that. Mostly there isn’t an alternative to that. Either sign off your rights with an employment contract if you wanna be paid for your skills, or die in a ditch (pardon the hyperbole). Tertium non datur, there is not an alternative. And no, I’m sorry, but “you have the freedom to start your own company”, “you have the freedom to not be employed by that company” are all false statements.
    - jzb 3y ago
      There's an in-between, here. The author was at a conference representing said company. Maybe they were told to go, but this isn't VMware policing their speech in general - this is someone attending an event on VMware's behalf and picking a fight directly with the speaker. I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there. If part of your job includes repping the company, and the company paying for you to be somewhere, then while you're wearing that hat you need to be conscious of what you say and how it reflects on the company. I agree with you that there's a power imbalance and "you're free to start your own company" would be unsatisfying if the company is trying to stifle your speech at all times.
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        > I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there. Depending on the "political opinion" I would absolutely expect to be fired for expressing it even "outside the context of work with no reasonable association with [company]." If I went out and stood on a highway overpass waving a nazi flag or participated in a KKK march, I would 1000% expect to be fired without even a conversation from my manager. Or, really, if I did anything in public that would get me to the top of Reddit's r/PublicFreakout and got identified, I would not be surprised if my job was in jeopardy over it.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  How is this any different than someone coming to your business and starting to yell at you, because they don't agree with your political views?

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.
  - eusto 3y ago
    "early stages of corporate dystopia". If anything, we're on the other side of it where companies are being held to some ridiculous standard that we don't even hold elected officials to. Remember Netflix having to fire Kevin Spacey for being accused of something that the president of the United States actually admitted to? How does this fit into the dystopian medium you think you live in? I'm obviously not condoning abusive behaviour, I'm using this as an example of how much scrutiny there is on these corporations. It's the same in this case: you're taking the view that a company should allow itself to be dragged into politics by the employee who publicly represents it. Surely that's wrong, isn't it? Companies should not be involved in politics. That's specifically what you are against when you call them dystopian. This person, who I assume is an US citizen, is absolutely allowed to criticise the army, but they should do it as a citizen. Ultimately, the army serves the citizens and corporations serve customers.
    - Yizahi 3y ago
      Again - I'm not supporting this person in the OP, not supporting her insults and don't support doing this to customers in general. I'm also rather grateful to the US army and citizens enabling it, because they are #1 factor today why me and my family and friends are alive. Regarding corporate dystopia, I politely disagree with you. Some isolated cases where corporations are a tiny little bit affected are a drop in ocean of the reverse situations. Also notice that in your example a person (Spacey) is unilaterally abused by the corporation, outside of any due process. This is actually an example for my idea, I think :) . And in general the trend is obvious - corporations are rapidly increasing in size, they destroy free market (or rather it works as expected) by demolishing any competition, bribe and subvert weak governments to push their agenda and lock all customers to their products/services. They blatantly exfiltrate money to the tax free offshores and avoid abiding by any laws (which matter). They deliberately stall any regulation by government of any new areas they are controlling (ads, ISP, media, communication and so on). They are like a rapidly growing tumor, for now mostly benign, but metastases has already started. And anti-monopoly government bodies of all countries are spectacularly impotent over past decades, sitting on their hand and doing nothing that matters.
- BasedAnon 3y ago
  If being a grown up means being an inhuman robot then I'd rather not be a grown up.
  - valval 3y ago
    Don’t worry, it doesn’t. Being a grown up is amazing.
inertiatic 3y ago
>you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom Isn't it obvious? You're literally giving away more than a third of your life working these jobs to do things that you don't personally want or benefit from. You think the more restrictive thing that is being really imposed on you is being unable to tweet "Fuck you" instead of spending like half of your waking time away from your family and loved ones? I'm personally not a fan of capitalism conceptually, not just the corporate kind, but it always strikes me as weird how other leftists think that's the unthinkable part, that someone would fire you for speaking out of line while still acknowledging that the other party is part of an organization that kills thousands and suppresses nations for oil for example.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  Very good points. In fact the reality is the lack of alternative. But this is really what I don’t understand about thousand and thousand of talented people working for Meta, for example.
yuliyp 3y ago
This isn't anything particularly corporate. If you worked at a mom and pop restaurant and mouthed off with this level of vitriol about the customers you should expect to be fired. I don't think there's any discussion about whether the OP had the right to make such comments. The employer also had a right to no longer employ them. Nobody's personal expression rights were violated, just the expression had consequences.
parineum 3y ago
> I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom. Nah, she should have quit and exercised her personal freedom to work for an employer she doesn't think is a war criminal. _That's_ how capitalism works, vote with your labor/dollar. Instead, she fought tooth and nail to keep that corporate job and the blood money that came with it.
- Osmose 3y ago
  Yes, the implication here is that having to give up something that is comparatively very valuable to you (your livelihood) while the consequences to the company of plucking it away from you are tiny (a line item on a budget somewhere) in order to exercise your freedom is a flaw of capitalism.
  - King-Aaron 3y ago
    What alternatives do you propose?
    - Osmose 3y ago
      I can't think through all the flaws but "criticism of the government is protected speech for employees" broadly seems achievable, which of course has tons of annoying details like "when is an employee speaking for a company vs for themselves, are personal twitter accounts an employee's own speech" or "what is a government entity" or "what is criticism" or "what is an allowed disciplinary response to grey areas" and so on.
      - King-Aaron 3y ago
        This wasn't even 'criticism of the government' at the end of the day, it was wholly unprofessional communication and blatantly rude. Honestly I cannot believe people are bending over backwards to support the actions of the blog author.
        3y ago
Hamuko 3y ago
Considering that this person was happily collecting a paycheck from a company that supplies DoD, I'd personally not make the "personal beliefs are more important than business" argument.
Gareth321 3y ago
> Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? But it must. If an employer at Starbucks signs off every order with “Heil Hitler,” we should expect them to be fired. Companies don’t have to afford employees free speech when they are on company time.
- Osmose 3y ago
  There already are protected forms of speech in the workplace, including discussion of workplace safety, unionizing, as well as speaking out against harassment and discrimination. And the NLRB has already ruled that some of those are protected even when made on social media, even if it's alongside profainty[1]. Perhaps criticism of the government or government representatives should be added to the list? [1] National Labor Relations Board v. Pier Sixty, LLC, 855 F.3d 115 (2d Cir. 2017)., via the second footnote on https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/first-amendment-rights-at-work/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/first-amendment-rights-at-...
  - Gareth321 3y ago
    Fair opinion. I might agree, but the manner of this “disagreement” was clearly outside the bounds of any reasonable code of conduct. I would not support such a law if it permitted workplaces to turn into places where screaming obscenities at each other over government policies were considered protect speech.
bobsmooth 3y ago
>Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? Yes, businesses exist to do business not be a place where you can discuss your feelings.
easyThrowaway 3y ago
A full frontal attack is not always the best strategy while facing an opponent, ideological or not. Just saying. They could've just posted asking if something as controversial and politically-biased as the DoD was the best fit for an international conference and if there had been any political interference and it would've carried the same weight.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  I like this reply, thanks.
jzb 3y ago
The sticking point here for me is that this person was attending an event on the company dime. They were literally being paid to make the company look good by attending. I’m still on the fence about this, I also think there’s probably context that we don’t have. Tagging the speaker was also needlessly antagonistic. That IMO escalated it from snarking to picking a fight. If they were at an event paying their own way, I’d be in agreement with you - but they were there to represent the company.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> 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 Rather, it's the right to freely associate yourself with whoever you want. Not above freedom of expression but certainly not below either. I wouldn't want to associate with certain people because of what they say and do. There are people who wouldn't want to associate with me either. This is fine. It gets a bit duplicitous when money and power are involved but that's to be expected.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  This freedom you all tout as a counterargument is a lie. You’re all repeating it as if it’s a commonly held piece of common sense, but have you stopped for one second if it actually makes sense? What is the alternative this freedom enables, if you have a skillset for which you need to be employed to make a living? For there to be a freedom, there would need to exist an alternative. As Mark Fisher already brilliantly pointed out before that devoured him to the core, the alternative is not even thinkable.
TheRoque 3y ago
I don't see the issue with this one. If you are working for the company in the first place, you're making an agreement to give your energy, and contribute to this company. It doesn't make much sense to willingly enroll in a company to then criticize its clients and business. The fact that they now represent this company is also quite obvious... This employee of course has the freedom to express its discontent with the company, but then the company is also free to fire this employee for not fitting the culture. If both disagree, it makes sense that they part ways in the end.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  The problem comes before that. Mostly there isn’t an alternative to that. Either sign off your rights with an employment contract if you wanna be paid for your skills, or die in a ditch (pardon the hyperbole). Tertium non datur, there is not an alternative. And no, I’m sorry, but “you have the freedom to start your own company”, “you have the freedom to not be employed by that company” are all false statements.
  - jzb 3y ago
    There's an in-between, here. The author was at a conference representing said company. Maybe they were told to go, but this isn't VMware policing their speech in general - this is someone attending an event on VMware's behalf and picking a fight directly with the speaker. I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there. If part of your job includes repping the company, and the company paying for you to be somewhere, then while you're wearing that hat you need to be conscious of what you say and how it reflects on the company. I agree with you that there's a power imbalance and "you're free to start your own company" would be unsatisfying if the company is trying to stifle your speech at all times.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there. Depending on the "political opinion" I would absolutely expect to be fired for expressing it even "outside the context of work with no reasonable association with [company]." If I went out and stood on a highway overpass waving a nazi flag or participated in a KKK march, I would 1000% expect to be fired without even a conversation from my manager. Or, really, if I did anything in public that would get me to the top of Reddit's r/PublicFreakout and got identified, I would not be surprised if my job was in jeopardy over it.
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
How is this any different than someone coming to your business and starting to yell at you, because they don't agree with your political views?