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Workers are filming their layoffs, then posting to TikTok. What could go wrong?
- anigbrowl 3y agoOn X, Conservative commentator Candace Owens called Pietsch "young and stupid" after her video went viral: "Now any company that googles Brittany Pietsch will come across this video of her secretly recording the company she was employed at to expose them for doing their job. Unbelievably shortsighted." Candace Owens is also known for her flippant suggestion that 'Hitler was trying to make Germany great again'. If the best source the BBC can come up with for the alternative POV is a nazi-adjacent social media troll, perhaps they should reconsider their cognitive biases.
- wizerdrobe 3y agoRegardless of bad commentary, it’s a cogent point. Debate the idea, not the idiot.
- lgvln 3y agoCredibility matters. If someone is equivocating genocide with “making Germany great again”, it deserves to be pointed out and their testimony taken with a huge grain of salt.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI was under the impression that the German economy was vastly improved under Hitler, so I think that point at least is valid.
- krzyk 3y agoBecause he funded military and conquest paid for that. In the long run he devastated Germany and half Europe with it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 3y agoGo read Götz Ali's Hitler's Beneficiaries, which lays out in exhaustive detail the combination of financial chicanery and outright theft that was used to channel wealth toward his political base.
- great_psy 3y agoWhile the risk is obvious, what is the alternative ? You can go down as a number on the spreadsheet, or you can show everyone else they are also numbers on a spreadsheet. Her behaviour is a first step towards a different workplace. The effectiveness is questionable, but what more can a single, non organized individual can do ?
- k8svet 3y agoSome people really thrive in the cage and would prefer to not acknowledge it's existence. That's what this entire thing really boils down to. No one's saying she did something immoral. Instead the implication is that she broke some social code. Because of course we're all operating on the assumption that corporations hold the power and we should be grateful that they take pity on us to exploit us at all.
- secondcoming 3y agoEveryone else with any measure of maturity knows they're just numbers on a spreadsheet. It's not a startling revelation.
- great_psy 3y agoHow many people act like they know this? Given how many people are willing to burn themselves out because of their job I’m going to guess not too many.
- fjoireoipe 3y agoThey could have quoted someone else who made the same point. Instead they chose to give more attention to a troll.
- anigbrowl 3y agoNo. Anyone can form a superficially cogent argument when they don't need to defend it. This one is fallacious because it assumes its conclusion (hard working managers doing their jobs, rather than the reality of being unable to articulate what expectations the laid-off employee failed to meet). Further, engaging with bad actors (who are generally cynics rather than idiots) normalizes their standing as commentators/public figures, and gives them opportunity to push shitty ideas into public discourse. They're PR professionals who understand how to exploit the dynamics of social media very well and imho to the general detriment.
- acdha 3y agoIt’s not a cogent point but a distraction: as an authoritarian, Owens is naturally predisposed to assuming the company is in the right but a more accurate framing recognizes that this was not HR doing their jobs but HR lying about someone to make it sound like they were being fired for cause. Doing their jobs would have been “we’re doing a layoff, here are the terms of your severance”, and recognizing that Owens is an unreliable source is important for not letting her framing shape the discussion.
- StreetChief 3y agoI find the whole article to downplay and minimize the impact of CloudFlair's actions.
- vdaea 3y ago[flagged]
- advisedwang 3y agoHe wanted to make Germany great insofar as greatness means him being in power, his hatred manifest in murder, wealth and rights incredibly unequally distributed and hundreds of millions living as an underclass. It takes a very warped view of greatness to believe it.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- ActorNightly 3y agoIt just safe to assume that these videos are staged, until proven otherwise.
- great_psy 3y agoGiven the cloudflare CEO responses, I think it’s safe to assume that one is real.
- advisedwang 3y agoIt doesn't seem that hard to pull off, nor particularly unlikely that some people will try. So I don't think I expect 'proof' that they are real. It's like the ice bucket challenge. Sure some people probably will fake it, but I expect many of them are real.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoThis young lady may or may not have destroyed her career prospects. I have no idea. But, if the outcome is that all employers need to think about whether their firings/layoffs are broadcast for everyone to see and critique, I’d say that she made the world a little bit better :)
- secondcoming 3y agoShe has definitely damaged herself professionally. It was a very naive thing to do. I'm actually surprised that instead of laying her off they didn't just sack her, but maybe there was a delay between the meeting and her releasing it. She got a few likes on social media though, so that's good.
- sitkack 3y agoNo she hasn't. You offer no support for your claim. I'd rather hire her than you and I have been industry for over 30 years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hightrix 3y agoDid she make the word a better place, or a worse one? In my opinion, after seeing this video, any HR department will simply say “you are being laid off” and give no other information. I imagine this could only reduce the amount of information that an HR dept would give. This is my cynical point of view, at least.
- legitster 3y agoAs a millennial, why does every aspect of our life have to be so performative? People are mistaking attention seeking for "transparency". If you spend every waking of your moment on camera or making everyone around you paranoid about being on camera, no one in your life including yourself is every going to be genuine. Besides, it's a dumb thing to do. Depending on the state you or the HR person is in you could be violating 2-party consent laws.
- sitkack 3y agoWhat a poor take that projects your own biases onto the situation. Every layoff should be recorded and she broke no laws.
- sugarplant 3y ago>and she broke no laws. in this same thread you replied to someone with "You offer no support for your claim."
- sitkack 3y ago"Could be", should have said verifiable to keep you happy, Brittany Pietsch is in a one party consent state. https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law The thing that rubbed me the wrong way is that @legitster most likely knew this, and this why they said, "could be violating ..." and then the whole comment comes off like a pro-corporate scare post to not call out shitty tactics. It is disingenuous. It is shallow and dismissive to call what she did the act of a performative millennial. By the point this article came up, it was widely known for those paying attention that Pietsch committed no crimes in recording this.
- beepboopboop 3y ago> @legitster most likely knew this You knew what state the other people on the call were in? Were their names even revealed? Even if they were, why would you assume others are as invested in this story that they’d seek out that info?
- rstuart4133 3y ago> What could go wrong? Probably nothing. Bad things happen in dark corners. Shining a little sunlight into a dark corner is almost always a good thing. In this case, possibly a very good thing. Because even just the threat of a little sunlight being shone on your performance generally improves it. This viral TikTok video made that possibility very real in a lot of peoples minds. So I'm guessing this video going to have an outsized impact, for the better.
- iamleppert 3y agoI had an old roommate who was the political whistle-blower for NYC police when they lied about the number of minorities they arrest. He was instrumental in getting attention to the disproportionate number of minorities adversely affected by stop and frisk. As an analyst, he had access to the actual raw data and was the one actually creating the reports internally and decided to do speak out when, despite his reporting, the police and politicians were lying to the public. He had an incredible background on paper (went to Harvard, numerous high level and trusted analyst positions in government, high profile Twitter account). After he leaked the information and had his 15 minutes of fame, his career was basically destroyed. I watched, first hand, over the course of the next two years how he couldn't get a job in his field anymore -- or any field for that matter. After going through his savings, he was forced to take a job working part time at a used clothing store, working for an abusive boss. Don't underestimate the power of forever getting your name indexed in Google. He was labeled as a "gadfly" by government. Watching him struggle and what it did to his mental and physical health over was absolutely heartbreaking. I really hope this woman doesn't have the same outcome, but I am not optimistic.
- zug_zug 3y agoIf your takeaway from that anecdote is "don't whistleblow" I feel like you're in a different dimension than me. My takeaway is that he probably has a viable lawsuit and maybe pay somebody 5k for some SEO, or change his name for free.
- BarkenBark 3y agoI don’t think that’s the takeaway. I think the comment simply meant to shed some light on the personal consequencea of the whistleblower that might go under the radar - both for readers and the whistleblowers themselves prior to the act.
- hulitu 3y agoThat was also my understanding. There are countries (in EU) where filming your layoff might land you in jail (privacy, obstruction of property, trade secrets).
- StreetChief 3y agoCloudflare CEO Matthew Prince responds on X: https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501