4 ms·

Google "mozilla Eich" for a case study that hits close to home for many HN readers.

nosefrog 11y ago
Freedom of hate speech isn't in the bill of rights.
politician 11y ago
I don't know why you're being down-voted. Eich was literally driven out of Mozilla by the social backlash to personal opinions he expressed publicly. This is a fine example regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his position which I won't repeat here because it is irrelevant in this context.
geofft 11y ago
That was voluntary, so I'm not sure what its relevance is to that comment. It's also hard to be an effective leader of a company when it is known that you desire many of your employees not to have civil rights, and there's no reason for Mozilla to spend its money on an incompetent CEO. (Note that I'm not saying that Eich is incompetent on technical matters, or even incompetent as a manager in the abstract, just an incompetent CEO for the company he was CEO of.)
- return0 11y ago
  "Voluntary", with a gun in his head.
- hoopd 11y ago
  Eich leaving Mozilla was absolutely not voluntary and I wish people would stop saying it was. He "voluntarily" resigned in response to coercive threats against the company he founded and spent 15 years building.
  - geofft 11y ago
    I'm taking this from Mozilla's blog post, which goes to lengths to portray it as voluntary (in addition to saying it outright at the top): https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... Since he left ten days after being promoted to CEO, and since the donations were known about in advance, I would argue that he should have known he would have been a compromised leader of Mozilla and if he valued his job, could have stayed CTO as he had been for 15 years. (And if he didn't expect his own employees to write public blog posts calling for his dismissal, then that alone makes him an incompetent and out-of-touch CEO. Whether or not his dismissal was voluntary, if that's the case, he was not qualified for the job.)
    - hoopd 11y ago
      Nothing coerced is voluntary, they're mutually exclusive concepts. Mozilla did not fire him nor was Mozilla the group that forced him to leave, that does not mean he wasn't forced to leave. As far as whether or not he was capable of running an inclusive company, he once founded what is known to be an inclusive company and was an executive there for 15 years without, to my knowledge, any complaints about how he performed his duties outside of contributing his personal money to a political campaign. Particularly telling is this part of the FAQ: > Q: Was Brendan Eich forced out by employee pressure? A: No. That less than 10 employees got him removed is outrageous. The people that worked with him knew best whether or not he treated people fairly and the fact that so few of them wanted him to leave tells me the whole thing was a disgrace.
    - return0 11y ago
      Of course they would go to great lengths to make it seem voluntary. Otherwise he has grounds for legal action.
return0 11y ago
I understand that it can happen for highly-ranking people , who are also public persons and speak for the company. However, I don't understand policies like the one that reddit recently established, that programmers who get hired must "commit to diversity". This looks a lot like the holy inquisition, it has nothing to do with their expected job performance. You either "think this way" or get fired. I thought it took all sorts to make a world.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > This looks a lot like the holy inquisition It looks like a loyalty oath, to be sure, but, while one might argue those are undesirable, comparisons with the Holy Inquisition (whether by that one intends the Spanish Inquisition or the Roman Inquisition)...well, to borrow from Pulp Fiction, it ain't the same f-in ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same damn sport. > either "think this way" or get fired. I think you are confusing "thinking this way" with "commit to act this way". Two different things. > I thought it took all sorts to make a world. Presuming that's perceived as important to the mission of a firm, why would it be unacceptable for a firm to expect employees to commit to act based on that as a condition of employment?
  - return0 11y ago
    > why would it be unacceptable It's not unacceptable, just weird. Many people may not agree that diversity should supercede meritocracy in a company.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Many people may not agree that diversity should supercede meritocracy in a company. If the diversity is viewed by the decision-makers of the company as part of the mission, than actions consistent with it are part of merit in the context of employment with the company. "Merit" isn't a freestanding thing unrelated to the context of employment, it is meaningful only in regard to what the company is hoping to achieve by paying you.

Freedom of hate speech isn't in the bill of rights.

I don't know why you're being down-voted. Eich was literally driven out of Mozilla by the social backlash to personal opinions he expressed publicly. This is a fine example regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his position which I won't repeat here because it is irrelevant in this context.

geofft 11y ago

That was voluntary, so I'm not sure what its relevance is to that comment. It's also hard to be an effective leader of a company when it is known that you desire many of your employees not to have civil rights, and there's no reason for Mozilla to spend its money on an incompetent CEO. (Note that I'm not saying that Eich is incompetent on technical matters, or even incompetent as a manager in the abstract, just an incompetent CEO for the company he was CEO of.)

return0 11y ago
"Voluntary", with a gun in his head.
hoopd 11y ago
Eich leaving Mozilla was absolutely not voluntary and I wish people would stop saying it was. He "voluntarily" resigned in response to coercive threats against the company he founded and spent 15 years building.
- geofft 11y ago
  I'm taking this from Mozilla's blog post, which goes to lengths to portray it as voluntary (in addition to saying it outright at the top): https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... Since he left ten days after being promoted to CEO, and since the donations were known about in advance, I would argue that he should have known he would have been a compromised leader of Mozilla and if he valued his job, could have stayed CTO as he had been for 15 years. (And if he didn't expect his own employees to write public blog posts calling for his dismissal, then that alone makes him an incompetent and out-of-touch CEO. Whether or not his dismissal was voluntary, if that's the case, he was not qualified for the job.)
  - hoopd 11y ago
    Nothing coerced is voluntary, they're mutually exclusive concepts. Mozilla did not fire him nor was Mozilla the group that forced him to leave, that does not mean he wasn't forced to leave. As far as whether or not he was capable of running an inclusive company, he once founded what is known to be an inclusive company and was an executive there for 15 years without, to my knowledge, any complaints about how he performed his duties outside of contributing his personal money to a political campaign. Particularly telling is this part of the FAQ: > Q: Was Brendan Eich forced out by employee pressure? A: No. That less than 10 employees got him removed is outrageous. The people that worked with him knew best whether or not he treated people fairly and the fact that so few of them wanted him to leave tells me the whole thing was a disgrace.
  - return0 11y ago
    Of course they would go to great lengths to make it seem voluntary. Otherwise he has grounds for legal action.

return0 11y ago

I understand that it can happen for highly-ranking people , who are also public persons and speak for the company. However, I don't understand policies like the one that reddit recently established, that programmers who get hired must "commit to diversity". This looks a lot like the holy inquisition, it has nothing to do with their expected job performance. You either "think this way" or get fired. I thought it took all sorts to make a world.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> This looks a lot like the holy inquisition It looks like a loyalty oath, to be sure, but, while one might argue those are undesirable, comparisons with the Holy Inquisition (whether by that one intends the Spanish Inquisition or the Roman Inquisition)...well, to borrow from Pulp Fiction, it ain't the same f-in ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same damn sport. > either "think this way" or get fired. I think you are confusing "thinking this way" with "commit to act this way". Two different things. > I thought it took all sorts to make a world. Presuming that's perceived as important to the mission of a firm, why would it be unacceptable for a firm to expect employees to commit to act based on that as a condition of employment?
- return0 11y ago
  > why would it be unacceptable It's not unacceptable, just weird. Many people may not agree that diversity should supercede meritocracy in a company.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Many people may not agree that diversity should supercede meritocracy in a company. If the diversity is viewed by the decision-makers of the company as part of the mission, than actions consistent with it are part of merit in the context of employment with the company. "Merit" isn't a freestanding thing unrelated to the context of employment, it is meaningful only in regard to what the company is hoping to achieve by paying you.