Update on an Employee Matter | Hacker News Reader

Update on an Employee Matter

github.blog

208 pointstodsacerdoti233 comments

Well they left all the juicy parts out

Context: https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22232766/github-employees...

I can’t believe people talk like this on a work public channel.

Thanks for the link! And yeah agreed.

I want to say: I don't talk as casually as this in a work channel, though I do sometimes discuss politics and current events. That's not because I don't think it's professional, but rather because I'm jewish and what happened to this employee feels like a very present threat.

It is a well-documented fact that neo-nazi hate groups were a significant presence in the riot and preceding "protest" at the capital. Stating that fact ultimately lead to a nazi-apologist coworker denying it, and then the jewish employee being fired.

> Stating that fact ultimately lead to a nazi-apologist coworker denying it

Where?

From the article:

>The current conflict began the day of the riots in Washington, DC when a Jewish employee told co-workers: “stay safe homies, nazis are about.” Some colleagues took offense to the language, although neo-Nazi organizations were, in fact, present at the riots. One engineer responded: “This is untasteful conduct for workplace [in my opinion], people have the right to protest period.”

Ctrl-F for that to see the screenshot with the full context.

How is that denying there are Nazis?

If you read the full sentence in the article, you will note that it continues by saying that the label is "slandering." Something has to be untrue for it to be slander. Therefore, by saying that labeling people in the crowd as Nazis is slander, it denies that there were Nazis in the crowd.

That employee is taking the position that "there are" is equal to "all those people are", the same flawed logic is being used as a premise by a lot of commenters here.

It's so blatently wrong that it's hard to assume good faith.

Now that you pointed it out I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t call it blatantly wrong. To me the statement honestly read like it’s lumping all protesters together, or at least it’s certainly not making an obvious attempt to differentiate.

> ... or at least it’s certainly not making an obvious attempt to differentiate.

It does not need to.

Yelling "Fire!" in a cinema hall does not need to be accompanied by precise instructions as to where said fire is burning. It's a warning, not a debate.

Something has to be defamatory and expressed orally for it to be slander. Apparently, all the labeling should have been around libel.

I am having trouble adjusting to a reality in which I am the first to express this quibble.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/libel-vs-slander-dif...

That's really an irrelevant piece of nitpicking, especially given the context being that someone was fired for calling neo-Nazis, Nazis.

> The employee was chastised for using divisive language, according to news first reported by Business Insider.

For calling, erm, Nazis Nazis? (and yes, given the photos of the event that monicker can be applied to some people present there)

No wonder the head of HR quit, this is such top level corporate PR BS that it's hard to justify.

> I can't believe people talk like this on a work public channel.

Not sure if you're referring to the instance of the egregious anti-Semitic joke (CW for that link, btw), or to the bulk of the communications, but for any who feel the latter, that any conversation involving Nazism is improper, I'd consider a counterpoint:

We're in an industry where it's very easy for our work to be used for horrible things, where indeed there are historical examples of technology being used to accelerate the operations of genocide, and it's not only appropriate but essential that the employees of companies be allowed to call out fascism, and express their fear and dismay of Nazis, to colleagues whenever they see it, regardless of whether it is immediately linked to a product initiative.

The comment that states "you dont see 'commie' being dropped in the workplace nor should 'nazi,' it's just slandering" is the false equivalency of the century, and if we can't distinguish between words that over-simplify a political ideology, vs. words that concisely warn colleagues that something is going beyond political ideology and towards a pattern of racially-motivated behavior that places people in grave danger, we haven't learned our lessons from history.

Except that the comments weren't in the context of any product initiative or related to company business at all.

I'm sure Christians or other religious sects feel that it's essential that they proselytize their gospel to you, but I don't think you'd be very happy if you were getting bombarded with messages about it at work.

There's really no reason the kinds of conversations linked above should be happening with frequency in a company chat room. If you want to be an activist, great. Do it after hours.

The comment in question was "stay safe homies nazis are about". Telling employees to stay safe is absolutely related to company business. Not having employees be killed by Nazis is absolutely an important part of product initiatives.

I'm talking about the conversations linked in the Engadget article.

Though by that ludicrous logic you can say anything is company business. Saving an employees morality is absolutely important to a company from a Christians prospective. So is preventing them from dying, so surely you're okay with people harassing you at work about skydiving or rock climbing or drug use?

What impact does an employee’s “morality” have on the business, from a Christian perspective? I don’t actually believe there’s a cogent argument that e.g. premarital sex makes someone less effective at their job.

What about theft? Drug use? Fraud?

Clearly these can affect your performance at work, so it's completely fine to proselytize at work.

It’s a looooong jump from “don’t steal from the company” to “Christ is your savior”.

>It’s a looooong jump from “don’t steal from the company” to “Christ is your savior”.

Almost as long of a jump as "I'm scared for your safety for a riot that occurred a week ago, so I need to retroactively warn you about Nazis"

If you’re referring to the GitHub situation, the comment in question was made as the attack was ongoing.

I think we agree on the larger point but I disagree with a couple of your points here.

> it's not only appropriate but essential that the employees of companies be allowed to call out fascism, and express their fear and dismay of Nazis, to colleagues whenever they see it

Fascism is the reprehensible government structure du jour but I think it's wrong to be single-sided here. Employees should be allowed to call out things they disagree with. It doesn't necessarily mean anything will happen, and they end up leaving the company because of it. But I do think there are quite a few conservative, non-fascist, anti-Nazi people who will read a "employees can call out fascism!" comment and feel at least a bit like it's meant toward them as more conservative that most people in tech. I was a #nevertrump Republican throughout the primary and changed my party registration the day after his nomination. I think he's done 10x the damage to conservatism than Nixon ever could have. But I'm sure there are people here who, because I was a registered Republican during the Obama administration, view me as a fascist. I'm positive there are people who are registered Republicans today who hate what Trump is doing (both to the party and to the country), working in tech, and reading HN right now.

> regardless of whether it is immediately linked to a product initiative

This I'm not so sure about. I mean GitHub exists to ship software, and for the most part if you're communicating over a GitHub channel it should probably be about that. The fact that they have DEI channels and race-based channels and such on the official Slack in the first place is probably a larger discussion in itself.

> The comment that states "you dont see 'commie' being dropped in the workplace nor should 'nazi,' it's just slandering" is the false equivalency of the century, and if we can't distinguish between words that over-simplify a political ideology, vs. words that concisely warn colleagues that something is going beyond political ideology and towards a pattern of racially-motivated behavior that places people in grave danger, we haven't learned our lessons from history.

With regard to the 6th specifically, absolutely agree.

With regard to the language more generally, though, you're assuming that "commie" is always an over-simplification and "nazi" never is. Something actually are communism, which is responsible for a couple hundred million deaths historically, so while not directly racially related, it's not exactly a great thing. Commie also doesn't have quite the negative connotation of Nazi, and rightfully so. So even arguing the point feels a little like arguing about "cracker" vs. the n word. One is obviously worse, regardless of context.

> But I do think there are quite a few conservative, non-fascist, anti-Nazi people who will read a "employees can call out fascism!" comment and feel at least a bit like it's meant toward them

That's a problem for the definitely anti-fascist, anti-Nazi to sort out with themselves. Why do they identify with fascism in this context? Is it because they have openly labelled the BLM movement as a terrorist organisation? Is it because they cheered when protesters were deliberately run over or shot?

> I think [Trump has] done 10x the damage to conservatism than Nixon ever could have.

IMHO this is because of the number of Conservatives who followed him. It's not Trump's fault, though he's an easy scapegoat. Trump certainly empowered a lot of people to express opinions and perform actions they otherwise wouldn't have, but Trump didn't make those people say those things or behave that way.

If Trump is prosecuted and imprisoned, that will be a great start. There will be many people who will see Trump imprisoned, dust their hands off and say, "well, job's done, that's fascism in the USA dealt with," only to be shocked when it turns out that jailing Trump didn't actually solve anything and the USA continues to suffer problems such as entrenched white supremacy in the police forces around the USA, crony capitalism in all levels of government, and political parties acting in their own selfish interest.

> The comment that states "you dont see 'commie' being dropped in the workplace nor should 'nazi,' it's just slandering" is the false equivalency of the century

That comment about slandering is a bs and a person making it is a hypocrite. There were people, whose clothes literally manifested that they were Nazis. Camp Auschwitz, 6MWE, there is no guesswork, they themselves declared that they are Nazis.

Independent from the events: The way Github employees communicate with each other makes me kind of uncomfortable.

In the companies I've worked here in Europe, such discussions just would not happen in a cooperate chat room.

Yes, we don't take calling anyone "Nazi" lightly. Well, at least level-headed people don't.

It's disrespectful to the people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the real Nazis.

As a member of the group of people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the “real” Nazis, I’d much rather be warned that their successors were involved in an ongoing terrorist attack in the immediate vicinity than tiptoe around the issue to avoid making conservatives uncomfortable.

> avoid making conservatives uncomfortable

Hacker News has a huge global audience. Conservatism means something very different in all parts of the world. I assume you mean Republicans in America? Just to give you context, here in Europe we would consider the Democrats in the US a right conservative party and Republicans a far right party. Conservatives in Europe would be considered far left in the US, because in Europe even the most conservative person would still be in favour or public healthcare, pro gun laws and support many things like rent control or minimum wage. If you try to associate conservatism with American far right groups it only shows your own narrow minded "conservative" understanding of the world.

We are discussing a conflict between American employees in a US-based office about an event involving American residents. It should be clear that I’m specifically referring to American conservatives.

Conservative Jews were first vindicated for being Jewish in the 1940s and now the same people are being vindicated by the next ignorant group for being conservative, because people like think it is ok to blame an entire group of people based on personal, religious or political beliefs which do no harm. Conservatism isn’t harmful. Conservative Jews also hate Nazis.

I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. I’m simply saying that (American) conservatives get uncomfortable if you point out how often they end up standing beside literal neo-Nazis, which you can easily see on display in the comments for this article.

> Conservative Jews also hate Nazis.

Tell that to Stephen Miller.

Also, vindicated means “proven correct”.

Fun fact, in China, conservatism tend to be related to old-school, Mao-era communism, which is probably considered far-far-left extremists in the free world.

The extreme sides actually join together around the back.

Just the reasoning that tends to get a bit muddy - for race/country/flag/god/people. I think the line tends to be when somebody starts mentioning 'the enemy' - and points to some formerly-considered-random guy nearby.

Nice one. Write a whole damn paragraph for a thing that was obvious from context.

As a member of the group of people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the “real” Nazis, I'd much rather not see words "Nazi" and "terrorist" used for protesters (or even rioters) whose intentions had nothing to do with extermination, torture, or serious attempts of coup or terrorism (cf. actual terrorist attacks by actual terrorists in Europe).

https://news.yahoo.com/q-shaman-stormed-capitol-upset-192631...

The guy in the yellow shirt is Jason Tankersley, founder of the Maryland Skinheads. The guy to his right in the mask is Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party (a neo nazi org).

This wasn't an exaggeration, a high number of literal neo nazi leaders were present.

Treating them the same as Hitler is literally “crying wolf”. These people are closer to internet trolls then they are to 1930s Nazis.

If Literal Hitler were in the crowd I guarantee there would be people downplaying it like this.

These were quite literal neo-Nazis engaged in a literal terrorist attack. I really don’t understand the hand wringing over describing it accurately.

As a Londoner and European, I’d love to exchange our terrorists (that literally blow up kids, shoot them point blank, and decapitate and drive over people) for US “domestic terrorists” that ... take selfies (yeah a few people died unfortunately, not too surprising for a riot with a massive security failure, but far from a literal terrorist attack).

What’s the minimum body count required for it to be a terrorist attack?

Yes, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that their goal was just to take selfies in the Senate chambers. The only reason we didn’t see much more violence is that congresspeople were evacuated in time.

Half the problem is people throwing around words like them and their without qualification. There were thousands of people with different views. Some were neonazis and some were terrorist. We all need to be more careful with our generalizations

I'm willing to bet if it was thousands of Muslims involved in that event, you would not be making this argument.

What do you know about me to make such a specific and personal attack?

About you specifically, nothing. Based on pattern recognition pertaining to news reports and analysis of various events over the last 25 or so years, many analysts who are now excusing and making distinctions between various types of people were the ones who were pointing fingers towards Islamic terrorists as the instigators. This was most evident in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Balanced perspectives and opinions on Islamic terrorism and domestic terrorism are mindful of making distinctions between militants and other groups. Hypocrisy and partisan sentiments are rampant right now. I think it is that important not to fan the flames

> or US “domestic terrorists” that ... take selfies

Tomp ignoring the churches that get shot up and bombed, the synagogues that get shot up, the mosques that get fire bombed.

I don't object to calling those people terrorists. Note that I also included "shoot kids point blank" in my comment, which was a direct reference to Breivik, inb4 "only muslims can be terrorists"

This is a confusing statement. When you say "there are nazis" when there are nazis (among a bigger group) that is just a factual statement. The disrespect is in not taking the threat seriously.

i agree with you.

I don't think that has anything to do with being in Europe or not.

The emotions and opinions exist in all workplaces. Some are just open to it and others not. The important part is being respectful and having empathy.

The second employee was arguing in obvious bad faith, that apparently being accepted (to the point of the first being fired) is what should make people uncomfortable.

Agree completely on the important part being respect and empathy. Agree on the second employee’s tone seeming argumentative. However, from the given information it’s not clear if the original (fired) employee remained respectful.

I do feel that in the US, the workplace has a much stronger weight, and often plays a much bigger role in the employee's life. I can see how that could lead to either very explicit work/life separation, or a blurring of the two.

Last week in Europe, I was reprimanded by an US-based C-level exec for using the word "annoying" while asking a question about email filtering in a corporate Slack channel. Can't imagine being still employed if I used the word Nazi there.

People in US are broadcasting hypocrisy onto the world.

None can feel safe.

> People in US are broadcasting hypocrisy onto the world.

America is large country, half a continent. The existence of people and companies with widely different standards within it should be expected. That does not make it hypocritical.

Also, you treat Nazi as slur, but it is not one. It is political group.

I’m sure words can have separate meanings from their initial one.

When taking a group of hundreds of millions of people with the same trait (such as their nationality), it’s easiest to compartmentalize and expect them all to think the same and behave the same. So when inevitably individuals or subcultures in that group have differences, it’s easiest to call it hypocritical.

I’ve been a European in American companies where saying “I don’t like that VP” in public would raise serious eyebrows, and I’ve been part of other American companies where saying “the VP Product is a fucking idiot” in public would make everyone laugh. It’s not the first time I hear GitHub fancies itself to be a bit edgy in culture, and I’m personally not into it, but it doesn’t make them hypocritical because some other guy you know, and you need to put in the same bucket, is different.

Not only uncomfortable but it’s also somewhat embarrassing. I’ve always thought GitHub would be a pretty good place to work but judging from those chats I think I would definitely avoid.

These kind of discussions happen in many work chats in Europe.

So unprofessional.

> Our head of HR has taken personal accountability and resigned from GitHub yesterday morning, Saturday, January 16th.

You don't normally see consequences for senior officers for this kind of mistake. I would be curious to know who this person was and if they had any odd political affiliations.

> Earlier this week, the company hosted an “empathy circle” to “build understanding with members of the team on things that affect us.” It did not go over well with employees.

Maybe they got fired for this terrible idea

Isn't that standard fare for workplaces everywhere in the world now? Not that I like it much, but it seems to be the normal approach.

I work at a company going hard on diversity and inclusion and they haven't gone even a baby step towards asking us to empathize with the grievances of people who feel fascism is the only thing that can help them.

Empathy isn't the same as tolerance, but I'd expect they'd either know the optics would be terrible or don't see the difference themselves.

When you fire a Jewish employee for (rightfully) calling out that Nazis were present at last weeks insurrection, but not folks who make jokes like “Hitler gave the Jews free healthcare” (per the Verge article another commenter posted), there better be consequences at the VP level

Yeah, Github sure sounds like a lovely company to work for, and tone is set at the top.

So far as I’m concerned, how people and organisations react to their mistakes when they are revealed matters a lot more than the fact that they make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, improving in response to them is what matters.

Which of course implies that nothing will improve until the shitty state of affairs gains publicity. This isn't how it's supposed to work, you are not supposed to fuck up and then repent in public, you are supposed to get it right without putting on a show of public repentance.

Seriously, does anyone need to be told that the confederate flag or the thin-blue-line-flag-with-Punisher-logo are symbols of white supremacism? Who thinks that support of that is acceptable in the workplace?

GitHub HR is no stranger to mistakes.

I know the bar is low for companies, but that there was exec-level consequences impresses me and make me more likely to want to work at Github.

It's weird to me that this was the head of HR's mistake (sort of implied) and not a more junior manager (both in reality, and in who usually gets the blame even if it's a senior manager's fuck-up). There is some unnamed VP of engineering who may have kicked off the process with HR. I don't know.

I'm glad GH (1) took another look at the firing, (2) realized they were mistaken, and (3) mea culpa'd publicly.

But this is how it should work, the person in charge taking responsibility for what happens under them instead of foisting it on an underling, regardless of who made the actual decision. The buck ultimately stops at the top. More leaders should be like this.

A good leader is supposed to take responsibility for the actions taken by his or her team. Failure of a unit implies failure of the leadership. In my view, the right outcome happened here.

> A good leader is supposed to take responsibility for the actions taken by his or her team. Failure of a unit implies failure of the leadership.

I've heard the same "leadership principles seppuku" and sure, this would be consistent with that ethos. (In my experience, that kind of buck-stops-here ownership happens less often than not.) But this isn't the part of your comment I want to argue.

> In my view, the right outcome happened here.

I disagree (if it was a subordinate).

If the responsible party was a more junior member of HR, I'd like to see the blowback land on the actually culpable party. (That could be in addition, or alternative, to the leader's resignation.)

If a junior member of HR was able to fire employee without review by other people and proper plausibly lookimg documentation, then the responsibility is 100% on whoever invented such process. Which is the lead.

Because really, that would put the company not just at risk of what is going on now, but also at risk of very expensive lawsuits.

Would that not just lead to no good leaders over the long term? (with the good ones always resigning due to actions of their team members)

The head of HR was Carrie Olesen, who doesn't seem like she had any odd political affiliations:

https://profilemagazine.com/2020/carrie-olesen-github/

https://github.blog/author/carrieoleson/

However, it's worth noting that the statement says "resigned from GitHub," and she was at Microsoft before the acquisition and moved to GitHub. I wonder if it means she's still with Microsoft. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Her political donations also look completely unremarkable: Obama, Biden, The Lincoln Project, etc.. I'm not sure what the previous commentator is wondering about possible political affiliations, but she certainly doesn't seem to stand out.

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...

Seems to me that the head of HR got thrown under the bus to protect other members of the exec.

Context for people who don’t know what this is referring to: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-github-backlash-je...

Kudos to them for this. Screenshots of the conversations leaked [1], and there is no ambiguity as to who was in the wrong here. Note the timestamp on the thread — the comment happened well after the terrorists had invaded the Capitol.

Hopefully whoever said “nazis gave the jews free healthcare” was fired as well.

[1] https://twitter.com/zoeschiffer/status/1350159432282357760?s...

fwiw, the healthcare joke was tongue-in-cheek for the discussion which, ironically enough, was also about Republicans in 2014. They were discussing how many on the right compared Obamacare to Nazism and how disgusting it was to make that comparison.

Oh wow, that's taken way out of context in at least The Verge article then. Not actually a joke at Jewish expense at all, at least other than not mentioning it at all.

All these leaked screenshots, quotes, etc are almost certainly missing full context.

It's rather discouraging that in `date +%Y` so few are aware or care about selective cropping. It's everywhere.

Well, I assume The Verge has more journalistic integrity than that (it's not done for emphasis, it totally flips the tone of the message from 'pro' to 'anti' (as it were)!) so it's disappointing that someone at GitHub leaking the story seemingly decided to take that message out of a context they could see, knowing that anyone else seeing it would read it as pro-Nazi without it, to make the point 'how dare this person still be employed by GH'. Both leaker and author of that message would seem to be on the same side, saying something in defense of Jewish people, but leaker is all but calling for the other to be fired for it...

Maybe they just searched 'Nazi' and took screenshots without reading context.

fwiw, the healthcare joke was tongue-in-cheek

It was sheer idiocy, and has no place in a sane, decent working environment.

You are really going to take that out-of-context 2014 post bait as truth? Really? You don't think it should be investigated a bit more before firing someone?

There’s no ambiguity if the firing was only about the original comment - that screenshot however is missing possible further comments from the fired employee. If the discussion turned disrespectful (e.g. personal attacks), that could explain why HR did the firing yet had no issue with other instances of the word “nazi”. Still probably not a justified firing, but would make more sense.

In HN, I've been seeing way more comments supporting the "freedom of speech" for those who stormed the Capitol, compared to other sites. (That might tell more about what sites I visit, but whatever.) So far I chalked it up to the strong libertarian bent of an average HN user - some people really believe in absolute freedom of speech. While I don't necessarily agree, I can live with that.

...And then I see multiple comments defending a company's decision to fire someone for one slack comment.

Makes me wonder if people just want their side to win.

It's perfectly reasonable to believe in freedom of speech in the public forum but a set of rules and decorum at the workplace.

The two should be separate. When people really complain is when someone faces consequences for their public speech at their workplace. But we're still humans and we still care about who we associate with.

A Jewish person should face consequences for being rightfully terrified of what's happening and talking about it with their colleagues?

Yeah no.

As per theverge article, they did nothing when anti-semitic memes and jokes were being posted by their employees.

So what can we take away from this? Github's "professional conduct at workplace" and "diversity" is complete farce.

I'm ready to move to bitbucket after this incident. When you promote people who share hatred, this means the company at the top probably also shares the same vision.

This is a PR disaster for github and there is NO WAY I can support github going forward.

Once again, somebody has flagged every single criticisms of Github's original decision. Is this Github doing damage control? I'm going to move our team completely off github now.

https://ibb.co/fdKKXdH

Whenever reddit deletes a bunch of subs, HN contains lively free speech debate about how horrible it is they closed the Trump one.

I have yet to see free speech advocates to complain about the left/feminist/communist/whatever one. (I am usually fine with all of them being closed.)

I personally think there's a big difference between on-the-job speech vs off-the-job. That may account for some of the disparity you're seeing.

In my experience, HN is pretty far on the techno-libertarian side, but with a decent amount of pro-social justice thought. It's actually a pretty interesting mix but not without its drawbacks.

This is not a comment on the 6th specifically, and actually I don't think you can apply it to the 6th, but if you are only in favor of speech you agree with, or even just speech you don't actively find abhorrent, you're not pro-free speech. You're not even indifferent, you're actively anti-free speech. Free speech is for speech you hate wish was never spoken. There's a reason the only speech you can be arrested for in the US is speech that directly harms others physically (or has a high likelihood to).

I haven't seen that much support for '"freedom of speech" for those who stormed the Capitol' - the big conversation here has been around the deplatforming of Parler, which clearly serves a bigger audience than just the rioters/insurrectionists. (Not counting flagged-dead throwaway account comments blaming it all on antifa, of course.)

It doesn’t matter if there’s still some good water in the pool after there’s so much urine in it that it smells like urine and has turned yellow.

People who aren’t of a militaristic, racist, fascist, or seditious bent are still welcome in other fora like Twitter and Facebook.

> People who aren’t of a militaristic, racist, fascist, or seditious bent are still welcome in other fora like Twitter and Facebook.

Problem is that such people are mostly welcome to those sites as long as they belong to the right groups. If you rant about women or left leaning people etc on reddit like women rant about men or left leaning people rant about right leaning people then you'll likely get banned.

So the large group of people who just wants to rant harmlessly but aren't allowed allowed to do it on mainstream sites has nowhere to go now so they seek out sites like Parler where they then get radicalized since the environment is so toxic. It would probably be better if Reddit etc was a bit more tolerant of them, but it is what it is.

Actually, there are still rant on women subs on reddit. And rant on left reddits. And anti masks anti lockdown subs on reddit. They all also exist on Twitter.

The people who want to rant hatmlessly without brigading other subs and without harrasing users of other subs are still there.

I might not agree what you have to say, but I’ll defend your legal right to say it; consistent with Supreme Court rulings and doctrines.

I won’t defend you creating a discriminative or hostile atmosphere at work, partly because I just don’t want to deal with political topics at work.

> In HN, I've been seeing way more comments supporting the "freedom of speech" for those who stormed the Capitol

In HN, I've seen people saying that the concept of free speech is outdated and that societies that support it are doomed to failure.

> While I don't necessarily agree [on the importance of freedom of speech]

This doesn't quite reach as far as the example I gave, but it is representative of what at the very least half of of comments in HN are like, when the subject is free speech. I always find it a little ironic.

> That might tell more about what sites I visit, but whatever

Given the difference of experiences, it might just be biases, including selection bias. And yes, I include myself in that statement, though I try to take note of comments beside mine defending freedom of speech, if nothing else just so I don't lose hope.

This is what should happen when an employee is unfairly targeted and fired. Accountability for the decisionmaker, an apology, and a re-hire.

> "Separating with an employee isn’t easy for anyone. When we do separate we want to protect and (sic) employee’s privacy so we do not provide details regarding separations.”

They weren't fired. They were separated.

There are few key properties in self-reflection - (1) Revaluate the decision independently, (2) Focus on the process and see if you come to the same conclusion, (3) If the conclusion is not the same, make the decision maker accountable. If it is the same, recheck the process to see if something is amiss. and (4) Revisit the original decision.

I don't about the details at Github but it seems they have indeed self-reflected swiftly.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/github-fires-jew... seems to be about this?

I mean no way of knowing, but I believe so too. Screenshots here: https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1350159432282357760

Other sources: https://gizmodo.com/github-fired-a-jewish-employee-for-warni... https://boingboing.net/2021/01/12/github-fired-a-jewish-empl... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9143169/GitHub-fire...

"We did something wrong which we don't want to talk about, and as part of an agreement to save ourselves from a lawsuit we are now apologising publicly for that bad thing we did and we promise not to do that bad thing again"

Where is that quote from?

Also, they are talking about the issue to a more than reasonable extent than what other companies have in the past.

Just because it's in quotation marks doesn't mean it's a direct quote.

The comment is clearly a statement by the commenter of an imagined subtext of the GitHub public statement.

And we won't even give the name of the person who's taking personal responsibility, we'll just quietly scrub her name from the "leadership" page. Some anonymous person is taking personal responsibility and keeping her name out of the news so she can get a CHRO job somewhere else.

https://github.com/about/leadership

http://web.archive.org/web/20210101021219/https://github.com...

It’s not ethical to post the persons name, and potentially even illegal.

Why is it not ethical to post Carrie Olesen's name? The article says she's taking "personal responsibility" for the situation, does it not? How can you take responsibility if nobody knows who you are?

I, for one, applaud Carrie Olesen's personal responsibility in admitting to siding with Nazis and firing a Jew.

Wow, well, that's the biggest move any big org has taken on an employee matter in recent years.

Quite sad actually

Which part? It takes a lot to admit you were wrong, backstep to do the right thing, and then hold the responsible party accountable, so I'm missing the sad part.

The sad part is that companies wrong employees all the time but rarely admit wrongdoing, backstep in any way, or hold anyone accountable.

Ok - I will agree that that is sad - but that's not what happened here.

This is not the biggest HR issue GitHub has faced in recent memory.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tom-preston-werner-resigns-f...

Coinbase CEO must be patting himself on the back right now.

I am afraid to ask this but can someone explain the "nazi joke" to me?

It wasn’t a joke. It was quite literal. Stay safe, fellow employees, there are literal goose stepping Nazis in the streets.

How do you know from this little context? People are so jumpy nowadays, which will lead just to misunderstandings and bad decisions/witch hunts.

I'm sorry - how does the OP know what? That there were nazis at the capitol? Because there literally were? I don't get what you're trying to prove with this comment

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wnja/neo-nazis-boast-about...

Read the comment thread please before you judge, this is the conversation:

"I am afraid to ask this but can someone explain the "nazi joke" to me?"

"It wasn’t a joke. It was quite literal. Stay safe, fellow employees, there are literal goose stepping Nazis in the streets."

And the I said: "How do you know from this little context?"

Turns out I was right, it was a joke about Obamacare, not some nazi at Github: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25813443 Also I was right about judging, 2 negative comments that assumed I'd support nazis.

> How do you know from this little context? People are so jumpy nowadays, which will lead just to misunderstandings and bad decisions/witch hunts.

If we're on the topic of 'free healthcare' then with what we know about how the Nazis treated all their prisoners, with what they documented about systemically murdering disabled people, what possible context could this ever be acceptable in?

Edit: as I've said in another comment, there wasn't "free healthcare" (which is phrased to make it sound like some sort of socialist utopia), there was mandated health insurance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People's_We...

it was a joke about Obamacare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25813443

I think the GP was referring to the free healthcare.

> Stay safe

And dilate

> "Nazis gave the Jews free healthcare"

It's not a joke. I can only assume this is a reference to the abhorrent "medical" experiments the Nazis were doing on prisoners, Dr Death being one of the more famous proponents.

The wikipedia article barely scratches the surface of the depravity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

The third reich had free health care. Maybe he’s referring to that? The post is from 2016 and out of context so it might be from some discussion over health care costs.

Reading all this drama I’m glad that I don’t have to work for a living anymore. Looks like you wouldn’t get any work done over the constant drama. Very depressing.

According to wikipedia it wasn't free healthcare, it was health insurance, which people were mandated to have as of 1941.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People's_We...

Contemporary states (like current Germany) that provide healthcare typically do it through mandatory health insurance and we call it free healthcare. So I think it is ok to call it that in nazi case too to large extend.

I am 100% sure it was not joke about that, it was joke about holocaust.

The germans of jewish descent were not considered citizes in Germany, so anyway I doubt the above benefits fully applied to them anyway.

(CONTEXT: I assume parent is referring to this comment from one of the github threads: "nazis gave the jews free healthcare". That comment was not made by the employee who was fired.)

(edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25813184 which adds some additional context. I assumed when writing this comment that the nazi healthcare joke was part of the 1/6/2020 thread & a direct response to warning about violence in DC. Apparently that post was NOT made a direct response to the thread on 1/6, but was instead made in a context where it's meant to be taken as a tounge-in-cheek criticism of nazi<->X equivocation rather than as a basal joke... Unfortunately, I wrote this comment assuming that the joke was basal and now I can't delete this comment but there's substantial down-thread discussion already. Therefore, I am leaving my original comment, which I wrote before seeing that clarifying post, so that the down-thread discussion doesn't cause even more confusion.)

Original comment:

I've interacted with people who think jokes like this are funny, even when there's no extra layer of hidden meaning or anything like that. Where the joke is literally "haha nazis gave jews healthcare haha get it because they actually killed all the jews haha". That's it. No hidden meaning, no second layer, just... a really stupid "joke"? in terrible taste.

Probably it's safe assumption that most of the people who think these sorts of jokes are funny are in fact actually genocidal or at least anti-Semitic?

I have met one person who would laugh at these sorts of "jokes" and who I sorta don't think was actually anti-Semitic. Or at least that's not all that was going on. Both because he was a practicing jew and also because he laughed at a lot of other really stupid and tasteless but not overtly bigoted "jokes". Stuff like taking pictures of his poop.

I really can't explain why he thought these sorts of jokes were funny. I'm not a psychologist so I genuinely don't know the word for what's wrong with him.

There are A LOT of people with undiagnosed psychological disorders for whom complaints about "PC police" are an entry-point to radicalization. The "spark" is being fired or socially marginalized for lacking any amount of social awareness. Through that entry point, they find people on the internet who tell them that there is nothing wrong with them and that it's all the fault of the "PC police" and "cancel culture". And then the radicalization starts.

IDK what the solution is. To be clear, people really should not be expected to work alongside others who make jokes about genocide or harass co-workers with scat pics. But also, to be just as clear, there's a very dark strand of US politics that is growing stronger, can't just be ignored anymore. That movement is making an intentional effort to radicalize people who are fired from their jobs, or fear being fired from their jobs, for their lack of social etiquette.

Nitpick: There are plenty of people like that who don't have any psychological disorder. Even after being evaluated by this or that crime. It is comforting to think there must be something psychologically wrong with them, but i don't think it is true.

And pretty often they are not socially marginalized either. They have friends and families and are interested into society. And they happily do those jokes with their friends and families.

Have you heard of "dead baby jokes"?

What's the difference between 100 dead babies and a Ferrari?

I don't keep a Ferrari in my garage.

Here's a sampling. https://thoughtcatalog.com/clint-conway/2016/08/50-of-the-fu...

Anyway, the thing that makes it funny is how absurd it is that the joke-teller would be an enthusiastic baby-murderer, -torturer, and/or -cannibal, depending on the joke (plus general surprise and shock).

For people who have grown up thinking that Nazis are obviously evil monsters and no civilized person could possibly be one of them, making jokes about gassing the Jews and that kind of thing can have a similar kind of appeal.

> Have you heard of "dead baby jokes"?

Not since maybe middle school?

I'm not sure what to say. If an adult made a joke like this -- especially in a workplace -- I would assume they have some sort of developmental disorder. I understand that assumption might be wrong and that in any case I'm not qualified to make a determination, but... I've literally never met a normal and functioning adult who laughs at jokes like these.

No? I could find hundreds of clips from stand up comedians making similar jokes to audiences dying of laughter.

It's a whole genre of humor.

And unfortunately in the United States being a self proclaimed Nazi or even sharing their beliefs is not in itself illegal.

Zach Holman (who worked at Github in 2014) posted in this thread that it was a tongue-in-cheek comment about Obamacare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25813184

I'm not sure from the screenshot that it was supposed to be a joke. The full comment was three one line paragraphs: "basically the same as nazis", "nazis gave the jews free healthcare", and "so", and it was in 2014.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare") had started in 2010, and every election after that it became an issue. Some wanted to replace it with single payer systems, or expanded government run systems (e.g. Medicare for all). Others wanted to get rid of it completely, and not replace it with anything.

Those who want a more expansive or comprehensive system than ACA often cite the systems of other countries as potential models for the US. Those opposed to that point out what they perceive as flaws in those systems.

Wikipedia tells me that the Nazis did actually have a healthcare system [1].

I could see someone saying some particular system is a good approach for the US to take, and someone who disagrees seeing that it has some similarities to the aforementioned Nazi system, and so dismissing it as "basically the same as nazis".

The rest of the comment would then be meant in a "look how bad that turned out" sense with the (ridiculous) implication that if the US gets free healthcare we too will end up committing large scale atrocities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People%27s_...

Glad to see they got this right in the end, but a shame it happened in the first place.

Is there any info on what actually happened?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22232766/github-employees...

That’s great news! Sometimes justice is, in fact, done. I look forward to more good news in 2021.

Is there any context available on what the employee was accused of doing?

The employee made comments on internal slack channels warning their coworkers in DC to be careful because there were a large number of nazis at the Capitol.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ery62NKUcAY6DlR?format=jpg&name=...

It's a good thing Nat took the time to tell us that GitHub condemns the attack on the US Capitol. We might not know otherwise.

I mean seriously, why do corporations feel the need to say this nonsense? Are we really at the point where a corporation needs to waste time to tell us "hey y'all, in case you weren't sure, we don't actually support an armed insurrection attempting to stop the democratic transfer of power, and lynch a sitting Vice President."

I agree! That's probably why their employees are also wasting their time discussing politics in the work public channel. And I don't mean it should be forbidden to talk about politics in the work public channel. It happens, but I have seen that Github has a lot of it.

Are you so sure that e.g. Chick-fil-A doesn't support it. There are corporation with a right wing agenda...

...but, maybe some corporations do/did support them...

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/534564-mypillow-ceo-photog...

Feedly tagged this with keywords "GitHub Jewish Nazis" without commas.

Can anyone provide some context for this?

Giving the reporter the benefit of the doubt, the person might actually have been completely oblivious to current events, and taken offense to what seemed like someone calling all republicans nazis. It really speaks to the absurdity of the resent events that this is where we are, that absolutely correct warnings that litteral nazi's are assaulting the Capital are discarded because reality cannot be distinguished from hyperbole.

That said, I for the life of me cannot understand how any HR employee would look at that conversation and decide to reprimand, let alone fire someone for issuing a warning that could quickly be backed up by checking the news. I would not be surprised if both the reporter and now fired head of HR where republicans and Trump supporters, who have a cognitive dissonance around what transpired on the 6th.

Don't discuss politics at work. It's unprofessional.

It perhaps helps to elaborate on why this is considered unprofessional. I'd think that for many their political viewpoints are more important than their current job. However their peers with whom they intend to discuss those, might not be in a position which allows them that choice.

Free discussions are necessary, but do it tactfully (and certainly not in writing as that just invites disaster as statements are taken out of context).

The people who say don't discuss politics at work are nearly always the ones who would be perfectly safe in a nazi takeover of America.

What was the improper reason for termination? I'm guessing that the employee had some distant political alignment with the insurrectionists, but not close enough to warrant disciplinary action?

Sounds like the opposite.

The alleged reason was "using the word Nazi on Slack", in the context of "“stay safe homies, Nazis are about.”" in relation to the events of the 6th and afterwards.

People have gotten fired for saying "We need to filter bad words like n***". When you have zero tolerance policy context doesn't matter.

Terrible guess.

I've just seen the screenshots from https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22232766/github-employees...

You just shouldn't be speaking like that in a company Slack channel. Politics should really not be discussed at work, and especially not in a public Slack channel. It's not the right place for it. It makes me not want to work there if they are discussing politics all day in a public Slack channel

I don’t think pointing out nazis at the capitol is politics.

Healthcare policy is politics, the election is politics. Pointing out nazis at an armed insurrection? No.

This isn't politics really as I see it, it's a heads up to fellow coworkers about a factually dangerous situation in their area. There were factually neo-nazis running about DC causing havoc.

I didn't realise they were all in DC, I thought GitHub was in the valley?

They are presumably fully remote right now and most large organization have multiple offices. This slack statement was from what I can tell aimed at those in DC.

They’re remote, this was said in their DC slack channel.

Based on the screenshot [0], the message in question was sent in the #dmv channel, which stands for the DC metropolitan area (DC, Maryland, Virginia, hence DMV).

[0] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/inUt0KKQbXWT45OMaXBLZuaAqM4=...

I agree completely... Then to try to hold a "empathy circle" to resolve the concerns raised by it...

Glad I don't work there!

So a Jewish employee points out (factually!) that there are nazis at an armed attack on the capitol, and to be careful, and then gets fired for saying that. You call this "appalling from both sides?" I just have to laugh.

a public company Slack channel is not the right place for it

I didn't realize that a workplace chat was the wrong place to update one's colleagues in DC about very real threats to their safety.

A public company just fired their head of HR, so I think they disagree with you here.

And that's their prerogative

I don’t mean to ask this in an accusatory gotcha way I’m just wondering what your stance is on someone warning their coworkers in Portland, or somewhere else that there are “looting communists around so be careful.” Or something similar referring to a blm protest. Do you feel this is also appropriate in a workplace channel?

"whataboutism" is exactly an accusatory gotcha.

I guess agree to disagree? I personally don’t believe that these sorts of conversations are work appropriate and I’m wondering whether or not they become inappropriate when the poster disagrees with what’s being posted. The only way I could see this being taken as an accusatory gotcha is if your world view being questioned in any sense is a personal attack. Which is pretty par for the course for older millennials tbh.

Rules are different now. If you’re making a negative statement regarding anyone on the tight, it seems to get more support than derision.

Please explain how this was a "negative statement" when folks wearing "Camp Auschwitz - Staff" hoodies were rioting in DC.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-camp-auschwitz-shir...

I'd prefer it if folks on the right were more offended by the presence of nazis in their ranks, than by folks pointing out the existence of those nazis.

Can you explain? On January 6 there was a man wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" hoodie with the word "staff" printed on the back, on national television. Do you believe this man is not a Nazi? And do you believe that Jewish people do not have a right to warn their coworkers to stay safe in light of people like this committing violent acts?

I'm genuinely curious to understand what part you believe is political here, because it seems like the employee's message was entirely based in easily verifiable fact and genuine concern.

I just don't think a company Slack channel is the right place for this, when tensions are high people can get upset and offended and it just creates a bad work environment. There are time and place for things like this, not over a Slack channel.

I don't know about any about that, I haven't been keeping up on the news

This was in their DC slack channel. Do you honestly believe that employees should avoid talking about ongoing riots in their city in their city's slack channel? I genuinely cannot believe that you'd think that an event where five people died was not appropriate for discussion in a city chat, especially to warn people to stay safe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-camp-auschwitz-shir...

> when tensions are high people can get upset and offended

People were waving swastikas, wearing camp Auschwitz hoodies, storming the capital building and beating a police officer to death with an American flag. The problem here is not calling a spade a spade. If you're offended by being termed a Nazi that possibly don't be advertising yourself as one.

god forbid someone create a bad work environment during a nazi coup lmao

… where "create a bad work environment" involves warning people there's a Nazi coup attempt in progress.

There's detail missing, so it's hard to be sure, but this just seems like HR incompetence more than anything else, and it's right that the head of HR left.

Companies shouldn't have political discussions in work forums, so the comment about Nazis was inappropriate. But was it a firing offense? They do talk about a "pattern of behaviour", but this comment can't trigger a firing. If they had just reinforced that work forums aren't the places for political discussion, that might have been the end of it.

Now they have to put out a virtue-signalling report about racism and actually encouraging people to discuss politics in internal forums.

The comment warning coworkers about dangerous people out in the streets was inappropriate?

There are all sorts of dangerous people out there. Of the 16,000 people murdered in the US every year, how many are by Nazis? No, it's a political statement, which is fine, politics is good. The workplace is just not the place for it.

The point is that at the time, in the immediate vicinity, there were significantly more Nazis “out there” than usual.

We don't know that, no one has counted. There were tens of thousands of people there, how many were Nazis? We don't know how many of them are there in the US, for that matter.

What we do know is that they have no real cultural influence or power. That's why calling them out as particularly dangerous is an act of politics. It attempts to smear political opponents by grouping them with evil figures like Nazis, white supremacists and racists.

You don’t think that in the midst of a terrorist attack in which multiple perpetrators bear Nazi symbols, people in the area should be at least slightly more worried about Nazis than usual?

There were people with using nazi symbols in the protest. People wearing nazi symbols are historically violent to certain groups of people. That's enough reason to alert people in the vicinity about it.

At my work's Slack I get snow alerts, heat wave alerts, lockdown alerts. All those can be politicised depending on the audience, but are still highly appropriate to be had on a company's Slack channel.

Unrelated meta-question:

In the screenshots in the article posted by bmiller2 https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22232766/github-employees...

You can see something I honestly dislike very much in discussions - a "bombing" of emoji reactions during discussions.

For instance, the "I think this comment is completely appropriate" has 35 "+"-sign emojis. I find this concept of "reaction bulldozing" to cause any discussion to be shut down prematurely. Adding a reaction like that is so simple to do and doesn't require any effort, it's very easy to do, but actually adding your own opinion or nuanced explanation is very much harder, especially when the other side then already has so many "reaction emojis". I feel like the "signal-to-effort" ratio is completely skewed by this. You'd have to be a very assertive person to pierce through it and offer your, possibly only slightly, different opinion after seeing this.

I'm not sure what exactly it is that I dislike about it - does it stifle discussion? Does it diminish diversity of opinions? I think it does, if you're not early enough to give a dissenting opinion then it's you against the group, and I'm guessing a lot of people at that point would rather not react at all anymore.

Am I alone in thinking this? Is there a solution for this? I often encounter this phenomenon in discussions with engineers, not just with contentious topics like nazi's, but also e.g. styleguide or architectural discussions. I hope there's a word for it so I can learn how to deal with it, because currently I really can't pinpoint it.

It's the equivalent to audience reaction in a debate. If you don't want it, take your conversation private.

So on the one hand you recognise that the reaction emojis require little effort, but on the other hand you feel that the reaction emojis provide emotional friction to you adding your own nuanced explanation?

It's a common situation and the discomfort you feel is probably similar to what a woman feels when she wants to report unwelcome sexual advances or outright sexual harassment in a mostly-male workplace.

Though I suspect the discomfort a woman feels in that instance is significantly more crippling to her than the feeling you're getting about the nuanced argument you wanted to provide about whether closing braces for the "then" clause should go in a separate line to the "else" statement.

The solution is to carefully choose which battles you participate in, and which hill you want to die on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com