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Comment by electronvolt | Hacker News Reader

Question: if it came out that Eich had donated to, say, the KKK, would you feel the same way?

I have mixed feelings over the way he was treated, but your argument actually seems the opposite of nuanced: the blanket claim that someone should never be fired for their political views (particularly, from a public position where their politics could have an effect on the company they represent both on internal culture and on externalities like boycotts), no matter how repugnant their politics are, seems pretty reductive.

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The problem was that people were using Mozilla as a punching bag for their disillusionment with Eich.

My favourite example was OkCupid, who detected you were using firefox and redirected you to a page telling you to use a different browser. Despite several gay developers saying that their experience at Mozilla wasn't oppressed by Eich.

But the kicker was that after OkCupid got what they wanted (and got a ton of good press), they didn't revert the damage they did to the Mozilla brand. They won, but I visited their site with firefox and chrome, and there was no redirect to a page saying "hey, mozilla is cool, you should use them [again|still]".

They weren't actually interested in reform, just in shouting and winning, and damn who they damage in the process.

I remember months after Eich resigned I was looking at new phones and I asked the salesperson if FirefoxOS was compatible with their network. She said she didn't support Mozilla because of how they had acted towards the LGBT community and that Android was the open and respectful platform I was looking for. It was very forceful, and it was clear that any further discussion of FirefoxOS meant I was a bad person.

It was so bizarre I didn't even engage on the topic, she didn't even realize they had won. She was on the clock at work representing her company, she even was training another employee. It was so unexpected that I didn't realize what had happened until it was over.

Where do you live that this is a conversation an employee would risk?

>Question: if it came out that Eich had donated to, say, the KKK, would you feel the same way?

Yep. Although that would be a much higher "this won't affect his job performance" bar than Eich's anti-gay marriage stance, which passed that bar because his was a purely religious stance and pretty clearly didn't imply personal or professional animosity toward homosexuals (amidst all the flak I never read a single anecdote about him mistreating a gay person, and you'd be damn sure that would have surfaced).

The KKK is a hate group, and so he'd have to demonstrate somehow that he was no longer personally or professionally hateful. That would only be possible if someone was truly reformed, a la Edward Norton in American History X.

...seems the opposite of nuanced...

The nuance is that humans are not built to defend the rights of their enemies, but that is precisely what consistency demands, what I did, and am doing now.

I believe strongly in defending rights regardless of content. I am a strong backer of the ACLU, for example, especially when they defend the rights of a group like the KKK. I think that doing so makes a much stronger statement in support of those rights than defending someone you agree with.

This is the nuance you talk up? Silly. You're flattering yourself. I believe the above and yet don't think Eich was wronged. Maybe that's too nuanced a position for you.

That's a hard question. Not so much because of anything related to politics, but because I get stuck thinking about actual murders committed by the KKK.

If instead you asked about something like a US neo-nazi group I would be much more tolerant of people giving money to a terrible group like that in a way completely unrelated to their job.

The reason the situation is tricky, I think, is because jobs with a spokesperson aspect blend work and personal life. Even though I can't think of any reason they should. I can't think of any major downsides from letting people have work and personal life be separate.

    > because jobs with a spokesperson aspect blend work and personal life.

I wonder how many of the people shouting "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" vis-a-vis the separation of work and personal life would have held the same viewpoint in defense of the impeachment of Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinski.

That's actually an interesting point.

The thing that didn't bother me about the Clinton/Lewinski thing is that, in my opinion, having an extramarital affair doesn't necessarily affect your job. But then again, if being viewed as an adulterer means that you can't get your job done properly as President, then that is a problem.

In the case of Eich, I was a bit more torn: being the CEO of an organization that prides itself on its openness and general "social good" means that your social views should match that of the organization. Or at least there shouldn't be any glaring mismatches.

> I can't think of any major downsides from letting people have work and personal life be separate.

It removes the ability to enforce arbitrary social conformity.

I can't tell if you think that's good or bad, but I disagree. The workplace environment still enforces certain kinds of behavior at work, and the public environment still enforces behavior in that environment. Each kind of social pressure is only weakened slightly by being unable to cross over.

Given how readily abused it is, it seems unwise. It's one of those things that works great... so long as it's only used by good people to do good things.

You know, for whatever local definitions of "good person" and "good thing" crop up today.

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