And who gets to say what protections people should and should not receive? If a company genuinely believes that pro-LGBT views are harmful, then in your framework they're equally justified to fire employees that donated in opposition to Proposition 8.
I think a lot of people forget that there's a world beyond liberal urban areas. Allowing it to become socially acceptable for companies to fire employees for their political views is also handing a tool for conservatives to suppress their employees' liberal politics.
And again, it's sending the message that the majority of Californians are not welcome at the company. It makes Mozilla hypocrites whenever they purport to support diversity or inclusion, and gives credence to the idea that Silicon Valley companies are deliberately hostile towards non-liberals.
You can't just throw your hands up in the air and say that because there is no absolute scale with which to measure human rights, everything goes. And I think its also not good policy to say that because an organization might* fire a pro-LGTB employee for their views, that everyone should be let to act however they want without consequences. In your view, what publicly expressed opinions would disqualify someone to be a CEO? Anything?
Views on gay marriage shifted rapidly between 2008 and 2014. I think its wrong to assume that just because 52% of people voted to support Prop 8 in 2008 that 6 years later opinions hadn't changed. And lets not forget that Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional in 2010 - 4 years before he was made CEO and continued to publicly support Prop 8.
* - By "might", I mean "has happened a lot for a long time". LGTB people have faced discrimination for a long time for wanting to live their life in a way that harms literally no one. Anti-LGBT people facing consequences for their actions to discriminate against others in a way that benefits literally no one is a relatively recent occurrence.
I don't believe being against LGBT marriages necessarily implies that you are against all forms of LGBT relationships / lifestyles.
Marriage has become regulated by the state due to its implications on all citizens. Just because someone doesn't agree with how the state legislates sexual relationships doesn't mean they should be antogonized. Their views can be beneficial to the argument regardless of which side they take.
Simply shutting down conflicting political ideologies doesn't really lead to any rational discussion on the matter. To give an example, consider the current legal strife with gun control. Some people want the state to increase gun regulation and others don't. If each party simply supports their case by saying the other party is discriminating against their way of life, the discussion wouldn't lead to anything sensibly intelligent.
People should have the ability to defend any argument they wish, so long as they remain civil about it. This is especially the case in matters which actually concern the people themselves. Their propositions may be wrong and detrimental to society but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to express their thoughts.
Everyone has the right to free speech - but no one has the right to avoid consequences for that speech. In 2008, he spoke, via a $1,000 public donation, of his opinion to support Prop 8. It wasn't just some random thought - he had a very specific outcome in mind that he wanted to see enacted that would impact _other_ people's lives. He got the consequence he wanted - Prop 8 passed and same-sex marriage was outlawed. In 2014, Mozilla employed exercised that very same right to speak against his fitness to be CEO. The consequence of that was that he was forced to resign. He doesn't get to pick and choose which consequences he'll allow. Once he speaks, other people get to respond, and thats what they did.
> Everyone has the right to free speech - but no one has the right to avoid consequences for that speech
This is actually not true. For example, it would have been illegal for Mozilla to fire Eich for his donation. This is because political activity is considered protected in California (like gender, race, etc.), so firing someone for making a political statement or for donating to a political cause is illegal.
We will probably learn more about this defense as the Google/Damore case proceeds.
Hi, you are mistaken on many facts here. I'll start with this claim. No employees at the Mozilla Corporation demanded that I resign. Six Mozilla Foundation (the non-profit .org with arms-length management and separate board) tweeted that I should step down (see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil... which fails to note their employer was not the company to which I had been appointed CEO, although I was founder of both orgs). They never worked for me.
At the Mozilla Corporation? That was what @dagenix specified in the grandparent comment by "... his employees ...." Unless they deleted their tweets, let's see those twitter links.
A green handle of "communist_" does not inspire automatic belief that you truly had friends at Mozilla Corporation or know of any such tweets.
Again, if you mean the six Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted against me as (poorly) reported by Ars Technica (see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil...), they were not "his employees". They worked for an entirely separate organization from the one I was running.
Back-story: Mozilla Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit set up in 2003 (I was founding board member, and a co-founder of mozilla.org in 1998 at the start). Mozilla Corporation is the for-profit, wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation which exists at arms length to make taxable revenue from Firefox. The two orgs are loosely connected; the Mozilla Foundation is much smaller and all about getting and giving grants.
> Everyone has the right to free speech - but no one has the right to avoid consequences for that speech.
Incorrect. At least, it's incorrect as far as consequences levied by their employers. In the United States, government employees are protected by the First Amendment. E.G. a government department that fired employees for pro or anti gay marriage donations would mean that the government is privileging one political opinion over the other:
> the rationale now is that while government may deny employment, or any benefit for that matter, for any number of reasons, it may not deny employment or other benefits on a basis that infringes that person’s constitutionally protected interests. “For if the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally protected speech or associations, his exercise of those freedoms would in effect be penalized and inhibited. This would allow the government to ‘produce a result which [it] could not command directly.’ . . . Such interference with constitutional rights is impermissible."
> In his case, his employees exercised their right to speak, said they thought he wasn't fit to be CEO, demanded his resignation, and he resigned.
This is not entirely correct, and is omitting a substantial part of the story. The company board (who are effectively Eich's bosses) told him to step down as CEO. The CEO doesn't have have a manager and so can't really be fired like a normal employee, but the board telling him to resign is functionally the same thing.
I wasn't saying that there aren't certain protections for speech - there are, and there should be. Its not like once you speak everyone in the room has the right to punch you in the face. What I'm saying, is that once you speak, there are some consequences you must face - one being that other people get to respond with their own speech. In his case, his employees exercised their right to speak, said they thought he wasn't fit to be CEO, demanded his resignation, and he resigned.
> You can't just throw your hands up in the air and say that because there is no absolute scale with which to measure human rights, everything goes. And I think its also not good policy to say that because an organization might* fire a pro-LGTB employee for their views, that everyone should be let to act however they want without consequences. In your view, what publicly expressed opinions would disqualify someone to be a CEO? Anything?
No political views should be inherently fireable offenses, only things like harassment that have nonpartisan criteria. E.g. Supporting proposition 8 is not a fireable offense, actually calling gay employees slurs is. Conversely, opposing stricter border controls is not a fireable offense on its own, saying that anyone who supports Trump's border policies is a Nazi that deserves to be punched is a fireable offense because it's a threat of violence. Firing must be made on non-partisan criteria.
> Views on gay marriage shifted rapidly between 2008 and 2014. I think its wrong to assume that just because 52% of people voted to support Prop 8 in 2008 that 6 years later opinions hadn't changed. And lets not forget that Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional in 2010 - 4 years before he was made CEO and continued to publicly support Prop 8.
Should anyone that supported the McCain–Feingold Act (the act overturned by the Citizens United case), or Chicago's handgun ban be fired as well? Both of those were found to be infringements on people's constitutional liberties. Again, this is what I'm referring to when I say that people many of the justifications for Eich's termination aren't really well thought out, and end up justifying the termination of lots of other people as well. The blanket statement that a certain political view should be a fireable offense because it was later determined to be unconstitutional is going to end up justifying the firing of lots of other people.
If all political views are valid, what about someone that has documented pro-segregation views? Is that person qualified to make decisions that impact the lives of a diverse workforce? If not, where do you draw the line? I'm not trying to make a strawman argument - I'm seriously asking why would this be any different?
The problem isn't that he had some thought in his head - its that he took that thought in his head and turned it into action. And those publicly documented actions made it impossible for his employees to trust him to make decisions in their best interest. Having the trust of his employees is 100% part of his job - the fact that he lacked that made him unfit to be CEO.
Supporting something that turns out to be unconstitutional clearly shouldn't be a fireable offense. But, both of the examples you cite are cases where a person can cite reasonable reason for their support that aren't merely about controlling the lives of others for no purpose. I probably made a mistake in mentioning it was overturned at all - I'm just saying, he continued to argue for something that wasn't even relevant anymore - in 2014 when this controversy erupted, same sex marriages were actively occurring in California. It seems likely that some of his employees may have benefited from this. And, yet, in 2014 he continued to support the prohibition of same-sex marriage - actively advocating against the life choices that his employees were making at that very time.
Should people that donate to women-only colleges be fired? After all, that's supporting a type of segregation, and you didn't specify which type of segregation you're referring to. But to answer your point seriously (presuming that you're referring to Jim Crow era segregation), the people that genuinely support those kinds of heinous policies will almost certainly end up committing actual harassment and be fired with cause. I haven't met a single pro-segregationist that hadn't used slurs against Africans within seconds of making their views known. Granted, my sample size isn't particular big.
Banning certain political views almost always going to harm overall inclusion. According to some of the first results on Google 33% of Americans oppose gay marriage [1]. For comparison, the total African American population in the us is under 14% - less than half. Firing an employee for anti-gay marriage politics and then turning around and claiming it is attempting to be an inclusive company is hypocrisy.
Refraining from firing people regardless of their political views would not cause the world to fall apart. Government employers are legally obligated to tolerate employees political views by the 1st Amendment, and can only fire them for other just causes. Over 20 million people are employed by the Federal, State, and local governments in the US so respecting employers' politics clearly feasible.
> But, both of the examples you cite are cases where a person can cite reasonable reason for their support that aren't merely about controlling the lives of others for no purpose.
The people that supported Proposition 8 can also cite what they believe are reasonable justifications for their support of Proposition 8. Sure, you may not agree that their justifications are reasonable. But that works both ways. Plenty of gun-rights supporters would claim that gun control is "merely about controlling the lives of others for no purpose". So in your moral framework, a gun-rights supporting company would be equally justified in firing pro-gun control employees as Mozilla was in firing Eich, just as long as they consider gun control to be "merely about controlling the lives of others for no purpose".
I really hope you realize that you're supporting the ability of a privileged elite (stockholders, CEOs, managers, etc.) to police their employees' political activity and coerce them into political submission through the threat of termination. Sure, bosses where I live (a liberal costal city) are usually liberal. But in much of the country, they're not.
I was clearly referring to Jim Crow era segregation. And, if your point is that all supporters of Jim Crow era segregation, which is super racist, will inevitably do more things that are super racist, why must we wait for them to do additional super racist things before judging them to be unfit to be a CEO of a large company? Similarly, once someone has demonstrated that they hold opinions contrary to the best interests of their employees, why must those employees wait until after they become CEO for them to demonstrate that fact yet again? If they have demonstrated that they are unfit, they are unfit, and they shouldn't have the position.
> Banning certain political views almost always going to harm overall inclusion.
Nothing was banned here. His position was that same-sex marriage should be illegal. Their position was that someone who supports same-sex marriage isn't fit to be a CEO of a large company, making decisions about a diverse workforce, based in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.
I'm also unclear about your definition of inclusion - is it just finding the largest number of people that happen to agree with each other?
> Refraining from firing people regardless of their political views would not cause the world to fall apart.
Its not about the world falling apart. Its about the right of employees to express their opinion of someones fitness to be their CEO. Which is totally the right of the employees of Mozilla to do.
> I really hope you realize that you're supporting the ability of a privileged elite (stockholders, CEOs, managers, etc.) to police their employees' political activity and coerce them into political submission through the threat of termination.
You are literally arguing that employees (ie: not the privileged elite) shouldn't speak out against the opinions of their CEO (ie: the privileged elite).
> And, if your point is that all supporters of Jim Crow era segregation, which is super racist, will inevitably do more things that are super racist, why must we wait for them to do additional super racist things before judging them to be unfit to be a CEO of a large company? Similarly, once someone has demonstrated that they hold opinions contrary to the best interests of their employees, why must those employees wait until after they become CEO for them to demonstrate that fact yet again? If they have demonstrated that they are unfit, they are unfit, and they shouldn't have the position.
Because there is no non-partisan determination of what is a 'super racist' or otherwise intolerable view, while there is a non-partisan (or at least fairly non-partisan) determination of what is harassment. Plenty of people I know think that any and all race-based affirmative action policies are 'super racist'. Would they justified in telling their direct reports that support affirmative hiring policies, or who donated against Proposition 209 (the proposition that banned race based affirmative action in California public universities) to quit? Sure, it may mean that occasionally someone with extreme political views get hired. But if they genuinely hold views that are truly extreme, they will inevitably end up committing harassment. Again, how for do you think that somebody who genuinely believes in Nazism or enslaving Africans is going to get without making an HR violation? They'd probably make an HR violation during the interview and not even get the job. And if they don't, then that's an indicator that the notion that their views were intolerably extreme wasn't correct.
> Nothing was banned here. His position was that same-sex marriage should be illegal. Their position was that someone who supports same-sex marriage isn't fit to be a CEO of a large company, making decisions about a diverse workforce, based in a state where same-sex marriage is legal.
You're missing the part where Eich's bosses tell him to quit. If managers are going around telling employees to quit when they support X, then the company is effectively banning or at least drastically reducing employee's ability to support X.
> I'm also unclear about your definition of inclusion - is it just finding the largest number of people that happen to agree with each other?
No - the whole point I've been arguing since the beginning is that attempting to cultivate political homogeneity is inevitably going to end up hurting inclusion.
> Its about the right of employees to express their opinion of someones fitness to be their CEO. Which is totally the right of the employees of Mozilla to do.
> You are literally arguing that employees (ie: not the privileged elite) shouldn't speak out against the opinions of their CEO (ie: the privileged elite).
Nowhere do I argue that employees shouldn't speak out against their CEO. Judging by statements made in your other comments, this seems to stem from the erroneous belief that Eich was entirely motivated to resign by Mozilla employees' displeasure to learn his political views. This is not the case. Eich's bosses (the Board) told him to resign. To make Eich's situation analogous to a normal employee, it'd be as if your manager scheduled a meeting with an employee and told them, "We noticed that you donated to ______. We do not tolerate this political view. You need to quit".
So, what, do we hire first grade teachers to be brain surgeons and wait to fire them until they kill a patient? Its preposterous to say that we can't look at past behavior and use it to judge someone's fitness for a job. He advocated against same-sex marriage in 2008. In 2014, same-sex marriage was legal in California. In 2014, he re-affirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage. Why on earth would his employees believe that he would be a good leader for them?
> You're missing the part where Eich's bosses tell him to quit.
If his bosses told him to quit, its because it was clear his employees didn't trust him. And they had every right not to trust him. And absolutely no reason to trust him. He hadn't screwed them in the 11 days he had been CEO, but had in the past and, by reaffirming his beliefs, made it very reasonable for the employees to believe he would in the future. What is the board supposed to do? Fire everyone but him?
> No - the whole point I've been arguing since the beginning is that attempting to cultivate political homogeneity is inevitably going to end up hurting inclusion.
Inclusion isn't about finding the worst examples of humanity and including them - its about including actually diverse people (which his employees actually were), trying to live their own lives, on their own terms, and not dictating to others how to live theirs. Its not about taking a single person, the CEO, and letting them say and do whatever they want. It is totally irrelevant what portion of the US still disagrees with same-sex marriage, unless you are going to argue thats OK. Its not. Its disgusting. Either tell me you believe thats OK or stop arguing that because X% of people believe in discrimination that somehow makes it legitimate. I don't care if you live in LA or in a single stoplight town in the middle of nowhere - discrimination is bullshit and cloaking it in the idea of everyone being allowed to have their own opinions only enables discrimination.
> Nowhere do I argue that employees shouldn't speak out against their CEO
So, what, the employees get to speak out as long as nothing comes of it? If something comes of it, thats the problem? What is the actual point of speaking out then?
Its been 4 years since he was sacked. Since then, there has not been a wave of pro-LGTB firings across the US. At least not, any more than were being fired before. Since then, there has been a greater recognition of LGTB rights, same-sex marriage is legal across the US, and opinions such as his have been further pushed into the trash can of history where they can live with other bullshit opinions. If employee outrage against a CEO that is clearly mis-aligned with their values, basic human values, is going to cause so many unintended consequences - where are they?
There are no moral absolutes. Life isn't math. But, his opinions, his positions, are abhorrent to any decent human being. You can try to cloak your argument in to a hand-wavy invocation of the idea that morality is changing and the norms of society aren't fixed - but try to defend what he actually advocated for. Is that ok? Tell me its ok to discriminate against your LGTB employees. Put that on record. Tell me that actively working against LGTB rights is ok and is something we should tolerate. Tell me that people that support LGBT rights in a state where same-sex marriage is legal should suck it up and support someone that doesn't believe in their rights. I don't want to hear about some hand-waving side effects - tell me about the actual issue here.
> So, what, do we hire first grade teachers to be brain surgeons and wait to fire them until they kill a patient? Its preposterous to say that we can't look at past behavior and use it to judge someone's fitness for a job.
This is a blatant straw man. Of course people skills and abilities must be considered. At all points in this discussion I have only focused on employee's political behavior. The notion that I have stated that candidates' skills should not be taken into account is a total fabrication on your part.
> Inclusion isn't about finding the worst examples of humanity and including them - its about including actually diverse people (which his employees actually were), trying to live their own lives, on their own terms, and not dictating to others how to live theirs. Its not about taking a single person, the CEO, and letting them say and do whatever they want. It is totally irrelevant what portion of the US still disagrees with same-sex marriage, unless you are going to argue thats OK. Its not. Its disgusting. Either tell me you believe thats OK or stop arguing that because X% of people believe in discrimination that somehow makes it legitimate. I don't care if you live in LA or in a single stoplight town in the middle of nowhere - discrimination is bullshit and cloaking it in the idea of everyone being allowed to have their own opinions only enables discrimination.
You're writing this with the erroneous notion that the people in charge are going to agree with your views. What about the people who have bosses that are part of the 1/3 of the population that doesn't believe in gay marriage? Are they supposed to just suck it up and get told to quit if they donate to pro-LGBT causes? You make broad statement like, "discrimination is bullshit and cloaking it in the idea of everyone being allowed to have their own opinions only enables discrimination" but don't consider the fact that lots of people consider things like affirmative action to be unjust discrimination. Heck, even here in California it was banned by popular vote. Does it follow that companies should grep for donors that were against Proposition 209 and tell them to quit? You claim that letting people have their own opinion enables discrimination. Sure, to a degree that's true but letting companies police their employees' opinions is an even bigger enabler of discrimination.
> What is the board supposed to do? Fire everyone but him?
This is another fallacious argument. The board doesn't need to choose between retaining Eich and firing everyone but him. They can fire nobody. Believe it or not, plenty of adults cooperate and work with people that have views different from theirs.
> So, what, the employees get to speak out as long as nothing comes of it? If something comes of it, thats the problem? What is the actual point of speaking out then?
I'm not sure why you're fixating on the employees. I did not mention them until you brought them up. My point has, since the beginning, been about the choice Eich's firing (or if you want to get pedantic, the asking of his resignation) from his superiors. As I have written before, the employees are equally entitled to make their opinions known.
> There are no moral absolutes. Life isn't math. But, his opinions, his positions, are abhorrent to any decent human being. You can try to cloak your argument in to a hand-wavy invocation of the idea that morality is changing and the norms of society aren't fixed - but try to defend what he actually advocated for. Is that ok? Tell me its ok to discriminate against your LGTB employees. Put that on record. Tell me that actively working against LGTB rights is ok and is something we should tolerate. Tell me that people that support LGBT rights in a state where same-sex marriage is legal should suck it up and support someone that doesn't believe in their rights. I don't want to hear about some hand-waving side effects - tell me about the actual issue here.
If your point of view is that the majority of Californians in 2008 we're "abhorrent to any decent human being" then your views are likely fringe. If you can't bring yourself to see what a decade ago was the majority of people, and what is 1/3 today, with even the most basic degree of respect then I don't think your have any business attempting to portray yourself as advocating tolerance. Dismissing half to a third of your countrymen's politics (assuming you're American) as "abhorrent to any decent human being" is the opposite of tolerance.
> "Yes" or "No" - LGTB people have rights?
Yes, LGBT people have rights. Refraining from firing Eich would not have been an infringement of those rights, though. Simply working with a co-worker who believes that civil liberties and rights should be regulated differently than you do is not a violation of those rights and liberties. No more than employing a pro-bussing employee is violating our 14th Amendment rights. No more than employing an employee that disagrees with Citizens Unitied is violating our right to free speech.
You seem to be operating under the noting that mere tolerance of a point of view is tantamount to an endorsement of that view. This kind of thinking is highly corrosive, and it is impossible to build an inclusive group composed of people that harbor this perspective. If a group if such people come together, the only way they would reach harmony is when they achieve political homogeneity. The notion that tolerance of a view is an endorsement of that view is implicitly a demand to be intolerant towards views one disagrees with. It is sobering to meet someone on HN that follows this line of thought.
And who gets to say what protections people should and should not receive?
In the US, the notion of equal protection under law is stated unequivocally in our founding documents. It is not the government's business to sanction some personal relationships but not others.
Not debatable at all, IMO, when looked at objectively,
So to support policies that are later determined to be unconstitutional become fireable offenses? That means anyone that supports public school racial integration policies (as in, deliberately balancing out student populations to counteract de-facto segregation) should be fired. This was determined unconstitutional in 2007 [1]. Anyone that supports racial quotas in higher education also needs to be fired, because that was ruled illegal back in Bakke vs. Regents. Using constitutionality as a basis for whether certain political beliefs are fireable offenses is going to entail the firing of lots of liberals in addition to anti-gay marriage proponents. I don't think this justification was thought through.
It's also worth mentioning that at the time of his firing, the Supreme Court had yet to rule that banning gay marriage was illegal. Eich was fired before the Supreme Court made Proposition 8 unconstitutional.
In most jobs, there are plenty of ways to get fired even if you haven't broken any laws. This was just one of those ways, for one of those employees, at one of those jobs.
Sure, it's legal. What we're discussing is what justification there is to make it socially acceptable to fire or tell people to resign based on political views.
(Shrug) It's acceptable to me and to a bunch of other people, so that by definition makes it "socially acceptable." I reserve the right not to employ Nazi asshats, or to work for them. That's the upside to at-will employment... and the downside of being a Nazi asshat.
In most states, political beliefs do not, and should not, qualify employees for membership in protected classes. Under California law the situation is murkier, but most conservatives like Eich would agree with that sentiment, I'd hope. But then, the definitions of traditional terms like "conservative" are becoming hard to keep up with nowadays.
I think a lot of people forget that there's a world beyond liberal urban areas. Allowing it to become socially acceptable for companies to fire employees for their political views is also handing a tool for conservatives to suppress their employees' liberal politics.
And again, it's sending the message that the majority of Californians are not welcome at the company. It makes Mozilla hypocrites whenever they purport to support diversity or inclusion, and gives credence to the idea that Silicon Valley companies are deliberately hostile towards non-liberals.