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Re:Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski by huebnerob on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @04:45PM (#14448402)
I would love to get 'put on the roof' like that, but I think the Japanese policy also states that you're not allowed to do anything outside of the ridiculously mundane task they assign you, and they actually watch you like a hawk to ensure as such. Pretty smart, most people aren't going to stay in that situation for long.
Re:Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski by marklyon on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @07:51PM (#14449519)
Could you imagine being the manager assigned to watch such employees? That's a special hell.

I once worked at a newspaper, when "online" was new and side project of the marketing department so that they could sell more ads.

Until I automated things, we were cutting and pasting a few articles each night from Quark into BBEdit and hand-massaging it into HTML templates for upload. They assigned us an "editor". Poor guy had written pro-civil-rights editorials at a time when that didn't go over well. Got assigned shit jobs for decades to try and force him out. We didn't create new content; there was nothing to edit. But, they made him go to all the meetings and report that each day. Dude used a giant trackball and knew nothing about tech, but somehow landed in the department that would one day rule the newsroom. I wonder how he's doing these days.

Re:Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski by munin on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @10:19PM (#14450041)
> Could you imagine being the manager assigned to watch such employees?

What do you think they do with the managers they want to fire? ;)

Re:Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski by watwut on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @02:08AM (#14450692)
Why they don't fire the person? This is ridiculously sleazy.
Re:Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski by amyjess on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:15PM (#14455133)
It's a huge cultural taboo to fire anyone without cause in Japan. And even if you do have cause, there's a pretty high bar for what actually constitutes cause. It would be a huge scandal if a Japanese company, especially a large salaryman-style company, fired an employee for anything less than stabbing a coworker.

Hell, even in the entertainment industry, where employment is gig-based, Masashi Tashiro didn't get blackballed until he was convicted twice for voyeurism, twice for drug abuse, once for nearly crippling a guy in a car accident he caused, and once for posessing an illegal weapon [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masashi_Tashiro#Second_trial_f...