Where did you get that from the article? Do you have off thread knowledge of the situation?

Author was an engineer:

> I was super excited I was actually getting an opportunity to pursue my engineering dreams. The word "engineer" was even in my job title!

He joined twitter and started sending his content to the PR team for approval:

> In fact, I was so prolific on social media that I got the attention of several industry analysts who asked how my company used social media for brand promotion and marketing. Of course, since I was in engineering, I sent these inquiries over to our PR department. ... I often tweeted about what we were doing, what the company was releasing, and what conferences I would attend. I understood the confidentiality policies at the company and never shared any confidential information. The company even gave me formal PR training so I would know what I could and couldn't say. ... After fielding several of my PR referrals, I eventually got the attention of a senior vice president at the company, let's call him Rick Dickerson. He then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.

The author was clearly stepping out of their role and impacting public relations. The SVP asked them to explain what they were doing and be introduced to those the engineer was working with (in social media). Then they flagged future content and told them to stop.

The SVP was ensuring they had the information they needed to protect the company and then limit any future off-message content being produced. The SVP wanted this engineer out of the social media space and needed him stopped.

> At that moment, it became clear that the SVP didn't just want to get me away from anything social media related in the company; he wanted me out of the company entirely. He was trying to get me fired.

I'm not saying I would have done it this way, but this is what happened via the article.

I don't get it. All I see is an SVP, who has the power to just say "Stop it" apparently jealous of this engineer's popularity and pushing him out to remove the personal threat, not company threat.

That's fascinating, if completely missed that narrative. Obviously I assumed the OP was biased but I had not seen your narrative as an option from the facts, though I do now.

He was effectively self-grooming for the position, isn't that what you're supposed to do? He was getting internal training for the role and claims to follow the policies he was taught. You are making claims without evidence.

> He was getting internal training for the role and claims to follow the policies he was taught.

His posts were being flagged by the PR team.

I suspect it's because he was discussing products without going through the PR team (because they would have told him to stop).

All my arguments are from the article itself.

> He was effectively self-grooming for the position, isn't that what you're supposed to do?

If someone from marketing came down and started force pushing code to production, would that be self-grooming? No, you'd expect a PR and some review process, which wasn't occurring here.

The PR team never flagged anything. The SVP backchanneled unfounded complaints to my director in order to get me in trouble. The PR team loved me.

> ... I showed Rick the platform's essential functions. Eventually, he created the company's Social Media Council, and I was appointed as one of the founding members.

It seems the SVP was in company representative in charge of PR / social media? If so, he was the party responsible for the team and thus "the team"?

> The SVP backchanneled unfounded complaints to my director in order to get me in trouble.

Seems like the SVP was going through the command chain to direct his complaints / concerns to you. That's the typical way corporate structures work.

What was flagged?

> Eventually, he acquired the tweets in question, and we were both stunned about why these benign tweets, which were clearly not about the company's financials, were being flagged. Then, he finally confided in me that the person who reported this to him was the SVP I had been working with previously, Rick.

If you are taking them at their word, this came directly from SVP and not some PR policy AND it was not related to financials. So are you calling OP a liar or not?

> What was flagged?

Your seemed to imply above that the SVP got involved because of already-flagged tweets, whereas the part of the story you've quoted happened after the SVP had not only met the author and appointed him to the company's social media council, but after the SVP started ghosting him.

The causality you're implying (if not explying) seems inverted.

> His posts were being flagged by the PR team.

The article specifically says that they were not.

If any of that had happened the order of events would have been different.

He would have received warnings that he was violating company policy. The SVP would have addressed him directly and asked him to stop tweeting about the company instead of asking him to be taught. His manager wouldn't have been confused about the complaint.

None of your arguments are from the article. You're going way out of your way to assume the engineer is in the wrong and omitting information in the article.

> started sending his content to the PR team for approval:

are you reading something I'm not?

It says other companies were asking HIM how his company used socials for PR.

> I sent these inquiries over to our PR department

He directed these companies over to their PR department for an actual answer, he didn't send his posts over to the PR department.

> After fielding several of my PR referrals, I eventually got the attention of a senior vice president (...) He then asked me if I could teach him how to use Twitter.

This SVP noticed he was basically sending them free marketing and decided it would be great to learn how to use it himself.

Nothing in your quote says he was sending his posts over to PR for approval at all.

What internal work was he posting?

The article goes out of its way to tell us that this guy received extensive training in what he was and was not allowed to say on social media from the PR team, and was doing well enough that he was a founding member of that company’s social media team.

I’m not sure where you’re drawing your conclusion from.

I replied in this thread to a different comment, but suffice to say, we're only seeing this engineers view on the topic.

From a company perspective, how do you handle someone who's gained a social media following and is posting about the company and acting as a company spokesman without being approved to do so.

You would collect all the information you can, then tell the guy to knock it off or be fired. That appears to be what happened.

Whatever the specifics of this particular situation, it may be worth observing that this seems to be in the context of rather early social media days. "When Twitter was launched, I was an early adopter."

And a lot of companies were really feeling their way into social media at that point (and by no means were their strategies necessarily broadly agreed to internally). I've seen first hand how many companies did not have well-articulated and specific policies and individuals were sort of on their own to do the "right thing" the interpretation of which was likely to differ depending upon what exec you asked.

It's hard to say what exactly happened in this case but in the mid- to late-2000s, it would have been very easy for an enthusiastic social media user posting about company matters to run afoul of someone used to company communications happening through tightly controlled channels.

Well no you wouldn't say "company financials" to escalate it, you would just be generic and say "proprietary information". There was enough suspicious stuff going on (being uninvited from internal group chats) that you can't chalk it up to one-off accidental miscommunications.

Besides, unless I misunderstood, it doesn't seem like the "knock it off" was directly communicated to the employee by the svp at any point, which a good faith manager would probably do, unless they have a severe nonconfrontatiomality issue (some managers do)

If the company was publicly traded and if the author was discussing unreleased products and speaking as a company employee, then yes it could impact the FTC reports (i.e. financials). However, those details weren't shared.

(Speaking of which, if this was AMD -- I likely traded on this guys information lol I made a boat load off employees sharing information they shouldn't have publicly)

> There was enough suspicious stuff going on (being uninvited from internal group chats) that you can't chalk it up to one-off accidental miscommunications.

We have no idea what actually happened, what we can say is that from the author's own statement(s) they continued to post on social media and stopped sending it to the PR team. To me, this reads that the author was given repeated hints / directly told to stop and wasn't listening. My guess is the training was, "hey you're probably not supposed to be posting this, review the training please".

That said, we don't know. I'm not saying this was handled well, but this definitely wasn't being "bullied" out of a job. Their job was engineering, they were pushed out of social media, at best; after not being hired for it.

I don't know if you're ESL or if you just didn't read the article but none of what you wrote is in the article. You're assuming so much here.

For the record. I had zero infractions on social. None. All allegations were made up and unfounded.

I believe you, I'm trying to counter the narrative that there is some way you could have misinterpreted otherwise "normal" administrative disciplinary communication

Strong disagreement. If there's any problem (which there usually isn't) you bring them into the loop. I've seen this repeatedly even at huge companies like Microsoft.

From what the man engineer explicitly details and according to your own logical rules that you laid out.. nothing was violated.

You're simply saying you believe the engineer is lying and dishonest. This is possible but there's nothing compelling about your assumption unless you provide evidence that supports it. Otherwise it's just sort of a random assumption.

I mean, Yeah sure for example, I could assume that he also has anger issue problems that he's unaware about, but that's a random assumption... Why would anyone care? In short I'm saying what compelling evidence do you have to make your assumption more relevant?

This is the kind of risk-averse, backstabbing claptrap that prevents companies and individuals from rising above local maxima.

> without being approved to do so

You'd think if he wasn't approved to do so then they would've actually told him to knock it off and not, you know, give him PR training and put him on a social media council.

Imagine the scenario where they did do this. And the employee was intransigent and didn't follow orders. Do you think it's possible this sort of person would also present a skewed account of what happened?

You have no idea if the perspective presented it accurate.

> Do you think it's possible this sort of person would also present a skewed account of what happened?

Sure, but it's pretty hard to skew being included in the very part of an organization that presumably influences how said organization represents itself on social media. Are you insinuating that the author is outright lying about that?

This is ridiculous. If you have a problem with what someone is doing you say "I have a problem with what you're doing, for the following reasons." You don't drop oblique threats or do the other nonsense mentioned in the article.

Obviously we don't know the other side of the story but you are making a massive leap from what is presented and ignoring the completely reasonable alternatives to what the SVP is reported to have done.

Think of the game theory and organizational evolution in such a flat hierarchy, especially when the flat section is a middle management level.

This flat hierarchy works at the low level. It already does almost everywhere on the border of "production workers" and "low management".

But in the middle management, the incentive is promotion and control. You start out with a flattened hierarchy, and say 20 managers vying for promotion, well, you probably won't get promoted. Then why try hard? Uhoh, now most of your managers will either:

1) leave

2) fight over / jockey over being the "senior level" of the 20 underlings

3) stop trying

4) embezzle

5) gradually conspire to "unflatten" and add more levels, gain control (solid line or dotted line) to the territory of your peers