This should have been a lesson on the toxic and pointless nature of social media, but the author seems to have misread the situation entirely.
Spoiler alert: It isn't.
And I'm sure I'm far from the only person here who's near relatives died in the holocaust, so this little bit of rhetoric you're employing is grossly offensive.
Still, this person displayed unbelievable lack of judgement by posting like that to a speaker of their employer’s conference, and it crossed at least two more lines beyond the simple “fuck you” preceding it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols...
[1] http://cup.columbia.edu/book/from-the-fires-of-war/978383821...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ukraine-hasbetter-he...
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-row-over-holocaust-history-...
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-tells-israel-to-stay-o...
Where do you the Russian soldiers raping and torturing children in Ukraine sit on your scale?. [1]
Where does the Russian government giving 1 Billion dollars to a PMC run by a Nazi with SS symbols tattooed on himself sit on your scale?. [2][3]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-troops-raped-tort...
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-yevgeny-prigo...
[3] https://strikesource.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screen-S... (the head of Wagner that the Russian government just gave a billion dollars to).
About in the same place as Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, removing the incubators and leaving the babies to die. [0]
I'd suggest you follow the links I gave you.
"In this first English-language book on the Azov movement, Michael Colborne explains how Azov came to be and continues to exploit Ukraine’s fractured social and political situation—including the only ongoing war on European soil – to build one of the most ambitious and dangerous far-right movements in the world. Michael Colborne ... has been part of the Bellingcat Monitoring Project team at the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, primarily researching Ukraine’s far right."
And by the way, what other country made a neo-Nazi brigade a part of its army?
"And they are putting their lives where their mouths are"
Not sure what's your point. Nazis were doing that too.
Literally all of them, including Russia of course(which has multiple).
You can possibly claim that it is PMC rather than direct Russian military, but then there is the recent ultimatum given to Wagner troops -- Join Russian military ranks or leave.
Was it all you had?
lol, I'm done.
Edit: Looked through comment history and it makes sense now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30731180
You're a joke, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Well, this sure looks like an evidence of Wagner's commander having a neo-Nazi tattoo [0][1]. Besides Utkin's personality there doesn't seem to be anything else.
I wanted to verify sources a bit further myself, but alas: https://i.imgur.com/YxG58lR.png
To be fair, it is silly to even separate them as they're all fighting hand in hand with regular Russian army with Russian army supplies, so for all intents and purposes they were both part of it.
But seeing as the person I was responding to is touting about "powerful Russian military" and "weak Europe" from the comforts of the western middle class, I don't really want to engage in discussion any further.
"so for all intents and purposes they were both part of it"
Not really. Rusich is a dirty secret just like Utkin's personality. They are not legitimized in any way. Azov with the Wolfsangel on their banner and Aidar are openly ultra-nationalist and touted by Kyev as heroes.
Russia and Russian Military have a long and proven track record of lying without any shame or remorse, so I don't really care what the "official" standing of these units is. They are fed by Russia, armed by Russia and controlled by Russia, everything else is "Пыль в глаза".
Without downplaying the troubling beginnings of Azov (who aren't the worst offenders by a mile if you look at 2014-2015, to be honest) -- it has little bearing in 2023.
Ukrainian army went a long way cleaning up their ranks and becoming a professional army since then, they had trials and punished their own soldiers for committing crimes in ATO, which Russian side not only did not do, but encouraged.
The World is holding Ukraine to an impossible standard right now, magnifying every individual case and person to paint the whole country in bad light while turning the blind eye to one to Russian atrocities (See HRW about Cluster munitions for Ukraine vs silence on Russia using all sorts of forbidden weaponry).
Zelensky let them all out when the war started[0], including the infamous Tornado battalion[1][2].
"have a long and proven track record of lying without any shame or remorse"
Just like the Ukraine or the US.
"which Russian side ... encouraged"
Another fine example of 'atrocity propaganda'[3] to mobilize public support in Western countries for the Ukrainian war.
"vs silence on Russia using all sorts of forbidden weaponry"
So why is the silence? That happens when things get investigated and no proof is found. I remember Ukrainian general claiming in 2014 that Russia used a tactical nuke in Donbass.
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10559879/Zelensky-r...
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-tornado-battalion-rogue-para...
[2] https://focus-ua.translate.goog/uk/amp/ukraine/521825-osuzhd...
Seems like you're more then happy about Russian nazis but looking to very much focus on the other side.
> Another fine example of 'atrocity propaganda'[3] to mobilize public support in Western countries for the Ukrainian war.
There doesn't need to be propaganda when you are up against the monsters that rolled through Grozny and Aleppo.
The Russians are every bit the monsters that most people think they are.
> Just like the Ukraine or the US.
But the Russians lie a lot more. They have pretty much not stopped lying since this "we are not going to invade" war started and even just before it.
Typical Vatnik when they have no way to counter an argument, remember the Internet Research Agency says attack the person not the content.
The audacity to compare Ukraine, which has incredible level of transparency during this invasion in every aspect, welcoming auditors and investigators from all over the world to Russia is very telling of your biases.
I am Russian, I am well aware of nuances, but to even compare the two is insanity in 2023.
"After the first few years of its formation, only a small minority of members had far right connections. ... The Azov Battalion and the entire Azov movement are almost completely untainted by antisemitism."
Not that I'm defending Azov. Just that I don't think that this commenter's apparent concerns about Azov's political beliefs are what they seem. I don't think they really care as to whether Azov is now, or ever was neo-Nazi in any substantive sense. It's just a topic they like to through around to push people's emotional buttons, and distract from far more obvious and important issues.
Pretty much exactly like Putin is doing whenever he plays the Nazi card.
Of course its commanders are a minority.
"untainted by antisemitism"
So it's ok to hate other nationalities if it's not Jews?
No one idolizing Bandera and the likes of him cannot be untainted by Nazism.
"I don't think they really"
Pretending to read other person's mind and accuse them of insincerity based on that makes a poor argument.
"to push people's emotional buttons, and distract "
You mean people in Western countries might learn whom they are helping and ask questions like "why exactly have we been doing this"?
We know all about the topic. However, it's clear from the overall tone of how you communicate here (and your endless evasions when cornered on simple factual matters) that you are either not capable of, or are simply not interested in anything even remotely resembling a productive discussion about it.
"We know all about the topic."
Please refrain from using 'we' when talking about yourself.
That wouldn't be the first time when the West uses Nazis against Russia. I hope you just lied and used 'we' instead of 'I'.
The rest of your comment is expectedly lacking any specifics.
You might be right, actually. Naive and brainwashed Americans supported criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext. And reelected Bush afterwards. So don't underestimate the power of Western domestic propaganda.
Leave your edgy fursona (is that how they call it?) to your personal life.
No idea what noun the former use for the thing, though there's probably a dozen here who will add that detail…
Tech is queer, trans, furry, plural, and all sorts of other weirdness. If you cannot deal with people bringing their true identities to the job, you are free to choose another industry to work in. I hear plumbing pays well.
I don’t know, looks like VMWare found another way to deal with it.
There are many people who want to improve things instead of leaving.
Talk about being inclusive, huh.
As a trans woman, I will pitch in and say this kind of stuff (from fringes of trans/queer community) is why we get hate crimed.
There's medical basis (decades of research and literature) for asserting that one's gender does not match their biological sex. There's not a DSM V criteria for being a pony.
I assure you they would keep "hate criming" you no matter how many cartoons you like.
The person above literally said "The pony IS her authentic self", word for word.
That gave me a chuckle over my morning coffee. A beautifully absurd paragraph. Please write more of this comedy.
(Anyone thinking this about "the pony" is missing the point, probably disingenuously so.)
I'd probably rather work for a company that requires people to be professional on a job than one that allows them to "authentically" go wild and throw shit around. There are limits to how much "authenticity" I want to see from my coworkers. Everybody has their own opinions, but there's a time when one needs to choose between staying a professional or let oneself loose. And I'd rather work in a place where the former is encouraged.
Where did you read this?
But most people are extremely hypocritical, and will gladly ignore their “ideals” in the name of the holy fat paycheque.
Also, I cannot really explain really well, but it seems like there is a big difference saying “he” about just mythical person, and referring to a real person (whose gender you don’t know).
Not hard, but incorrect.
Regardless of how the vicissitudes of politics go, the current NLRB has made its decision, so the author is acting in accordance with the law. Their legal counsel agreed. Perhaps you find this dishonorable or morally disagreeable because of the particulars of this case, but given this is about an individual employee vs. megacorp, it seems no different in principle from the adage of "don't feel bad for quitting, your company would lay you off without a moment's thought." That VMWare vice president is not losing any sleep over the $40k.
Like what world do you live in that people don't complain about their old jobs such that you think it's that unacceptable?
Funnily enough, it would seem that VMWare historically has bigger things to worry about when it comes to the government, protests, and broken contracts:
> The Defence Information Security Agency (DISA) reversed a decision to award VMware Inc. with a $1.6 billion contract, following a protest by number of tech companies last February.
> The Pentagon’s decision to cancel its joint enterprise licensing agreement with VMware means the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was able to dismiss protests against the award made by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citrix Systems Inc., Nutanix and Minburn Technology Group, LLC, as per the statement at this link.
https://siliconangle.com/2015/03/17/u-s-military-drops-1-6b-...
In any case, regardless of the intentions of the author, VMWare doesn’t look particularly worse off for having this story publicized. It feels like they were caught between a rock and hard place.
I disagree. If leadership of a company makes an ethically questionable decision and everyone who disagrees with that decision quits, that leaves an even more ethically questionable organization behind. I think all good people have an obligation to voice an ethical objection to their company's behavior whenever relevant. Don't just quit and let the amoral/immoral people win.
The author's problem was not that they decided to object instead of quit. Their mistake was doing the objection in both a public and intentionally inflammatory way.
If the opposite is stay and actually make efforts for change then yes. If it is staying and keeping your mouth shut then it's just keeping the status quo. And that may be fine and understandable but don't be offended when called out on that.
Posting a cynical tweet does not reflect a moral high ground, specially if the person doing the tweeting doesn't express any similar concern on any other occasion regarding their line of work and how they contribute directly and indirectly to that moral hazard, and apparently gets disappointed when their employer fires them.
Frankly, it all looks like puerile attention-seeking fuelled by Twitter echo chambers.
Do you go all out on your ideals? Does your employee not do anything that violates them?
this is complete bs. it's not 'VMWare or unemployment' (or any $bigtech or unemployment). there are a ton of employers ready to pay competent people a decent salary.
What other factual statements should you not be allowed to make about your employer's clients?
Or you think you can be obnoxious clown without repercussions?
Seems to be working for Elon, tbh.
It was a customer of the company that got offended. Should he know every customer of the company? If the company has 1000s of customers, are they all off limits? Are you supposed to know who they are?
If you work for AT&T and an AT&T customer (of the millions it has) is a jerk or you have some political disagreement with their views, do you get to tweet about it on your personal twitter account? Should they be able to complain and get you fired?
If I was a big tech company especially one trying to find people interested in working lower down the stack, I wouldn't go around pissing off leftist furries.
They are free to make these claims in a way that doesn’t damage the business. Like a second personal Twitter account.
Are they, though?
I mean, presumably they were posting from a personal account to begin with. Just how separate would a second account have to be - Is it enough to just say all opinions are their own, and only post on their own time? Could they use their own name? What about an online handle they'd used before, if a highly motivated doxxer could possibly identify their employer?
The author seemed perfectly fine with getting paid by their employer, but somehow felt morally justified to openly criticize the way they got their paycheck. It sounds like a very selective self-righteous position.
Your "hot takes" for the most part (especially when they're basically cheap dunks) on SM help only twitter.
There's plenty of criticism that can be done about the parts mentioned, but those tweets are pretty much the definition of heckling. Honestly nobody cares, and nobody is there for that
Boy, I'm so happy I don't work for anyone, I'd hate to have to deal with sensitive pricks that think they can dictate what their employees say on social media.
https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/op-ed-usafs-chaillan-knausenb...
OP was fired for stepping on the toes of a thin skinned official with a good network.
Guess I'll never know.
More generally, one shouldn't have to give up his/her personal rights to say "fuck you!" to the government once he/she enters an employment contract.
What they don't have is freedom from consequences. They don't have imnunity from being fired.
A government official used his position of power to get a critic fired over a personal insult.
I'm not sure what "free speech" is good for if government officials can just get you kicked from your job for exercising it.
https://www.alexanderjarvis.com/the-pitch-deck-fuck-you-list...
> What is the fuck you list? Simply put, it’s what you tell Billy Bob to get him to shut the fuck up, and as someone who hates you, still make him think what you are doing actually makes sense.
> The fuck you list are 3-5 key points about why your business is amazing and you are going to win. They are the important points you would feel annoyed for having not conveyed when you leave that big meeting with the investor you really want to close.
We have arrived at peak HN.
A New Yorker using the expression is just frankly a different reading than a Washington DC type.
Nonsense; no company allows any employee to publicly hurl insults at a large paying customer.
But then again, VMWare never had a reputation as a good employer, did they?
Here's a genius idea: keep your hot takes to an isolated Twitter account not directly associated with your employer? Have we really forgotten basic OPSEC?
The fact that the author claimed brought a third party to a work-related meeting with a VP with the purpose of live tweeting it to the world already speaks volumes.
[0] neither is the US, despite what it says; I am however a free-speech maximalist, and the differences between these positions includes but is not limited to acknowledging that some speech chills other speech.
Right, understood. But it is the right of every company to have the freedom of association[1] to determine what sort individuals they want to associate with, no?
Just because someone has the freedom to say something, it doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it. It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers.
Like I kept hearing over the last few years[2], "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".
[1] Much like your Free Speech position, I'm not being absolutist, only maximalist in this position; IOW, no dissassociation on illegal grounds, like protected class members, for example.
[2] Not that I agree, just that it seems to be acceptable.
In the context of the DoD… if people, online or offline, get to them just by swearing, then North Korea should have saved money and developed an f-bomb instead of an a-bomb.
not when it comes to employees and also not when it comes to customers. employees have a right to share their opinions. and discrimination on political opinion is illegal in many countries. i am not sure if that is the case in the US, but it is in the EU and the UK at least.
doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it
the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers
depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_are_murderers
according to the german court: "sharing opinions to public controversies is a sign of a free democratic order"
companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
I said that in the post you replied to.
> the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
They said it while being a paid representative of the company, at an event that they were paid to represent the company.
> depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person.
This was made about a specific person.
> companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
Of course they can, they just can't do it while representing the company.
I'm a little confused about why you replied; are you clarifying my position by disagreement?
it is still their personal twitter account. they are not representing their company on twitter. the time and the location of the person should not matter.
This was made about a specific person.
that is debatable. i interpreted it as a general statement about the military that the recipient of the message is a part of. i can see that it can be read as a personal accusation, but i believe that this was not the intent of the sender.
are you clarifying my position by disagreement
it appears that i am. it did help me better understand your position, so i hope that's ok.
(Curiously, I've just seen someone walk past me with "duck off" printed on their T-shirt. But then, culture here in Germany is much more liberal about both word and deed — it's American cultural norms that made the autocorrupt inside my quote marks).
Is this not just a way to say "my speech is free speech and protected, your speech is hate speech and should be banned"?
Therapists and doctors have to guarantee to their patients that no beans will be spilled just to get what they need to do their jobs.
Whistleblowers need to know their names won't get shared to be willing to blow their whistles.
Filibusters, in the political rather than military context.
That's just off the top of my head.
I'm all for banning threats and other speech that's illegal. But once a line is drawn it's in everybody's interest to defend it in either direction. Remember that everything you demand to be banned can be used against your cause at a later point. Similar with every accusation you want to be able to utter.
If you're there on your company dime, and the tweets are associated with your company image, the company now gets a say.
But that's not what happened. What happened is that she personally cursed out a client, publicly accusing this person in war crimes, while being on a job conference. And, when confronted about that, she basically told HR "your rules are stupid, I'm not going to follow them, let me educate you about how your job should be done". This is not a free speech issue, this is "rules don't apply to me because I am a precious flower that is always right" issue. The organization could choose to tolerate and accommodate this kind of an employee if it's worth it, but nothing requires them to. She is still free to curse out the government in her free time, or when she is outside her job duties - and I would be the first, again, to support her right to do so. But maybe realizing there's a time and a place for such things may do her some good. And if she can't control herself while being on a job (and going to the conference is part of one's job, otherwise why would their employer pay for it?) and be a professional then maybe she should look for some job that does not involve doing that.
Note she wasn't even fired for the conference BS. It was when she explicitly refused to commit to social media guidelines that they pulled the plug. I say if you prioritize the ability to say shit on twitter over your job, then it's not a question of free speech, it's a question of choice. She made her choice, now she's completely free to say shit on twitter.
You look like less of a bootlicking dumbass when you don't contradict yourself in the span of a single comment.
https://qz.com/1041113/a-wharton-professor-explains-why-hiri...
There's a difference between being a "bootlicker" and being extremely unprofessional (to the nth degree).
[0] https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/op-ed-usafs-chaillan-knausenb...
[edit] WAY worse! Intellectual Property Theft, Gifting Officials, Misuse of Position, Abuse, “Sabotage” of Competing Platforms, Improper Contract Award, Misappropriation of Funds
Zero excuse for the behaviour of the tweeter though.
OP does mention that they were with VMWare only by acquisition.
Do I think that OP should have done this? No. Do I think they deserve to be fired over this? No. This is the standard chastise them for being an idiot and get back to work.
The problem here was a high-ranking Federal bureaucrat (USAF Chief Software Officer) got his knickers in a twist and rattled VMWare management who should have told him to go pound sand.
And, personally, even though I don't find the OP sympathetic, I'm glad this story came out as the bureaucrat in question should absolutely be named and shamed so other companies won't capitulate to him being a snot. Anybody with skin that thin shouldn't be allowed any amount of power, ever.
How do you know that? Nothing in that article suggests there is even the smallest shred of evidence that the bureaucrat in question applied any pressure.
Both [2] and [3] aren't about this story at all.
I think we're taking their account of the events at face value. Maybe this event was just the last in a chain of similar events, and management were fed up already.
Although, I also think that your kind of event description is just as likely. I'm sure it happens a lot, as I know it does in many political, business and interpersonal situations. And you know that being thin skinned won't ever lose them their power, just like that. A person has many reasons to get into power, it's not up to merit.
Unfortunately it's not basic; the ability to strip all context to make this about being mean to a customer makes for a poor argument.
The government isn't just _any_ customer, whether you think the firing was justified or not. The DoD enjoys a ton of taxpayer budget money and a sanctioned right to kill people if it deems it necessary. And it was proactively recruiting at a tech conference for software that isn't innately violent. Is that bad? Maybe not, maybe so. Is that a basic customer? Not at all.
Is this really only about criticizing the government at work? If she made the tweet off hours or wasn't even at the conference, does Nicholas Chaillan still complain to VMWare and get her fired? When is it okay for her to criticize the government without losing her job? Would it even have cost VMWare anything if they didn't fire her and just disciplined her? How about the social media policy that bans talking about incredibly generic things like "age, sex, race, religion"? Has anyone at VMWare ever gotten disciplined for tweeting out "Jesus lives"?
I think your reduction to "employees must never tell any customer ever to go fuck themselves and that's basically what happened here" isn't useful nor is it one of the more interesting questions this post raises.
If the engineer had posted something criticizing the military outside of the context of the conference and without personally attacking the speaker, nothing would have happened. In fact, I bet the engineer had already done that multiple times before.
imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.