Hardly.
When one executive contacts another directly the intent is implicit. If destroying this person was not the clear desire this communication would have taken place at another level.
Sipmle logic states that Steve Jobs actually cared about maintaining the scheme he had with Google and couldn't care less about one particular Google employee.
Why would he? If he really were some kind of perverted power-luster he had plenty of his own employees to torture, but he just wasn't like that. He was always pursuing HIS GOALS ruthlessly, he wasn't out to get his rocks off by hurting people or exercising power.
(None of this is from direct experience, but it's evident from public information.)
It's important to remember that Schmidt was on Apple's Board of Directors at the time this occurred (he joined in the fall of 2006.) The Board was hand-picked in its entirety by Jobs.
These are power guys, and if Schmidt doesn't do something strongly, he will be perceived as weak. The implicitness in this email was a basic alpha-male locker-room challenge for Schmidt to show if he had any balls.
To me, this looks like a survivalist-move on the part of Schmidt to show Jobs he is "in charge" at Google. It's obvious Jobs knew how to push his buttons; otherwise, why would he (Schmidt) jump when the CEO of another company (Jobs) said "jump"?
Such locker room / schoolyard pissing contests show lack of leadership, creativity, compassion and humility. Very Wall Street.
Without a source of what was in the policy manual it's really hard to armchair quarterback, but such 1 strike and you're toast really sends the wrong message to everyone.
The message back to Jobs should have been, It's taken care of. Won't happen again.
Internally, IF the policy said violate A,B or C and termination applies, I can't quibble.
Otherwise, people make mistakes and should be handled as such. That what makes companies "Great Places to Work" and not the next job to pull a paycheck before the next one.
When an animal trainer gives a dog a cookie for jumping through a hoop, it's beyond question that the trainer intended the dog to jump through the hoop. Even the dog understands that. That is exactly the situation here.
I recommend reading this: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-i...
He didn't have to. And learning of the consequence, he didn't seem to care.
a power play by the heads of HR who seem to be the real bad guys here
Really? Blame the minions? They offered someone's head to save their own.
In the big scheme of the moral calamity that this whole thing is, this particular exchange feels oddly trivial to get its own article. But I think it's just the sort of thing that people can and will latch on to easily.
And people can latch onto being fired because almost everyone has experienced it at least once. That moment, of "what do I do now?", is probably one of the worst feelings in the world. And the glee these assholes have in actually doing it (remember no one is supposed to enjoy firing anyone, MBA101) is even more enraging since it confirms everything the 99%ers have been protesting about. These guys are fucking with other peoples' livelyhoods and making a joke of it.
The employee in question was presumably trained on the policy upon starting work and presumably informed of the costs of violating the policy.
The employee violated that policy, damaging company relations in the process, and was fired. That's a separate issue from the whole salary debacle. That Steve Jobs replied with a smiley face is immaterial to the broader problem at hand. Steve Jobs would in all likelihood reply to the end of the world with :-O. Who cares?
That Google terminated an employee in violation of what they indicate was a clear policy, is again, irrelevant to the discussion. It serves as nothing more than an attempt to get emotional response using something only tangentially related to the core issue.
If the said employee felt the policy was unethical and possibly illegal, violating it is not the answer. There is no indication that the employee was making a moral stand. More than likely, he couldn't follow directions. And he got fired.
This logic would not fly in any other industry. I don't see why SV thinks it is exempt. You never see a "policy" like this being defended in banking or whiteshoe law firms.
Also stop calling it a policy. Policies are written down, recorded, and published. One manager having an informal meeting about an unofficial policy doesn't make it policy. The reason this lawsuit is making waves now is because the policy was never put to ink. It was never put to ink because these companies wanted as little evidence as possible. Does that sound like a good policy?
I think it's really the 99.9%.
Being in the 1% top income in the country kind of rings hollow if you still can't afford a house.
I'm Canadian, so the irrational fear of communism/socialism is much lower here.
Not that I'm advocating for communism of course. Any system that honestly believes that a dictatorship[1] needs to be established first and that it will simply "whither away"[2] has been proven by history to be wrong.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
Yes, it sucks to get fired, but firing is a necessary part if running almost any company.
By emailing the CEO of Google. Jobs knew exactly what he was doing, and what the outcome would be. And boy, what an absolutely embarrassing response by Google.
It's all power talk.