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A comment on Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec. Parent comment

Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by antimagic on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:48AM (#8601232)
Employers being reluctant to fire an employee because the employee is a member of a minority is pretty much a myth - particularly in jurisdictions such as the US where employees generally do not have much by way of job security. At best it will just make the employer double-check to make sure they have dotted the Is and crossed the Ts before pulling the trigger.

Also, forgive me, I don't know a universally inoffensive way to broach the subject, but people expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?

See what I did there?

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by petervandijck on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:18AM (#8601324)
It's not a myth. Legal and HR will explain to you how easily the company can get sued in those cases. It can be VERY hard to let go an employee who is member of a minority (I speak of experience).
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by cowsandmilk on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:39AM (#8601685)
not if you have been properly documenting things for everyone you fire. Amazon fires enough people that they should have procedures in place that make this trivial.
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by petervandijck on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:13PM (#8605050)
For people not familiar with the way things work in the USA, "properly documenting" here means that you need at least a few months of written warnings, an "improvement plan" that then "failed" and such before you can fire someone who just isn't working out at all.

In other words, it's very hard to fire them.

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by NoMoreNicksLeft on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:32AM (#8601984)
Who the hell documents anything well? I thought we were all programmers here.

Documentation of anything is the most difficult task, the most disliked task, and the most avoided. That's gotta be true no matter what anyone's job is, programmer or not.

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by g8gggu89 on Friday November 14, 2014 @01:43AM (#8606089)
Managers?
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by deedubaya on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:13AM (#8602269)
> I thought we were all programmers here.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL. I feel the number of top stories on HN are steadily moving away from programming, and that it is more about Entrepreneurship/VC/Business Management these days.

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by wmeredith on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:58AM (#8601264)
Do you have any sources to back up the claim that it's a myth? I'm genuinely curious because my personal experience in the industry for 10 years says otherwise. But that's just anecdotal, and I've never come across a study on it.
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by wook36 on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:30AM (#8601371)
Amazon has a termination policy in the offer letter, this is just BS.
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by fifthesteight on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:23AM (#8601350)
> People expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?

This type of thinking in our industry needs to STOP. There is far too much evidence that women are treated like absolute shit pretty much across the board (don't bother pointing out your handful of CEOs and other execs, if you can't face this fact then you're part of the problem).

If it happens to women, it happens to others.

You sound like you've got some pretty sweet white, male privilege. If you aren't a member of that majority, well they've certainly got you on their side.

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by antimagic on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:59AM (#8601794)
And you sound like you can't read - I was arguing the opposite ;) Or rather, I was putting out there the idea that people that whinge about minorities receiving advantages are racist. But as I was aping the intellectually dishonest argumentative technique of the GP, I didn't actually make that claim, I merely suggested that this was a possibility.

For the record, I'm female, and member of a discriminated against minority, that has previously been fired for membership to said minority. And no, I don't think management in that case paused for even a microsecond worrying about potential backlash from firing a member of a minority (they stated quite clearly in the termination letter that this was actually the reason they were firing me - nice). If they were at all concerned about that, they certainly hid it well...

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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by fifthesteight on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:51AM (#8601457)
Surprise surprise hackernews downvotes comments disparaging the rampant misogyny and prejudice in our industry.
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Re:Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec by lil_cain on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:38AM (#8602435)
You're getting downvoted because you've misunderstood the original comment. Antimagic seemed to be pointing out that claiming that Munira was still in employment because she was a member of a protected class was quite probably racist. You replied saying that kind of thing needs to stop, because it's mean to women.

The only sane conclusion from this is you've misread antimagic's original comment.

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