I don't know if I'd read that much into it. It's possible that the employee was asked to resign for severance instead of getting fired outright, and Github just wants to make sure they're being accurate. After all, the rest of the post makes it pretty clear they acknowledge their mistake.
What is quite amazing to me is that they were so quick to fire him. I mean, even if he said something inappropriate it just doesn't make business sense. People say all kind of inappropriate things all the time. If a comment violates your policy have a chat with them and continue normally. Firing an employee is very expensive. Firing them over inappropriate comment is also demoralizing to the rest of the team.
I mean it's better to have some co-workers who are dicks, some that call you a grammar nazi and maybe even some who disagree with you politically than to play a Russian roulette with words every day - you never know which one is loaded and terminates your career.
Agree or disagree with him, it's refreshing to see a CEO taking a direct and absolute stance on a subject like this and not some wishy washy corporate doublespeak.
Is there more to this story? It is not clear why it mattered that the employee is Jewish and seems like that could have happened to anyone else as well.
You don't see why Jewish employees might be more concerned and in tune with safety considerations of the presence of literal Nazis than gentile employees?
Like I was saying, the decision would have been the same either way, but it's more egregious when weaponized against a Jewish employee.
I mean, I guess, but it just seems bizarre and unnecessary to force a racial angle on this story. I would be pretty unhappy if I were in this guy's place and reporters insisted on calling me a "Mexican employee".
We're talking about literal Nazis here. It's not 'forcing' a racial angle when they want to round up people like the employee in question and put them in death camps based on their race.
If you were warning about the presence of a group calling for a Mexican genocide to your Mexican colleagues and were fired for it, it would make sense for that to be noted in the news stories.
I agree that it's a weird detail to include, but the alternative would be:
"GitHub admits fault in firing of employee who said 'Nazi'"
...which, while true, would give people a negative impression of the employee if they only read the headline.
It's also meaningful that he is Jewish and asked his coworkers to beware of Nazis because he has more reason than a non-Jewish person to be afraid of Nazis.
> It's also meaningful that he is Jewish and asked his coworkers to beware of Nazis because he has more reason than a non-Jewish person to be afraid of Nazis.
I wonder if that holds true in 2020 as much as it did in 1933, or if it ever held true actually
^^^ This is Github’s official statement which is absolutely worth reading.
However, the title is rather unfortunate: “Update on an employee matter.” That title is extraordinarily biased. While I didn’t really anticipate how this submission would get flagged, I don’t think the corporate-speak title is at all fair to the situation. That said, duly noted how the mods treated that story versus this one.
I think it is pretty clear that part of the story here is missing. No company fires someone just for saying the word Nazi. there was a complaint made against them perhaps a misunderstanding.
The quote saying that “Nazis have no place at github” is particularly confusing.
My guess is that someone interpreted this as Trump supporters are Nazis and as an accusation of their coworkers
I think that's it. It was viewed as an insult and someone invoked Godwin's Law against him. Only it turns out he was speaking correctly and accurately.
Doesn't matter that he's Jewish. You shouldn't get fired for this.
These censorious companies are way too sensitive for this. I don't get how these are the same people who promote entrepreneurship and taking huge risks in business and tech but the second someone says a word that hurts their feelings they should be fired.
It doesnt help that they constantly shut down criticism of it which only emboldens those who live in this new borderline thought police order as the norm.
The side effect of this is that it aggravates hostility towards those very groups that society is "protecting". I just see no way out of this downward spiral.
Pretty soon we will be "reeducated" when it offends the hypersensitive hive mind in a semi totalitarian "western democracy"
I do believe that we will see secession of states like Texas who has their own conventional military and tech giants relocating there signals tax cuts. This would seriously undermine the Biden-Harris administration and I don't believe that Texas in particular will end up like Quebec where it needs to rely on Federal subsidies and generous tax credit for businesses.
The way out is to call out the absurdity, ignorance, and hypocrisy of it all. In simpler terms: be the pin that pops the bubble.
It will hurt people's feelings, it will trigger their tendency toward victimization, but if we're going to avoid another mass genocide (the logical conclusion of this sort of behavior), it's time to call it what it is: mass delusion operating as a stand-in for traditional systems of morality like religion.
I wouldn't even call it "mass" delusion. Who really supports it? Surely not inland or eastern states, that are very orthodox, and I doubt it's Indian or Chinese immigrants who have their own and rather sophisticated philosophy (I mean hinduism and such) and I doubt it's high-tech whites who at most politely ignore slurs in their address. This draws a rather depressing picture of our "culture" if I may use this word. The said delusion is really just a policy enforced at the very top, i.e. in places like DoD and WH. Twitter creates an illusion of majority, but I bet that if this majority were to organise a picnic, they would fit on a smallish park.
Mass enough to be influencing major educational institutions, the military, and the media. Twitter is not my point of reference. Jimmy Fallon hosting a nutcase who tells children they're inherently racist is.
Divide & conquer. This is the war that is being waged on America; your minds. Who has the most intimate and proximity in determining what the collective sees? The device in your pocket is how people view the world. Nobody is reading books, nobody is practicing critical thinking anymore.
If I was a foreign power I wouldn't go up militarily against the US, that would be disastrous. Instead, I would head to the universities, I would fund the companies that are in close proximity to the consumer of popular media. I would start 20,30,40 years ago and slowly change what the people in your country thinks about their status quo. The top brass doesn't care because they don't see weapons. Underpaid, underappreciated, unscrupulous individuals are easily won over. Again, the decision makers don't see the enemies here. Then one day, the small cuts collectively add up and the wounds begin to rot from within. Once again, nobody raises alarms because they are incentivized or naivete from being #1 for so long.
I would go even further by focusing on the existential crisis of the non-majority ethnic groups and exploit it into hating the very country they are in because of isms. Then you go to the other side which is the conservative portion of the majority ruling class and sell them the idea that those people are ungrateful and hostile.
Throw technology and fast food equivalent of entertainment that creates a population addicted to the short bursts of serotonin and you just might be witnessing what you are seeing today.
Bonus points for dividing the political ruling class by feeding exploitative information true or not that will be weaponized.
I think it's important to remember this was all said in the context of private messages, so none of this was ever intended to be aired. The fact that messages sent in private are now made public is itself quite concerning.
> “Others have already said so, but I just want to say it
> explicitly myself - I think that nazis were present at
> some protests on Jan 6, and that it’s very scary to see
> those ideas on display,” wrote one engineer in Slack.
I am yet to see evidence of Nazis being at the protests - I don't think anybody openly displaying support for Nazi ideals would find wide support in a pro-America crowd.
Assuming there were some in the crowd, I am slightly concerned that what was actually meant was "all of those people were Nazis", in which case this is dangerous rhetoric.
> “100% Nazis were there, and 1000000000% Nazis are scary as
> fuck and do not belong anywhere. PARTICULARLY AT GitHub!”
> responded another.
This idea that any group "do not belong anywhere" is quite scary. Once you have gained the title of 'Nazi' (which seems to be a more abused label in modern times), then there seems to be this idea that you have no place in society - and that you can have all services removed from you.
Even if you are a literal Nazi (or Communist, or <insert bad ideology>), as long as you abide by the laws of the land, you can be a functioning member of society, and as such need the same basic protections. These people should be allowed to open bank accounts, buy groceries, go to work, pay taxes, drink at a bar, etc. We can't de-humanize people because we disagree with the way they think.
> “Hubbers are free to express concerns about neo-Nazis,
> antisemitism, white supremacy or any other form of
> discrimination or harassment,” he wrote. “And of course,
> we expect Hubbers to be respectful, professional, and to
> follow GitHub policies on discrimination and harassment at
> all times.”
I miss the days when it was taboo to mention politics or religion in companies. I used to work with a "Nazi" and a "Communist" (as well as a whole range of political leanings), and we worked together fine. I've also worked with alcoholics and drug addicts. Generally we all agreed that if we want to do these things, we do it off company time.
> I am yet to see evidence of Nazis being at the protests - I don't think anybody openly displaying support for Nazi ideals would find wide support in a pro-America crowd.
the guy in the yellow shirt is Jason Tankersley, founder of the Maryland Skinheads. The guy to his right in the mask is Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party (a neo nazi org).
> I am yet to see evidence of Nazis being at the protests - I don't think anybody openly displaying support for Nazi ideals would find wide support in a pro-America crowd.
The "Camp Auschwitz" shirt strikes me as pretty clear.
> GitHub was way out of line viewing and judging these
> messages. It doesn't matter what happened there. That
> channel is not for them.
I think that really depends on when the employees are using it - if it's on company time then I think GitHub have some right to reprimand people for the use of their time, rather than the content on their messages.
There were multiple photos of a man wearing a shirt that said "6MWE" which stands for "Six Million Wasn't Enough", a direct reference to the holocaust. Are you saying you don't believe that sentiment is in line with Nazis? Or do you not believe that this shirt was on display there?
Edit: And this is one example, if you are truly in the dark about these symbols and what not being on display more examples can be provided but I really would like to know if you've seen this and what you think.
>It seems unlikely that anyone standing with that guy would have known what his shirt meant or would share that view. It seems far more likely that this guy is a plant, who is there for the specific purpose of generating those news articles about "evil" Trump supporters.
I don't believe we can really discuss things if you believe that people are false flagging in the midst of "normal" Trump supporters that invaded the US Capitol to somehow make them look worse. Additionally, Trump and his supporters have continually failed to eject the worst elements of the group so I fail to see why you believe that these supporters would suddenly draw a line here.
> Are you saying you don't believe that sentiment is in line
> with Nazis?
If that is a photo from the capitol protests, sure, the sentiment is in line with that of the Nazis on the topic of Jewish people. But I might expect many Palestinians to share the same ideas, but they are not by definition Nazis, despite overlapping ideas about Jewish people.
That shirt is black and yellow, the colors for the 'Proud Boys' [1]. Whilst the group is described as 'far-right', I don't believe they support Nazis. I believe the leader is of mixed ethnicity.
This isn't politics. This is existential. It's only politics when all voices are heard. When a contingent are trying to upend democracy and denigrate entire demographics, then it's no longer an opinion worth respecting and has to be shut down. There has been ample evidence of Nazis and other hate groups in the Capitol riot as there has been in the Trump movement since the start. You've certainly already seen it and are choosing to ignore.
Let me get this straight: A Github employee used the them "Nazi" in an appropriate context. Other employees, who many not be targets of Nazis, took "offense" at this, and got this employee fired.
I'd say that Microsoft should fire all of GitHub management for this -- as well as the other employees who stirred the pot.
That's great that github acknowledges that employees are free to talk about their concerns of bigotry, but calling everyone outside of your party a nazi is just as bigoted. Tone it down.
Jayden X was one of the very first in. It's on video. Would be tough to characterize him as a Nazi.
The point is that there are many people with many ideologies, ugly or not, that patriciate in this year-long age of unrest. Can we stop with trying to characterize everything as something?
the guy in the yellow shirt is Jason Tankersley, founder of the Maryland Skinheads. The guy to his right in the mask is Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party (a neo nazi org).
The fact that you can point to someone there that wasn't a nazi doesn't negate the fact that 100% nazis were both there and prominent.
That person is not saying that 100% of the people there are Nazis, but that there's a 100% chance that Nazis were present and prominent, which is absolutely true.
They need to terminate the CEO and everyone else who has been involved in firing the employee in question. It is not that the CEO was not informed about that kind of "action" and did not decide not to overrule it.
This whole situation is a great example of why you should avoid politics / politically charged statements in the workplace all around. No one's mind about anything was fundamentally changed. People got upset and stressed out and wasted a bunch of time. People had their employment status impacted. It was just an overall negative episode. When people say something that is problematic or borderline, the response should be "end the thread" and everyone moves on with their work.
It isn't problematic to note that there are literal-not-figurative Nazis afoot. It is descriptive.
How one chooses to respond to that description is telling on oneself. And "see? just don't talk about politics, ignore the literal Nazis" is telling on yourself, too.
Your putting words in my mouth. I never suggested that the description was the problematic part. A person can bring up tons of factual things that just stir the political and emotional pot (current events, anniversary of a war or assassination, quoting a politician, quoting current law, bringing up niche holidays, quoting results of research papers, etc, etc). The fact of the matter is that a company chat channel is best served as not being a police blotter,a history book,a memorial site, Wikipedia, the news feed of media outlet, or many other things that are still in realm of descriptive facts.
the guy in the yellow shirt is Jason Tankersley, founder of the Maryland Skinheads. The guy to his right in the mask is Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party (a neo nazi org).
No. It’s not a surprise the only other example you could pull is the other one that was pushed by the media relentlessly for years. Anything else? I keep hearing America is a white supremacist country with Nazis everywhere. Where are they? Shouldn’t I see them more often? Why were there so many minorities at Trump rallies who were welcomed and never harmed (myself among them)? Maybe it’s all just a narrative being pushed?
How many people like that do you think are bumping around having a meaningful impact on people's belief systems (versus just being ignorant in their own little bubbles)? I ask that because the level of fervor and fear around Nazis these days makes it sound like they're goose-stepping around in large groups.
> On Friday, January 8th, GitHub separated with an employee.
What an absurdly passive corporate euphemism for GitHub wrongfully firing one of their employees.