Be Excellent To Each Other

Here's the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26868536

But in brief, Brendan Eich is a hardcode CompSci genius who doesn't agree with gay marriage, and made a donation to an anti-gay marriage lobby a few years back of $1,000. He recently became CEO of Mozilla and people didn't like that he didn't like gay marriage, and now he doesn't work there any more.

While I disagree with his thoughts on same-sex marriages, the idea that he lost his job because of a completely unrelated (un-job-related) opinion doesn't sit right with me at all.

Yes I suppose, if he was sacked for supporting gay marriage, there would be a large back lash.

Your beliefs should be irrelevant for the job you, within reason.

The board can decide to make him step down if his public life choices don't mesh with the company's image - that's their prerogative.

The CEO of a company represents that company (look at Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Alan Sugar etc) if the company doesn't want to be represented by a bigot, then I think that's fair enough.

Malc

The CEO is the figurehead of a company, as such I think it does affect his ability to do the job. If enough people think he's a horrible cunt then it will have a negative impact on the company.

edit: what malc said basically.

He wasn't sacked or stepped down because of his payments or beliefs, but more because of the commercial reaction to them. His beliefs, be they political or religious or whatever, were costing the company users and money.

That said, were they positive beliefs instead of discriminatory ones, there would likely have been a media backlash against those who were trying to oust him. So in essence it would only happen in beliefs were likely to be offensive and/or negative ones. Again, though, that depends on who you ask.

Thirdly, I want to punch my autocorrect for constantly inserting an apostrophe into 'were'.

Overall, he's a fuckwit, so screw him.

I feel like I have added nothing to this discussion.

So rather than add nothing - i'll throw this in here since i saw it earlier and its sorta related

The US Company 'Honey Maid' made a recent set of commercials which had the tagline 'This is wholesome' around family's and included a number of different groups of people (mixed ethnicity / sex / etc) and received some positive and negative feedback and have today put out a video about what they did with that feedback :

What if he had supported a proposal of racial segregation? Or the extermination of jews? They are just opinions, after all.

Would you want to work for such a man? Would you buy the products of his company?

He invented JavaScript. The Internet would be an incredibly different place without it. I would love to work for him - his opinions on marriage would make no difference to the amount I could learn from him. For all I know, my boss shares his opinions. I don't know because it's nothing to do with my job.

But what if Eich left his job because he supported gay marriage, but none of his colleagues did, and public opinion agreed with them? Would it still be acceptable then?

I can't help but feel that people are saying that this was an acceptable thing to happen just because they happen to disagree with his position. Discrimination is still discrimination, even when it's discriminating against someone you don't agree with.

It is - however what people tend to do when someone who is the public face of a company comes out with some unpopular views is associate them with the company and 'vote with their wallet' by not using their product or services.

If enough people do this then I would expect people to step down from being the public front of that company because thats what the shareholders would want (there is also a point where the story and information about the company stops being about that company and just about that one person or one view).

I dont think this was posted here but earlier in the week OkCupid started blocking users who connected using Firefox (or anything reporting to be Mozilla)

http://consumerist.com/2014/04/01/okcup ... -marriage/

I'm sure there have been cases in the past where someone who had an unpopular belief stepped down and was later 'vindicated' as times changed and their belief became more common (although i'm struggling for examples)

I think it's an easy one because of what it was about. It's something that is, bar old people and extremists, a pretty simple issue of equality.

I agree it would be a whole different kettle of monkeys if he were vilified in the States for, say, supporting abortion rights.

But even then, most media would probably support him. So it's mostly about supporting the media's agenda. Or is it? There's a very strong right wing media sector, but they don't seem to have as visible an impact. It seems to be that people are okay as long as what they support is inclusive as opposed to discriminatory.

Happy to be proved wrong with examples; just typing as I think.

I could well imagine that a religious company (Quakers perhaps?) might not want a gay marriage supporter to be their CEO I think most people would understand that, if not agree with it.

MAlc

*boycotts porridge*

I know! Imagine how much better is would be with a different language

Could be worse, he could've invented php.

The alternative at the time was based on Visual Basic, of course.

I think this is a pretty good explanation of why his actions made it impossible for him to be CEO of Mozilla

I don't really know much about them, I just picked them as they were the first religious based company I could think of.

Malc

Hitler built great roads and Mussolini made the trains run on time. Achievements don't cancel out unpleasant beliefs.

He hasn't been discriminated against. He worked for Mozilla since 2003. He made the donations in 2008. No-one cared then because he was just an employee. It's only when he became the CEO -- the public face -- of the organisation -- an organisation that employs gay people -- that his beliefs became an issue. Leaders are held to a different standard to others, partly for practical reasons (they weild more power) and partly for philosophical ones (as the boss, he's the ultimate company rep). That made his situation clearly untenable.


What? JavaScript predates VBScript by more than a year. The only alternative in 1995 was Java applets.

I still think the real idiots of this affair are the board. Eich's Prop 8 donation has been a simmering issue in the community for years now - they should have known that making him CEO would create a firestorm of bad publicity. Now they've lost a CTO, a CEO, and the inventor of JavaScript. Which seems less than optimal, especially as Firefox finds itself in a more marginal position these days.

Bring back jwz in our hour of need!

And unpleasant beliefs don't cancel out achievements (Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, asidedly).

I'm on my phone, so this is going to be quote hell.


There was certainly some VB-like thing that MS did. Maybe it was a bit later.

Jwz is way too busy running a nightclub/pizza restaurant and being fucked over by san Francisco politics and other gubermental shit to get over his hatred of computers enough to do more than release xscreensaver updates.

as far as I can make out he's awesome.