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Comment by paulddraper

7 hours ago

Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla for a $1k political donation.

Corporatist hellhole was your reaction to that too I imagine.

* Technically resigned, but there was significant pressure from Mozilla.

One of them is a worker drone with very little power, the other is the company's founder and CEO who is openly telling people that he believes a decent chunk of his employees don't deserve basic human rights. Quite a difference there, don't you think?

Software, especially open-source has an over-representation of people that identify as LGBTQ. Brendan openly signaled that he thought a good subset of his employees did not deserve the same rights as others. I don't see how he could have been an effective CEO after doing that.

  • It would've been a huge liability for Mozilla. An employer is not allowed to discriminate on sexuality. Fire any LGBTQ employee, and there's now a decent chance that Mozilla will now have to prove in court that it didn't have anything to do with the CEO openly hating gay people and creating a hostile work environment.

What a strange hill to stand on at this time. The overwhelming public backlash, boycotts, and resulting damage to Mozilla's brand left Eich with no practical choice but to step down.

  • “Overwhelming.” Eich made a modest donation to a ballot initiative, which got majority support by California btw.

    But in any case, your point is “it was damaging the company, therefore it makes sense to see them gone.” And there’s your parallel.

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    In reality, whether corporate agnosticism is right depends almost exclusively on your feelings of the underlying cause.