There’s a weird implicit conservancy in tech circles around the dictatorial nature of corporate leadership.

It stems from this weird externalization of corporate decision making that just turns everything that happens at large companies into the machinations of the unknowable machine of capital.

“Of course they were fired, they protested in a way that disrupted the business, if the business is disrupted the machine must correct itself, and it did so by releasing the corporate anti-bodies of leadership to fire the disruptive element. Thus the machine is corrected. This is all logically sound, and thus impervious to moral inquisition.”

Hacker news is full of people LARPing as corporate crisis management officers, or counsels for the defense. Every post you get about “company caught grinding up babies to fuel forever-chemical cancer machine” will get a ton of posts by people arguing that actually it’s a net positive for the world and how could anyone be against such amazing innovation?

I agree with you. People are gleeful and smug about the firing. I’m proud of the people who stood up against a contract that will only bring death and destruction to the world and I am ashamed of those that smugly revel in their firing.

Yeah, I don’t understand a place in the world where I fit that allows that kind of shitty behavior. I have a direct line to the founder of the place I work at. He gives a shit and listens when I give voice to a problem.

Isn’t that called “capitalism gone bad”? The principles of capitalism and that story about competitiveness is good but in a global economy where monopolies distort the market, by reflection you’ll have bending of rules which thrives thanks to a political class that is driven not by ideals, but rather personal interests and ego. Those that have the poet will abuse it. I’m not surprised at all. What is worse is that peoples brains are becoming numb thanks to social media. We are not able to think for ourselves anymore.

Spend 10 mins on Blind, and you’ll see that once anonymous, people tend to be far more right-wing than you’d like to think.

I completely support their right to protest, having attended many myself, as does the constitution. However, they were on the clock and on private property. They should have organized a protest outside, during off hours, if they wanted to protect their jobs. Circulating a petition wouldn’t have been a bad idea either.

Edit: OP shared this interview in a thread further down. It’s a first-hand account from a former employee. The employee stated that they were warned several times about pending arrest and violation of workplace behavior. I respect their commitment to their cause, but it was with full understanding that they were arrested and subsequently terminated.