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Fascinatingly, this is not prima facie illegal in many US states! Wow. We live in a corporatist hell hole don’t we?


I'm curious to hear other people's perspectives on why they think they should be illegal?

For example: Suppose you hire someone to help you move furniture.

You can decide you dont like the color of their shoes and tell them to kick rocks.

You dont owe anyone a job, and labor for pay is a contractual agreement, nothing more.


Color of shoes is one thing, that’s fair game.

Buuut it’s probably better for society to not kneecap ordinary folks just for trying to run for office. Otherwise, you only get folks in office with deep pockets who can take the hit.


Sure, it's a dick move. But it's important to distinguish "shouldn't" from "legally can't".

Should you be racist? No. Should you call someone fat and ugly? No.

But personal liberty and freedom require we allow people to make choices and have opinions we don't personally agree with.


Personal liberty and freedom also require people to be free from economic coercion so that we can exercise those rights. Corporations have an asymmetric amount of power and we should stop anthropomorphizing them.



I think we're on the same page:

  > "a just society should generally tolerate the intolerant, reserving self-preserving actions for only when intolerance poses a concrete threat to liberty and stability."
Freedom of speech and self-expression applies to just that: words

If intolerance or hate poses a physical threat, or in any way infringes on the liberty and personal autonomy of others, a line has been crossed and must be swiftly dealt with.


I’m guessing you may not be from a minority and/or you live in a safe area? It’s a common occurrence for bigots to lob “words” at those people, in a way that they rightfully do not feel safe. On occasion, it escalates. What this means is that those people, for their own safety, have to act differently than they normally would. For example, gay/lesbian couples often have to pretend to be straight and can’t have a normal night out and display affection without being in danger.

In addition to the possibility of peril, there is also the psychological harm these interactions cause, and the living in fear.

It is only those who are safe who believe words from the intolerant are harmless. The intolerant count on that lack of knowledge to get away with “just asking questions”.

I hope you and your loved ones never have to go through any such interactions, they are harrowing, but I also urge you to have deep discussions with the recipients of them to understand a bit better why we should protect them instead of dismissing their concerns.


I spent years in prison and homeless, lol

Being denied housing or employment was not just a regular occurrence but the norm for me for a large portion of my life


It limits the ability for someone to run for office. Making it only so people who CAN afford to not work to run. Seems unfair.


Even if an employee has the authority to make a decision, executive leadership should still have the legal right to terminate someone if they disagree with that choice. Let's not make running a business illegal.


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.


"Brendan openly signaled that he thought a good subset of his employees did not deserve the same rights as others."

Why is this such a bad thing or such a big deal? We CONSTANTLY allow this to happen to identity groups that we feel its justified against. For example, our society (U.S.) thinks that the identity group of younger workers should not enjoy the same protections against age discrimination as the identity group of older workers.

Another example of this type of discrimination is that its OK to charge someone a 'cover' to enter a bar based on the immutable characteristic of their gender but not the immutable characteristic of their race. Society finds it normal, acceptable, and moral when Men are discriminated against as an identity class but when that same standard is applied to race? Well, we all know how that goes...


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.

—

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


What would be illegal about firing an employee who you think is causing your company to get a bad image?


> The lawsuit says Instacart violated a California law that bars companies from preventing their employees from becoming candidates for public office, among other complaints.


What would be the consequences of ensuring that only those with enough personal wealth to be able to go without a job while campaigning can run for office?


The thing about legality is that you kinda get to chose. In your case the companies' interests weight more than the people's interest.

For example in the US it's totally legal to spy on your employees with key loggers &co, in most of Europe it isn't


Well in normal countries…firing them for something they did outside work. In American vernacular, something something free speech.


You have the right to free speech. Your employer, like anyone else, has a right to not be associated with what you say.


She approached to ask for permission. If they had any reservations, that was the time to discuss them. She did what was expected of an employee. The fact that they blessed her and then went back on their word seems wrong.

Not a lawyer but my intuition says there might be some legal grounds here favouring the wife.

My take is someone even higher up found out later and did not like it. Now it’s entirely possible the individuals who gave their blessings were supportive of the party the wife was standing for, and the ones above them weren’t? Still whoever blessed the campaign did so in their capacity as a senior officer of the company. A total shit show nevertheless.

To the original commenter: sorry this happened to your wife. Hope she’s able to find another job that treats her right. Also congrats on the baby, hoping parenthood makes up for all of this and more. Sending the best of wishes your way.


AFAIK in every US state a company can fire you for any reason that’s not protected, and “we told you this was okay but changed our minds” is as good a reason as any in the law’s eyes.


In many US states a company can fire you even for protected reasons, and just fabricate a reason that isn't protected. Of course there are examples of people fighting this because it sometimes is a fight worth having, but the vast majority just have to accept being discriminated against and try to find another job.


I think Montana is the only state not "at-will"


Puerto Rico is technically not a state, but as part of the US, and counted in the statistics of the (federal) Department of Labor, I would also count it as a _not "at-will"_ state.


Correct. If she had something in writing, signed by a person with proper authority in the organization, she might be on stronger footing. But they could just find some other reason, or state "no reason" for her termination, and that's perfectly legal in an at-will employment.


If I ask my employer if I can start a YouTube channel and then after getting permission I start posting videos that make the company look bad, and showing how awesome competitor products were I wouldn't be surprised if I got fired. I wouldn't be fired for the account but what I did with it.


We don’t know if the person did any such thing (bad mouth the company or its products).

However, in the scenario they did, then the company would have grounds to fire them.


From what I heard when I was a patent examiner, there was a secure area of the patent office where these classified patents would be examined. I never knew where it was but there were rumors.


Especially since if you were driving in Sicily you must have your head on a swivel 100% of the time. There are probably multiple fiat pandas trying to drag race around you on the one lane road that somehow has traffic going both ways, lol.


I assume the tooling and process are such that it’s a one-time thing, as in, this is the most of these chips that we could ever possibly need for all time. They’re not going to be able to spin up the same fab and build the same chips the same way again in the future whether that’s 5 or 50 years in the future. Given the long lifespans of military systems, it’s maybe not so crazy.


And all it cost was 15+ years of life?


It doesn't cost life to eat modestly and live smaller than you can afford, you live life while doing this. Many think the best part of their life was when they were young and poor, its not a bad life to have low costs so you can live stress free.


Unless you think that the rich experiences of life are what make life worth living, that money grants you access to some of those richest experiences, and that you are more able to fully appreciate and incorporate those experiences into your personhood at a younger age.


I'd advise that person to change their attitude about that, because it's stupid and inhuman. Otherwise you get the absurd statement that average people in most countries, billions, a normal married guy in Vietnam, none of their lives are worth living.


No, that doesn't follow at all. Having less access to experiences of value is not remotely the same as having no value.


to add, SWE salaries are already significantly higher than everyone else.

I had the typical expense-level of a family of four, but I was living as a single adult.


I enjoyed every moment of it :).

I've traveled to 63 countries, I've had wonderful relationship with people across the globe, and love coding/building services.

I spent ~3 years living in Vietnam, having a more comfortable life than most Americans, while retaining US income levels.

My remote job enabled me to live with my parents longer, earning California-level pay in Florida, helping me save more money and have more time with them.


What exactly do you mean by “politicians bribe the populace for votes” ?


I mean there is pressure on democratic governments to increase benefits - welfare, disability, retirement etc, spending, beyond a sustainable amount. (However if AI delivers massive productivity gains its whats going to keep humans in the game (our political power))


Law firms are already limited by sales and marketing, and I believe the concept of ‘legal wizardry’ is misplaced. There’s almost nothing one law firm can do that another couldn’t do just as well. The only thing clients want are the ‘you don’t get fired for buying IBM’ factor and asking ‘how high’ when they say jump. The first is all based on cultivating an image and that’s just marketing and sales, and the second is just pure workaholic-fueled hustle.


The wizardry is not in knowing the law or the case law, especially in commercial law it's mostly selling their experience because the have seen it all before and if they're good they'll show you the ways you can get abused by the other party. History of negotiations and deals is the leverage they provide.


Labor law will be hit more by widespread use of robotics, but I can envision a much larger market for contract disputes and transactional law. Having AI in both sides doesn’t mean people won’t disagree about stuff.


I recently tried to install Samsung magician on Windows 11. Tried. It flat out doesn’t work, tried some basic remediation and internet searching to figure it out, but could not get it to run at all. Completely nonfunctional. Seems to be an issue with some electron configuration or command line args. I gave up because it wasn’t worth more effort, but I believe it when I read that the software is a dumpster fire.


Only if it’s in this district, it has almost no weight in another district. And being unpublished makes it a flimsy argument even in this district.


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