Atlassian defends firing engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

Correct, but as of writing this the two top comments were:

> Regardless of the fact that he probably is a jerk

and

> Does Atlassian's CEO realize that we all now know that he really is a rich jerk?

My comment was just meant to provide an insider perspective as a foil to those who had given theirs.

> The employee didn't call him a jerk. That was a straw-man from Atlassian.

We don't really have enough information to adjudicate either way, the article doesn't include a transcript of what she actually said or a transcript of what was being said in the courtroom with context (tribunalroom? boardroom? wherever the lawyer was talking).

It seems a bit pointless to hypothesise what might have happened then decide whether the imaginary actions were reasonable in the hypothetical scenario. If we're going to debate correctness there needs to be actual source material instead of this third-hand summary behind a paywall.

Reading this comment really shifted my perspective on this whole thing. I’m less upset about the firing and more upset that anyone ever has the ability to control the livelihoods of 19,000 people.

Maybe businesses shouldn’t get that big.

does this particularly qualify him as a jerk? or just that the employee takes all the risk in employment, and capitalism does wrong by rewarding owners and management vs workers?

that he's showing off how rich he is as the result of throwing these people on the street is just part of the system weve built

He might have been a top bloke then but in recent years he has had irreconcilable relationship breakdowns with his co-founder https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1m3ilhy/inside_... , wife and CFO https://www.afr.com/technology/mike-cannon-brookes-wins-inju... and most recently CTO https://www.afr.com/technology/atlassian-slashes-1600-jobs-a...

"Power doesn't corrupt; it reveals."

   -- Robert Caro

It's not the marination in money, it's the loss of constraint that fear brings.

Most of us aren't good people at heart.

What a wild cultural difference. Where do you live?

Over here in the USA, I don't think any customer service worker expects to be able to openly mock a customer and still have a job. I struggle to imagine the idea of calling my boss a wanker to his face and still expecting to have a job. To insult the CEO seems like it might as well be a resignation - if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company?

Let's bring this close to home. You hire someone to mow your lawn. They come in every week and mow your lawn. And you pay them. One day you walk by and they're talking with your neighbor and you overhear them saying you're a rich a-hole and a jerk, and an idiot. I mean not appropriate workplace behavior. Are they going to still have a job or would you prefer that someone else mows your lawn? I mean they just said nasty things about you- nbd. not something that should affect their status as your "employee".

Wow. I mean, come on, thats like the least offensive thing ever. At the most, maybe tell the manager to tell them thats not the “spirit” of the workplace, but firing for this is a step too far.

If the CEO wasn’t a jerk before he certainly is now.

My sides can't handle this much freedom. This can be hardly called an ad hominem.

There's no "free speech" at work [-places] in the USA. That's not what free speech means anyways. You can and will be absolutely be fired for saying things at work that are incompatible with your employer's opinions. I can't think of a faster way to get fired anywhere than insulting the person running the company you work for, private or public company, definitely in public.

The US has less free speech than some other countries. Especially now, but this was always true at corporations. In the US you can be fired for anything, including speech.

> Generally people in power will surround themselves with yes-men.

It's probably a CEO thing too - you have some vision for the company so you're going to hire people that enable that vision, not people that will question your every move.

> The most charitable interpretation is that most rich/powerful people are just as flawed as everyone else.

I can't believe that. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps at their private schools and then had to claw and fight as a legacy admission to the school their parents attended. From there they lived hand to mouth destitute with barely a million dollar loan from their parents!

Then there was the existential crisis of meeting with their college roommates' parents and their own parents' bridge buddies to secure millions in loans. It was their flawless vision and skill that let them be at the right place and the right time. If they wouldn't have had the foresight to fall out of a lucky vagina we would all be worse off.

You see they're scrappy go getters that started from the absolute bottom. They're infallible supermen whose greatest assets are their humility and unerring genius.

Can we agree that you are exaggerating? Not that you are totally wrong, but the flip side is, that ceos do need a different skillset. Workers who excel at the bureaucratic grind might not make the best leaders for lack of vision and empathy. Then again the concept of an empathic leader also seems to be foreign to many. It's hard to see anything with all the bullshit covering everything.

> Nobody is forced to use it

If you consider choosing to leave a job of a tool a choice that people can easily make, then sure. Otherwise, yeah a good portion of employees don't have any say in the software their managers choose, and either use it or get let go