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comment by Meriadoc
Meriadoc  ·  3923 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Brendan Eich steps down as Mozilla CEO

He wasn't forced to resign, and he didn't peacefully oppose. The company, who's main product relies on a userbase to be able to use search engines which they are paid a (very, very small) amount to point towards Google by default. People were outaged at him and threatened to stop using the product.

Now they weren't outraged because he opposed gay marriage, but because he actively donated to a proposition to limit the rights of people. That was a political act, not a political belief, that relied on discrimination. Having a person like that as a head of a public company is not good, especially because it calls into question if he can reasonably separate his work from his personal biases. Would he not hire someone for being gay? Do we know if he have other discriminatory views? How can you know? And as a company, if you are paying a man, and he is using his own money to vote against gay marriage, you're indirectly doing the same as the company. Your name is attached to him.

Now on top of all this, he well and truly proved he had no right leading this company. He could have very easily lied and put this all to rest. He could have apologized for donated to the cause, said 2008 was a very long time ago, and made a simple sign of good will; but instead, he showed that his political acts and bigoted beliefs were far more important to him than leading the company. It simply didn't mean that much to him clearly. So he can fuck right off and go talk about the dangers of gays all he likes now, if he so pleases.





pseydtonne  ·  3922 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think this connection is being made clear enough: that he was willing to lose business for his company for his beliefs.

We can all have our opinions. Nevertheless, a CEO does not get to hide from being the public face of a company. That's most of the point of the job: you trade ever being off the clock for large sums of money.

There is a reason most people burn out from being a CEO after a year or two. A regular manager or even a director has more accountability than the people below, but even they get time away from the pager. The CEO's job is being a 24-7 pager.

Speaking of which, does anyone have that list of businesses the Koch head brothers run?

user-inactivated  ·  3923 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
Meriadoc  ·  3923 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Obviously this is true. But it still shows that his discrimination was more important to him than running Mozilla, and that shows that he truly wasn't right for the job, as many people are crying out that he would be great and this is minor. Clearly it is not. Lying would not make him better as a CEO, we just wouldn't have known he is as awful as he is.

user-inactivated  ·  3922 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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Meriadoc  ·  3922 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That is correct. He wasn't suitable for the position in either way. He had no way out because of his own actions. He's either a liar, or he's a bigot. Neither make him suitable as the head of such an open and mission-based company.