Seems odd in his tweet he noted he was unable to get funding in the valley for Brave. The guy created JavaScript and was a creator of Firefox. Don't get it ..as JS alone has contributed like how much to world economies, as well to almost every HN reader's wallet/bank.
Creating a language 20 years ago doesn't mean you're responsible for everything the language produced. If javascript didn't exist something different would have taken it's place and produced just as much value.
Microsoft tried with VBScript, but JS was fit enough to survive, and no one wanted a second language after it. No point in speculating, we know JS matters. Asserting it could have been Blub means nothing. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1905155.
Also, I kept working on JS, while doing other things. I worked on JS in both Netscape and Ecma TC39 through late 1997, then co-founded mozilla.org with jwz and others. For mozilla.org I was chief architect, but I still kept working on the Mozilla JS engine, SpiderMonkey, adding features such as getters and setters that became important in 2005 due to use by Microsoft's Live Maps.
Live Maps emulated the IE DOM in Firefox via those same getter and setter extensions that I'd added over the years since 1997. In IE, Live Maps of course used the native DOM. This left Safari and Opera failing unless they reverse engineered the getter and setter extensions from SpiderMonkey in Firefox quickly. It took them about a week, and then Live Maps worked in Safari and Opera too.
This shows how quickly browsers can evolve, based on innovation in just one browser's engine, even in the wake of a monopoly period of stagnation.
Ubiquity doesn't equate to profitability. In fact, most of the big internet Startups (Twitter comes instantly to mind) lose and money and likely always will.
It doesn't matter - it's legal, protected political speech in donation form. There's nothing wrong with having differing opinions about things; you can disagree as much as you like and donate as much as you want to counter it.
Appeal to legality isn't proof of moral superiority. Racial segregation was also legal via Jim Crow laws, and people still hold the political opinion it should still be despite society changing and moving forward.
It is also not censorship nor is it illegal to terminate employment with someone based on their political actions.
Only in enacting company-wide policies to coerce political participation. Terminating employment for political actions in an at-will employment state like California is still legal.
From your article:
>On the contrary, political beliefs or views are not a specifically protected category under California's discrimination laws. Nothing in either of the two labor code provisions above directly addresses discrimination or retaliation on the basis of expressed political views. Nor does the First Amendment serve to provide any further guidance. With limited exceptions, the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of "freedom of speech" applies only to government action and not private employers/employees. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 prohibits political affiliation discrimination against federal employees only.
That's a lawyer's marketing blog selling his services to sue for wrongful termination. The labor code § 1101 they cite is the same thing: it applies only to employers using threatening to terminate in order to coerce political activity, not actually terminating someone for political actions.
This is an important distinction. It is illegal for an employer to threaten all employees with termination if they do not vote on X, for example. It is not illegal for an employer to terminate an employee for taking a specific political action.
Mozilla did not threaten to terminate in order to coerce action, they terminated for actions already taken place, making it legal.
> it applies only to employers using threatening to terminate in order to coerce political activity, not actually terminating someone for political actions.
So your idea is that it's not okay to threaten to fire an employee over political actions, but it is okay to actually fire someone over political actions? No worker protections protects against both. Read it closely:
> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through _or_ by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
It prohibits both discharge and threat of discharge. The argument that Mozilla did not threaten to discharge Eich, and thus discharging Eich because of his political activity is not relevant. Both are prohibited.
I didn't make the laws - this is what they are. GP is making the appeal to legality which is wrong in this case.
The law is to prevent employers from extorting all employees into taking political action under threat of termination. Terminating a single employee for their past political actions is different from extorting all employees into action.
> The law is to prevent employers from extorting all employees into taking political action under threat of termination.
Not incorrect, but an incomplete description of these worker protections. It is also prevents employers from threatening employees into refraining from taking political action, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."
> Terminating a single employee for their past political actions is different from extorting all employees into action.
Terminating an employee for their political action makes it crystal clear to the remaining employees that they need to refrain from that political action if they want to keep their jobs - and that violates worker protections.
Again, you seem to be under the impression that these protections only exist to prevent employers from making their employees carry out a political action. That's not the case, they also prohibit influencing employees from refraining taking political action. Firing an employee from donating to a ballot initiative is a very explicit way to get employees to refrain from donating to said ballot initiative.
And yet again, I as well as other commenters have provided you with analysis from law groups that explain that Mozilla firing Eich over his political donations would have violated these worker protections.
This is becoming ad nauseum. You're missing the point about how the law applies differently to company policy and actions, but my guess is that you desperately want them to be the same hence your repeated arguments and confirmation bias. The lawyer blogs you and another commenter linked to are trying to sell services to sue employers and are not valid analyses.
> This is becoming ad nauseum. You're missing the point about how the law applies differently to company policy and actions
Where are you getting this idea that this law only applies to company "policy". Reread the protections:
> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through _or_ by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
Where does it say that this is only prohibited by policy? It says "No employer shall..." not "No employer shall implement policy to...". The law does not apply differently to company "policy" versus "actions".
How is policy of terminating employees who donate to certain ballot propositions not amount to coercing political participation? It's directly coercing employees against donating with the threat of losing their jobs.
How do you know that it is Mozilla's company policy? That is the distinction based on the law that you cited. Firing someone for a reason in an at-will employment state does not suddenly make that reason part of the company policy.
Because they fired an employee specifically for their political donations. Your claim that firing employees for their political activity is ok as long as it's not a company policy and only one-off instances is not what law groups are saying. Here's one that addresses Eich's case specifically: https://shawlawgroup.com/2014/05/california-law-protects-emp...
> Mr. Eich’s situation is somewhat analogous to the one addressed in Nava v. Safeway, Inc., an unpublished decision of the California Court of Appeal. There, the court found that an employee had a viable wrongful termination claim because Safeway allegedly fired him for opposing gay marriage. Safeway claimed to have discharged Nava for taking down a sign he considered to be pro-gay. Nava claimed he was fired for his political beliefs.
> Eich therefore likely had the right to contribute to Proposition 8 as a protected political activity.
I'm not claiming anything, just explaining the law you cited.
Being fired for your political actions is entirely legal in at-will employment states like California.
The law you cited does not apply, except to companies that use company policy to _coerce_ political action from employees.
Firing someone for their actions does not make it company policy.
Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by adding politics into their company policy. Mozilla was saying that for that particular position at their company, the employee's political actions were grounds to be terminated.
I'm not sure how many more ways I can explain this, but that's why what happened is legal, despite the lawyers opinion you googled.
I understand what you're saying, but the point is you're wrong. A company cannot go around firing any employees that donates or otherwise supports a candidate from a particular party, for example. The protections read:
> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity. [1]
This not only prohibits employers from coercing employers to adopt a particular stance, it also prohibits employers from influencing employees to refrain from adoption or following any lines of politician action or activity.
How could firing an employee for political donations not be considered influencing an employee to refrain from a particular line of political action. Specifically, in Mozilla was influencing employees to refrain from the political action of donating in favor of Proposition 8.
> Mozilla was not coercing employees to take political action by adding politics into their company policy. Mozilla was saying that for that particular position at their company, the employee's political actions were grounds to be terminated.
Again, this is not just about specifically telling employees to support a particular cause in its company policy. Employers coercing employees to refrain from adopting or following political action is prohibited too. And in this case, it is pretty explicit what political action Mozilla was trying to make employees refrain from: donating to Proposition 8.
And again, people that study law say that firing Eich for his donations would have been illegal as I provided above.
Both are prohibited, "...through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment". It's illegal to do influence employees through means of discharge or through threat of discharge. Firing someone for political activity and threatening to fire someone for political activity are both in violation of these employment protections.
You're cherry picking the statement by quoting it out of context, which shows the law only applies to one (coercion):
> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
> No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees...
So it's not just coercion, it's prohibiting influence (as well as attempts at either). And it also describes the manner of influence that is prohibited:
> through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment.
It is prohibited to influence employees through discharge or loss of employment or through threat of discharge or loss of employment. Both threatening to fire someone and actually firing someone over political activity are prohibited.
And lastly it describes what the employer is prohibited from influencing their employers to or to refrain from doing:
> to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
Using the above to get employees to follow a political action to to refrain from following a political action is prohibited.
> You also dodged the question.
Because the question is inane and you know it. My whole point was that both threatening to fire Eich and actually firing Eich for donations violated these protections, so this distinction is irrelevant. But I'll entertain you: threatening to discharge someone over political activity is when an employer threatens and employee to fire someone for taking or refusing to take a political action. Discharging someone over political activity is when they are actually fired.
And now it's my turn to give you an inane question of my own: When the law prohibits both threatening to discharge someone for political activity and actually discharging someone for political activity, is trying to justify firing someone for political actions by saying, "it's okay they actually discharged him for political activity, they didn't threaten to discharge him" an effective approach?
> Mozilla contends Eich voluntarily stepped down; if true, of course, there is no legal issue.
The article was using the Eich example to illustrate the case law it was discussing. It did not state that there was a legal issue in Eich's case, merely hinted that Mozilla's contention might be false and, if so, there was illegal behavior. But the primary purpose of its inclusion in the article was to elucidate the relevant issues, not to argue for or against what happened in that instance.
Here's an equally correct example invoking Godwin's law.
>Why yes I do donate lots to the ANP.
>Why? Well they align with my love for Hitler, racial purity and fascism.
>What do you mean the board things this'll make jewish employees uncomfortable?
>A wider range of customers/employees won't like it either?
>So what. It's legal, protected political speech in donation form!
Nobody gives a fuck. It's equally legal to not want to associate with such a person.
Whether it's a racist or someone that wants to ban gay marriage, etc i wouldn't to work for them, with them or fund them.
And guess what.
I don't expect the Mormon church or whatever to put part of a gay couple or an advocate or donor for related stuff in an executive position either.
You're right, it absolutely is. The corollary to this is that no one has to hire him/work with him; they're allowed to fire him for his legally-protected speech. I don't agree with how it was handled either, but we must protect their freedom to act as they choose as much as Mr. Eich's freedom to speak as he chooses.
You've been downvoted; I sympathize. While you stick to "speech", I think you miss two things, one about speech and the other from a different area of law:
1. Free speech is not just a U.S. 1st Amendment issue, and who cares what else goes wrong at subsidiary levels. From the Committee for the First Amendment (Humphrey Bogard had to disavow under HUAC pressure; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_First_Amendm...) on, depending on whose ox was being gored, both left and right have decried "chilling effects" of less than federal censorship effects on free speech. Cory Doctorow had a good piece on this recently:
Cory covers the full space, including corporate censorship of dissidents of all political stripes, corporate capture via monopolies and market super-powers, etc. Recommended.
2. California has labor law from the New Deal era, which protects employees from being fired or demoted due to political affiliation, participation, or any action including speech:
Respectfully, with full benefit of hindsight, do you think it would have been better if you had stayed at Mozilla, forcing them to either fire you (which would have been illegal) or learn to deal with dissent? I ask not to criticize but to strategize.
Thanks for standing up and fighting these good fights.
Oh, sure, until it ends up in the situation where you have to prove your perfect ideological allegiance to the Party in order to have employment. It's already the case that you can't publicly post things without getting dox'd and fired for a lot of opinions that were 100% the norm not that long ago.
You may call it progress, but the progression is towards totalitarian liberalism; your gay marriage is really not going to make that experience that much better once they find some place where you're not faithful enough. For example, what if you're a white gay male?
If I remember correctly he didn't get fired for just not supporting gay marriage, he got fired for donating to some bill that was trying to prohibit gay marriage. That's quite the difference.
That's an entirely disingenuous way of putting this situation. Mozilla's profits are NOT the salaries of its employees - the profits are AFTER payroll. It was Eich's personal money, not Mozilla's money, and there is absolutely zero implication that Mozilla itself had the same opinions as its CEO - nor should there be.
If you draw that inference, it is because you're acting as part of Cancel Culture, which is totalitarian liberalism in action.
He was forced to resign (the Mozilla board was actually in favor of having him stay on) for having donated to a group supporting an anti-gay-marriage bill 3 years before he became CEO. And, as far as I am aware, not giving any further indication of support in the intervening 3 years.
Hi jcranmer, please be careful. Prop 8 passed in 2008, almost six years before 2014 when I was CEO. Also, neither of us can say (for different reasons) whether I was forced, and if so, by whom. Mozilla is clear that it did not fire me, nor could it have legally:
I don't see that as being very different. Why is him exercising his protected right to political speech in donation form subject to your judgement when it doesn't have any impact on the quality of the software he gives you for free?
I think that it was less about the end-user as it was about the gay people working for Mozilla who felt uncomfortable working with a CEO who took the actions Eich took in his past. One cannot know peoples' private thoughts or biases, so folks often take what ever signal they can get.
You're seriously likening the inability of gay people to go through the motions of a marriage ceremony to children being subjected to slave labour? That's the falsest equivocation I have ever read.
I'm comparing avoiding a company because of human rights issues with avoiding another company because of human rights issues. Its understandable for a well adjusted person to not want to fund either of these things.
>You're seriously likening the inability of gay people to go through the motions of a marriage ceremony to children being subjected to slave labour? That's the falsest equivocation I have ever read.
I'm not too familiar with the US and it's laws but doesn't marriage have an impact on legal matters, benefits and taxation?
I know for example that here I can't get a higher loan based on a higher percentage of my income because i'm single and the bank is limited in how it can lend out the money it lends from a state entity.
More specifically, he was asked to step down when it came to light that he donated to proposition 8. This proposition was passed. So by the logic of Eich's firing the majority of Californian voters would be excluded due to their political beliefs - a rather interesting take on inclusion.
I'm a little bit on the fence about Eich's firing as well, even though I wholeheartedly disagree with his stance on same-sex marriage.
But your comparison is not very apt.
This proposition was passed. So by the logic of Eich's
firing the majority of Californian voters would be
excluded due to their political beliefs
Big difference between "voting for" and "funding."
That's why we have secret ballots. So you can vote without fear of repercussions.
For better or for worse, once you have a C-level title, you are seen as representing the company and emblematic of its values. As you move up that ladder, things change.
I can't think of too many corporations where the executives' political activity wouldn't be grounds for some scrutiny.
I'm sure we can come up with some pathological examples where very few people would complain an an executive's ouster, such as an executive who supported openly Nazi candidates and figures. And I'm sure we can come up with much trickier and ambiguous scenarios, such as an executive who donated to a politician who then, in turn, opposed gay rights. When it comes to our two-party system, even with our current level of strife, very few would like to see somebody fired simply for voting for the "wrong" one of the two.
Read more about his background and you'll see why. Cancel culture is definitely real. (There was a post here from WSJ the other day about it - wasn't great since it was more of a whinge, but there are some legitimate examples of "cancel culture" happening, and they are increasing in the tech industry).
tl;dr he was fired for having conservative beliefs, and nobody in the valley would touch him. So he went a founded Brave instead.
And of course, once I got Brave started outside the valley, we got "funders" in the valley to invest, including many top VC firms (who now constitute <10% of all funds we raised to date so don't switch horses to argue we are VC-controlled).
Legality and morality are very often unrelated; in this case, the implication is not that he did something illegal, but that he is an asshole for spending his money for the purpose of making other people’s lives worse to the benefit of nobody.
Personally, I think that’s a perfectly good reason for not giving him more money.
“Cancel culture” is many people (many of whom matter to investors in one way or another) stating that they also feel that that is a bad place to put money.
I did not know that. It is odd though. I used to remember no one cared what about your Views as long as you were good at what you did. CS was as close to meritocracy as it could have been. It is a shame.
Strange, I don't remember any Mozilla employees organizing and rallying for political causes in the 1990s, and Mozilla was certainly around, if not the dominant platform at the time. Gay rights was no less of an issue then than it is today, it simply hadn't been popularized by the media and endorsed by politicians and corporations.
Personally I find it abhorrent that anyone was so quick to rally against Brendan Eich. If we keep going down this path, all we'll be left with are people that change their opinions on a whim and flip flop on issues so quickly that they resemble politicians. I'd rather have a good leader I don't agree with on every issue, than a poor leader who's trying to pretend to be on the right side of whatever political stance is in-vogue.
Part of his job was to acquire and retain employees, allocate capital, and engage in public relations.
Spending his personal money on fucking over other people (with no real benefit to the world), many of whom worked for or could work for him, is a bad sign about those parts of his job.
(That may not be an argument for the board to fire him, of course, but it is an answer to “how good is he at his job?”)
Well, how is him spending his personal money anyone's business but his own? Now, you could make an argument that his sort of mob mentality is why people now skulk around behind various trusts, llcs and PACs to any kind of political work other people may dislike.
To your point, I guess it really depends on how you define his set of responsibilities, which is a valid point to make. I thought of something very limited ( writing lines of code ).
From that perspective.. why does it matter who he donates to and why. Is it not up to him to decide?
He was the CEO, so it was much more than coding. For a regular software engineer (ie, no direct reports) I think it’s a very different calculus.
And it _is_ up to him to decide how to spend his money. But if he spends that money on things that deeply impact other people, it is more than fair for other people to care.
CS was never close to meritocracy (I'd argue that finance is/was historically far closer to meritocracy than CS ever was). Eich was raised in the Valley, got a Master's in CS before he had gotten a job, and was a millionaire and investing in Silicon Valley real estate before he had been working for ten years (he never started a company, and only created Javascript after something like eleven). There are people working on life-saving infrastructure in CS who've been working for forty years who don't have a million.
Also, "your Views" are different from "your Actions." If I think you're ridiculous, so what? If I think you're so ridiculous that I pay people money to promote a law that would increase what you have to pay in taxes, suddenly everyone cares, and rightfully so!
I was never a millionaire from real estate before I'd been working ten years. Are you perhaps misinformed by someone who was at SGI and exaggerated rumors they heard? I made more off of SGI options than I did by ten years in from real estate, and I never flipped. I've owned the same properties for over 30 years.
I agree with you that many fine people do life-saving or otherwise important work for far less. But facts matter, and I'm here to correct the record.
P.S. I was raised in Pittsburgh and Maryland as much as in the Valley.
This says you were a millionaire before you'd been working ten years, and as far as I'm aware it's fairly accurate? It's a profile of you that happened long before you were controversial. I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate, just that you also had invested in real estate (I assumed that it was obvious that the former was probably a precursor to the latter, but I guess not).
It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully? I had more upside from SGI's IPO than from valley real estate (which was good too, but I never flipped). Yeesh!
It does not say "due to real estate". How hard is this to read accurately and relate on HN faithfully?
Sir, the last comment was stating that I was trying to avoid implying that it was due to real estate.
> I didn't claim that you were a millionaire because you had invested in real estate
> just that you also had invested in real estate
I'm not accusing you of getting rich off of real estate.
I'm just saying that "investing in real estate" is something that requires a substantial volume of money (as you said, a nest egg): it was a way to show that you were well off, not a way to imply you were a slumlord or something.
I misread your comment, sorry. But I must say real estate was cheap in the ‘80s, especially after downturns. Remember the crash of ‘87 aka Black Monday? Yikes, I’m old.
I can see that ( finance-wise ). Tbh, I did not know there were this many female bank CEOs until I just checked a moment ago. I was pleasantly surprised.
As for meritocracy, in the 90s no one cared who my online persona was. My persona was about as eye-grabbing as the one I use here. My contributions, for lack of a better term, were dismissed for being crap, which I eventually understood. I think people miss out on that.
As for your point actions and views, I respectfully disagree. You only seem to separate them, because you dislike his views, the resulting words and would like them not to be translated into action. I can understand that, but it sounds .. convenient? You are free to talk about stuff, but the moment you get politically active you get shunned? It seems very backwards to me.
Not just banking! Despite not being seen as "Computer Science," the technical areas of finance are also highly diverse. If you can make money, someone will be willing to give you $250,000 a year to fuck off and play with implementing trading algorithms, regardless of who you are. It's pretty sweet.
I don't know who or what your online persona is, either: I'm still talking to you, and it's still an interesting conversation. There are still places to play anonymously or pseudonymously, and they usually have more people than they did during the 1990s. People generally tend to forego that, though.
As for your point actions and views, I respectfully disagree. You only seem to separate them, because you dislike his views, the resulting words and would like them not to be translated into action. I can understand that, but it sounds .. convenient? You are free to talk about stuff, but the moment you get politically active you get shunned? It seems very backwards to me.
Think of it in terms of separation of church and state, right? I can call you a sinner who's going to hell all I'd like, but it's unconstitutional and wrong on many levels to try and take away something from you that I have no plans to stop partaking in. (I think Eich is an atheist so this is just for the matter of example; I don't know why he didn't support it, he doesn't seem open about his reasoning and as such I'm not going to try and conjure up some reasoning for him.)
I'm not passionate about what Eich did or did not support, because frankly I have no idea why he funded what he funded, but if you look at it in terms of taxes, he's a very well off guy trying to increase the tax burden of a bunch of people (his coworkers/later-employees, no less) solely because he disagrees either morally or pragmatically that they should be able to get married. (Tax benefits to marriage are controversial in the first place, but definitely something incredibly beneficial.)
This country was founded on violent response to moralistic taxes; it's in its blood to care about increasing taxes arbitrarily, and the Prop 8 ads his cash helped fund were absolutely aimed at blurring the separation between church and state, even if that wasn't his intention (though he never denied it was, so we'll never know).
It is a good argument. Tbh, I am struggling a little with forming a counter-argument.
It is a little odd. I think I see action as just an extension of speech. This is probably a reason I hesitate when anyone says you can talk about something, boy you better not, say, actually exercise your theoretical right to assemble.
I think I will need to think about it a little more.
I don't agree. While things might be changing,I know for a fact that on my journey, I went from having no degree or experience, to becoming a senior engineer at one of the largest companies in the world, solving some of the hardest problems in the world, with nothing more than luck, a computer, and a passion for learning. And I know many other people in the same boat, which I hear is not the norm in other professions.
So, take that anecdotal evidence as you will. But I think I'm not the only one, and a lot of people will disagree with you. We're part of one of the only professions in the world where you can enjoy a very high standard of living in a white-collar profession with little to no expectation of having academic credentials.
So being fired for holding a particular view is okay now? Regardless of your views, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of corporations having a de facto role in enforcing public morality, through who they chose to hire and fire. People okay with this have obviously learned nothing from the days where you could be fired for being gay. Other way around? Nothing wrong with it according to some people. This whole trend is worrying.
Having said that - corporations do have a right to hire and fire who they please. But it is important to at least acknowledge "cancel culture" as a legitimate and immature trend that is happening. Often the pressure to fire somebody comes from the outside, not from within.
To be clear, it wasn't that he was "anti-gay" it was that he donated $1000 to Prop 8 in 2008, a California Proposition that made gay marriage illegal in CA until Obergefell struck it down 7 years later.
This is important because it is a clear delineation between "privately disagreeing but allowing individuals their freedom" and "actively campaigning to take away rights from Mozilla employees and users".
We do have a brood of reactionaries attempting to blur that distinction like they always do, but there are plenty of conservatives who do not share that particular bias.
I have met plenty of bigots on both sides of politics. But immediately trying to call me out on labeling this man a conservative by saying he is actually a bigot is, ironically, bigotry itself.
__jal's comment was ambiguous. I think they may have been saying the opposite: that not all conservatives are bigots, and that it's unfair on conservatives to brand bigotry as conservatism.
