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Yelp Employee Posts Open Letter About Cost Of Living And Low Wages, Gets Fired (modernreaders.com)
whoever57 writes: Talia Jane was employed by Yelp in San Francisco but after posting in an open letter to Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, that her after tax income of $8.15 was insufficient to provide basic necessities like heating, food, etc., she discovered that she had been fired. How did she discover? Her work email stopped working. Even her boss did not know what had happened. Stoppelman denies having a hand in her firing, making the claim "(There are) two sides to every HR story so Twitter army please put down the pitchforks," replying to the criticism. He didn't personally turn off her email, perhaps he did not even make the decision to fire her, but as the person who ultimately sets the culture and policies of the company, his claim to not be directly responsible is unconvincing.
I truly hope none of us here will express amazement that someone who criticized their employer, and blamed them for what are essentially her own poor life choices, got fired.
This is how the real world works, jr. You are not owed, or entitled, to shit.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This has been covered elsewhere, and never with so much horseshit bias. No editorialization should be needed for news, which is why no one likes Bennet Hasslehoff either.
Didn't we reject this nonsense about the time Glenn Beck refused to deny raping and murdering that girl?
And I am sure it had nothing to do with her getting alcohol delivered to her while at work or bragging about making sexual jokes to the companies twitter account. It's either quite a coincidence or she knew she was in trouble and wrote the letter to try and make the company look worse.
Why is anyone making barely above minimum wage trying to live in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. without even getting a roommate to split the rent? Also, the low temperature doesn't get below freezing so there's no need to ever run a heater. Yes, that means you'll probably want an additional heavy blanket to sleep under, but you're not going to die.
This is a known medical condition :SMACSS
Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome.
Researchers are still searching for a cure!
Even if it's not in the employment agreement, California is an at-will state. You can be fired for not sounding cheerful enough when you greet your CEO in the elevator, if he so desires and is that petty.
Imagine all the people...
Thanks for that scoop /. !!
Sent from my ENIAC
https://medium.com/@taliajane/...
I was told Iâ(TM)d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department.
I'm just as heartbroken, that poor girl.
What a crock. Sure you don't work for Yelp's HR department?
Here's the post in question.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The person is making $10 per hour (before taxes) and working in San Francisco. That's a bad combination right there. I wouldn't work in San Francisco unless I was making $30+ per hour.
Talia Jane was actually fired 4 years ago, but they forgot to stop her paychecks and email. They just "fixed the glitch".
Her red Swingline was also confiscated.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
You can be fired for not sounding cheerful enough when you greet your CEO in the elevator, if he so desires and is that petty.
*cough* Steve Jobs *cough*
I wish we were responding to her actual letter, rather than your portrayal of her letter, and your spin on the situation.
I'm going to respond to her letter, rather than to you.
===
Starting wages for her position at Yelp are nearly $10/hour over minimum wage. Assuming she worked a full 40 hour week, she was making a minimum of $35,360/year.
That yields, given California and federal tax rates:
$680.00 = Weekly Gross Pay
$086.59 = Federal Withholding
$042.16 = Social Security
$009.86 = Medicare
$017.79 = California
$006.12 = SDI
$517.48 = Net Pay
$26,908.96/year gross income
Accept her "80% goes for rent" number as fact. That yields:
$21527.168 / year
= $1793.93 / month
This is a quite high rent, and implies she's living alone, with no roommates. We'll get back to that.
$5,381.79 = non-rent disposable income/year
$448.48 / month
$103.49/week
This is low, but it's livable. She does not qualify for SNAP (food stamps), even after income deductions: she is not below 200% of the federal poverty level. In other words: 30% of people live on less than that.
Let's revisit the rent.
A ForRent.com search (not the best site, but representative) shows 6 apartments in Emeryville -- a nice area, near Berkeley, but across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, for less than $800/month. All of them near public transportation; 2 of them have pools.
That's without taking a roommate. So she could have halved her monthly rent, if she was willing to live somewhere *not actually in San Francisco*.
That's another $993.93/month in her pocket... ...which covers everything she complains about in her letter, plus adds some spending money. She'd have more if she split the rent on a more expensive apartment with a roommate.
= $229.36/week
+ $103.49/week
= $332.85/week
I'm not feeling very sympathetic right now.”
It's interesting then, that we AGREE she would have gotten fired over her essay embarrassing her employer, but the CEO smerts that it's not the case at all, and goes off on a tangent about how swell and sensitive he and Yelp are...
I would have found a way to supplement my income. I see people selling Yelp 'reputation management' services all the time, being an inside /(wo)?man/ on that would be profitable indeed.
In my contract it is forbidden that i discuss my salary with anybody, especially in public in connection with my employer.
I read Talia's essay and thought it was very well written.
You, sir or madam, clearly do not have an English degree.
Her essay used sentence fragments, run on sentences, split infinitive, improper grammar, and a host of other follies which one would not expect of someone with a degree in English Literature.
I would post a link to her actual essay (in reality, nothing more than a blog posting on a rather unsurpassing blog platform company), but to do so would drive traffic to the site, and I cannot force myself to do that in good conscience.
A better written response, with link to the letter
Here: https://medium.com/@StefWillia...
I refuse to link the letter in question directly. It's crap.
You're a human being. You're owed food, shelter and healthcare. Otherwise wtf is the point of civilization? Why shouldn't I just sell your organs on the open market or crack your skull open and feast on the goo? Stop acting like dog eat dog is just how it should be because you got yours (fuck me). We band together as a species to make life better for all of us. You're more vulnerable than you think you are. Wake up before it's too late.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The economics of this is something the employer should take seriously; if you're paying your employees so poorly that they literally have nothing to lose by calling you out, then it's gonna happen.
A lot of people (sock puppets?) seem to be making this the story of a brat who can't make good choices, but I see it as the story of how a young American worker's enthusiasm and determination got her ground into hamburger. It's a warning to other young would-be Yelp workers to steer clear lest they suffer too. That's the only way these soulless corporations will ever feel the sting and be forced to raise wages.
This article could be an interesting one to use to model different moderation models. There is a real mix of conflicting moderation so far with insightful mixed with flame bait and over rated mixed with interesting.
Could be a good example to work with putting in a "contentious" filter.
as a small business owner i can tell you all yelp is a disgusting piece of shit, worse than facebook, all they want is money for basically not removing you from any and all search results, they have no interest in helping consumers find what theyre looking for.
I agree completely: people should think clearly about cost of living and desired standard of living relative to salaries when choosing where to work. Then, when corporations can't hire the workers they want at the salary they are offering, they will increase their salary offers. Talia's problem is that she obviously didn't do that.
I'm just saying it's what WILL happen.
Indeed, history teach us that people revolt when they do not have enough to eat. But on the other hand, I cannot think about a democratic system been thrown away this way.
Therefore we are stuck with this alternative: either convince people to vote for someone that will fix the problem, or convince people the system is not democratic (which may be the case or not: what matters is how it is perceived) and they should revolt.
This is very true. I understand why in the 90s, companies chose to be there - 80% of the world's VCs were there, and so that was where companies got started. Plus if you were a semiconductor or software company, usually the people you needed would be more likely found in the Santa Clara Valley than anywhere else.
After leaving the Bay Area and returning there on a visit after 10 years, I just couldn't recognize the place. Most of the tech companies that could be seen from the Bayshore Freeway in the 90s and even early 2000s were gone. The Microcenter near the AMC Theater in Santa Clara, which could be seen from the same freeway, had been replaced by a Walmart. Unlike previously, where the big offices used to be that of various tech companies, like the Intels, the Suns and so on, now it was mainly the consulting companies - KPMG, Accenture, et al.
I know that a whole bunch of the geek crowd w/ goatees love loitering in San Francisco to be in 'The City', but still, this fetish of basing their companies there totally escapes me. Particularly a company like Yelp, that could easily have set up shop anywhere else in the country.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to have some money in the bank
If you're going to San Francisco
You're going to meet some large expenses there
For those who come to San Francisco
Payin' the rent will be a worry there
In the streets of San Francisco
Young people, grey showing in their hair
All across the nation
Come see that abberation
People in trouble
There's a whole generation
With really no explanation
People in trouble
People in trouble
For those who come to San Francisco
Payin' the rent will be a worry there
In the streets of San Francisco
Young people, grey showing in their hair
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Yes, I know, Yelp not Yahoo... When thinking of shitty companies, for some reason Yahoo always pops into my mind...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
TIL why they're called Yelp. It's the noise they like their employees to make.
Sometimes we don't realize we are in a bad position and it takes a kick in the butt to improve your situation.
I do feel bad for her, but I am not surprised. If she is worth it, I truly do hope market forces work their thing and she finds something more meaningful and pays enough.
I recall working a job for $11 an hour in college in Hawaii and thinking, I just need to make $30k a year as a manager and I will have my life set, then I graduated from college and a lot of classmates were making $80k some $100k a year.
I tried it out took a chance and moved to the "Mainland" and financially and spiritually I am in a much better place. I miss Hawaii, but am at peace with the choice I made.
So like I said, hope she will find something better, but she needs to be worth it.
She was also complaining that she wasn't being paid enough to buy food. In that context, that's not an unreasonable complaint.
That was clearly in poor taste. It might even have risen to the level of being actionable once it became clear that the account in question was held by a Yelp employee. It doesn't negate the message, though.
And, to play devil's advocate here, that's precisely the sort of acting out that I'd expect from someone who was being paid minimum wage for a job that in the Bay Area should have paid considerably more than that. If you don't treat your employees with respect, why should they respect you? Where I come, respect is earned. If you're paying people McDonald's wages (and they were), you should expect no better than burger-flipper levels of decorum.
With an unopened bottle of alcohol. In every tech company I've ever worked for, they've had beer bashes where people actually drank alcohol while ostensibly on the job. The only thing potentially career-limiting about it was the caption, which could be interpreted to mean that nobody was surprised by having alcohol at work because you needed it to make it through the day. Or it could be a genuine statement of surprise from someone who moved here from an area where beer bashes aren't part of the culture, and where having alcohol at work would actually be unusual. If this had anything to do with her dismissal, then somebody has unrealistic standards.
Source?
And then you pay for parking in San Francisco. Unless Yelp has some special deal, that's going to cost you a minimum of $15 per day, which is four bucks per day more than she was paying for round-trip BART fare, by my math. And that's before factoring in gasoline, wear and tear on the vehicle, the years of your life that you lose to stress while sitting in Bay Area traffic, etc. I wouldn't work in San Francisco for a quarter million per year, much less $12.25 an hour.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
... that she got fired from Yelp for posting an unflattering review?
They will not increase salary offers. They will beg Congress for more h1-b visas and pay immigrants less in the high cost of living areas. That or outsource.
Silence is a state of mime.
Bunch of bullshit removed
I have been doing a bunch of looking, since reading your post to see if I could find references to what you are speaking of.
Based on my searches, I have several things to say to you. First, by posting what you did, in the manner that you did, without providing one shred of evidence, you have effectively engaged in libel. That kind of behavior has opened you up to a potential lawsuit. Given the daily readership of this site, coupled with the nature of your claims, I would say that if you have any assets to protect that you pray she does not become aware of your posts, or, if she does, that she doesn't subsequently contact an attorney.
The second thing I have to say is: Fuck you asshole. That kind of shit being posted anonymously, is exactly the reason that our freedoms get eroded daily. Your apparent willingness to defame someone, and to try to protect yourself by doing it anonymously reflects badly on everyone here, and is just one more piece of ammunition in the hands of those that wish to strip us of our rights. If you can't control yourself enough to take part in an adult conversation about the larger issues without the need to spew bullshit into the conversation just to make yourself feel more important, then kindly leave, as you have nothing of value to contribute.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
but i still don't care about yelp. sorry, better luck with your next "star turp".
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Thanks for making that last point yourself. I don't trust time stamps exhibited in online media either. The year is missing from most of the time stamps. Lots of 2015, however. This wasn't even Talia's own collage. Some stranger presents what can only be assumed to be a hand-picked selection of impressions. I remain vigilant of the fact that a ginormous, experienced marketing/social networking firm likely has motive to influence. It just doesn't make sense that the general public would white knight for Yelp.
If you've ever been homeless, you understand that the only way to get off the streets is to conceal your situation from potential employers and landlords. You can also end up homeless by being too honest about your instability. Catch-22. I wouldn't even fault Talia for creating a whole online fantasy life to stand for the one she aspired for. I see some delicious comfort food, but I don't see proof of prosperity or fraud. I've cooked up some nice things out of the contents of charity food sacks.
There are endless explanations for the photos including photoshop, other's photos being used, photos taken months earlier being posted later, that Talia enjoyed cooking until the high heating bill wiped her out, that Talia cooks at her bf or neighbor's house, etc.
I don't doubt Talia's essay was a simplified account of things, but again, there's NO compelling evidence that she's a fraud. No-one seems to really doubt how poor her pay was, or that she was about to encounter a whole lot of maintenance bills. Many many people are just one paycheck away from living on the street, no matter how comfortable they look in the meantime.
And I was just watching another stories about Yelp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Most of the comments here are about whether the woman in question is a whiner. That isn't the important point. The National Labor act makes it illegal to fire employees for "discussing terms and conditions of employment with fellow employees". The NLRB has ruled that social media is a way to discuss conditions with other employees. Unless she was discussing company secrets not related to things like salary she can't be fired for that. More detail can be found here: https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outr... If Yelp fired her because of this post, then they are going to owe her back wages and maybe a lot more.
"Lady Murderface" is the name she used to share the post on Twitter. The name probably colored my initial perception of the post, because it doesn't actually seem creepy on a second read.
That's kinda what I meant by professional context though... I don't mean she shouldn't have taken her complaint public; the public forum is definitely the place for it. But I wish she had focused more narrowly on the professional issue.
Instead she takes the reader through four paragraphs of autobiographical detail. We learn about her relationship with her dad and about her old living situation and how she won't get a promotion for at least a year. It all feels kinda self-indulgent, until she drops her bomb in paragraph five: Yelp employees are going hungry and some of them are homeless. Holy shit, why did she wait five paragraphs to say that???
From peoples' comments, I suspect most readers aren't getting past her autobiographical opening. People are dismissing her as self-indulgent and unprofessional after reading a few paragraphs... by the time she reveals that Yelp has a real problem, she's already lost half her audience.
1) Not sure English is really your native language.
Sure you're a dumbfuck
2) I was unaware that this episode had already led to plans for revolution and wealth re-distribution on such a grand scale.
If you're calling for this girl to get a better deal, that's what you're calling for, whether you know it or not. It's too bad you don't know it, because you're a dumbfuck
3) All Talia wants to do is her part in waking a reluctant workforce up to a) how at least one tech company exploits it's workers, and b) that the workers can't depend on someone else to improve things, so they ought to consider it themselves.
No, she wants to complain, and she wants it to be someone else's fault that she has no marketable skills worth mentioning, and went to work someplace she can't afford because she wants to live there when there are jobs elsewhere in the country. Granted, bloody few of them. But she's not even aware enough to know what's going on in the country, she's just focused on herself. She's also a dumbfuck. She can't be complaining that she doesn't have enough money to eat while simultaneously posting pictures of steaks and eggs benedict. I couldn't afford to eat that shit at her age, either. She blew through her money living beyond her means and then decided to blame it on her employer, and she got fired precisely as she deserved, not least because she deliberately violated the terms of her employment.
Other thoughts: I don't think I'd like to live in a world where "common sense" meant only that you should leave an exploitative industry to it's own devices and keep quiet
That's not what I said, and it's just another example of how you are a dumbfuck that you would characterize it as such, you disingenuous douchebag. First, she was not in an "industry". She was a phone monkey, not a programmer. Second, she chose to go to work for a company that paid shit in a place where you need lots of money to live a "normal" lifestyle. Other people making what she is making share housing and eat ramen.
There is a problem with wages in San Francisco, but unless you were born there, you really don't get to bitch because you knew the situation before you moved there. San Francisco is typically one of the world's most expensive cities to live in, it pretty much always is in the top ten, and any asshole can fire up their web browser and find this sort of thing out... unless they're a dumbfuck
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The National Labor act makes it illegal to fire employees for "discussing terms and conditions of employment with fellow employees". [...] If Yelp fired her because of this post, then they are going to owe her back wages and maybe a lot more.
\
In a word, no. The post wasn't disseminated only to other Yelp employees. It was aired on the open internet, which is a clear violation of her employment contract. Nobody is going to pay their employees to badmouth them on the internet. That's just not how it works.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I live in the southern US. I am amazed at the cost of living in big cities. I pay around $1000/month mortgage on my 3000+ square foot home on almost 4 acres of land. I can't even imagine paying that for something smaller than my laundry room.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling