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Game Company Fires Two Employees Who Complained About 'Mansplaining' on Twitter (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
On July 3rd, narrative designer Jessica Price tweeted a 29-tweet thread dissecting the challenges of writing player characters in an MMORPG. A streamer who goes by Deroir responded, "Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree slightly," and shared a three-tweet explanation of how narrative design influences player expression in the sort of games that Price narratively designs. Price both replied directly to Deroir, tweeting "thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude," and retweeted his response with the caption "today in being a female game dev: 'Allow me -- a person who does not work with you -- to explain to you how you do your job....'"
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Someone who is unable to take valid criticism, immediately making a fuss about on it on social media, generalizing members of both genders, isn't good a look for a company.
Quoth Jessica on the death of John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (dead at age 33 by cancer): "The kindest thing I can say is "I'm glad he's no longer around to keep doing harm.""
let me make it crystal clear:
you responded to simple criticism with sexist remarks.
that shit don't fly.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way: women also try to explain and argue things they have no clue about.
So if I say "you're cluelessly explaining", versus "you're cluelessly explaining in a MAN way", does the second add any information besides the implication that men are bad? If "mansplaining" is a pejorative term, this situation becomes simple: in the US, if someone is a bigot in public and gets caught, their company typically fires them.
On the other hand, I think that response is a problem in US culture. Everyone has ugly aspects in their personality. Firing should not be a standard response whenever a bit of ugliness rises to the surface. This seems like a bit of Puritan legacy which our European friends don't share.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
She got fired for being a sexist jerk. Her co-worker got fired for joining into the sexist attack. The person that responded to her, Deroir, said nothing sexist, demeaning, belittling, or insulting to her. SHE is the one who took things too. She could have simply ignored the comments if she did not want to interact with him. Reddit did not do the damage, she and her co-worker did this to themselves.
She was being an asshole, fueled/excused by her idea that men are enemies, while somewhat representing the Company (which customers likely are 90% men), and got burned. Big deal.
It's weird how the left whines about how we talk about each other (here in Sweden at-least, once we've finally started to trash-talk them back) and how supposedly now the dscussions are so toxic / uncivilized even though their method operandi has always been screaming and trying to put shameful words onto people rather than actually meeting an argument or having a conversation. They used to be such great fans of it. And I still think they are. And I still think they will continue. It's just that it's pretty boring to be on the receiving end .. "There's a problem people don't dare to speak what's on their mind!" - yeah⦠can't imagine anyone having had such problems before!!
Anyway, feminism is cancer and sexist.
And, of course, The Verge tries to spin this 180 degrees to make HER the victim. Nope. SHE is the one that caused her own firing.
That's 50% of the population right there. If I have to walk on eggshells because you might make it a gender issue, who is the one using gender as a weapon?
Not denying sexism exists, it does. It also exists in these hardcore gaming feminists, who are shooting themselves in the foot with really rather terrible arguments and soundbites.
My understanding is, the guy who messaged her, was very tame in his reply, it was a direct reply to her tweet and I believe he works or worked with them or he was some kind of official partner.
He also was quite tame in his response and gender had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, his behaviour the remainder of the night, was very much polite and lite, he really wanted nothing to do with an internet lynching and was just disapointed by her reply.
Her reply was a quote tweet (ie: a shaming) to make them look bad and went on to a gender whine.
I've become very sick of this gender politics / identity politics bullshit, she was foolish to defer to the "I'm a woman so he's not allow to question me" however that being said, firing her seems a bit excessive.
I'm not sure why this belongs on bloody slashdot though, more political stuff eh?
Yeah, because Slashdotters never get their panties in a twist when someone they perceive as a layman in a subject tries to correct a person working in that field...
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
So, a person - presumably a customer - posts his opinion on a subject.
A developer, with a huge following immediately publicly shames him, and retweets, using their large public following to embarrass the person who deigned to weigh in on a subject that apparently only developers know about.
The publisher then sacks the employee for bringing the company into disrepute.
Sacking seems a little heavy handed here, but I don't think the employee was in the right.
Is she? Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock? Did she waste time at work? Did she fail at her job? Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
She celebrated TotalBiscuit's death, she's a hateful, evil, sexist, racist feminist lunatic, and according to management this was the last straw after a string of far left nutjob bullshit. That's the REAL story. This is not even about reddit. This is about another SJW getting what she deserved.
Not only was he not insulting, he was right. The player's choices usually can't affect the outcome but they can certainly allow the game to develop an understanding of how the player wants to play and respond to them accordingly.
I would also completely disagree with the "she didn't ask for his input" defense. Putting something on twitter is asking for a response. He didn't break into her house and read her diary and then leave her a note disagreeing with her.
But I wouldn't fire either of them over just that nonsense.
You still read Slashdot...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I think the problem started even before. She apparently started a 29-tweet thread (which should automatically tell you it was not the right medium), expecting no criticism/feedback/etc.
If you don't know what twitter is, stay away. That has worked great for me so far!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
She didn't argue with a stranger. She argued with a streamer who has some kind of a contractual PR agreement with her employer to promote the game.
That's how this series of events went this fast. Streamer in question likely went through official channels within the company reserved for people like him, which was rapidly escalated within the company to the top.
29 tweets? Sheesh. Doesn't ArenaNet have a forum or something?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Um. If you're discussing what you do at work with a customer of your employer, it doesn't matter whether you called the twitter feed a "personal account" - you're speaking for the company. How you behave reflects on your employer, and your employer is justified in telling you not to do that, or, in a particularly egregious case, firing you over it.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Disclaimer: I do game dev.
You're not wrong, but there's a fair bit of debate that goes on about "superficial choice." If the choice has no consequences, is it really a choice, or is it just virtue signalling for the player? How much of an impact does a choice need to have before it becomes part of the story, and how much is just "fake depth?"
Basically, if every choice you make leads to the same place, do any of those choices matter? It's a complex question, both for philosophy and for game development. People get pretty worked up over it.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Deroir is not just some streamer. He has an NPC in the game named after him i.e. he has a special relationship with the company. There were other pillars of the fan community also taking part in the twitter discussion and Price insulted them as well. She called Deroir "rando asshat." Price has been with the company less than a year, so she probably didn't even realize that she was taking a dump on the company's biggest, most high profile fans.
The reddit quote about the "hand of reddit" was almost immediately downvoted to oblivion i.e. the community at large didn't agree with it at all. It was probably posted with the express purpose of including it in the news stories about the incident.
That being said, this isn't really about politics at all. Jessica Price clearly has issues. Even before the incident her twitter was so full of negativity and toxicity that she can't possibly lead a happy life. You don't fly off the handle like that when your things are in order. I hope she eventually gets the help that she so obviously needs.
He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud.
I'm a guy and I had to deal with stuff like that when I was younger. For example, when I started with SAIC at the NASA Langley Research Center in 1996. My first time on-site, a much older admin literally started explaining to me how Unix worked. I interrupted him and said that not only was my BSCS degree focus in operating systems, but that I had actually taken a course in BSD internals from Kirk McKusick when I was an admin with Unisys at the NASA LaRC supercomputing group -- I was an admin for their Cray 2 and YMP supercomputers and 3 Convex mini-supercomputers from 1988-1992 -- and that I knew how Unix (and, more specifically, SunOS) worked. He shut up and we got along pretty well after that.
Unfortunately, sometimes pushing back hard is the only way to get any (initial) respect and, unfortunately, I've seen it be worse for women.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In many sensible countries, publicly making sexist and inflammatory remarks that are related to your work and employment can be sufficient grounds for getting fired. Personally I think firing her just for this isn't warranted... but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a prior history of similar behaviour. Maybe she handled criticism or suggestions from her co-workers with the same grace and tact. From the interview on the Verge, it sure sounds as if she tends to take criticism as a personal attack.
I'm actually more interested in why Fries got fired after defending her on Twitter. As far as I can tell he was perfectly polite.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I am what you would call a "leftist" or even worst an egalitarian "socialist" which is probably a gross word for msot american ;) (e.g. everybody no matter skin color, gender, sexuality , wealth or political affiliation should have the same equality of opportunity + as a specie we fare better when we protect each other so social net to catch those who fall in the crack e.g. illness, financial problem, rehabilitation etc...).
She was rightfully terminated. She was toxic, obnoxious.
As for the "loud mouth" and the whiner as you call them , they are a problem from all political parties. You would better off to recognize that there are loud mouth in the right wing , mysoginistic racist bigot, and loud mouth on the left wing, ultra "mansplaining manhating" "human are the problem ecologist" and I pass many others. They are a minority but both side are using them as a scapegoat to accuse the other party of going too far, and get brownie point from their base. I doubt all dems are as you describe, just like I doubt all reps are nazis racist. But if you believed the minority yelling, that is the impression you would get
My advice : ignore the extreme left and the extreme right yelling, fight them rationally without name calling, and consider they are truly a minority. So if somebody from your party is trying to use the other party loudmouth as a scapegoat, then get skeptic and look closely at the man behind the curtain puppetting the show, because chance are they are pointing at the loudmouth from the other side to bamboozle you , and withdraw attention from the problem of your own side. Just a friendly advice, and if many of you take it, this should bring back the US politic discourse to the center rather than the ultra extreme. And chance is that it would force head of both party to work for the mass, rather than the extreme ideology. Win win.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Assuming that's all true - then you roll your eyes and brush the question aside, answer it with some friendly sarcasm, or even with (gasp) a professional response. Not by losing your shit and going on a sexist rant from out of nowhere.
Fixed.
Uh huh. And if you're willing to throw your customers and community under the bus because one of your employees is a snowflake - let me know when you go public so I can buy some put options.
Jessica Price:
Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO.
The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single-player game.
People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character.
Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed--they're playing a character THEY designed.
So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created.
N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character.
But the *interpersonal* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak.
So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players.
So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight.
To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity.
Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the *experience of being loved by Edward.* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is.
Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story.
She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on.
And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way.
Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality.
Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander.
So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't
When the mentioned her company by name, she immediately became a PR person.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response. Imagine you drive a truck on a really tricky route and write about all the things you contend with. You've been doing this successfully for years. Then someone says, politely, but meaning to educate you, "if you turned the wheel and used the gas at the same time, how about that?" That's a thing deserving only scorn.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud.
No it was not right, it was hateful by her.
In your professional workspace you have to deal with morons. Everyday. Customers, or like here business partners. You can tell them off, but you cannot insult them like she did, publicly.
Also there are the different areas of engagement to consider. If you deal with such a person personally at the office, like the two Unix greyboards in the other response, then yes you can, maybe, call him an asshole while personally talking directly to him. You cannot do this on Twitter which is a public forum. It's very different if you call someone in person an asshole or publish it in a trade magazine for the whole industry. Same words, totally different outcome, for good reason.
What's more: the greybeard had to work with this guy everyday, could not avoid him so a clearing of the air is necessary one day, the sooner the better. She could have easily avoided and simply ignored the replies without any consequences to her work, her posting or anything else in her life.
Bottom line: it's not what she did, telling him off, but HOW she did it that got her fired.
If you and your other writers can afford to screen for companies where you can insult business partners, then more power to you. I doubt it will be many companies to choose from unless game text writers are a suddenly very sought after profession.
Honestly, she's a real walking vicim looking to express victimhood at the slightest comment. But I doubt this comment alone got her fired. People like that are toxic to work with, if she does that at work, everyone would be frightened to point out the tiniest of problems to her for fear she's explodes.
Deroir's comment is valid, mostly agreeing while making a subtle point. She didn't address his (her?) subtle point, or even take the time to be civil.
She could simply have said, "we do address that, for example [character name] in [game] changes personality based on your choices through the game in ways [example1] [example2]... I understand that problem fully and we do address it"
--------------------
Deroir:
Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design;
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC.
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options),
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread!
I was pretty pissed that the Verge left out the Tweets from Deroir in the actual article. It really paints a one-sided picture and sets him up to be the bad guy.
Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)
Source
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)
Source
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...)
Source
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)
Source
Personally, nothing about this came off as sexist or trying to "set a woman straight;" its simple, civil criticism to something someone plastered onto the web publicly. Maybe this was the straw that broke the camel's back and set her off. Verge stated that her posts were motivated by the whole "Dev & Community interaction" that is expected, but if that's the case, then I think the better option would have been to post her 27 tweets into the ArenaNet forum or on a company developer blog where Community Managers could moderate the discourse. Either way, Deroir's not at fault here any more than anyone replying to posts here on Slashdot are.
That most certainly was not the right way to nip it in the bud (unless you're Linus Torvalds)
Despite a lot of publicised blow-ups, they're actually pretty rare. If you look at all his interactions on LKML, Linus shows a lot of patience with new people.
He only really blows up if (a) you're someone he knows and you're pushing something or done something he thinks is dumb and you should know better, or (b) you're new and you haven't listened to something sensible he's given as an answer, a couple of times already.
If you pursue something with him in an intelligent debate, he's quite amenable to having his mind changed on things.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I hate how the phrase, 'Teach my grandmother to suck eggs', which doesn't try and belittle either sex has been mutated into mansplaining so it can be used as a political weapon against ~50 % of the human population.
Guess what, I am a guy and I get people trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs constantly from both side of the fence, it happens. If I have the time, I just nod my head and make the appropriate noises at the appropriate time and move on with my life. Otherwise, when I realise it is happening, I tell them I have something else I need to do and go.
It happened to me last week. Bored the hell out of me but I was polite and listened and surprisingly picked up one or two useful tidbits which will help me with the subject at hand in the future. I still found the whole thing frustrating but that's life.
Because Wired has too many big words.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He made the insultingly simple suggestion because ArenaNet wasn't doing it. By your analogy, it's like you've been driving a truck successfully for years while operating the wheel or the gas one at a time, but never at the same time. Then someone suggests why not try using both at the same time.
The problem the guy was getting at (the dialog choices don't have any consequences in the plot) is much older than MMORPGs and even CRPGs. It existed back in pen-and-paper RPGing. It's called railroading. The GM (or devs) have a set idea for how the plot should progress, and forces your character down that path. Pretty much all computer RPGs do it, with free-form games like Skyrim or Fallout (outside the main plot) being the rare exception. Mainly because it's a helluva lot easier to write one plotline, than to write a choose-your-own-adventure type plotline with multiple branches and possible endings. A proper, respectful reply would've been simply to state that while a branching plotline is desirable, it would require an order of magnitude more resources to produce. And so it becomes an economic choice between players getting only one new branching plotline each year, or multiple linear plotlines throughout the year.
I discussed RPGs a lot with Raph Koster when he was working on Ultima Online. I threw a lot of suggestions at him, some good, many dumb. I developed a tremendous respect for him because he always responded to my suggestions politely (the dumb ones only needed a short reply to shoot down). He was never insulting, and always provided thought-provoking responses which usually demonstrated why the problem was much deeper than it seemed at first glance. He didn't view dumb suggestions as an insult. He saw them as an opportunity to teach the person making the suggestion, so they themselves could perhaps become better game developers in the future. And that ultimately is what allows our civilization to advance - by helping pull people up to your level if you're clearly higher up. Not by getting offended and trying to tear them down because you think their suggestion is insultingly simple.
Ah okay, my bad. She said "manfeels". On her personal Twitter account. After being bothered by numerous people.
I guess that's a fireable offense at that company. Glad I don't work there, wouldn't want to be walking on eggshells all the time.
She claimed misogyny where there was none. To be honest I don't want to work in any place where false claims of harassment are honoured.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The link in TFS shows only the first post that she responded to, but from the quoted section someone politely suggested that she was generalising from her personal experience to an entire industry and she then immediately launched a personal attack in response. If you do that in private, you're an asshat. If you do that after publicly associating your online persona with your company, there's grounds for disciplinary action. Worse, her response explicitly drew attention to her link with her employer.
Twitter makes no difference, if you go around saying 'as an employee of FooCorp, I am an expert in this' via any communication channel, then if you subsequently act in such a way that reflects poorly on FooCorp then you'd expect issues. It isn't private communication when you're broadcasting it in public and using your company's name.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"These are our private social media accounts"
Do Milennials really believe that? They aren't YOUR accounts and they aren't private. They aren't your "space". They are owned by Twitter and their corporate partners. Get off Twitter.
I wouldn't have hired you either. Why bother explaining "how she could have avoided it in the future"? Just ask for clarification and move on.
As an employer, I always do a quick web search for the candidate's name. It almost never produces anything that sways my hiring choice. But, in this case, if I saw the nonsense she posts on twitter, I definitely wouldn't hire her even if she's fantastic at her job. I, and I'm sure many others, try to construct a great team of people who are low ego, accept criticism, and won't create drama. This person, I'm pretty sure, would make a real mess of my team, and a quick web search in the future will tell all potential future employers that.
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
The reality has ALWAYS been the quality of your work doesn't matter if you embarrass the company in a public forum or are a total asshat that doesn't work well with others.
I'm reminded of the quote (I don't know where it came from), don't ask a question unless you want to hear the answer. Or, in this case, don't post something unless you can tolerate the responses.
Nothing to see here, just another snowflake that can't handle differing opinions and wants to play the victim card to justify their original position and blame others for their inability to play well with others.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
She was a sexist jerk for years before she was ever fired. She was fired because her policy of hatred, anger, and insult slinging finally garnered her a big enough following to potentially affect the profits of the people she worked for.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That's simple. Don't put your employer in your profile and never refer directly to that employer when talking about things at work which bother you. When you list your employer, you're associating yourself with that employer. When you put that you're in an elevated position with that employer, expect to be held accountable. It's the height of ignorance and entitled behavior to think the two are not interrelated
Sig not found.
While I sympathise with your plight it sounds like you've had a lesson in how not to respond to someone else's mistake.
When she sent me the time for our informal interview, she made a mistake with the time zone and proposed me a time 1 hour after what she meant.
By and large, telling other people what they meant tends to wind them up. Given this, asking them to clarify what they meant, perhaps pointing to the area of confusion, would seem to be a more 'user friendly' option.
Is this right? Or fair? Is this even the 'best' way of avoiding any recurrence of the mistake? Perhaps not, depending on your context for 'best', but it is what it is...
Whether you take the lesson on board, however, that's on you!
Reddit definitely did the damage here. I'm nervous about how Mob Rule just got vindicated. I felt the same way when all those Neo Nazi's were being fired from their jobs. Firing people for being jerks doesn't make them less jerks. It cuts them off from their income, the pressure of which is going to make them worse, not better.
On a side note, she probably can't ignore the comments though. It sounds like she's expected to engage with the community as part of her job. And yes, that means outside of work. Being forced to work off the clock is pretty common in America and it was one of the things she was complaining about in her posts.
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You apparently don't know what a White Knight is.
Damore is a troublemaker, but his writing wasn't actively abusive. It cited journals and drew conclusions in what was obviously a carefully worded communication he knew would be controversial and even hurtful in some cases. In this case the wording is actively abusive, using derogatory terms that play on gender stereotypes. There is a clear difference in attitude and behavior here even if both people are potentially
sexist. One person walked the line, the other didn't even try to.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Jessica Price tells the Verge. If Reddit wants you fired, well fire you. The quality of your work doesnt matter.
That is truly insightful coming from an MMORPG character writer, an occupation known for producing quality writing that repeatedly receives not only multiple industry awards, but is up there with the Pulitzers and Nobel laureates for literature.
The underlying issue is that many people in the U.S. have very limited social ability.
An example: The game development company management did not have the social ability to realize that dealing with this social issue in a foolish way would become widespread news.
This is what a reasonable response to Deroir would have looked like.
The fact is in the Age of Internet Shaming there is no such thing as "off-the-clock"
It's very easy to have multiple Twitter accounts (or indeed on pretty much any social media platform), where someone has no idea who you you work for in some of them and only knows as much as you care to reveal.
It would be plenty easy to set up some anon account that argued about game design, where you just let on you worked in the industry.
But then that would not provide the same level of cache about who you work for, winning arguments by the appealing to authority method...
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to be off the clock, remove ties to where you work from where you post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
She wrote her thoughts. Someone replied saying what she said is interesting, but on one particular point he disagreed about the relative importance. She went off on her "mansplaining" sexism rant, because they ONLY reason anyone could ever disagree with her on anything would be if they were a sexist pig. Totally impossible for people to have different viewpoints. Disagree with her on just one of her several comments and you're automatically a pig.
The dev who got fired said it's because she's been doing it a few years that nobody should disagree with her about what makes the most fun game design ("telling my how to do my job").
I've been doing my job, and actively studying to learn to do it better, for twenty years. I make sure all my code gets peer review, because I'm still not perfect. People can have ideas different from mine, and they might be good ideas. I actively encourage new people to peer review my work, reminding them "you don't have to be more experienced than me, or better than me, to see where I might have made a mistake or where I could do something better". I actively seek opinions from other people and never once have I attributed their opinions to their genitalia.
You left out "she thinks".
There's clearly more going on here that we in the public don't see, but it's good of ArenaNet to not put up with employees attacking customers. There's too much of that going around right now, and companies that let their people tell customers "we don't want customers like you" in response to complaints are finding themselves hemorrhaging customers. Good to see ArenaNet's smarter than that.
We do know she publicly celebrated TotalBiscuit's death, so it's a safe bet that she's not nice to be around. And personally attacking critics in your own industry right up there with ranting at customers, in terms of stupidity. (Seriously, what's going on the mind of a game studio manager when he hires someone who has attacked the most popular and influential PC games critic in the world?)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
On her personal Twitter account.
ArenaNet's social media policy is quite clear that if your social media account isn't anonymous, you're publicly representing the company. Which is appropriate for a game studio, especially an MMO (-ish) given the typical interactions between customers and "devs", with forums deep-diving anything ever said by a dev for clues about game changes.
She knew she was speaking as an employee of ArenaNet.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You have to go to eighteen levels of straw manning, word twisting mischaracterization to describe Deroir's comments as anything other than polite and constructive.
> The left is dividing into a group who is traditionally liberal and favors a diversity of opinions and fairness (and many other left wing policies) and a group who insists on compliance, attacks heretics, and isn't in favor of fairness ("it's okay if innocent men's lives are destroyed")
Agreed. And one group makes the other look really bad. When leading Democrats like Maxine Waters call for harassing the family members of the president's staff, so "they can't go to a gas station, can't shop, can't go to a restaurant ... absolutely harass them", it makes Democrats look bad. Really bad. Kinda like how Trump makes Republicans look bad when he - well when he acts like Trump.
When David Souter was nominated to the Supreme Court, the left held protest rallies and all that, pumping up their donors yelling "he'll overturn Roe vs Wade, and probably force states to make abortion illegal". Of course Souter not only upheld Roe v Wade, but generally was more liberal than even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or Clinton's other pick, Breyer. I wouldn't be too concerned about Roe vs Wade. It's stare decisis, settled law.
Even in the very unlikely event Roe v Wade was struck down, consider what that would mean. Before Roe, most states allowed abortions. Since then, public opinion has shifted more toward allowing abortion, so absent Roe v Wade likely all states, certainly the vast majority, would allow abortion. A few more conservative states, such as Texas, might require the clinics performing abortions have procedures in place to transfer a patient to a nearby emergency room if complications arise. Texas might ban partial birth abortions, in which the baby's head is crushed as he or she is born. You may agree or disagree with the policies, but the sky isn't actually falling.
That shit doesn't fly? I say it did, and hit the fan right in the middle.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No more or less than the people who high-fived when Roseanne was fired.
You got it right. This is a woman that expressed she was glad at the death of Total Biscuit.
This was just the last straw.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust