The Real Reason Palmer Luckey Was Fired From Facebook (zdnet.com)

ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that the founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, wasn't fired because of his political views, as a recently-published Wall Street Journal article suggests, but because the virtual-reality company lost a $500 million intellectual property theft case to game maker ZeniMax. An anonymous reader shares the report: According to The Wall Street Journal, Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, a virtual reality company, was fired by Facebook because "he donated $10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton group" during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. But the article fails to mention a simple little fact: On Feb. 1, 2017, Oculus lost an intellectual property (IP) theft case against game maker ZeniMax, to the tune of $500 million. So, if one of your employees just cost your company a cool half-billion bucks for doing wrong what would you do? Well, Facebook isn't saying, even now, but on March 30, 2017, it let Luckey go.

Yes, Luckey also lied about his political moves, which went well beyond donating to an anti-Hillary billboard campaign. But let's look at the record. Everyone knew he'd lied by Feb. 22, 2016. Was he fired then? No. Was he fired after being found guilty of stealing ZeniMax's trade secrets? Yes. Officially, Facebook stated: "All details associated with specific personnel matters are kept strictly confidential. This is our policy for all employees, no matter their seniority. But we can say unequivocally that Palmer's departure was not due to his political views." Let me spell it out for you: He made some political waves. Nothing happened. He cost Facebook $500 million. He was fired. Can anyone here seriously not draw the lines between the dots?

Comments

Doubtful

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Execs lose billions of dollars and there are no repercussions. For example: Microsoft bought github for $7.5 billion. Eventually that will be marked down as a "writedown" for $7 billion, because Github isn't worth nearly what Microsoft paid for it. Essentially the executives wasted $7.5 billion. So, losing a $500 million court case is nothing. GE just did a writedown of $23 billion. There are no ramifications for the executives, but the stockholders get the shaft.

Re:TRASH Article

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't fire people because they lost money in the past, you fire them because you think they are going to lose money in the future.

"Oculus is liable for $300 million in the verdict ($50 million for trademark infringement, $50 million for copyright infringement, and $200 million for breaking the NDA), while Luckey owes $50 million and former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe owes $150 million (both for false designation). Oculus CTO John Carmack, who previously worked for ZeniMax and was accused of stealing code and destroying evidence, is not personally liable for any damages. ZeniMax had sought damages of $6 billion in the case." --Oculus Exec Liable for 500 million in ZeniMax VR Trial. I don't think I'd be inclined to trust a person to not lose more money after that. Carmack, meanwhile, has a long history of being a huge driver in making a company money and was not found personally liable. Seriously, though, how often do you hear of Execs of any large-ish companies being held *personally* liable?

My experience is that the most common reason people are fired is incompetence. The 2nd most common is being on the losing end of internal office politics. As you move up the hierarchy from janitor to CEO the first reason diminishes and the 2nd increases.

Presumably the trial exposed how incompetent this Luckey was in actual VR stuff (or at least management of it). Besides, they purchased Oculus for Carmack, not Luckey. Internal office politics I'd tend to argue probably fell more on getting rid of "dead weight" from a purchase made, not external political affiliation. Anything and everything was probably much more of a useful excuse than "we fire all the executives because we already have our own management", as that's the sort of thing to cause executives of companies to be very hesitant of being bought up by Facebook. Having to pay some trivial duty to whatever political party, charity, whatever to keep your high level Facebook executive job and cut off that excuse? Yea, that I imagine happening more in the future as ass covering, not as actual need or effectiveness.