Some on this forum will be working for companies with conflicts of interest on the topic, and if an employees words were construed to be the opinions of the company that could be bad for that person.
I was once almost fired for saying a little too much in an HN comment about pentesting. Being dragged into an office and given a dressing-down for posting was quite traumatic.
The central issue (or so they claimed) was that people might misconstrue my comment as representing the company I was at.
So yeah, I don’t understand why people are making fun of this. It’s serious.
On the other hand, they were so uptight that I’m not sure “opinions are my own” would have prevented it. But it would have been at least some defense.
Good on you. I’m happy to hear you got out of that kind of environment. It’s soul-draining.
Also a relief to hear that other people had to deal with this nonsense. I was afraid the reaction would be “there’s no way that happened,” since at the time I could hardly believe it either.
it's like people are LARPing a Fortune company CEO when they're giving their hot takes on social media
reminds me of Trump ending his wild takes on social media with "thank you for your attention to this matter" - so out of place, it makes it really funny
> it's like people are LARPing a Fortune company CEO when they're giving their hot takes on social media
At least in large tech companies, they have mandatory social media training where they explicitly tell employees to use phrases like "my views are my own" to keep it clear whether they're speaking on behalf of their employer or not.
Why would they be speaking on behalf of their employer? That is what would need a disclaimer not the common case. Besides, he can put it one time in his profile, not over and over again in every comment like he does. There is no expectation that some random employee is a spokesperson for Google on tech message board comment threads. It's just a way to brag.
> Why would they be speaking on behalf of their employers?
Disclaimers aren’t there for folks who are thinking and acting rationally.
They are there for people who are thinking irrationally and/or manipulatively.
There are (relatively speaking) a lot of these people. They can chew up a lot of time and resources over what amounts to nothing.
Disclaimers like this can give a legal department the upper hand in cases like this
A few simple examples:
- There is a person I know who didn’t renew the contract of one of their reports. Pretty straightforward thing. The person whose contract was not renewed has been contesting this legally for over 10 years. The outcome is guaranteed to go against the person complaining, but they have time and money, so they tax the legal team of their former employer.
- There is a mid-sized organization that had a small legal team that had its plate full with regular business stuff. Despite settlements having NDAs, word got out that fairly light claims of sexual harassment and/or EEO complaints would yield relatively easy five-figure payments. Those complaints exploded, and some of the complaints were comical. For example, one manager represented a stance for the department to the C-suite that was 180 degrees opposite of what the group of three managers had agreed to prior. Lots of political capital and lots of time had to be used to clean up that mess. That person’s manager was accused of sex discrimination and age discrimination simply for asking the person why they did that (in a professional way, I might add). That person got a settlement, moved to a different department, and was effectively protected from administrative actions due to it being considered retaliation.
Sounds like the company in the latter example really screwed up, but how does that connect to disclaimers? Is it just an example of malicious behavior?
> Sounds like the company in the latter example really screwed up
Interesting. I think they made an unfortunate but sound decision based on their circumstances.
> but how does that connect to disclaimers?
It doesn’t directly.
> Is it just an example of malicious behavior?
Yes. It’s an example of how absolutely bat-shit crazy people can behave in ways that can tax a company’s legal team. Having folks use a disclaimer will almost certainly lighten some of this load in terms of defending against folks who weaponize online comments made by employees.
Exactly. There is no scenario where we should expect some random anon to be speaking for Google. When that is the case a disclaimer is warranted, not the common case of speaking for oneself. He can write it once in his profile if he's so worried about it, not every other comment like he does. It's just inflated self importance
