Mozilla Chief Steps Down After 1 Week

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-chief/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Executives%20and%20Management&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

by mjudge260 • 12 years ago

38 53 12 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

avmich4• 12 years ago

Gay marriage opinion is the grounds for changing CEO. How about immigration opinion? Animal rights opinion? Climate change opinion? Political views?

davidgerard6• 12 years ago

I'm sure your startup will work hard to make sure this never happens to you. If this is how the world is, then what are your plans?

vishaldpatel• 12 years ago

Civil liberties. That's what all this is about. And he used his money to take civil liberties away from a group of people. That was a mistake. A costly one.

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

It's easy to frame immigration as a human rights issue.

Only somewhat more challenging to frame climate change the same way.

Political views are already covered under human rights via freedom of speech, thought, and conscience.

Some people view animal rights as equivalent to human rights.

These are not fundamentally different things. At most it's a matter of framing.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

This assumes that marriage is a civil right (it's not directly mentioned within the bill of rights)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

avmich4• 12 years ago

To whom?

I'm disagreeing with Brendan on that opinion. That was $1000 - and I was thinking about donating an equivalent amount to the other cause before I learned I'm way too late. But having him step down? Now, we can have our - even good - corporations run by moral people - scratch that: by people whose most important virtue is morality. That could be good. Good for everybody. But I'm not so sure - so I'd hesitate to demand Brendan to step down.

Because he has quite a talent to be useful in other important places.

Or, alternatively - what would you think about my original question? Should we closely scrutinize executives on their beliefs across the whole spectrum? I suspect there are other important issues, besides LGBT opinions.

wheaties2• 12 years ago

Sorry but I have to agree with this. If the purpose of the role is to be the CEO of a company dedicated to open source software then his religion, personal beliefs, and his lifestyle choices should have no bearing on being a CEO. That includes both people who are for AND against gay marriage. We aren't supposed to discriminate on any front when hiring someone so what makes this different?

pekk2• 12 years ago

What is different is (A) this is not a normal employee but the CEO who represents the company, (B) it is not about his personal beliefs or lifestyle choices but his public political behavior, (C) not every issue or belief is equally innocuous.

But really, (D) this caused a lot of scandal for Mozilla that runs contrary to its mission, and some internal scandal too. If it were chartered as a conservative political organization they could have laughed it off. but it's not Mozilla's purpose to play Moral Majority or Larry Flynt.

davidgerard6• 12 years ago

You tell me. He's out of a job because LOTS AND LOTS of people were seriously upset by his Prop 8 donation. You can decry this as the worst thing ever if you like, but it still happened and - and this is the important thing - was trivially predictable in advance, because they got a taste of it in 2012 when the donation first came to light (it reached international news coverage back then too).

So - given there's a pile of real-world data to reason from - what do you think made this different?

heterogenic• 12 years ago

If he doesn't like gay marriage, he doesn't have to get gay married. But contributing a significant amount of money to take away that option from someone else is wrong. And to believe it's his right to take that option away is wrong.

I have a same-sex partner, Brendan is willing to work and make a real effort to take away our recognition. To unmarry our children's parents. To eliminate our shared benefits, and impair the other 1148 rights conferred by marriage.

I am not happy that my money and time might go towards his salary and to further empower his views, so it's a logical decision for me to boycott his company. Many others feel similarly.

To be fair, at any point he could have said "My views have evolved, and I no longer think it is my right to deny others marriage.". He chose not to.

cgh2• 12 years ago

It's not hard to understand: replace the word "gay" with "black". Now do you see the problem?

Aside from that, much of the job of being a C-level executive is about perception and trust. People need to see you're a "good person" who is frictionlessly aligned with the company's public profile. Weird outliers, like denying gay people the right to get married, cause friction.

pekk2• 12 years ago

If Mozilla hires someone as figurehead/CEO who is incredibly divisive for any reason, and public outcry is sufficient to impair its actual mission, then they might have that CEO step down to avoid the firestorm.

Rather than becoming "the anti-gay rights company which courageously stood on its anti-gay rights principles".

Publishing Nazi tracts might be protected by the First Amendment, but you can't compel it to be protected from social disapproval.

fletchowns2• 12 years ago

It's not simply an opinion though. Equal rights is fundamentally different than all those other issues you listed.

carlob2• 12 years ago

Immigration policy is also about equal rights...

saraid2162• 12 years ago

Um. Animal Rights and Immigration are both "equal rights" issues.

mjudge2603• 12 years ago

I think an opinion on gay marriage is a political view.

Additionally, I think a negative opinion on gay marriage is particularly contentious, as opposed to a view on environmental or immigration matters, because it could affects the rights of employees, and additionally it creates a toxic work environment for supporters of gay marriage.

Companies shouldn't stray into the realm of political opinion because their employees do not have homogenous political views.

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

Immigration and environmental issues couldn't affect employees?

avmich4• 12 years ago

Nah, sounds a little controversial to me.

1) "opinion on gay marriage is a political view" 2) "Companies shouldn't stray into the realm of political opinion because their employees do not have homogenous political views."

Employees may have - even strong - opinions against gay marriage. But they can't be homogenous?.. So they shouldn't be considered? Or being "particularly contentions (because)" makes them exempt?

Looks like a really complicated subject, don't you think?

morganherlocker• 12 years ago

:%s/Gay/Interracial/g

yypark• 12 years ago

It's interesting people haven't brought this up on Hacker News: http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Cynically, it's about conforming to the views in your given industry, company, culture, or society.

The lofty way to put it is a Mozilla CEO should represent the organization's ideals of tolerance, diversity, etc.

The cynical way to put it is tribalism. Humans want people with similar beliefs around, because they are good, and believe the other side to be evil (this being one of the strongest issues). One way for ordinary people to enforce their political power is through means like this. There's no need to dress it up in terms of fundamental rights, bigotry, intolerance etc. And in the tech world, gay marriage is one of those "not OK's" to oppose. I'm sure in the Southern Baptist world, donating to Planned Parenthood, will immediately get you called for an ouster as a baby-killer. It's just that the climate in the tech world has already shifted to this point, whereas the climate in Brendan Eich's church probably has not.

It's really about what acceptable opinions. For some opinions, there are silent majorities in some areas, that are silenced in others. I'm just trying to come up with a way to understand this, that can be applied to all situations and all ideologies.

saraid2162• 12 years ago

I dunno. This seems to be an example of libertarian philosophy actually working. That is, public outcry produced a morality-motivated backlash prompting actual consequences.

That's how it's supposed to work, isn't it? If a widget-maker is a bigot, there's supposed to be a boycott while everyone moves over to his competitor so that the bigot goes out of business, right?

I agree that this shouldn't have been a controversy to begin with (though a conciliatory move in reaction to public outrage is hardly unreasonable), but isn't this a victory for libertarianism?

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

The market is supposed to be a thing that happens to other people.

lucideer• 12 years ago

How about immigration opinion? Animal rights opinion? Climate change opinion? Political views?

- "Political views" is too vague to comment on.

- Immigration opinion is absolutely grounds for changing a CEO - it affects groups of people, potentially both employees and customers of any company. If the CEOs views affects them sufficiently negatively, this should surely be addressed?

- Animal rights - possibly , particularly if the company's role is animal-related.

- Climate change - as above.

All the above might not apply to a company / CEO that is not as directly "public-facing" as Mozilla, but generally for any company with a widespread reputation to uphold and an outspoken employee base, then absolutely any of the items you listed could be grounds for change.

nobbyclark• 12 years ago

Ummm... so what does gay marriage have to do with browsing the web? FAIL

mjudge2603• 12 years ago

it reflects an attitude that company executives have towards their employees. Companies should respect the reality that their employees do not have homogenous political views.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

It didn't sound like he expected anyone at Mozilla to have his viewpoints.

He made a private donation privately, 6 years ago.

mjudge2603• 12 years ago

I don't see how reciting a companies commercial objectives can aid your argument. FAIL

jhuckabee• 12 years ago

Building a web browser requires that you employee people, some of whom may be gay. Alienating that entire group of people, and the majority of others who support them, can certainly put a damper on their motivation to keep that browser pushing along at full speed.

Definitely not FAIL, this is a big win for Mozilla and civil rights.

davidgerard6• 12 years ago

And ... the users. They thought they had the company swung; but there were boycotts and actually-disgusted end users happening.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

After seeing all this, I wonder what would it take to get the people behind 'the right to marriage' to get the same reaction to 'the right to privacy' - which is an arguably more expansive provision that protects literally 100% of the population?

quaunaut• 12 years ago

Actually, it doesn't. There is no American right to privacy. There's a belief in that right, but as far as I know there is no law that supports or enforces that right.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

The same right to marriage that people are rallying under is a subset of the right to privacy (that's not specifically mentioned, but extended by the supreme court).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights

jonahx• 12 years ago

I agree with your sentiment, and I'm not being facetious when I say the answer is "a single human being who can be held up as the enemy." The government seems to be protected in this scandal by its very ubiquity and pervasiveness. There is no one we can force to step down, no building we can shutter, no single computer we can turn off that will restore our privacy.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

It's sad that for "change" to happen, it often requires someone to hate.

saikit3• 12 years ago

What's done is done. But now that Mozilla rid itself one of its best assets, what's do prevent a rival like Microsoft or Google to hire Eich and have him work on their products?

gnoway• 12 years ago

The fury of however many people there are that actually care about this issue?

saikit3• 12 years ago

I don't think multinationals like Microsoft or Google would be too concerned if they were to pick up one of the top programmers in the world for a, presumably, a non-CEO position.

jitl• 12 years ago

I doubt any company is chomping at the bit to hire Eich after this fiasco, regardless of his technical competencies.

davidgerard6• 12 years ago

I think you're wrong there. He'll be unemployed not one second longer than he wants to be.

saikit3• 12 years ago

I'd check the gay marriage positions of say... Yandex or TenCent.

joelrunyon7• 12 years ago

The irony of this happening in SV where everything is a supposed "meritocracy" :)

morbius• 12 years ago

This is absurd. I've been following the news for over a week. I still don't understand the outrage. Heck, I doubt Mozilla even did, because Eich posted a reassuring statement and people still aren't happy.

Besides, he never said he hated same-sex couples. Supporting Prop 8 was a bad decision, but the vitriol directed at Eich is a non-sequitur. There's varying opinions on varying sides of the debate, so why is Eich singled out for having one?

People can hate Eich. I frankly don't care what anyone thinks of him. But it's so boneheaded that someone would need to step down from a CEO position just because he supported a bill. It's scary. And remember, Eich isn't just "some guy"; he was CTO of Mozilla for years and invented JavaScript.

The whole situation is kind of pathetic.

josephlord• 12 years ago

Mozilla is a political organisation not just a pure commercial entity. It has supporters and a community not just customers and the CEO needs to retain the support and trust of that community. A CEO with controversial political views would be a risky choice for this post whatever the subject).

moskie• 12 years ago

This is a good thing. And I strongly disagree with the idea that none of his political beliefs should be taken into account when determining whether he should be the CEO of Mozilla.

When it comes to personal/political beliefs, there is a line. Having beliefs that go beyond that line means it will (should) affect your professional life. But people draw that line at different places, meaning that, in aggregate, you don't know where the chips will fall in situations like Eich being the CEO of Mozilla. Some people draw the line in a place, such that supporting anti-gay marriage legislation is acceptable, others do not.

I think few people would be surprised if there was an uproar upon the revelation that the CEO of Mozilla (or any company) was a supporter of, say, the KKK. Most everyone would agree that that's an unacceptable "political" belief, such that he should be not be the CEO.

So the question isn't whether Eich's beliefs should be an issue. The question is whether supporting anti-gay marriage legislation goes beyond the line of acceptability. And the public has spoken pretty clearly here. Good for them.

Mozilla Chief Steps Down After 1 Week

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