but it's insane to argue that he should have anticipated the tides of public opinion and his career path several years in advance. It's pretty much unreasoning hate at that point - a guy did a bad thing, so he deserves literally any bad thing that happens to him.
Except that's not really what's being argued, I'd say. It's been noted repeatedly -- this guy could have saved face
easy. A simple "Hey, my bad." or "That was ill-considered of me." (
even if he's just talking about the relative stupidity of making a public donation to a potentially controversial movement) would likely have been enough -- and if not, dropping an equal donation to an equal rights movement of some such would have burnt off the rest of the enmity. What's a thousand dollar "I was an idiot" tax to a CEO salary, yeah?
If it were as little an issue of not anticipating public opinion and career path -- and unfortunately, right or not that's
exactly what you're having to do these days, if you're not willing to just blanket avoid anything that might cause problems -- simple spin could have solved the issue. And you do
not need to be in a CEO position if you can't spin, these days.
And it's like I said. You screw up previous
and don't run damage control -- you're done. For a businessperson, that's arguably right and proper -- as many have noted, one of the primary ideals regularly proposed is to not let personal convictions get in the way of business. If that means your personal convictions cause you to need to suck it up and apologize to save company face, you suck it up and apologize, whether you mean it or not. Managing PR is part of the job description these days. For
everyone, but especially management.
What happened to this guy was not, perhaps unfortunately, unreasonable to have happen to a high level manager nowadays. Maybe it
should be different, I'unno. All I really know is that it
isn't different, and it's going to get worse before (
if) it gets better, if you're against this sort of thing.
I don't see how his private political views are of any relevance for Mozilla.
Apparently they
weren't private if he was making public donations, or insufficiently private if it suddenly became news. Regardless, if he's going to be a major figure in the business, the company's market dislike his political views, and that market knows of them, those views suddenly become very,
very relevant to the company.
Moral of the story, really. If you're going to have political beliefs, don't make them public.
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Topic: Is it wrong of me to think of the whole Mozilla fiasco as a pretty ugly result? (Read 22829 times)