I understand you’re not interested in replies to this comment, but for the sake of other readers I’ll point out parts of it that seem wrong to me:
I disagree with the suggestion that there was something sinister about a policy of ‘we don’t talk badly about you and you don’t talk badly about us’. That is a rephrasing of a fairly standard social (and literal) contract which exists between the majority of people all around the world. As somebody who works for the government making policy, you bet I’d lose my job outright if I publicly criticised them. But I would also expect a variation of this from most employers.
I think it’s reasonable for an employer to no longer want to hire you or work with you if you’re saying bad things about them, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for them to try to limit what you say beyond that. I think it’s not appropriate for your employer to try to hurt you or your future career prospects at other employers because you talked about having a bad time with them.
Whistleblower protections aren’t exactly analogous, because AIUI they’re about disclosure to government authorities, rather than to the general public, and that’s a significant enough difference that it makes sense to treat them separately. But it’s nevertheless interesting to note that if you disclose certain kinds of wrongdoing in certain ways, your employer isn’t even allowed to fire you, let alone retaliate beyond that. These rules are important: it’s difficult and unpleasant to be in that situation, but if that’s where you end up, protecting the employee over the employer is IMO the right call.
[...] autophagic self-immolation process [...] toxic witchhunts [...] pillory and vigilantism
I get that threats like these are very painful for the people involved. However, I don’t think there’s any real non-painful way for people to confront the realities that they’ve hurt others through mistakes they’ve made, and there’s no non-painful way to say “we, as a community, must recommend that people guard themselves against being hurt by these people”. You hint that there are other ways to handle these things, but you don’t say what they are.
I think we could probably come up with a system that’s kinder to the accused than this one. However, granting that sometimes such a system would demand that we need to warn other prospective employees and funders about what happened, there’s no world that I can see that contains no posts like this. I think it’s reasonable to believe that Kat and Nonlinear should have had more time to make their case, but ultimately, if they fail to make their case, that fact must be made public, and there’s no enjoyable way to do that.
I understand you’re not interested in replies to this comment, but for the sake of other readers I’ll point out parts of it that seem wrong to me:
I think it’s reasonable for an employer to no longer want to hire you or work with you if you’re saying bad things about them, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for them to try to limit what you say beyond that. I think it’s not appropriate for your employer to try to hurt you or your future career prospects at other employers because you talked about having a bad time with them.
Whistleblower protections aren’t exactly analogous, because AIUI they’re about disclosure to government authorities, rather than to the general public, and that’s a significant enough difference that it makes sense to treat them separately. But it’s nevertheless interesting to note that if you disclose certain kinds of wrongdoing in certain ways, your employer isn’t even allowed to fire you, let alone retaliate beyond that. These rules are important: it’s difficult and unpleasant to be in that situation, but if that’s where you end up, protecting the employee over the employer is IMO the right call.
I get that threats like these are very painful for the people involved. However, I don’t think there’s any real non-painful way for people to confront the realities that they’ve hurt others through mistakes they’ve made, and there’s no non-painful way to say “we, as a community, must recommend that people guard themselves against being hurt by these people”. You hint that there are other ways to handle these things, but you don’t say what they are.
I think we could probably come up with a system that’s kinder to the accused than this one. However, granting that sometimes such a system would demand that we need to warn other prospective employees and funders about what happened, there’s no world that I can see that contains no posts like this. I think it’s reasonable to believe that Kat and Nonlinear should have had more time to make their case, but ultimately, if they fail to make their case, that fact must be made public, and there’s no enjoyable way to do that.