
Business Insider CTO Forced to Resign Following Twitter Firestorm - untog
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/business-insider-tech-bro-fired.html
======
newnewnew
Poor guy. For what it's worth I agree with the tweets that got him fired,
including this one[1] and the ones immediately around it. The "controversial"
apps from the techcrunch disrupt hackathon weren't really "misogynist", so
much as in bad taste. And I'm tired of seeing accusations of "hate" used to
shut down discussion.

But it seems that tweeting that kicked off a PC feminist lynch mob that went
back through his tweets combing for a way to get him fired. Most of the tweets
that offended them are logically defensible, if against mainstream opinion.

The one that is beyond the pale is a quote from Mel Gibson. I'm not sure why
he posted that. Anybody that has a reason to dislike you isn't going to give
you the benefit of the doubt. You gotta be on your toes. Even in this thread
on HN people are debating whether or not he should be fired, and then that
tweet gets posted and people say "oh, I see".

This goes to show that the only way to have counter-cultural opinions on the
internet is with a pseudonym. Or to never make mistakes. You hackers arguing
about "women in tech", founder accents, or other sensitive topics under your
real names are insane.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/377139293136756736](https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/377139293136756736)

~~~
jackowayed
I would call supporting the objectification of women misogyny. Sure, it's not
traditional "hatred" (But really, how many people _hate_ all women in the
traditional sense? Is that all people think misogyny means?), but it's a
failure to value women as people.

Regardless, it's more than just bad taste. At a professional event for a group
that has terrible gender balance, glorifying the objectification onstage only
further creates a culture where it is hard for women to feel welcome. It's bad
taste that is Part of the Problem. And even a sexualized environment (eg. the
stupid CircleShake presentation) can make a lot of people feel uncomfortable,
especially women since society views male and female sexuality _very_
differently. Plus women are overwhelmingly the ones who have had very bad
experiences with sex (sexual assault, etc), or have worried about it even if
it hasn't happened.

So both presentations contributed to the status quo that makes tech/startups
feel like a boys club, making it harder for women to feel comfortable joining
the communities. I think that supporting these unjust, sexist status quos is
misogyny, so both presentations were--in effect, if not in intention--
misogynistic.

But it also doesn't matter. He's the _CTO_. If he were a random dev, firing
him would probably be extreme. Talk to him, ask him to avoid touching
controversial subjects online for awhile and be more careful and considerate.
But this is the guy who leads the technical team. He has a lot of impact on
the culture. If he thinks the right response to stupid guys who support the
objectification of women onstage at a large, publicly-broadcast professional
event is to defend them as "not misogynists," then I don't trust him to be
very sensitive to how his work environment may need improvement to make women
feel more comfortable. And I doubt many prospective female engineers would
either.

~~~
newnewnew
Let's be honest, the decision to fire Pax isn't about hiring female engineers
so much as appeasing the lynch mob.

I disagree with your definitions of misogyny, objectification, and all that.
But you seem like a reasonable person and I'm sure we could have a good
discussion over it. However, if at the end of the discussion _I get fired_ for
holding my side of the conversation, count me out.

~~~
juridatenshi
You keep using the term "lynch mob." I do not think that means what you think
it means.

------
hosay123
For all the value of political correctness in the workplace, someone just lost
their job for their honest views, because some found them too ugly to bear. If
you're still thirsty for more ugly truth, check out a Twitter search for
@paxdickinson just now. Apparently to many, honesty is objectively worse than
endless vengeful hate.

I don't support anything this guy said, but clearly some of it was sarcasm,
and as for the rest of it, differences of opinion are entropy, and every time
we suppress them, the universe gets that little bit colder and humanity dies
that little bit quicker..

There are no winners here. I find everything about this episode a disgrace on
both sides.

~~~
newnewnew
The politically correct and their defenders engage in _Crocodile Humor_ , the
laughter of the powerful at the powerless[1]. It is an ugly thing to behold.

"Many UR readers have had the priceless educational privilege of growing up
behind the Iron Curtain. These readers will identify Professor DeLong’s tone
at once: it is the tone of the Soviet humor magazine Krokodil[2]. I will take
the liberty of Anglicizing, and call it “crocodile humor.” Extremely educated
readers may also be familiar with the Nazi variant, as found in Der Stürmer
and the like. The material is different, of course, but the tone is
unmistakable. We’ll hear a good deal more of it in the next four years.

Crocodile humor is the laughter of the powerful at the powerless. It is not
intended to be funny. It is intended to intimidate. Those who laugh, as many
do, are those who love to submerge themselves in a mob, feel its strength as
theirs, chant and shake their spears as one."

[1] [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/preside...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/president-obama-with-little-
perspective.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil)

~~~
rollo_tommasi
It is beyond ludicrous to suggest that a C-suite executive at a media company
is "the powerless".

~~~
newnewnew
Who can get who fired is a flawed measure of power, but a good first
approximation.

Which groups can say racist statements about which other groups and still keep
their jobs? Also a good question for measuring relative power. We'll ask Anil
Dash[1]

If your HR department toes the official feminist line, feminism has _power_.
If someone can get you fired for making a dongle joke to your friend, that is
_power_.

The myth that white males all hold positions of power is itself evidence of
the power that cultural Marxists hold.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361167)

------
fingerprinter
I know NOTHING about Dickinson other than this article and the linked
articles, but something that really bothers me about tech is how people like
him are able to even become CTO/CEO/CXO at all, let alone continue to get jobs
at that level!

I've worked with my share of C level folk who are borderline sociopathic and
have the wonderful combination of NOT being successful at that level either.
It astounds me that people can basically continue to con their way around
companies at the upper levels.

/rant

~~~
Nate75Sanders
Most devs I've met will just endlessly put up with this shit.

They'll also put up with:

    
    
        - long hours
        - far less than optimal physical workspaces
        - being left in the dark about what's going on in the company from a business perspective
        - all kinds of other crap
    

We need more devs who will speak up or at least who will support the ones who
do speak up.

In far too many workplaces, it's still high school. Management is sometimes
just a great way not to have to be accountable.

Pre-empt: Obviously there are great managers. I'm not talking about them.

~~~
fingerprinter
I also wonder about the VCs or boards that hire them! I get the sense that
they generally don't care if someone is a complete asshole so long as he gets
results. But I am confounded when someone is a complete asshole and they don't
get results. How does that person keep getting these jobs? :/

~~~
theorique
I don't know what this guy's like in real life, but if he acts relatively
normal in a job interview, why would his social media habits come up?

In all my job interviews, no one has ever asked me whether I tweet out racist
and sexist comments (spoiler: I don't).

~~~
fingerprinter
This is two days old now, so not sure you'll see it.

One should always expect that their internet information where their real name
is listed will be seen. Most places are doing some sort of internet search for
the person to see what public information, both good and bad, they can glean.
This is the way of the world these days.

~~~
theorique
Agreed.

Depends on the policy of the company, of course, but the first thing I would
do when I get a resume of a person for interviewing is to google their name.
Do they have LinkedIn, github, Facebook, a personal web site?

There's good, neutral, and bad.

\- good: OS contributions, intelligent blog on topic

\- neutral: random hobbies, completely blank web presence

\- bad: photos with illegal drugs, hostile blog, drive-by vicious blog
comments, etc

------
meritt
Another brogrammer removed from the industry. Hopefully the debacle at TC
Disrupt over the weekend removed a few more as well. Let's keep this train
rolling.

~~~
samstave
What was the debacle at Disrupt?

~~~
untog
You wouldn't have heard about it if you only read Hacker News - users
systematically flagged any reference to it off the site. The 21st Century
equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la la"

Worth pointing out that the exact same thing has now happened to this thread.

~~~
cstejerean
After seeing all of the complaints about that event on Twitter, I was
definitely surprised to find no mention of it on HN. I wonder why this wasn't
worthy of discussion here.

~~~
untog
It happens any/every time gender is discussed on Hacker News.

There was a hackathon planned last year that boasted "women, booze &
massages". Numerous threads about it were immediately flagged off the site.
Same the Geeklist issue with a promo video that had a woman in her underwear.

It would be one thing if the HN community was capable of looking at these
issues and having a reasoned discussion about them. But no, flagged
immediately. Heroic hackers jumping on the gender grenade so the rest of us
don't even have to think about it.

------
plinkplonk
( I am not following this closely, so please correct me if I'm wrong)

Did he really get _fired_ for tweeting "feminism in tech remains the champion
topic for my block list. my finger is getting tired."?

someone gets fired for saying he blocks people talking about $topic on his
twitter timeline?).

wow, if that is all he got fired for, then (imo) this is political correctness
gone crazy.

EDIT: ok there is a whole history of weird tweets. see
[http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-
ne...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-
nightmare-1280336916)

Whoa I didn't know you could use the word 'nigger' in polite/public
conversation in the USA.

Above judgment withdrawn. The guy is nuts. How did he get to be CTO in the
first place?

------
Karunamon
Was this just the last straw? I ask because the tweet pictured in the article
seems fairly reasonable. Calling out a coworker for insulting you on twitter
doesn't seem particularly objectionable.

~~~
untog
Very much the last straw. How about this tweet:

 _" In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers.
It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."_

[https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/statuses/18546571881](https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/statuses/18546571881)

~~~
Karunamon
Wow. Suddenly this article makes sense.

~~~
runn1ng
He is a fun guy.

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-
ne...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-
nightmare-1280336916)

------
protomyth
For Business Insider's sake, I hope he was not involved in any hiring
decisions because there will be some lawsuits.

~~~
dragonwriter
He was the CTO. It'd be pretty odd for a CxO not to be involved in any hiring
decisions.

~~~
protomyth
With how big a prick he is, someone might have kept him out of the hiring
process.

------
eranation
Rule #1 of work (Murphy entry #42331) - if you write something that has a
public link, and involves the words: rape, asshole, feminism, and you hold a
VP level position, it will be on HN front page, and it will not be a good
thing for your job. I really hope for him he was sarcastic, but even if he
was, it's no excuse.

my question: what gain would someone have for posting these kind of tweets?
show off you are a cool guy? get some "no such thing as bad publicity"
followers? is it a "Miley Cyrus" marketing scheme?

Rule #2 of work - be nice. to everyone. there is no downside to this. prove me
wrong.

EDIT: corrected Murphy entry number

------
theorique
That escalated quickly.

~~~
andrew_gardener
based on his history (links from inside article) it seems to have been
building up over the years. Guess he finally crossed the line?

~~~
leephillips
Guess he did. Joking about "niggers" gang raping Jesus didn't cross it, but
suggesting that he preferred not to read about feminism in tech was just too
much.

------
MatthewPhillips
Kind of glad I've stopped using Twitter. Seems to be a cesspool of negativity
and snarkiness. I think the problem is the vast majority of Twitter users have
very few followers and consequently get very little interaction (Even
programmer "celebrity" @izs only has ~8k followers). I think this leads to
Lord of the Flies behavior, why we constantly see tweets getting attention
when they are antagonistic.

~~~
venomsnake
Twitter - when all you have is only one line, everything you try to say sounds
like stand up comedy oneliners. The majority of which are of dubious quality.

Also are BI so big that they require a CTO or title inflation is in full
swing.

We are must also solve the problem why someone can be fired for something non
work related and out of company time in general. Because it will grow bigger
with time.

------
untog
Welcome to yet another dead thread on Hacker News, flagged off the site by
people too scared to discuss gender in the tech industry.

------
bambax
> _You know we work in the same building right?_

Not anymore you don't.

------
fedvasu
why people who believe in meritocracy are termed anti-feminists? No I don't
even remotely know Pax, heck this is the first time I heard of him. Guys
seriously do you want to sink to the level of quota and reservation based on
gender now? It is exteremely difficult to get talented and motivated people in
tech, let us not put gender bias or elitism on people who care about their
field (may be just their company/org). I am not saying Pax is not anti-
feminist, may very well be, but so much hate against him, He didn't say women
must be banned from our industry, he didn't even say women are dumb (or less
capable). I am all for equal rights for all gender(which exist till now, which
may come to exist in future). Is it so hard for all of us to accept that the
most motivated, accomplished and talented people must be rewarded the most in
our industry? Is meritocracy bad or plain stupid? I hope HN folks take their
heads out their rear and deeply contemplate about this, Yes one need to be
civil in public forums, but that doesn't mean one is not entitled to his/her
opinion. Come On guys we are better than this (including me).And BTW he
defended himself for being called a __hole by his co-worker in a very
dignified fashion, that is something!Let us be rational about things like
this.

~~~
pessimizer
I guarantee that a bro with this kind of lack of self-control and awareness
who has made it to CTO has been the beneficiary of a lot of informal
affirmative action and quotas.

"At least three cool dudes that I can drink at lunch with? Check."

~~~
fedvasu
fuck political correctness. Most of the time I had to deal with all the
passive-agressive BS of office, I want to throw a few chairs out-of-the window
and whenever I talk to a feminist, I want to go frag mode in the office. I
always wish I could let some steam off,instead giving reasonable and
politically neutral statements.I guess it is just me. :(

------
bruceb
Regardless of his views he seemed to imply a threat of violence in his tweet:
[https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/377191338930094081](https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/377191338930094081)
"@anildash really, dude? You know we work in the same building right? Would
you like to come call me an asshole to my face tomorrow?"

Yeah lawsuit waiting to happen.

------
jcromartie
He's honest about his opinions, and he might be trolling sure, but I really
fail to see the evidence that he's a racist misogynist.

This is just a meme which the mob picked up and ran with, just like "Phil Fish
is an asshole" that drove him out of indie game dev.

Edit: for example, when people say he makes misogynist tweets, then they need
to offer evidence that he is against women or hates women.

------
spindritf
I've seen it gaining momentum on Twitter yesterday. Pretty disturbing lynch-
mob stuff.

EDIT: Is it possible to link to past search results on Twitter? So
[https://twitter.com/search?q=%40paxdickinson](https://twitter.com/search?q=%40paxdickinson)
but as it was 12h ago? Either way, it's not that different today.

------
anu_gupta
Not sure why people are trying to defend this immature little man-child. No
one is saying that he's not allowed to tweet what he wants to. Then again,
it's perfectly legal to fire him for almost any reason, and that's what
happened.

TL;DR; if you're an asshole, then sometimes unpleasant things happen to you.

------
joshdance
A side point, does Business Insider do original reporting, or do they just
aggregate? I stopped reading them after I found it was just slideshows of
bullet points pulled from somewhere else.

~~~
pc
They do original reporting too, e.g. the extensively-researched
[http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-
biography-2013-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-
biography-2013-8?op=1)

------
interstitial
TIL that millions of geniuses around the globe can fathom the entire truth
from a twitter feed w/o need for further investigation. Including the geniuses
of HN.

------
suyash
Business Insider seems like a dumb company. We all need to standup and support
the hacker - Pax Dikinson. He was talking for himself and not for his employer
after all.

------
rdl
This is fake controversy ginned up by Business Insider. Notice how you're all
talking about Business Insider now?

Is there any evidence "Pax Dickinson" is a real person?

~~~
untog
Are you serious? You really think that if BI made a fictional CTO no-one would
say anything about it?

------
fedvasu
It is height of hypocrysy! That dude is not entitled to his opinion.
:facepalm: I hate this entire feminism in tech agenda. Yeah, He is a douche,
so what? Everyone is a little bit on varying topics.Because of things like
that our industry is stranded in politics. Pax: Salute!

business insider: you are anti-democratic and pro-feminist douche bags.

fuck feminist agenda.

~~~
untog
I've already posted this once, but can you explain how this tweet is related
to the 'feminist agenda':

 _" In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers.
It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."_

[https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/statuses/18546571881](https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/statuses/18546571881)

~~~
fedvasu
haha, I think I defended a nutjob. I get it but seriously, he got aked to
step-down for anti-feminist post not for this seemingly hurtful comment toward
a community. Good Job BusinessInsider! (for choosing sides)

~~~
untog
_he got aked to step-down for anti-feminist post_

Citation needed. He was asked to step down for being an abhorrent human being
who posts abuse about a number of groups of people (including women) and
leaves his company vulnerable to lawsuits.

------
general_failure
Best of luck anil. Seriously don't call people things which you won't call
them on their face. Unless you would.

~~~
ceejayoz
How do you know he wouldn't?

