> “We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. "But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves."
Grief is hard and what's happening in Gaza is tragic, but this is not what the workplace is for. Why is it Microsoft's job to provide the described space?
Maybe this is less of a thing on the coasts, but where I live people have families, friends, churches, bars, clubs, and many other outlets that are designed for this kind of personal reflection and mourning. We don't expect our workplace to provide it for us because we don't live at work. We go into work to earn money to provide means for us to live our lives outside of work. To the extent that we want our coworkers to be involved in those spaces, we invite them to be.
More than anything else what I'm getting from this is that the death of the third space on the West Coast must be well and truly complete, if this kind of line sounds reasonable there.
> Maybe this is less of a thing on the coasts, but where I live people have families, friends, churches, bars, clubs, and many other outlets that are designed for this kind of personal reflection and mourning. We don't expect our workplace to provide it for us because we don't live at work. We go into work to earn money to provide means for us to live our lives outside of work. To the extent that we want our coworkers to be involved in those spaces, we invite them to be.
Yet corporations are eager to show allyship and support to the cause of the moment whenever it provides benefits in term of image and recognition.
At my company the CEO sent out a long email after October 7 lamenting how horrible and unjustified it was. Did the same occur at any of these BigTech MIC puppet companies?
Right, so, the Silicon Valley workplace is in fact a forum for political perspectives, as long as they're in line with the imperatives of the MIC and the profits to be made from selling to it.
> the death of the third space on the West Coast must be well and truly complete
100% gone. I've been wondering lately if companies might benefit from investing in getting the third space back; increase in employee creativity would offset the drop in overtime hours.
Welcome to Corporate Orthodox Church & Bowling Center. We are really glad you’re here. Everyone in accounts receivable is down on Lanes 12-14, and the software engineers are practicing choir right now. Have a seat anywhere you’d like and grab some kool-aid. You’re allowed one drink, but you’ll need to authenticate to the VPN first.
exactly! my org had one of those bowling trips a few years ago for a holiday party, and it was a lot of fun. just need a way to quantify the benefits to productivity...
Expecting employees to compartmentalize their personal lives completely during work is unrealistic and dehumanizing.
I’ve worked with American companies for years and sat through countless meetings where U.S.-specific events were addressed—9/11, BLM, elections, Black History Month, Thanksgiving, natural disasters, even sensitivity and active shooter trainings. Outside of local disaster/issues, none of these are directly relevant in my country, yet we empathize, because it’s human to care.
Here’s the problem: When divisive topics arise, companies either censor them entirely or let them play out. Censorship may be inhumane, but it’s efficient. Or, a company can solicit feedback and allow employees to hold non-disruptive, neutral events outside of work hours.
If this is the path, it has to be consistent. No exceptions for topics like the war in Ukraine or U.S. cultural movements. This approach avoids corporate bias while enabling individual expression without disturbing business.
Publicly held or large companies shouldn’t hold positions on sensitive issues, but employees should have the freedom to engage, with policies that prevent harm or offense.
And, by the way, a vigil doesn’t count as harmful.
That is a different complaint and not the one they're fronting. They are framing this event as a personal mourning space, not a protest against company policy.
If they need their personal mourning space to be provided by their employer, that's indicative of a major gap in their non-work support networks.
If they're camouflaging a protest against company policy as personal mourning space, then they're abusing people's support of emotional wellness to justify hosting a protest on private property.
I think it can still be both; Lack of outside life and internal protest.
>Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” because of the use of its technology by the Israeli military.
What does the story you linked have to do with political views?
What Hamas did on October 7th was a historical fact - taking testimony of that historical fact is apolitical.
Holding a vigil at work to draw attention to a war that in an employee's opinion is unjust is neither historical nor apolitical. It is simply political posturing and virtue signalling.
> Microsoft Israel engineers develop advanced AI tools to assist users around the world in creating personalized memorial ceremonies or events based on Oct. 7 survivor testimonies
Same thing this person was fired for, only instead of Palestinians they want to memorialize Oct. 7th Israelis.
This is a copy paste of text from the article I'm referring to:
"Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company's headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel's war with Hamas. The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington. Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid" that has opposed Microsoft's sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government."
That is nothing at like Microsoft using AI to help with post-interview processing of testimony taken by October 7th victims and their families.
To put this another way, if you can't see how “No Azure for Apartheid" is not just unavoidably - but intentionally - political then I'm not sure what else I can say.
Incredibly shocking how quickly Americans adapted to their government enabling the systematic deaths of thousands. Surely this will leave a lasting impact on those of us who cannot ignore it
The parent's criticism was of the American government. Also, Israel is certainly not acting more restrained in Gaza; civilian deaths are well over 100K at this point.
Not really shocking- I live in the desert southwest and can see the remnants of the genocide of natives here. There are plenty of folks who are at peace with the "historical necessity" of that mass murder, so it doesn't ever surprise me when the ancestors of those folks are at peace with similar violent efforts to take a space.
I can't ignore it, but the more I look at this place the less it seems like anything truely new- it feels like a product of the kinds of governments that rule the world at the moment.
> Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing ... The same group had months earlier called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stances on Israel. ( https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-pa... )
Ah, just another example of "cancel culture" in the US getting rid of the "politically undesirable". (It's news to me that speaking for human rights and freedom of Palestinians colonised by Israel, is now "antisemitism"). I hope Americans recognize that to an outsider like me, the slogan of "land of the free and the home of the brave" is increasingly sounding so hollow. This sad current political trajectory of "you better not have any political beliefs that offend those in power" is certain to lead the US to its downfall.
There is nothing new about this. Do you think you could call your boss an active participant in genocide and keep working 20 years ago? You would be shown the do them too.
Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft. Neither of the Cheneys hold any political office. I look forward to Trump’s action after January,19,2025 as the president of the United States. None of this wishy washy treatment that Israel, a U.S ally has received from the current administration.
>Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft. Neither of the Cheneys hold any political office.
Yes, certainly lobbying and policy advocacy don't exist, so there's no actual way to be involved in politics other than holding public office and voting.
>None of this wishy washy treatment that Israel, a U.S ally has received from the current administration.
Providing the bulk of weaponry and auxiliary infrastructure to a country actively engaged in a conflict whilst offering full-throated moral support is 'wishy washy' now.
Trump couldn't do anything because he was being held at a deep state black site. The person you saw in the Oval Office was a body double hired off the dark web, who was deliberately making bad decisions to ruin Trump's good reputation and steal the election, probably.
You are telling it like some kind of joke but both Trump and Obama were publicly castrated in office. The power of the president seems greatly exaggerated.
I think that, at least in part, this meme is how parties excuse their inability to deliver once they secure power. In Obama's case specifically, I don't know how a guy who had been a community organizer since the 80s, who'd been a senator since the late 90s was so caught off guard by the legislature once he had executive power at his disposal.
But yet they both did actually do a bunch of other things, especially exercising the power of the bully pulpit.
Or alternatively if we do take it for granted that presidents are quite constrained in what they themself can do (aka "separation of powers"), then why is the original comment talking as if there would be some massive sea change next time when there wasn't one last time?
This seems like another bit of Schrödinger's Trump. Like how he's both the most powerful most successful person, and also just an unfortunate victim that other people are always doing mean things to.
Anyone with sufficient karma can flag and unflag. I did not flag this, and cannot unflag, but stories that are likely to turn into flamewars get flagged. I have also noticed that anything critical of Israel in anyway is also highly likely to get flagged.
I noticed the same: anything critical of Israel gets flagged right away. And I'm not surprised: they have a large IT ecosystem and have engaged in similar behavior before. Paul Graham complained about this [0] after it came out that Israeli VCs, tech entrepreneurs, etc. had groups for coordinating attacks on anyone questioning the Israeli narrative on social media. Like, they mentioned PG by name in their briefings.
I guess don't mix profession and politics? That's a junior move regardless of the topic, and punitive actions are to be expected, anywhere in the world, in any type of business.
The last thing any employer wants to see is to become yet another endless battlefield of left vs right, green vs red, blah vs fart. Keeping politics out of your job is a sign of professionalism, since its trivial for any random 2 people in the world to disagree on politics, they just have to dig deep enough.
From the cold blooded business perspective, MSFT is probably doing the right thing for its here. The FTC is currently looking to break up Google; the military industrial complex would have likely discouraged the FTC from this course of action if Google had crushed the Project Maven employee protests a few years ago.
US IT sector is too linked to the US and Israeli military. One more reason for Europeans, for example, to create their own sovereign independent IT sector. They lack the will but by following blindly they will again pay the price like we see with dutch ASML now and Nokia before it.
> “We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. "But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves."
Grief is hard and what's happening in Gaza is tragic, but this is not what the workplace is for. Why is it Microsoft's job to provide the described space?
Maybe this is less of a thing on the coasts, but where I live people have families, friends, churches, bars, clubs, and many other outlets that are designed for this kind of personal reflection and mourning. We don't expect our workplace to provide it for us because we don't live at work. We go into work to earn money to provide means for us to live our lives outside of work. To the extent that we want our coworkers to be involved in those spaces, we invite them to be.
More than anything else what I'm getting from this is that the death of the third space on the West Coast must be well and truly complete, if this kind of line sounds reasonable there.
> Maybe this is less of a thing on the coasts, but where I live people have families, friends, churches, bars, clubs, and many other outlets that are designed for this kind of personal reflection and mourning. We don't expect our workplace to provide it for us because we don't live at work. We go into work to earn money to provide means for us to live our lives outside of work. To the extent that we want our coworkers to be involved in those spaces, we invite them to be.
Yet corporations are eager to show allyship and support to the cause of the moment whenever it provides benefits in term of image and recognition.
At my company the CEO sent out a long email after October 7 lamenting how horrible and unjustified it was. Did the same occur at any of these BigTech MIC puppet companies?
Yes, the MS CEO made several statements:
https://www.geekwire.com/2023/microsoft-ceo-heartbroken-by-a...
Microsoft was also very recently working on this:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/microsoft-launches-ai-platform...
Right, so, the Silicon Valley workplace is in fact a forum for political perspectives, as long as they're in line with the imperatives of the MIC and the profits to be made from selling to it.
> the death of the third space on the West Coast must be well and truly complete
100% gone. I've been wondering lately if companies might benefit from investing in getting the third space back; increase in employee creativity would offset the drop in overtime hours.
Welcome to Corporate Orthodox Church & Bowling Center. We are really glad you’re here. Everyone in accounts receivable is down on Lanes 12-14, and the software engineers are practicing choir right now. Have a seat anywhere you’d like and grab some kool-aid. You’re allowed one drink, but you’ll need to authenticate to the VPN first.
exactly! my org had one of those bowling trips a few years ago for a holiday party, and it was a lot of fun. just need a way to quantify the benefits to productivity...
I hate this take.
Expecting employees to compartmentalize their personal lives completely during work is unrealistic and dehumanizing.
I’ve worked with American companies for years and sat through countless meetings where U.S.-specific events were addressed—9/11, BLM, elections, Black History Month, Thanksgiving, natural disasters, even sensitivity and active shooter trainings. Outside of local disaster/issues, none of these are directly relevant in my country, yet we empathize, because it’s human to care.
Here’s the problem: When divisive topics arise, companies either censor them entirely or let them play out. Censorship may be inhumane, but it’s efficient. Or, a company can solicit feedback and allow employees to hold non-disruptive, neutral events outside of work hours.
If this is the path, it has to be consistent. No exceptions for topics like the war in Ukraine or U.S. cultural movements. This approach avoids corporate bias while enabling individual expression without disturbing business.
Publicly held or large companies shouldn’t hold positions on sensitive issues, but employees should have the freedom to engage, with policies that prevent harm or offense.
And, by the way, a vigil doesn’t count as harmful.
Except that Microsoft does organize spaces for many other issues, causes and such.
You can argue whether they should or shouldn't, and I think that's valid. But when it gets selective, it gets muddy.
The issue is that Microsoft does active business with Israel. It's not just completely non sequitur.
That is a different complaint and not the one they're fronting. They are framing this event as a personal mourning space, not a protest against company policy.
If they need their personal mourning space to be provided by their employer, that's indicative of a major gap in their non-work support networks.
If they're camouflaging a protest against company policy as personal mourning space, then they're abusing people's support of emotional wellness to justify hosting a protest on private property.
I think it can still be both; Lack of outside life and internal protest.
>Hossam Nasr, said the purpose of the vigil was both “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” because of the use of its technology by the Israeli military.
I’m not certain why this was flagged, however I think this is a better source: https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-pa...
Somebody posted that link too on HN and it was flagged too. :/
Good.
Keep your political views (far left, far right, or anywhere in between) away from the workplace.
Tell it to Microsoft:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/microsoft-launches-ai-platform...
What does the story you linked have to do with political views?
What Hamas did on October 7th was a historical fact - taking testimony of that historical fact is apolitical.
Holding a vigil at work to draw attention to a war that in an employee's opinion is unjust is neither historical nor apolitical. It is simply political posturing and virtue signalling.
It's really not difficult to understand.
This is literally the subtitle of that article:
> Microsoft Israel engineers develop advanced AI tools to assist users around the world in creating personalized memorial ceremonies or events based on Oct. 7 survivor testimonies
Same thing this person was fired for, only instead of Palestinians they want to memorialize Oct. 7th Israelis.
Hi friend,
Are we referring to the same article?
This is a copy paste of text from the article I'm referring to:
"Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company's headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel's war with Hamas. The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington. Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid" that has opposed Microsoft's sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government."
That is nothing at like Microsoft using AI to help with post-interview processing of testimony taken by October 7th victims and their families.
To put this another way, if you can't see how “No Azure for Apartheid" is not just unavoidably - but intentionally - political then I'm not sure what else I can say.
Incredibly shocking how quickly Americans adapted to their government enabling the systematic deaths of thousands. Surely this will leave a lasting impact on those of us who cannot ignore it
What exactly do you think occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan in the years after 9/11?
The double-think about Gaza by US citizens is just mind blowing to me as an outsider.
The US acted the same, but even worse and you have the nerve to criticise Israel for acting more restrained than your country did!?
There were at least a 100K civilian deaths in Iraq alone during the second Gulf War!
The parent's criticism was of the American government. Also, Israel is certainly not acting more restrained in Gaza; civilian deaths are well over 100K at this point.
Not really shocking- I live in the desert southwest and can see the remnants of the genocide of natives here. There are plenty of folks who are at peace with the "historical necessity" of that mass murder, so it doesn't ever surprise me when the ancestors of those folks are at peace with similar violent efforts to take a space.
I can't ignore it, but the more I look at this place the less it seems like anything truely new- it feels like a product of the kinds of governments that rule the world at the moment.
> Nasr said his firing was disclosed on social media by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism more than an hour before he received the call from Microsoft. The group didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on how it learned about the firing ... The same group had months earlier called on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to take action against Nasr for his public stances on Israel. ( https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-fired-workers-israel-pa... )
Ah, just another example of "cancel culture" in the US getting rid of the "politically undesirable". (It's news to me that speaking for human rights and freedom of Palestinians colonised by Israel, is now "antisemitism"). I hope Americans recognize that to an outsider like me, the slogan of "land of the free and the home of the brave" is increasingly sounding so hollow. This sad current political trajectory of "you better not have any political beliefs that offend those in power" is certain to lead the US to its downfall.
There is nothing new about this. Do you think you could call your boss an active participant in genocide and keep working 20 years ago? You would be shown the do them too.
I wonder if there was an "unauthorised" vigil for Ukranians on ms premises would the employee be fired too.
Both Dick Cheney and Bill Gates endorse the Democrats, who (by their actions) endorse the current events.
There’s not really anyone to endorse that doesn’t support it.
Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft. Neither of the Cheneys hold any political office. I look forward to Trump’s action after January,19,2025 as the president of the United States. None of this wishy washy treatment that Israel, a U.S ally has received from the current administration.
What is it that you are endorsing? More funding for Israel?
The support or wishy washyness still amounts to funding the military action that is killing thousands and thousands of civilians.
What more do you want? Even More funding and public forced support of this clear massacre?
>Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft. Neither of the Cheneys hold any political office.
Yes, certainly lobbying and policy advocacy don't exist, so there's no actual way to be involved in politics other than holding public office and voting.
>None of this wishy washy treatment that Israel, a U.S ally has received from the current administration.
Providing the bulk of weaponry and auxiliary infrastructure to a country actively engaged in a conflict whilst offering full-throated moral support is 'wishy washy' now.
What did Trump do to hold Israel accountable between 2016 and 2020?
Trump couldn't do anything because he was being held at a deep state black site. The person you saw in the Oval Office was a body double hired off the dark web, who was deliberately making bad decisions to ruin Trump's good reputation and steal the election, probably.
You are telling it like some kind of joke but both Trump and Obama were publicly castrated in office. The power of the president seems greatly exaggerated.
I think that, at least in part, this meme is how parties excuse their inability to deliver once they secure power. In Obama's case specifically, I don't know how a guy who had been a community organizer since the 80s, who'd been a senator since the late 90s was so caught off guard by the legislature once he had executive power at his disposal.
But yet they both did actually do a bunch of other things, especially exercising the power of the bully pulpit.
Or alternatively if we do take it for granted that presidents are quite constrained in what they themself can do (aka "separation of powers"), then why is the original comment talking as if there would be some massive sea change next time when there wasn't one last time?
This seems like another bit of Schrödinger's Trump. Like how he's both the most powerful most successful person, and also just an unfortunate victim that other people are always doing mean things to.
Some lives are more valuable than other.
60,000 more
Why is this flagged? @dang
Anyone with sufficient karma can flag and unflag. I did not flag this, and cannot unflag, but stories that are likely to turn into flamewars get flagged. I have also noticed that anything critical of Israel in anyway is also highly likely to get flagged.
Ditto on the point about Israel.
I noticed the same: anything critical of Israel gets flagged right away. And I'm not surprised: they have a large IT ecosystem and have engaged in similar behavior before. Paul Graham complained about this [0] after it came out that Israeli VCs, tech entrepreneurs, etc. had groups for coordinating attacks on anyone questioning the Israeli narrative on social media. Like, they mentioned PG by name in their briefings.
[0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465
@mentions don’t work. If you want to contact dang, use the email at the bottom of the page: hn@ycombinator.com
Fine.
But they'll never fire their halloween execs.
Would this happen to fall under the "cancel culture" rubric?
I guess don't mix profession and politics? That's a junior move regardless of the topic, and punitive actions are to be expected, anywhere in the world, in any type of business.
The last thing any employer wants to see is to become yet another endless battlefield of left vs right, green vs red, blah vs fart. Keeping politics out of your job is a sign of professionalism, since its trivial for any random 2 people in the world to disagree on politics, they just have to dig deep enough.
> Keeping politics out of your job is a sign of professionalism
I guess Microsoft as a whole is an unprofessional organisation, then.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/pub...
> Microsoft actively engages with governments, policy makers, and civil society partners across the world (…)
> In the US, the Microsoft Corporation Stakeholders Voluntary Political Action Committee (MSVPAC) (…)
Doing business with Israel is mixing profession and politics.
[flagged]
Consent manufactured.
From the cold blooded business perspective, MSFT is probably doing the right thing for its here. The FTC is currently looking to break up Google; the military industrial complex would have likely discouraged the FTC from this course of action if Google had crushed the Project Maven employee protests a few years ago.
US IT sector is too linked to the US and Israeli military. One more reason for Europeans, for example, to create their own sovereign independent IT sector. They lack the will but by following blindly they will again pay the price like we see with dutch ASML now and Nokia before it.
Providing more context about the type of “collective healing” this individual is referring to:
https://x.com/stopantisemites/status/1818312718123737228?s=4...
'''Context''' from yet another body that deliberately conflates anti-Zionism with anti-semitism? No thanks.