Github today apologised for firing a Jewish employee who warned co-workers about Nazis and offered him his job back. It also said that "employees are free to express concerns about Nazis".
As it happened, the Jewish employee posted to an internal Github Slack channel: "Stay safe homies, Nazis are about." But the comment sparked criticism from a co-worker about the use of the word "Nazi" to describe the rioters, calling it "untasteful conduct" for the workplace. The Jewish employee, who wished to remain anonymous, told Techcrunch he had been "genuinely concerned about his co-workers in the area, in addition to his Jewish family members".
It keeps coming back to me that the company said he was fired not for the remark but for "patterns of behavior", a vaguery that is not quite the polished language of human relations.
We can't simply chalk this up to the indistinct teenage-libertarian mentality of Silicon Valley, where giving a shit about anything marks you as a poor Culture Fit. Github fired a Jew for complaining about the Nazis sacking the U.S. Capitol, bullshitted him about it, and it did so after taking sides when another employee complained about it. Trouble.
