GitHub hired an independent investigator to look into their firing of a Jewish employee after he told fellow Jewish employees, “stay safe homies nazis are about.” They found that, unsurprisingly, GitHub was wrong to fire him. They’ve since reached out and apologized to the employee and the public, and have even agreed to re-hire the fired employee. The head of HR took responsibility for the wrongful termination, and has resigned. The firmer GitHub employee hasn’t stated whether or not they want to go back.
GitHub still hasn’t said what logic lead to the firing. They’ve made no statement about change to prevent this from happening in the future. GitHub also has another problem. The Nazi sympathizer that took issue with a Jewish person telling fellow Jewish people to “stay safe” while in Washington D.C. while Nazis were about? He’s still at GitHub. As are others who have made disgusting jokes about the Holocaust.
Why did GitHub fire a Jewish person worried about Nazis but not the person defending Nazis to a Jewish person?
Wrong Employee Terminated
https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1350159432282357760?s=20
There’s an employee at GitHub who, “joked” that “nazis gave the jews free healthcare” in 2014. That employee is still at GitHub. As is the employee who responded to the warning to “stay safe” with a defense of far-right people getting the label of “Nazi.”
The user tried to claim that, despite their initial ignorance to the fact that there were actually Nazis about in Washington D.C., that they were just unhappy with conservatives being conflated with Nazis. However, it’s not as though any of the “non-Nazi” Trump supporters in Washington kicked out those with Nazi paraphernalia, the way any moderate or left-leaning person would do, so perhaps he’s wasting his time defending people who are, in fact, rather sympathetic to Nazis (or as we call Nazi sympathizers, Nazis).
This person, even after admitting that they may have initially overreacted to the word “Nazi” being used as they didn’t know the context or room they were in at all, still reported their Jewish coworker for using the word “Nazi” to describe self-avowed Nazis.
“This is a deeply unsatisfying response … And it makes me feel sick to my stomach. It seems that GitHub chose to fire a Jewish employee for either accurately labeling the (literal, verifiable) Nazis at the Capitol as Nazis; or that they were fired for expressing a religious sentiment. I don’t see how either of those comport with GitHub’s values. I respect the privacy of departed employees, but there simply must be something else that can be said as to why this isn’t as bad as it looks.”
– GitHub Employee on Slack
Why is someone so antagonistic, who seeks out discussions about Nazis to defend them, who knowingly makes misleading reports about the statements of his Jewish coworkers about Nazis, still at GitHub? Why is anyone attached to this debacle still there? Why won’t GitHub give anyone, including their own employees, a clear answer as to why this person was fired? I think the answer is staring us in the face.
Hey, GitHub employees, stay safe, homies, Nazis are about.
Sources:
- Erica Brescia (GitHub COO), The GitHub Blog
- Zoe Schiffer, The Verge
- Jody Serrano, Gizmodo