The public narrative was that you were pressured to resign because some employees were upset that you had made a donation to an initiative opposing gay marriage. I did not “make that up” - it was all over the Internet. I won’t bother posting all the links here, but a simple Google search reveals hundreds of articles all saying that my summation in my original comment is dead-on accurate.
So please do not accuse me of “making stuff up”. I was simply repeating what literally every article on this matter says. If the entire media got that wrong, then fine. Ultimately only you know why you left. But I “made up” nothing.
Your words: “ If you have a conservative bone in your body, you are not welcome on the Mozilla campus.” This is wholly made up, no evidence for it as far as I can tell. Please cite anything you can adduce on this point. My exit is not on its face evidence supporting your statement. If things have changed since I left, let me know.
You also seem to have assumed that the “employees” who called for my resignation reported to me. Not so: they all worked for the smaller Mozilla Foundation, which has arms-length structure as parent non-profit to the for-profit Mozilla Corporation of which I was CEO.
This is wholly made up, no evidence for it as far as I can tell.
Again, that’s not “made up”. It’s a logical conclusion based upon the facts of what happened. You are saying that the facts of your case are not evidence that this could possibly happen to anyone else at that organization in the future. I hope you’re right. But the reality is that if they pushed one person out because of ideological differences, it is quite probable that it has happened to others and will continue to happen.
The bottom line is this: You made a minor donation to a conservative political cause years before you became CEO. That ultimately led to your departure. I don’t think even you would dispute either of those facts. This pretty well supports the conclusion that anyone with even mildly conservative views is not welcome there. I’m not sure how else anyone would interpret that. You seem to have a much more charitable interpretation of it than the facts support, but that doesn’t mean that people interpreting what happened in the most obvious way are “making up” that interpretation.
"Logic" suggests Bayesian analysis but you're working with too few bits. When you make an absolute-sounding posterior claim based on thin or non-existent priors, you risk losing sound inference in favor of pushing a preferred conclusion.
I'm disputing your absolute-sounding "Mozilla’s employees are fiercely liberal". Even if you define "liberal" broadly, are they all? Really, no moderates or righties? As I happen to know some, and so do other people, you seem to be using hyperbole at best, if not making things up.
Also your absolute, unhedged "If you have a conservative bone in your body, you are not welcome on the Mozilla campus." Again, counterexamples are known personally to me and others on HN such as @roca. So instead of persuading, you're exaggerating for some reason (to divide and conquer, to get sympathy, it doesn't matter -- the exaggeration is the point and it blows back, assuming you are actually trying to persuade anyone; perhaps you are writing not to persuade?).
Mozilla would have trouble with state law if they actively fired or demoted anyone over past political acts, per California Labor Law 1101 and 1102. Let's agree that is not the case.
That leaves subtler biases. You could be right, especially after I left, that anyone who is known to be "on the right" (conservative is almost useless as a clear political term) would face subtler kinds of hostility, skepticism, pressure. You are probably right about executives, but that's true at a lot of places. Anyone pushing buttons by boosting Trump at lunch or water-cooler time, wearing a MAGA hat, etc., would run into complaints and escalations.
But at this point we are far from your absolute, unqualified assertions about "are fiercely liberal" and "not welcome". See what I mean?
P.S. See https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/04/fighting-media-narrativ... including all the comments. I'm not taking anyone's side there, but if it were as absolute and simple as you asserted, many righties would have quit too and we'd hear from them. If I missed such testimony, please link.
But at this point we are far from your absolute, unqualified assertions about "are fiercely liberal" and "not welcome". See what I mean?
I probably should have hedged it to some degree, but I feel like you’re being pedantic. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. This was a comment on HN, not a research paper. I was making a generalization, perhaps one worded too broadly, but one that you seem to eventually concede to in the latter part of your last comment.
FWIW, I mentioned your case as an example because I think you suffered a terrible injustice. I can’t stand hypocrisy, and to have things like this being brought forth by people that belong to a party that calls itself the “party of tolerance” disgusts me in a way that I couldn’t fully describe in writing. I don’t even agree with your stance on the issue you donated to, but I think that incidents like yours have a chilling effect on free speech, and that isn’t good for anyone. Too much of this kind of thing happens across the board. I find it fascinating that you seem to be defending the other side in your situation, but I am sure you have your reasons.
I think people not on board with “no one at or to the right of 2008-era Obama is allowed here” purgers need to stand their ground. If you agree then I hope you’ll avoid absolute declarations of the form you used. It concedes too much and lets too many (whatever their beliefs) off the hook. We can’t all hive off into our own left, right, and other forks of every project and do more with fewer people. We need unity behind common goods such as those that Mozilla originally pursued, which I am still working on with many at Brave.
So please do not accuse me of “making stuff up”. I was simply repeating what literally every article on this matter says. If the entire media got that wrong, then fine. Ultimately only you know why you left. But I “made up” nothing.