from Hacker News

Microsoft fires engineers who protested during company's 50th anniversary

by rfarley04 on 4/7/25, 8:29 PM with 65 comments

• by archagon on 4/7/25, 10:39 PM

  > The company also said that Abousssad could have raised concerns “confidentially with your manager, or with Global Employee Relations. Instead, you chose to intentionally disrupt the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.”

  “You should have dumped your complaint in a black hole instead of speaking up.”

  Brave folks: they’ll no doubt see a ton of harassment and their future employment prospects (or even immigration status) may be affected. But if I found out that technology I was working on was being used to kill people, I might choose to flame out in the same manner. It’s hard to wash blood off your hands.

• by elmerfud on 4/7/25, 8:47 PM

  Reading the article you can call this a protest, because yes it does fit under that definition because it's quite broad, but it doesn't fit the normal idea of what we would consider a protest. This was not people who decided not to attempt the 50th anniversary and then go outside and conduct a peaceable protest. You could equally use the word disruptors to describe what they did.

  As Microsoft said it seems that they work quite willful in their disruption. People seems to have forgotten how to be effective at making changes. They should have first gone and made their grievances known in a private way to the appropriate people. Get the attention of leadership in a way that is respectful and they in turn will be more willing to hear what you have to say. If that doesn't work you begin to broaden out your objections to get others involved and to make the issue more well-known. Seems people have forgotten that part abd skip those initial steps going straight to the disrupting ways. As if they are babies throwing a tantrum. I don't know if it's because they were never given discipline when they were younger and so throwing the tantrum is the way that they've learned gets them what they want.

  I think the protesters do have a valid point but I'm with Microsoft on this one. They didn't try and have their grievances handled in a productive way by going to those and making their case they started by just being disruptive jerks. Even if they have the most valid point in the world, the way they presented it should get them tossed out.

• by asdefghyk on 4/8/25, 5:59 PM

  Why do these protestors never mention actions of ( US rated terrorist organization) Hamas in this situation? Apparently hiding in tunnels beneath hospitals and schools etc. Hiding behind and sacrificing Gazza people. Why they never mention Hamas has said wants to kill all from Israel etc ?

• by sherdil2022 on 4/8/25, 3:45 AM

  This is not unexpected. Bravery is always met with such cowardly acts instead of introspection. But bravery and truth will prevail.

  Hold your heads high Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal.

• by bbqfog on 4/7/25, 8:35 PM

  Those people were incredibly brave and I'm glad they stood up for what is right. Microsoft should be ashamed of itself, hopefully they feel real business pressure from BDS for their unethical support of genocide.

• by rvz on 4/7/25, 9:01 PM

  Most of big tech have defense contracts with the government and the government uses that technology for their own objectives.

  If you are working at the likes of Microsoft without that knowledge and disagree with the way those technologies are used by governments, maybe you should not be working for them at all, especially if you have "morals", "principles" or "ethics".

  There are no angels in big tech. You know that.