No.

This is a good place to point out issues with things an employee has done that affects the community negatively (including, hypothetically, actions such as defamatory statements to the press). But it is not reasonable to request and expect the company to actually fire someone.

In any given situation, there are basically three possibilities:

1. The employee has acted on their own and deliberately/maliciously, in order to cause damage to the company's reputation or to the user(s) involved in the situation
2. The employee has acted on their own and made an honest mistake
3. The employee has acted according to guidelines and/or direct instructions, and thus in the eye of the company done nothing wrong

It's up to the employee's manager/management chain to determine which of these possibilities applies.

In the first case, firing might or might not be the appropriate action for the company to take.

In the second, training or a performance improvement plan or a reassignment of duties might be appropriate, or some other form of remedial action.

In the third case, I'd be more interested in posing the same questions to the person(s) who issued the guidelines or instructions than in firing the employee who followed them. (Though in cases where the error is egregious and obvious, I would hope that most people would object rather than "just follow orders" - but this is hard to judge from the outside, and as a user of the platform we're not in possession of enough facts to draw correct conclusions about amount of guilt on a given person.)

It isn't. It doesn’t do anyone any good. It'll certainly never work, and all it does is make them feel more isolated, and more likely to lash out.

Practically - the more likely outcome is folks are going to circle wagons and make life difficult.

Its worth considering - you don't affect that one employee. You affect their interactions with us. You affect the feedback that they give to their bosses, and how they treat and expect their underlings to act with us.

I doubt social media would work much better either, unless you're famous.

If you think someone is hurting SE - the best thing to do is work against it constructively. Hold your community together. Blunt the worst of the stupidity - if they want to hurt the community, help shield it.

While I admit I get the anger - we also need to focus on helping each other and surviving the worst of it.

No, meta is not an appropriate place.

If you have a concern about an employee, you need to communicate with the company, not with other users of the company's products/services. If, as in your hypothetical case, an employee has taken "public actions that are objectively detrimental to both the company and community," then it's likely that everyone here already knows about them and even if they don't, this isn't the audience that needs to be informed.

There might not be a specific policy that applies to a post that says "employee so-and-so should resign," but such a post could easily fall under at least 2 different close reasons.

Not at all.

And the underlying argument boils down to a counter question:

Assume you ran into a conflict with another user, right here on meta.stackexchange.com. There is a heated exchange, and you cross some lines. Now: would you want the moderators, or worse, Stack Exchange Inc. Community Managers to openly discuss ideas about your suspension here?! Or would you want that the other user puts up a question like Caleb needs to be suspended, who agrees?!

And no, the situation is really not much different: you don't want that your "identity" gets dragged into the public like that.

We can not stand up and ask Stack Exchange Inc. to treat moderators like Monica in better ways, when we come in (at the same time) and publicly go "and you have to fire this or that employee of yours".

Long story short, never forget the golden rule:

Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.

No, it is not appropriate, not even close to being appropriate.

A misstep by an employee should be seen as a misstep by the company. It's up to the company to take measures based on that, or not. We're not talking a mere disagreement, we're talking taking away somebody's income and a whole series of dramatic side effects. It is disproportional and not our place to call for this.

It is also cruel. The person in question is a private individual that by the nature of the work is semi-publicly known. An ordinary person, not a celebrity or politician. We should firmly draw a line where in today's cancel culture it is not normalized that the internet has one day simply decided that you're out of a job or labelled forever. On the basis of a statement, disagreement, or error. This too is disproportional and in nobody's interest. It is against the interest of anybody using their real name online.

I've seen such a pile-on happen at GitLab recently. Their CFO very publicly made a huge mistake. The community backlash was incredibly cruel, much harder than here. Like a gang of 500 kicking somebody who is already down, and even taking pleasure in it. It's awful.

The man made an error at work. I've made plenty of those, and I'm sure you have too. Yet when I make such an error, and leave work, there's not a crowd of 500 hooded (anonymous) people on the streets awaiting me to call for me to step down. Nor is anybody spray painting the entire city with my name so that it is remembered that I made the error.

Yet that is what a public pile-on or call for resignation does on the Internet. It's cruel, disproportional and not our place.

You could argue that the particular error made at SE was exactly like that, a public vilification of a person. Yes, and given how much this outrages the community, that's exactly why we shouldn't do such things.

The correct (moral) way to handle this is to keep pressure on the entity SE, not the employee.

I am going to disagree with the existing answers, and I am going to explain why.

Yes

Let me admit up front that I don't just think it's appropriate to call for a resignation, right here on MSE. I have done so. One of the problems that SO Inc faces is a breakdown in the relation between the Community Team and the community. I am not suggesting this is the only problem, but it is one that needs to be resolved.

The next question is of course how the problem can be resolved. If the breakdown was incidental to the functioning of the Community Team, we might be discussing other options. But that's not the case. As the name says, the whole point of the Community Team is to communicate with the community. This team is failing in its core activity.

The harsh fact here is that the breakdown is not mendable, and SO Inc does not have the real option of dismissing the community. This is a familiar problem encountered by professional sports teams, and there's a familiar solution. The coach leaves, the team stays. Individuals can be replaced.

Raised objections

Shog9 mentions that such a call is petty and mean. This may be the case sometimes, but we should downvote down petty and mean proposals because of those reasons. That logic applies to all petty and mean proposals, regardless of the target or the suggested course of action.

Shog9 also brings up the threaten to the livelihood of the affected SO Inc employee. I can understand this point. New York is an expensive city to live in. However, I again point to the "sports team" analogy. A coach that's fired may need to move to a different city. And that's chiefly because there are only a limited number of sports teams. There are plenty of other jobs at other companies in New York similar to those at SO Inc. A move might not even be necessary.

"Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.". This is of course personal, that is the whole point of the statement. Personally, I accept criticism (If you think this answer can be improved; do comment below.) I might not like mean and petty feedback, but see before.

Multiple people have brought up that MSE might not be the best place. I agree with the comments below those posts - MSE is the place to talk about things in common to the Stack Exchange sites, especially those that need improvement. The Community Team needs improvement. The continued silence towards the community in this matter proves that. The improvement has two parts. We need a clean cut with the past, and a positive outlook. Let's not talk in the abstract here. Keeping Sara Chipps as an employee continues to hurt SO Inc and its community.

I'm simply wondering how such a question would be received and whether it would be closed.

I recently had a comment (not a question, but a comment similar to a rhetorical question) removed for exactly this reason.

I am sharing the PM I received because I think a similarly-worded question would receive a similar response.

Based on my experience, a post that does not directly call for someone to resign but implies that the post's author and others would welcome such an action would still get censored.

Moderator Private Message from moderators sent Dec 24 at 14:35 to C8H10N4O2 Hello,

We're writing in reference to your Meta Stack Exchange account:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/272076/c8h10n4o2

We wanted to let you know that we've observed some rudeness in your latest activity. We get it; anyone who's ever tried to engage with others online has probably been tempted to lash out at someone else. This is just a friendly reminder that we require all participants to act in a professional and civil tone when using these sites. If another user has wronged you in some way, please do not respond in kind. Simply flag the content for moderator attention and move on.

MSE is not an appropriate place to call for employees to be fired or resign, no matter how angry you may be.

If this is a simple misunderstanding, no harm done. Sometimes it is helpful to remind ourselves on occasion that keeping things friendly and constructive doesn't have to be at odds with being right — so enjoy the site, bring your sense of humor, and please be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know.

Regards, Meta Stack Exchange Moderation Team

add a new private reply

from C8H10N4O2

to ChrisF ♦;Journeyman Geek ♦;Tinkeringbell ♦

While I find myself agreeing with Shog's wonderfully written answer, I feel like there's another angle to consider.

Being upset about a decision being made is perfectly fine. Depending on the decision or decision maker, that can be par for the course. There's nothing wrong or inherently unhealthy about a disagreement.

However, when it comes to calling for someone's resignation over that disagreement, this is where things fly off the rails very quickly. It slams shut the opportunity to actually discuss anything constructively, since it's as if you have some kind of sway or position in whether or not someone here remains gainfully employed, as opposed to their employer.

If you want to talk about your disagreements...

then talk about them.

You don't have to shout or call for heads or any of that nonsense since that's going to set you waaaaay back, and leave you thoroughly unsatisfied.

I used to play a game called RuneScape. The company behind it - Jagex - has had a very colorful history of...shall we say, "unpopular" decisions. There were a few breaking points for some people which eventually wound up becoming the "we pay, we say" rallying cry.

...and that was all back the early 2010s.

I've thought about that for a long while since it kind of haunted me. Why would people putting money on the table then get to dictate how that money is spent? I wouldn't want to run a business if that's how things actually worked.

I won't deny that a consumer has considerable leverage over a company's direction, but that leverage comes strongest in the form of persuasion. A company changes its strategy if it is persuaded to do so, and even then only if it aligns with the hidden goals and vision of the company itself.

I never really got on board with that cry since it was never an actionable thing. The amount of privilege someone must have to even type something like that always stuck out to me as...silly. Ultimately, if you don't like what you're paying for, stop paying for it.

The same thing seems to be happening here. If you don't like what's going on, then you don't have to keep participating. Coming here to demand that people resign/step down/be fired is tantamount to having your cake and eating it too; recent events have forced you away from your desired path of participation, but you still participate and want others to be punished. That's a non-starter.

Absolutely Not.

In the end, the employee is the company's employee, not ours. They were hired by the company, not by us, for reasons the company felt (at the time) were good reasons. We don't have access to those reasons, because we aren't included in the hiring process. Nor should we be.

An employee is hired based on how well the employee will further the company's business aims. Those aims may not agree with the customers' desires, but that is the company's decision to make, whether in hiring an employee because they fit well, or firing them because they fit poorly. If we feel that the company's business practices are not in line with our desires, we can certainly complain about them. But the company should be able to do what it thinks is best. It's their decision and their responsibility.

Calling for the firing of an employee of any company (because let's face it, you're not calling for a resignation) is NEVER ok. People's livelihoods are off-limits. Some people have been sacked for their view (AFAIK, not with SE, but other companies), and that's a BAD thing we should all oppose.

That being said, there have been actions done by SE that you don't agree with. The proper recourse is to:

• Point out the action here on meta, along with a polite version of "WTH were you thinking, SE?". Make clear that you consider SE responsible for it.
• Click the "contact" button in the footer, and proceed to the the exact same thing in a more private way. Remember that being polite makes it harder for people to dismiss your opinions. This is a subconscious thing.

And as long as a satisfactory response doesn't come up, feel free to keep up an amount of pressure, much like already happening right now.