On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
&gt; But this groupthink terrifies me when it’s used to bully people for exercising their right to free speech. How will we know what people are truly thinking if we rush to silence them?<p>I think &quot;right to free speech&quot; is a weak and kind of scary argument to be making here.  Inside a corporation, you don&#x27;t have the same right to free speech you would have on the outside.  HR can fire employees for things that wouldn&#x27;t get you arrested for saying in public.<p>To quote the alt-text for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1357&#x2F;</a><p>&gt; I can&#x27;t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you&#x27;re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it&#x27;s not literally illegal to express.<p>I think a better argument would be that the &quot;manifesto&quot; wasn&#x27;t actually saying anything particularly controversial, it was just a statement of opinion that many reasonable people would agree with.  Perhaps it contains some assumptions that aren&#x27;t backed up by recent research, but unknowingly saying something that&#x27;s not true shouldn&#x27;t ordinarily be a fireable offense.<p>I would rather work at an employer where employees feel free to discuss hard problems that are relevant to the work environment for which there aren&#x27;t any easy answers than one where minority opinions (or even majority opinions that contradict the leadership) are silenced.  On the other hand, I wouldn&#x27;t want to work at an employer where people felt free to say deliberately offensive things without repercussion.