WHAT I WOULDN'T DO: Legal Update from HR's Trenche: Would you fire this employee?

• Author: Hyman, Jon

Recently I asked a simple question on LinkedIn: "Would you fire this employee?"

An employee took to LinkedIn to celebrate Elon Musk's dismantling of an online discussion group called Blackbirds. Blackbirds was an employee resource group for Black Twitter employees to support them, foster their development and provide them a safe space to talk and, if necessary, ask for help within the company.

Here's what this individual (who is not, and never was, a Twitter employee) wrote in commenting on a post by a disgruntled former Blackbird user:

"Blackbirds? Seriously? This is a thing? At one point in my career, I had never worked in tech before either. But when I did start to do so, I didn't expect my employer to establish a Whitebird group or anything of the sort. One more reason to cheer Musk: his dismantling of woke, patronizing, unAmerican racial segregating structures."

There's one more key fact that I asked everyone to consider--the commenter is the "director [of] global learning operations" at his $5 billion publicly traded company.

The results read like a mandate. Of the more than 575 votes, two out of every three would terminate.

And I agree. I'd fire the employee, too. But I don't think it's that cut and dried. If it was a rank-and-file employee with a clean employment record, I'd likely pull the employee in...