> Is it just me or are those both terrible overreactions from the companies' sides?
No it's not just you, the responses from the companies were, as far as I'm concerned, illegal; the guy was fired for something he said (freedom of speech?), and she was fired through 4chan blackmailing her employer (as far as I could tell).
Of course, I don't know what kind of employee protection people have; IIRC the IT business isn't unionised yet, so there's little to fall back on. Well, besides the internets, which is what caused kind of a giant backlash.
I thought that here in the US only applied to a specific list of disallowed reasons (race/gender/etc). Which don't include "being targeted by the Internet Lynch Mob".
It depends on your contract. If it guarantees employment and you're not an at-will employee, the contract will state reasons for why your employment can be terminated. It's possible that the contract might include "being targeted by the Internet Lynch Mob" as one of the reasons, but I doubt it.
No it's not just you, the responses from the companies were, as far as I'm concerned, illegal; the guy was fired for something he said (freedom of speech?), and she was fired through 4chan blackmailing her employer (as far as I could tell).
Of course, I don't know what kind of employee protection people have; IIRC the IT business isn't unionised yet, so there's little to fall back on. Well, besides the internets, which is what caused kind of a giant backlash.