Firing of Chinese Facebook worker after colleague’s suicide at California HQ provokes fury
- Software engineer Yi Yin says he was fired for protesting mistreatment of Chinese
- Facebook says it works hard to promote welcoming work culture
The firing of a Chinese Facebook coder who accused the social media giant of mistreating foreign employees has provoked an outpouring of outrage on domestic social media.
Software engineer Yi Yin struck a chord when he posted on WeChat that he was forced out for “lack of judgment”.
The 37-year-old said he got an emailed warning the same day he joined a memorial at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus for colleague Chen Qin, also from China, who killed himself by jumping from the fourth floor of a company building last month.
The September 26 vigil had morphed into a demonstration over alleged discrimination against Facebook’s Chinese employees.
Yin told Bloomberg News that HR sent the email and then called him into a meeting the day after, during which he was told to stop speaking publicly about the death because of privacy concerns.
Yin got a second and “final warning” just a few days later, which he said didn’t cite any breaches of company rules or other specific reasons.