[Thread] Antonio García Martínez says he did not “part ways” with Apple, was fired in a snap decision, and Apple's statement on his exit is defamatory and false
of the women (or just people; take a look at the quotes) who'd have to work with this guy. https://twitter.com/... @antoniogm : 4. I did not ‘part ways’ with Apple. I was fired by Apple in a snap decision. @moorehn : Reminder that everyone who is defending Antonio Garcia Martinez is doing so because they hate women too. Some of them may have internalized misogyny, some of them may have just good old-fashioned misogyny, but they're all, frankly, scared of women and they're showing that. @jason : Predict he will get a $10m settlement https://twitter.com/... Nikita Bier / @nikitabier : @antoniogm Remember us when you're a millionaire https://twitter.com/... Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : Apple needs to either settle *quickly* (for likely a very large sum of money) or risk having its playbook for ads expansion published to the public Matt Taibbi / @mtaibbi : The people who start campaigns against people like Garcia-Martinez aren't idealists. They're just ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available, and it's time to stop thinking of stories like this through any other lens. https://taibbi.substack.com/ ... David Sacks / @davidsacks : If Steve Jobs wanted to hire someone, there is no way he would go back on his word to appease a mob of snowflake employees concocting a bogus excuse to be unhappy. By permitting this, Tim Cook shows what kind of CEO he is. https://twitter.com/... Matt Taibbi / @mtaibbi : Apple reached out to @antoniogm, not the other way around. He sold his house in Washington State as part of what he expected would be a long-term commitment to Apple. The company was fully aware of the book and its contents when it hired him. https://taibbi.substack.com/ ... Ric Burton / @ricburton : If Steve Jobs were a teenager today, he would view Apple with the same derision as he viewed IBM They have a stranglehold on the mobile ecosystem They abuse their App Store power all the time The internal culture has shifted from product craft to performative wokeness Sad 😞 https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @aghamilton29 : Thread. If a company doesn't want to hire someone, they don't need to. But hiring them and then throwing them under the bus because a bunch of entitled unrelated employees decided they didn't like the hire is completely backwards. https://twitter.com/... Ash Jogalekar / @curiouswavefn : This reminds me of the Oppenheimer case where Oppenheimer's actions before the war which were public were brought up against him much later. At the very least it indicates sloppy background research; logically it means you didn't really have a problem but only caved in to the mob https://twitter.com/... Slava Akhmechet / @spakhm : I don't know if this will shift from the court of public opinion to the court of law, but either way it will be a landmark case people will study decades from now. Anyone of any influence in SV supports Antonio. About time someone pushed back against the vultures and won 💪🚀 https://twitter.com/... Peter Kafka / @pkafka : Asked Apple PR for comment and they declined. Harmeet K. Dhillon / @pnjaban : [raised hand] Josh Wolfe / @wolfejosh : I prefer cultures where if you write a book and your words are public you are given a chance to defend yourself against concerns and a cooling off period before being fired. CONTENT of your character not mischaracterized CONTENT. https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : Imagine working at and collecting a salary from Apple — which has long benefited from slave labor-like conditions and sweatshops — and thinking you're morally qualified to condemn anyone, let alone unjustly wreck someone's reputation & get them fired like they just did: https://twitter.com/... Dan Romero / @dwr : Don't pick a fight with a man who wrote a best-selling book, has 60K Twitter followers and a Substack. https://twitter.com/... Emil Protalinski / @epro : Why Apple fired Antonio is clear. I'm more interested in why Apple hired him in the first place: https://www.getrevue.co/... https://twitter.com/... Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : Through this drama, Apple has opened a window that peers into its ambitions for expanding its ad network. This could create an enormous headache for the company, given that FB is incentivized to highlight its potentially anti-competitive behavior. https://twitter.com/... Ed Bott / @edbott : As Friday news dumps go, this is pretty mediocre, but I will take it. https://twitter.com/... @kfury : Every single person I've seen defending Antonio García Martínez or vilifying the Apple employees who spoke out against his hiring is a guy. Mark Gurman / @markgurman : Antonio Garcia Martinez says Apple was “well aware” of his writing and was hired anyways. https://twitter.com/... Patrick Moorhead / @patrickmoorhead : This will be interesting to see how this plays out. FWIW, Apple doesn't win *everything*. It has lost some high profile and low profile lawsuits. It does win more than it loses, though. https://twitter.com/... @razibkhan : good for antonio! a thing i regret about my own cancellation is i was quiet and brushed it off since i thought it was a weird freak event. it wasn't. i should been more clear, vocal, etc. i just didn't think i was a public person & would go back to obscurity. i know better now https://twitter.com/... Christopher Ryan / @thatchrisryan : The heights of corporate hypocrisy (and mob lunacy) are truly amazing. https://twitter.com/... Luke Johnson / @lukejohnsonrcp : A great article about the cowards and hypocrites who run Apple. https://twitter.com/... Joe Hewitt / @joehewitt : The surprising part of this story is that Antonio wanted to work for Apple in the first place. https://twitter.com/... David Sacks / @davidsacks : Required reading if you really want to understand what AGM wrote and what happened at Apple. https://twitter.com/... Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : Apple could & likely does hire ex Google and FB ads people to build its ads tracking biz. Hiring the one high profile guy who is very vocal about tracking while crusading against FB and in the middle of antitrust case was a bold choice and very telling
Just to do a sanity check on my awful book and just how boiled our political frog has been over the past five years, this is just a small sample of the globally positive reviews from elite mainstream institutions at the time. “Who controls the past controls the future.” https://t…
1. Apple actively recruited me for my role on the ads team, reaching out via a former colleague to convince me to join. Apple found my experience in the ads space, specifically around data and privacy, highly relevant to their efforts and persuaded me to leave my then role.
Wondering when this cancel culture i hear so much about will finally get to @paulg so i can stop hearing his bad takes on literally everything. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
People can possibly have different opinions about whether Apple should've hired Antonio, but hiring him and then immediately firing him, over stuff they knew about, and the way they did it, looks like a case study in screwing up https://twitter.com/...
The prominent advertising-technology engineer let go by Apple amid an uproar over sexist passages in his memoir called the company's statements around his dismissal “defamatory and categorically false” https://www.wsj.com/...
if his version of events, re vetting the book and discussing it with his friends, is accurate he should have a good lawsuit against apple. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
“That book is not me now, it wasn't even me then,” he said. “To be honest, there was a literary persona. I was trying to create a style in my naive, first-time book writer sort of way, which in retrospect, I think was a mistake and I regret much of it.” https://www.wsj.com/...
https://www.wsj.com/... Hot take / reality check: if you are incapable of having a highly productive professional relationship with someone across a boundary of bottomless mutual personal contempt and loathing, then you have no business calling yourself a professional
3. Apple was well aware of my writing before hiring me. My references were questioned extensively about my bestselling book and my real professional persona (rather than literary one). This set of prominent Valley VCs and execs are all willing to assert as much under oath.
If you've even been curious why I left the startup scene, this is a thorough examination of the reason - it's infested with these attitudes, dripping from the top down like rotting garbage left to fester in the searing sun. https://twitter.com/...
2. I upended my life for Apple. I sold my WA residence which I built with my own hands, relocated myself, shut down any public media presence and future writing aspirations, and resolved to build my career at Apple for years to come.
5. Apple has issued a statement that clearly implies there was some negative behavior by me during my time at Apple. That is defamatory and categorically false.
So I've been thinking more about Apple firing Antonio Garcia Martinez, and have changed my mind a bit. This might be a long thread. But the tl;dr is that the company should have given him a chance to keep his job, while canning someone from management. Now, a preface...
This is the most authentic soundbite from this podcast. It's a defense, not a disavowal. “I wrote [the story] in an extraordinarily unvarnished way that was more descriptive than normative; the world as it was, not as I wished it to be.” - @antoniogm https://podcasts.apple.com/..…
Huge embarrassment for Apple, continuing to make decisions like this is going to dramatically reduce the quality of applicants they get in the future. https://twitter.com/...
It's the #1 Best Seller in its category on Amazon. *Of course* Apple knew what it was getting. They didn't have a problem with it until the mob formed. Then to justify their cravenness, they publicly smear him. What a way to make HR decisions. https://twitter.com/...
It's amazing how the powerful miss the point. The people signing the petitions *were* concerned about livelihoods — of the women (or just people; take a look at the quotes) who'd have to work with this guy. https://twitter.com/...
Reminder that everyone who is defending Antonio Garcia Martinez is doing so because they hate women too. Some of them may have internalized misogyny, some of them may have just good old-fashioned misogyny, but they're all, frankly, scared of women and they're showing that.
The people who start campaigns against people like Garcia-Martinez aren't idealists. They're just ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available, and it's time to stop thinking of stories like this through any other lens. https://taibbi.substack.com/ .…
If Steve Jobs wanted to hire someone, there is no way he would go back on his word to appease a mob of snowflake employees concocting a bogus excuse to be unhappy. By permitting this, Tim Cook shows what kind of CEO he is. https://twitter.com/...
Apple reached out to @antoniogm, not the other way around. He sold his house in Washington State as part of what he expected would be a long-term commitment to Apple. The company was fully aware of the book and its contents when it hired him. https://taibbi.substack.com/ ...
If Steve Jobs were a teenager today, he would view Apple with the same derision as he viewed IBM They have a stranglehold on the mobile ecosystem They abuse their App Store power all the time The internal culture has shifted from product craft to performative wokeness Sad 😞 https…
Thread. If a company doesn't want to hire someone, they don't need to. But hiring them and then throwing them under the bus because a bunch of entitled unrelated employees decided they didn't like the hire is completely backwards. https://twitter.com/...
This reminds me of the Oppenheimer case where Oppenheimer's actions before the war which were public were brought up against him much later. At the very least it indicates sloppy background research; logically it means you didn't really have a problem but only caved in to the mob…
I don't know if this will shift from the court of public opinion to the court of law, but either way it will be a landmark case people will study decades from now. Anyone of any influence in SV supports Antonio. About time someone pushed back against the vultures and won 💪🚀 https…
I prefer cultures where if you write a book and your words are public you are given a chance to defend yourself against concerns and a cooling off period before being fired. CONTENT of your character not mischaracterized CONTENT. https://twitter.com/...
Imagine working at and collecting a salary from Apple — which has long benefited from slave labor-like conditions and sweatshops — and thinking you're morally qualified to condemn anyone, let alone unjustly wreck someone's reputation & get them fired like they just did: https://t…
Through this drama, Apple has opened a window that peers into its ambitions for expanding its ad network. This could create an enormous headache for the company, given that FB is incentivized to highlight its potentially anti-competitive behavior. https://twitter.com/...
This will be interesting to see how this plays out. FWIW, Apple doesn't win *everything*. It has lost some high profile and low profile lawsuits. It does win more than it loses, though. https://twitter.com/...
good for antonio! a thing i regret about my own cancellation is i was quiet and brushed it off since i thought it was a weird freak event. it wasn't. i should been more clear, vocal, etc. i just didn't think i was a public person & would go back to obscurity. i know better now ht…
Apple could & likely does hire ex Google and FB ads people to build its ads tracking biz. Hiring the one high profile guy who is very vocal about tracking while crusading against FB and in the middle of antitrust case was a bold choice and very telling