Photo: HarperCollins
The Apple employee fired because of controversial passages in his 2016 memoir Chaos Monkeys calls his termination a “snap decision” by Cupertino execs.
Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook product manager, was recently hired and fired by Apple within the space of a few weeks. In a recent Twitter Space chat with journalists Kara Swisher and Casey Newton, Martínez opened up regarding the specific writing from his book that was widely circulated before his Apple departure. The book describes San Francisco Bay Area women as “soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of sh*t.”
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The author said the sentence had been taken out of context. He also said it was written in an exaggerated voice similar to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Martínez said his editor on the book originally wanted to cut the paragraph in which the offending line appears. But this was only for reducing the overall word count, not for reasons of offensiveness. Nonetheless, Martínez acknowledged keeping the line was probably a mistake.
“In retrospect, I would not have written it that way,” he said.
Chaos monkeys come home to roost
Elsewhere in the conversation, Martínez said he always expected to get blowback from Chaos Monkeys — just not necessarily in the way he did.
“I thought Chaos Monkeys‘ would cancel me, but purely from the tech perspective,” he said.
In addition, he questioned why he was fired for his words, but Dr. Dre — co-founder of the $3 billion Apple acquisition Beats — did not face similar repercussions for the lyrics in his songs.
Shortly before his firing, Apple employees circulated a petition asking for an investigation, citing Martínez’s “misogynistic statements” and how these “directly oppose” Cupertino’s commitment to inclusion and diversity. More than 2,000 employees signed the petition.
Via: Apple Insider
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