Software Engineer's Firing Ruled Illegal in a Rare Win for a Tech Worker

ytpete 53 points 35 comments July 10, 2026
www.nytimes.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (6 comments)

ytpete

A US administrative labor law judge judge found that software maker Atlassian had illegally fired an engineer after she pushed back against manager layoffs and other policy changes. > The ruling found that the engineer, Denise Unterwurzacher, had a federally backed right to make such comments because she made them as part of a collective effort to aid or protect co-workers. > The judge ordered the company to reinstate Ms. Unterwurzacher to her former job or an equivalent position, and to make her whole financially. It is one of the most significant outcomes in years in a case involving the labor rights of a tech worker. Atlassian said it planned to appeal the ruling, however.

nemomarx

In these cases where they have to rehire someone, does the employee usually stay after? Wouldn't the workplace be kinda hostile now with the manager who fired you?

matchbok3

Her comments were very unprofessional and unproductive. She will lose on appeal. No worker has a right to distract the company like she did.

theamk

https://archive.is/YkrVy

hendersoon

Atlassian was extremely foolish. Obviously you want to fire someone who makes unprofessional comments like that on the company Slack, but you don't explicitly fire them for that, you find some other defensible reason to do it.

newsomix9xl

Now that we have fancy AI can't someone make a FOSS jira clone?

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