A working journalist by day, and a working journalist by night too because there are not really any boundaries anymore, especially in media professions that are often underpaid and unfairly maligned, Brandon Foster shared an idea designed to increase corporate transparency and give more rights to workers.
Listen to Brandon’s submission featured in Episode 65 of How Cool Is This? and read a transcript of the full episode below:
Brandon: Hi, my name is Brandon Foster and my idea is called The Exit Interview. The idea stems from a fairly recent BuzzFeed News story in which a former Facebook employee sort of detailed some shady things going on while she was working for them, namely Facebook's handling of foreign elections.
When the story came out, somebody pointed out that this employee had passed up something like $64,000 in order to be able to tell this story, and one of my first thoughts was, “Oh, I bet if she really wanted to, she could crowdfund and make up most or all of that money.” And that sort of snowballed into the idea of… what if there was just a website that could do that for you? So that's the idea for The Exit Interview.
It would be a platform for people to tell these kinds of stories and not just on the huge scale of whistleblowing on Facebook but also somebody leaving a company who wants to speak out about a workplace environment problem that they otherwise couldn't afford to do.
I assume there are just so many stories that go untold because people need the severance package. Whether it's someone who would have spoken out about a racist boss or a sexist workplace environment, or your huge tech company failing to properly handle misinformation campaigns abroad.
This is certainly just an idea. I would love it if somebody could pick it up and run with it and give me credit... but I would hope that it would sort of create a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ situation where you could speak out about these things and not have to go broke because of it.
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Nick: Okay, Brian, how cool is The Exit Interview?
Brian: This is extremely cool. I've been in a situation before where I had to decide between saying something or feeling financially responsible when suddenly I didn't have my income anymore. And it's not really a fair choice.
Nick: No, that's such an incredibly tough situation that I don't think any employee should ever have to find themselves in, especially when they are in a place where they need to say something because something truly awful, truly evil is happening.
Brian: My situation wasn't nearly as tumultuous as misinformation that ruined democracies across the globe, which Facebook is responsible for and is very uncool in doing so… but at the same time, I really did feel like I was forced into taking hush money, which was not cool.
Nick: Hush money as a concept is just not cool. Having to pay someone to not say something usually means that you're in a pretty sketchy situation to begin with.
Brian: Yeah, and I do think it's a standard corporate operating procedure. But on the whole when you have to pay someone to not talk about you, or your company, then you are not a cool person.
Nick: No, you've screwed up in such a way that you don't want people to say how you screwed up. That's bad. That is just totally the opposite of cool.
Brian: But on the other hand, it means that you recognize that you're not cool and you're doing what you need to do to protect the other people that you have on your team.
Nick: Is being a whistleblower not as brave or impressive as it used to be if you have the safety net?
Brian: It's tough because if everybody can blow the whistle without worry, then it intrinsically becomes less cool than before, but that also means that there is a socioeconomic divide between people who are allowed to be whistleblowers.
Nick: Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit of money to speak the truth. But I think the hope and what Brandon is saying is that if the financial disincentive to speak truth to power was gone, more people would speak truth to power so that companies in turn would maybe just have to stop fucking up.
Brian: If anything, this program would eliminate the NDA and also cause companies, in general, to act in a way that was ethical and morally responsible and not have to even deal with this situation in the first place.
Nick: It's one of those ideas that, if it works, it goes away. I would love to live in a world where this podcast helped birth an idea that fundamentally changed the way corporations operate. That would be pretty cool.
Brian: And it's very cool of Brandon to put it out there for someone to build.
Nick: Totally, and that's the whole point of this podcast... is that we want people to share their ideas in hopes that someone who knows how to bring this thing to life might be able to help out.
If you want to build “The Exit Interview” and prevent companies from muzzling its employees, feel free! Brandon shared this idea so you can make it happen. Your favorite “How Cool Is This?” boys recommend this be a subscription-funded journalism platform rather than supported by advertisements… you don’t want to be the next Facebook, do you? Not cool.
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