It isn’t uncommon knowledge that working in the mainland Chinese market takes some special navigation skills for multinational corporations.
For example, last year we told you about how Huawei partner Leica got in hot water in China because of an ad made by a Brazilian agency for consumption in Brazil’s local market that featured the Tiananmen Square. The fact that Leica got in trouble in China for something an ad agency did in Brazil just shows you how sensitive things can be.
Another example outside of our industry happened when an eSports star voiced his approval of the Hong Kong protests which led to his dismissal by the developer and publisher Blizzard.
Now, Shutterstock is joining the debate and employee concerns over censoring the company’s database of photos as found in China and the CEO of the company has an interesting, nuanced take on those worries.
Specifically, Stan Pavlovsky told gathered employees that they could “pursue other opportunities” in response to a petition signed by approximately one-fifth of the company’s 1000 something employees, FStoppers reports.
According to a source from NBC News cited by FStoppers, this has caused three employees to quit their job. While the desire to stand your ground as a company makes sense, telling employees that their opinions don’t really matter that much tends to have a cooling effect on any passion that person might have for the company.
What do you think of this story?
Should the employees just shut up and move along with their jobs or are they right in protesting the company’s censoring of images for the Chinese market?
Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments section below if you like.
And we’ve got a bunch of other photography news articles on Light Stalking for you to check out. You can do that by clicking this link right here.
1 Comment
Talk about blatantly telling your employees that their opinions and needs are worthless to you… I wish every one of them would quit, and then that jerk would get fired.