What made HR act in this way? They clearly felt they were protecting the company by firing this person, but they've done nothing wrong and it's unclear they posed any kind of threat to the company. Certainly the complaint about his co-worker would not be perceived as a threat.
I will give some weight to the possibility that Uber HR are utterly disfunctional, but on balance I'm left with the impression there's more to this story than we're being told.
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There are a lot of missing parts to the story. If we assume the author left out everything that made them look bad, and including only what makes them look good then the result is a very incomplete feeling article.
For example: they asked for guidance and then the very next thing is them being fired. How did they respond to the coworker? Something is off here - the coworker who had messaged him about non-work topics TWO days in a row - then immediately reported him for his reply. What?