Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/05/22/why-tech-firms-are-trying-to-run-away-from-politics-and-failing

by furrowedbrow • 5 years ago

390 951 5 years ago

I have no tolerance for politics at work. As far as woke at work goes, not too long ago someone in my office commented on slack "I don't approve of unnecessarily gendered emoji" - I can't even begin to imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts. First world problems? No idea.

flyinglizard3• 5 years ago

It's like deriving and then acting upon several layers worth of meta-information from very mundane things. People would take the bit that was said (or not said), build some story around that, possibly derive a second story from the first and then go out and attack you based on that. Nothing is taken on face value.

lliamander14• 5 years ago

I'm not sure the idea of "no politics at work" is exactly the right mindset.

I like the idea that a narrow mission (corporate or otherwise) allows for coalition building, and that you can sometimes put your differences aside and build something great the world can benefit from (this was an idea pushed by the early defenders of open source and the OSI).

When you build these coalitions, it also somewhat forces you to humanize the people not from your political faction.

eh9• 5 years ago

As a PoC, I’ve also fielded those comments from white co-workers and it honestly feels like a contemporary version of being blind to race.

nailer11• 5 years ago

To me it seemed less racist when we all had yellow hands. Then again I think poc is a silly term - non Europeans have completely different experiences and cultures from each other even within the US.

throwaway19592• 5 years ago

Can you expand on what do you mean as being blind to race? Do you want them to see your race, treat different races differently? Aren't we supposed to be a color-blind society? Maybe I am just not understanding what you mean.

nxmnxm99• 5 years ago

Yeah. I grew up in a third world country and moved to North America pretty late. I never realized how sheltered and weak Americans were till I joined a well known YC company.

meowtimemania3• 5 years ago

Can you expound? In what ways do you find them weak? I can think of many but curious on your perspective

ed25519FUUU4• 5 years ago

Good times make weak men, and all that.

anon77254• 5 years ago

I never realized how sheltered and weak Americans were

People are people. I would try to view it through the lens of power dynamics and in-group signaling rather than weakness/strength.

eloff5• 5 years ago

I feel like this is true, especially of younger generations, in many rich countries.

I think maybe because it takes challenge and pain to grow and things have been quite comfortable for a long time for many.

It could just be my perception. But I've never seen so much anxiety, such reluctance to do hard things, and such inability to focus. Social media may be largely to blame.

mbrodersen4• 5 years ago

You need to experience challenges and overcome difficulties to build a strong character. The same way the immune system needs to be exposed to bacteria and dirt to become strong. When you aren’t, the result is a weak fragile personality that can’t cope with the slightest unexpected derivation from how they expect things to be.

runarberg• 5 years ago

But your workplace is full of politics. Are you not allowed to use GPL dependencies? Do you get bonuses paid in stock options? Is there a senior developer that takes no input from new hires as a general rule? Does your boss get paid a lot more then you? Are parents allowed flexible work hours? Are more and more positions being filled in low paying areas? Does your company sell software to the American Military? to ICE? Does it have manufacturing in the occupied Palestinian territories?

Leaving politics outside of the office is simply not possible.

smegger00114• 5 years ago

the one that gets me is adding race to emoji. they all used to be 'Simpsons yellow', a skin tone not found in any ethnic or racial group, and as such not representing or excluding any group but now we have black white and other various skin tones for our happy-faces. WHY? Does black happy face mean something different than white happy face isn't happiness universal? why bring race into something that was simply meant to express emotion?

krapp4• 5 years ago

I don't understand why so many people get so angry about something so inconsequential.

slashdev2• 5 years ago

Fully agree. It seems so stupid. Why do people care about what color the emoji is? Don't they have real problems?

wernercd• 5 years ago

why bring race into something

Because making everything about race is how we fight racism... somehow...

justbored1232• 5 years ago

Step back, take a deep breath and read what you wrote.

You are saying that we should not care, but you clearly care if the face is black ... So, somebody decided that he would like to have a black emoji because he like it that and you decided to make an issue out of it ... and accuse the other person of what you yourself are doing ... If you don't see it is because you don't want to see it.

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"

mattnewton4• 5 years ago

I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some characters (like Apu) are not yellow.

You have to pick some skin tone for the default; just floating features would be off putting.

Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it. And it’s a small thing to have fixed that costs you basically nothing.

nsilvestri• 5 years ago

"Simpsons yellow" actually represents white people on the actual Simpsons TV show. The other characters who represent the non-white population all have different skin colors that line up with the people of those cultures or races. So even though nobody's actual skin color is Simpons yellow, culturally we already were representing white skin as that color.

furyofantares2• 5 years ago

I perceive the cartoon yellow emojis to be white, an alternative interpretation never occurred to me at all.

The first time a black coworker gave a black thumbs-up reaction on slack, I noticed I didn't want to +1 it. I didn't identify with it, it didn't feel like it was coming from me. This was a strong reaction and totally unexpected, and it was a "holy shit" moment as well, because I suddenly imagined how excluded I would have felt if that had been the only option for years.

solidasparagus• 5 years ago

When using emojis to convey their emotions, some people prefer their emojis to match what they look like. It's not a big deal - certainly not worth complaining about a feature that makes some people happier. The impact of online avatars on self-perception and outcomes is an interesting topic that's worth looking into (it's not limited to race).

But more importantly, why shouldn't a black person be able to use a black emoji? We have the technology.

whoooooo123• 5 years ago

Am I misremembering? I coulda sworn that originally the 'white' (realistic, non-yellow) emojis were the only option, and the "neutral" yellow tone was added at the same time as the more diverse set of realistic skin tones. I'm certain that's how it was in Slack, for example - I remember discussing it with people at the time. Was I hallucinating?

throwaway3169436• 5 years ago

The original smiley face was yellow because it was drawn on yellow paper, chosen because the task was to make a logo to cheer people up and yellow was “sunshiny and bright”. The colour has nothing to do with skin tone.

MillenialMan4• 5 years ago

I have a fun conspiracy theory that the variety of emojis is a subtle plot to increase the barrier to entry against smaller companies. Now they have to invest in a much larger number of graphics to create unique set, which encourages them to use something off-the-shelf and brandless.

rantwasp2• 5 years ago

you do have tolerance. you just don’t know it. a lot of things are “political”. You cannot share virtually anything about you or your life without some political subtext.

Try sharing something, anything and I’ll make it political in 2 easy steps.

Unless you’re a machine, there is politics at work. does everything have to be a woke political discussion? prolly not

AnimalMuppet• 5 years ago

A lot of things are "political", but not that many are political.

Try sharing something, anything and I’ll make it political in 2 easy steps.

Yeah, see, that's the problem. The problem isn't that everything is in some way political. It's people who are looking to make things political. (In fact, that could be a functional definition of woke-ness.)

You don't want that at work. Eventually, the woke people will find a way to turn on some of your most valuable and most talented employees. That's not going to end well, no matter who wins the fight.

qudat• 5 years ago

The more our communication defaults to chat (e.g. slack) the more I feel like it is detrimental to our productivity. I think we will wake up from this fever dream of Slack and realize there are better ways to communicate.

globular-toast5• 5 years ago

I can imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts: an unoccupied one.

Lots of people are going to work just to get out of the house and doing make-work. They aren't invested in their work. It isn't what they want to do. The work isn't real with real outcomes and real responsibility. It's not hard.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

I can imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts: an unoccupied one.

A distracted mind, perhaps. I think it's interesting how far from the economy politics has shifted. I have the impression that before the 21st century people used to fight a lot more for worker's rights, unionization, better working and living conditions... You know, things that actually impacted the bottom line of capitalists. Curiously, all this mainstream "wokeness" seems to have begun after Occupy Wall Street.

Politics seems to have been de-economized and the economy seems to have been de-politicized.

yakshaving_jgt6• 5 years ago

last week Alphabet, Google’s parent, had to deal with another internal petition circulating among employees, this one calling on the firm’s leadership to make a statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel”.

It's a special kind of hubris to believe that despite over a thousand years of conflict in the region, the right people to comprehensively understand and solve the problem are some people who make a search engine from the other side of the planet.

tshaddox6• 5 years ago

It doesn’t sound like the internal petition was calling for the firm to solve the conflict. That would be unrealistic, but it’s not at all the case here.

lliamander14• 5 years ago

What then is the purpose of demanding others make a public stand on an issue over which they have no practical control?

yakshaving_jgt6• 5 years ago

Then it would seem the statement is inconsequential — at least in my view. How is it constructive to point out a conflict which is already at the forefront of everyone's minds because of mass civilian deaths and the associate global media coverage?

whymauri• 5 years ago

Yeah, GP is kinda strawmanning.

flyinglizard3• 5 years ago

It was calling for a "safe space for anti-Zionism", which is just another term for the abolishment of Israel. Fun times.

jdgoesmarching2• 5 years ago

Nobody is fighting over theological differences, they are fighting over land. Specifically, land that was conquered by the British who promised it to both parties, failed to manage a compromise, tossed the problem to the UN who drew up horrible borders, then allowed Israel to settle beyond those borders without consequence.

The entire history of this issue is roughly 100 years old and almost entirely due to imperialism and mismanagement, not some ancient bickering over who has the most correct supernatural beliefs. That’s a line we are taught to feel ok about ignoring the issue, which conveniently benefits Israel.

yakshaving_jgt6• 5 years ago

I am aware of all of the context you have provided, thanks.

You're mostly right, but I don't think it's correct to say that the "entire history of this issue is roughly 100 years old". At least in the minds of many of the people in the riots — because this isn't exclusively a conflict between militants — it is about who owned the land first. Who's right here? Well, it's disputed. That's… why there's a war.

barbacoa• 5 years ago

Majority of the Jewish immigrants after the creation of Israel were ethnic Arab Jews that were expelled from their Islamic Arab countries. This conflict go back much more than 100 years.

Google234• 5 years ago

Sorry, I’m not buying that you can just ignore religion. There’s a reason that there are essentially no Jews left in any of the other Arab states in that area.

tomp3• 5 years ago

The belief that without Western / British "imperialism and mismanagement", Jews, Muslims (Shia and Suni) (and Christians) would just peacefully co-exist in Jerusalem is ... wishful thinking at best.

mr_toad2• 5 years ago

The entire history of this issue is roughly 100 years old and almost entirely due to imperialism and mismanagement

There were four empires who controlled the region over a period of thousands of years. There is a long long history of ethnic violence in the region, going so far back it’s literally prehistoric.

You’re just cherry picking facts to support one side of the story.

incadenza2• 5 years ago

They quite literally are. I would encourage you to listen to the arguments put forth by the Israelis currently settling across the internationally recognized borders in the West Bank.

xdennis• 5 years ago

You conveniently start the issue at 100 years ago to frame the issue against Israel.

But it didn't start with the British, nor the Turks before them, nor the Mamluks, Crusader Kingdoms, Arabs or Byzantines. It started when the Romans defeated the Jews 2000 years ago and exiled many of them.

monoideism3• 5 years ago

It's a special kind of hubris to believe that despite over a thousand years of conflict in the region,

The recent conflict in Israel/Palestine dates from the early 1900s, with a big acceleration around 1946-48.

Prior to that, the last longterm conflict in the region was over 500 years beforehand, in the Crusades.

But yeah, I agree that it's big hubris for some relatively ignorant and pampered American kids to believe they can solve it, or even properly understand it.

oogabooga123• 5 years ago

These problems fix themselves given enough time. Less productive firms go out of business and take their cultures with them.

Social norms are evolved, not designed.

genericone2• 5 years ago

Sometimes businesses/organizations are propped up for their missions by wealthy sponsors and not markets. There are no market pressures that make them go out of business unless the sponsors themselves feel financial loss and stop sponsorship.

moomin2• 5 years ago

Yes, which is why it’s neither a good look nor good business for tech firms to be holding back the tide on social norms’ evolution.

worik• 5 years ago

But there are many solutions to that. Many "better" states firms could evolve into.

I agree that social norms are evolved, but part of that evolution is the activism of the people within.

So the fact that social norms evolve does not mean we should stop working on them

andrew_2• 5 years ago

tip: Disable javascript to get around the paywall

I'm a huge fan of what Coinbase and Basecamp have done. Coinbase is thriving and Basecamp appears to be no worse for wear. I hope we see a continuance of this trend; whereby we continue to encourage DE&I whilst keeping the worst and most toxic topics out of day to day business.

CPLNTN• 5 years ago

In his most recent blog post DHH said that the small group of people leaving Hey was offset by a lot of new customers for Basecamp

andrew_2• 5 years ago

If you're going to downvote, at least provide objective reasoning for it. Otherwise it's just petty disagreement, which violates the spirit of HN.

eric4smith2• 5 years ago

People are human. But work is work. The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work.

Just stop to think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition condemning something that has nothing to do with work?

The workplace necessarily is going to bring together people that do not agree on personal matters - but who best align on matters relating to... work.

Color me naive, but shouldn’t what happens in the office be about the office???

Shouldn’t we be advocating on non office things outside of the office??

tshaddox6• 5 years ago

The point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work.

What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs (like literally my most basic needs, think food and shelter).

devoutsalsa• 5 years ago

I think the parent comment is saying work is all ultimately all about making money. That’s in sync with what you’re saying. I think.

jdgoesmarching2• 5 years ago

I was about to say, this is the most chilling HN sentence I’ve ever read. The totality of our existence from 8-5 is not owed to someone who profits from our labor and skills because they got lucky with some seed money or an inheritance a decade ago.

That’s just the divine right of kings with extra steps.

mc32• 5 years ago

You’re both right. As a member of a company one is to further the mission of the company but it’s based on an agreement that in exchange for that, you and the company come to an agreement on compensation.

lliamander14• 5 years ago

I think it's fair to say the reason the business employed you is to fulfill the aims of the owners of the business. This does not negate you have your own aims and needs, but for the employment relationship to continue those aims need to be in alignment.

jonas21• 5 years ago

That seems like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of the comment.

I think what they're saying is that you should view an employment relationship as an exchange, where you get money (which can be used to fulfill your basic needs), and your employer gets your labor for a certain number of hours per week.

As you are voluntarily exchanging your labor for money, it's reasonable that the focus of the workplace should be to advance the goals of your employer and not your personal goals. Of course it's best if these goals align and everyone can achieve their goals simultaneously. But when there's a conflict, the employer's goals should take priority. That's why they're paying you.

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs

well I do, but I've noticed that employers in interviews always want to know about how interested I will be in their problems and what I find attractive about their problem space and I get the distinct feeling they don't want to hear "if you pay my target wage I will be interested in what you want for 8 hours a day"

mypalmike• 5 years ago

Are these not just two different perspectives on the same thing? The "aims of the entrepreneur" is overly specific to certain work arrangements, but overall the point stands. You have motivations to work which align with fulfilling your needs, and the organization you work for has motivations which align with what the owners/leaders want. The latter is served in part by your labor.

cercatrova3• 5 years ago

Seems like you're agreeing with them. You do what you need to do at work so that you can afford to buy food and shelter outside of work.

But even if not, they seem to mean personal aims to be philosophical in nature, such as political ideological furthering, not concrete like food and shelter.

moomin2• 5 years ago

It’s well worth reading up on the details of the Basecamp disaster. At every point in the process, it was about work. How people behaved at work, how clients were treated, how people reacted to feedback, how information was communicated. It may have been “politics” but it was in no way separable from Basecamp‘s core business.

nailer11• 5 years ago

From having read about the details: someone took a list making fun of mainly European (‘white’ in American) names and posted an image saying mocking people leads to genocide.

Yes this is easily separable from making productivity tools.

ghufran_syed2• 5 years ago

It’s too early yet to see whether the whole episode at basecamp was net positive or negative for the company.

GeneralMayhem7• 5 years ago

Yep. The story of Basecamp is a story of how the extreme-right is able to successfully tar any progress - or, frankly, any lack of regress - as "politics", and therefore something that belongs in a box somewhere else, to be addressed at some other time. When what you want is the status quo, you can always look like the great reconciler by saying "this isn't the time for this conversation", because you win by default.

pitspotter• 5 years ago

Are we, in fact, waking up to woke?

duped6• 5 years ago

The office exists within society. Some things exist everywhere you go in society. You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business.

Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society.

The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect the most change.

Just in recent history, the Civil Rights movement was built by people disrupting workplaces through boycotts and sit-ins. As we move forward in society it goes to reason that future movements should follow that example.

buzzy_hacker• 5 years ago

I feel there is room in the middle. While we should not leave ethics at the door, not every ethical issue is applicable to work (as I’m sure you would agree.)

So while it might be relevant to discuss “woke” issues like discrimination on group characteristics at work because that’s an issue that could manifest itself at work, I don’t think it’s relevant to call for a statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Google, as is suggested in the article.

Open-minded to contrary opinions though.

ixacto2• 5 years ago

Advocating for what things exactly?

It might be a strawman, but I’m going to guess and it would be something like an end to perceived workplace raceism/sexism/*isms.

If you let in political advocacy movements from the left do you really want political movements from the right? Or is it just ok if the left is advocating for it? I kinda think the left is trying to have their equity cake and eat it too…

To some people (I am not one of them at all, but I understand the argument) any abortion is literally murder, and it as a sincerely held belief as the recent movements like BLM and #metoo were.

So do you really want to hear about abortion/guns/illegals/debt/satanism/furries in the workplace? This is just setting up workplaces for problems or maybe we can just realize work is for work?

chairmanwow1• 5 years ago

I worked at place like this at Lyft and to be honest it made me pretty uncomfortable. I was aligned with most people about most of the causes circulated freely, but not all. And on the items I wasn't fully onboard with the party line, I felt there was a huge risk to my job if I ever were to voice that.

I won't ever work in an environment like that again. Once I cross the threshold with my coworkers to be friends I feel like there's a significant difference in what we are comfortable talking about with each other and certainly I expect to debate social causes with them at that point. Otherwise, I find it incredibly naive to expect consensus on any ideas, regardless of how fundamental they seem.

newsclues• 5 years ago

Critical race theory applies its lens to everything.

School is racist, police are racist, government is racist, of course work and the office will become targets.

geodel• 5 years ago

You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business.

Calling this rabid politics as 'ethics' and 'morals' is a neat trick. It is like calling "freedom to not air one's views', 'freedom to get fired for non PC views', 'freedom to be deplatformed' as actual freedom.

acituan• 5 years ago

The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect the most change.

Just like we can't say "I should vote on other people's behalf because I know better", we also can't say "I should have more access to societal change because I am employed in an affluent organization". Otherwise it would be elitism 101.

Office as a means of societal change doesn't provide equitable access to everyone in a democratic society. There is no such thing as democratic participation through back-channels.

Playing politics in or around a megacorp is only popular because petite-bourgeois, frustrated with not actually being an elite and having any real control, try to co-opt hot button societal issues in the hopes that their political gesturing will be a status enhancer and grant them access to some power.

jimmyswimmy• 5 years ago

Oof. There isn't room to just go to work... to work?

I want to go to the office and interact with people who are the best at what they do, I want my company to hire those people, and I expect them to hold me to equal standards. When the office was explicitly segregated, men vs women, black vs white, whatever,sure,they're could have been room for politics to change that in the workplace. It doesn't seem the same now. We hire the best people we can get,and we go to work to achieve a common aligned with whatever our work is.

I'll deal with, or avoid, politics outside the workplace. I can't imagine trying to work through all the nuance of my personal political views with a coworker or, God forbid, an employee.

How much would you enjoy discussing your potentially opposing political views with your boss? I trust him to be a good person, but once you pay that seed of doubt in someone's mind, things are never the same.

eschaton2• 5 years ago

The poster you’re responding to may know and agree with all this as well, and that could be why they hold the position they do: They may be opposed to society changing.

refurb6• 5 years ago

I agree 100%! Constitutional rights are a great example, those don’t stop when you enter the workplace and need to be protected 24/7.

So no doubt you’ll be happy to sign my petition to further protect our 2nd amendment right to carry a concealed weapon at work! Yeah, right there, just sign. Oh you don’t support the constitution? When you said we should bring these fights to work you meant just the ones you support. Ohh....

betwixthewires8• 5 years ago

I think its less of a "giving up your ethics and morals because you crossed the threshold" thing and more a "leave your coworkers the fuck alone" thing.

Do you think it is a coincidence that this nonpolitical workplace thing is catching on right now, and not, say, 30 years ago? Nobody was calling for a nonpolitical workplace when the issues at hand were sexual harassment and equal pay for equal work. If there were some hiding behind that, they certainly didn't have a critical mass of support behind them.

The problem isn't so much that people bring their ethics to work as it is that busybodies bring their moral crusades to work and demand that everybody join their cause or be labelled a bad, bad person. I, for example, have taken my ethics everywhere I have gone every day of my life. I have a rebellious spirit. I think rules in jobs like banning tattoos are stupid (even though I have none visible). I think dick in a suit dress codes are hazing and counterproductive. What I have not done however is send out an email chain to everyone in my office demanding that my CEO be fired for not doing a press conference on the plight of the furry fluidgender otherkin in Tanzania.

fighterpilot6• 5 years ago

  "The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things"

Not if those things are mostly orthogonal to the mission and capabilities of the company.

We exist in a division of labor economy for a reason. Company A does X and company B does Y because those two companies have skills and missions that are unique to the people and institutional memory inside those companies. A is highly optimized for X, and B for Y.

The people in A might even disdain Y (e.g. a charity volunteer's opinion about hedge funds) and the people in B might disdain X (e.g an oil and gas worker's opinion about environmental activism).

That's all fine because those two companies are narrowly focused on their verticals of interest.

This woke at work stuff demolishes that. People on company A and B didn't sign up for things orthogonal to X and Y, and many of them do not want to be socially pressured to go along with some activist agenda hoisted onto the company by a noisy minority of employees.

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

People confuse politics with morals, as they say ‘Politics is preference’.

StanislavPetrov2• 5 years ago

Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society.

Those who create social problems in the workplace by constantly prosecuting their cultural crusade perform an astounding display of entitlement. Nobody is obligated to agree with your social judgements, no matter how fervently you hold your beliefs or how self-righteous you are. This is especially true when a large part of your cultural crusade consists of sifting through utterances from the distance past in an attempt to find anything you and your fellow crusaders consider "problematic", so that you may punish the transgressors.

As an older person, my personal belief is society went off the rails in the late 1980s. Its when we started giving every kid a trophy, no matter how poorly they performed. Its when we started telling every kid they were entitled to respect, no matter how boorishly or stupidly they acted. Its when we started telling every kid that they were entitled to be free of judgement, no matter how awful their behavior or how much they deserved to be judged. Its when we started telling kids that their opinions were valuable, no matter how absurd, idiotic or delusional those opinions were.

Now we have generations of people who think they have the right to force others to (fervently!) adopt their cultural mores. They are blinded by self-righteousness, having been raised on a steady diet of coddling and compliments. They have been conditioned since birth to reflexively appeal to authority whenever they feel wronged or "micro-aggressed".

ModernMech• 5 years ago

The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work.

I agree with this idea at face value. But most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, traveling to work, or recovering from work -- not for the benefit of entrepreneurs, but to afford the cost of living. I think as a society we'd be less likely to inject our politics into our workplaces if we didn't have to spend such a large portion of our lives at work.

hluska2• 5 years ago

I can’t help but wonder if the tech industry did this to itself. Tech companies offer so many amenities at the office from free food, to laundry, to massages that the line between office and home has blurred. Maybe the solution is making offices feel like offices and normalizing forty hour work weeks?

dukeyukey2• 5 years ago

You think it was the benefits, rather than the we're-a-family, always on-call, live your work culture employers have been pushing?

throwkeep5• 5 years ago

It started with bulldozer parenting, which lead to a generation being unequipped to deal with the real world. They are effectively still toddlers, stuck in arrested development. They demand to be protected from everything, including words and ideas. If they don't get what they want, they throw a tantrum. Colleges turned into their pushover parents, and then tech companies, and now almost every institution.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

The workplace is the best place if you are incredibly lonely and don’t interact much with society outside of work.

skybrian• 5 years ago

More generally, most organizations have a mission. Even if the mission is explicitly political (like getting a candidate elected) there are still going to be things that people care about that aren't mission-related and getting into an internal dispute about them is a distraction from the mission.

An example of that for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc...

But this hardly solves all political disputes. It's enough to rule some issues off-topic and have it generally be understood, but there are always grey areas, and plenty of politics that's directly mission-related.

imbnwa2• 5 years ago

In that same vein, shouldn't office dating/sexual pursuits be a no-no?

pmorici• 5 years ago

They generally are.

bsanr22• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, in the never-ending struggle to force employees to conform to some platonic ideal of efficient production, companies have spent a lot of time and energy - not just in their own policy, but also in lobbying to the government and the public at large - trying to make work the center of the average American's life. Think of all the things you have to pass by your boss before making decisions about your own life: which doctor you go to, where you might live, when you might take time for yourself and your family.

So, this is the flipside. We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot. Our companies spend millions and millions of dollars going over our heads to influence our legislative representatives, and seek ever greater and ever more direct influence on employees. You have to expect pushback. And political activism within companies, and pressure from employees for companies to be active in the way they desire, is the predictable - and, frankly, justifiable - form that that pushback takes.

Kick everyone out of the office at 5PM and you'll see a lot fewer people so invested in the political environment within and driven by their employers.

yakshaving_jgt6• 5 years ago

We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot

This is a curious fantasy that many Americans hold.

After having spent the best part of a decade working mostly in Sweden and Germany, I can tell you this has no basis in reality.

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

Americans tend to idealize European countries. We generally have a more accessible healthcare, but otherwise, well... European cities are chock-full of beggars and homeless people. Welfare structures are often hidden behind a high wall of bureaucratic compliance that pretty much locks some people out.

And even if you can manage those, your simple existence won't be on a level of a person with a normal job. Especially a single young person or a childless family cannot expect living beyond a very, very basic level from welfare money. Low enough that you won't be very happy.

Also, work does not end on the dot in Europe either. There are some countries that enshrined the right to do so into laws, but most have not. If you compete in a global economy, there tends to be a race to the bottom.

_0ffh• 5 years ago

where work ends when it ends

In the last year alone, despite the pandemic, Germans have worked 1.67 billion extra hours. More than half of them unpaid.

geofft2• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

Absolutely not, and for a very clear reason: the aims of the entrepreneurs are to make money and reduce costs. My aim, in asking for raises, is to increase costs. Are you saying this is inappropriate?

I am at work because the company and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. They need things done that are better done if I'm there; in exchange, I have a number of demands of them, starting with a sizable chunk of money. They're willing to meet those demands, so I work.

If I make political demands of my employer, it may be novel, but it is not a fundamental change of a relationship where I am already making financial demands of my employer. If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases.

ghufran_syed2• 5 years ago

presumably you would also be ok with getting paid less money in exchange for more political freedoms at work?

Aerroon• 5 years ago

If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases.

That's not the problem though. The problem is that your political advocacy causes problems with your co-workers, not your employer. If you have political activism at the work place then you're possibly making the workplace hostile for people who disagree politically with you. You might never hear about it, especially if you're in the majority, but you're still turning people off.

thrower123• 5 years ago

Yes. You go to work because they pay you. That's it. I do not care about your politics, and I beg that you don't care about mine. I am not your family. Odds are, I will not choose to be your friend. A professional relationship as coworkers is the goal here.

wildrhythms3• 5 years ago

This naive take seems to imply that companies, in America today, do not have political influence. Or, companies do have political influence, but its workers deserve no say despite spending 40 hours of every week devoted to serving its interests.

gsich• 5 years ago

Shouldn’t we be advocating on non office things outside of the office??

If you want robots, then yes.

dukeyukey2• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

No? For me, it's to give me somewhere to earn money while practicing/improving my valuable skills. I couldn't give a monkeys about the dreams and aspirations of my millionaire CEO.

ggggtez2• 5 years ago

Yes, you're naive. Maybe if your a worker on a factory line and only being paid to turn a wrench, then sure. But at tech firms, you're being paid to think.

noisy_boy2• 5 years ago

Yeah - you are being paid to think to solve the problem specifically related to your work, not being lost in thoughts about your personal political beliefs.

antihero• 5 years ago

The workplace is 8+ hours of most people's day. You cannot divorce it from the very real problems that exist in the world.

smegger00114• 5 years ago

honestly i think the problem here is the standard 40 work week monopolizing societies time. in the last 50 years worker productivity has shot up but the hours worked have stayed the same. we have multiple studies showing greater productivity with shorter work days or shorter work weeks but we insist on keeping 40 hour 5 day weeks.

If people had more time outside of work they could do this outside of work.

paul_f• 5 years ago

Actually you can. And it has been done successfully for decades. Proselytizing has no place in the workplace.

EMM_386• 5 years ago

Color me naive, but shouldn’t what happens in the office be about the office???

Yes I don't understand any of this either.

Maybe I'm just an old dog who's been in software engineering for 20+ years, but when I get hired by a company they exchange one thing (money) for what I can offer (programming).

If I am uncomfortable with what they are asking me to do regarding my skill of programming, I can quit at any time and go somewhere else.

I can't for the life of me understand how employees are debating things like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during their time at work, on public channels.

There is plenty of time outside of work to do whatever you want.

fires10• 5 years ago

Not everyone has the option of going somewhere else. I would like to see that as a viable option for everyone. I have often wondered if we ensured everyone had a viable option how it would allow us to change discrimination laws. An employer of last resort that you can legitimately support yourself with. Not poverty wages.

groby_b• 5 years ago

The problem here is that the office is deeply interwoven with the political. Part of this is that, as they say, "the personal is political". But let's set that aside for a moment, because we could make the case that in-office personal matters (e.g discrimination) is legally covered. (I'd debate that, but that's more political than HN likes to get, so... setting aside)

Even then, companies have political impact. When the CEO of Citizen decides hate mobs are a good idea, and he sponsors homeless hunting for sport with a $30k bounty, that's political.

If your company decides to sell surveillance software, that's political. More so if they pick specifically whom they sell it to or not. If your company decides to oppose or not oppose attempts to get at user data, that too is political - either way.

And worse, if your company decides that since they have money, they should get a voice in the political process, that too is political.

kwdc3• 5 years ago

Perhaps hiring should measure people's ability to tolerate opposing views? It can't be good to work with people who can't stay civil in the face of disagreements. Surely that is a sign of a lack of emotional intelligence?

lamontcg• 5 years ago

Just try and jam that genie back in the bottle as hard as you possibly can...

tzs• 5 years ago

Just stop to think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition condemning something that has nothing to do with work?

I don't think that is very persuasive, because it is quite common in most other places petitions are circulated for the petitions to have nothing to do with the activity at that place. For example, of all the petitions I've been asked to sign outside grocery stores or inside shopping malls I don't recall a single one being about things concerning grocery stores or malls.

A better argument would be that when someone circulates a petition at work they are circulating it among people they know, and those people know that they know the petitioner, and that the people who will be offered the petition after them know them.

If I sign a petition at a mall, probably no one I know will notice. If I don't sign the petition, no one I know will know that I was offered the chance and declined.

Not so at work. A petition at work as a side effect is essentially asking everyone to publicly declare their stance on the subject of the petition.

I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work, and to not have such non-contribution held against you. A petition essentially forces you to contribute, and it is a bad form of contribution because your contribution is not accompanied by an explanation greatly increasing the chances of it being misunderstood.

noisy_boy2• 5 years ago

I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work

I think you already have that right.

and to not have such non-contribution held against you

That is the tricky part. How do you know if they will or will not be held against you? Maybe your skills aren't great but not bad enough to fire you but now with your non-contribution on an opinion is taken as you opposing it and your shortfall of skills is used as a platform to masquerade the real reason. Maybe the people judging you this way operate in a way that doesn't provide any clear cut evidence of their ulterior motives. Subjective areas like these have lots of shadows and shades of grey to hide things.

hypertexthero• 5 years ago

“The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation underlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he spent several weeks volunteering at Auschwitz, clearing paths for visitors and sleeping in a former barracks. His father had served in the German Army, and Steidl participated in a program that had been established, he said, to show young Germans “what the parents had done. The experience helped him confront ‘the dark side of Germany.’ One thing that he contemplated was the ethics of separating one’s work from one’s domestic life. ‘I read about how the homes of the officers were outside the concentration camp, where they had a wife and children, and a little dog, and they were the nicest people you can expect,’ he told me. ‘And then they were going to work—they were shooting and murdering and sending people to death. So I also thought that it makes a huge difference when you are not isolated from your work, when working and living is a symbiosis. Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment. You are working there all day, and then in the evening you drive home and you have your pleasant place to stay, with clean air, while poor people have to live with the dirt you are producing. I control my noise, because I am sleeping there, with an open window, every night.’”

—Gerhard Steidl

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl...

Aunche2• 5 years ago

People don't spontaneously decide that conducting murder in a concentration camp is a morally acceptable career path. The Nazis succeeded in the first place because they injected their politics into every aspect of life. Politics-free spaces create additional friction that impedes the rise of radical ideology.

throwaway36992• 5 years ago

We're not actually trying to equate working on email products at Basecamp to working at Auschwitz are we? It's an interesting anecdote but it hardly serves a useful function here.

riccardomc• 5 years ago

I think this story actually proves the point. In this case, people were monsters at work and respectable people at home.

Therefore it works the other way around too: someone can worship Satan in a death metal band in his private life and work at a Catholic school.

The very definition of maturity is assuming the role appropriate to the situation. What I think might influence my decisions, but in my job is my duty to set aside what I think and act in the interest of my employer. Not mine.

Now we live in a time where your work identity an personal are conflated into one. Your work is who you are. There's no longer life beyond it.

Maybe is a good thing... But it's certainly exhausting to me. Everyone putting up their best behavior all the time.

kortilla12• 5 years ago

Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment.

That’s... not how industry works anymore. The reason you don’t want to live in an industrial park is because they are bright, loud, and take up a ton of space so they destroy walkability.

To the larger point though. It’s a bit daft to compare not talking about politics to shooting Jews. The German guards most certainly discussed what they were doing and felt that it was the right thing.

If we’re going for melodramatic comparisons, political echo chambers in the workplace lead to the type of groupthink that result in real gas chambers.

ajkjk• 5 years ago

I think that's totally absurd. You're a human wherever you go, you should not be required to put aside what's important to you for most of every day, keeping your head down and paying tribute to capitalism. Work is, and should be, real life.

arvinsim• 5 years ago

For some people, work is life. So it isn't surprising that one spills over the other for them.

modriano• 5 years ago

I sleep about 6 hours a day, I work about 9 hours a day, and the rest is for life sustaining activities, housework, personal projects, and leisure.

Work is where I spend most of my time. Being a positive force in the world is important to me, so I only work on important problems, and to defend against falling into a motivated reasoning culture, I only work places where people can freely discuss ethical issues. I don't want to trick myself into thinking I'm connecting the world, but then discover I'm actually building tools that facilitate genocides in Myanmar or ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs or something.

So no, at least for me, attempting to compartmentalize my life like that seems like a really bad life strategy. I just don't want to regret how I spend a major part of my life.

unclebucknasty2• 5 years ago

think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition...

We've set commerce at the center of our society and gone so far as to grant corporations "personhood", allowing them to wield enormous political influence. As such, they're able to donate unlimited sums of money under the guise of "free speech". With regard to its effect on the spirit of a functioning democracy, this is illogical to say the least.

To some extent, this outsized influence disenfranchises the citizen voter. So, given this system, it's actually quite logical for workers to express their social/political preferences through the corporations for which they work. It's a means of reclaiming some of their power by influencing an entity that itself has more influence.

If this deference to corporations were not the case, then I might be inclined to agree with you.

*People are human. But work is work."

At least here in the U.S., our work-life balance is totally out of whack. We're expected to give so much to employers and invest so much of ourselves in the success of the company. We take time away from our families, etc. As such, the lines between our personal and work lives are already quite blurred. So I think this is where it seems strange to some that they are expected to leave select parts of their personal lives at the door.

ohazi• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

Have you ever worked for a large company, that's flush with cash, that likes to offer borderline ridiculous perks to employees (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.)?

Usually there are relatively few people at these companies who do the work that actually moves the proverbial needle. There are a lot of people at these companies who only ever get to work on some vanity project motivated by internal politics. Work that literally doesn't matter, that the owners don't actually care about, and that's eventually going to get thrown away after being used as some sort of bargaining chip.

But smart people often want to feel like they're doing "important" work, so we dress it up with goals and deadlines and KPIs to make it seem important.

A lot of these workplaces can more accurately be described as "day care for adults."

Rapzid• 5 years ago

day care for adults

I've never heard it put like this. Amazing. I shy away from these places towards small to mid size companies with more critical work..

SomaticPirate• 5 years ago

“Outside of office”

Part of this is that office has come home (literally when it comes to the current pandemic work situation). With tools like Slack and Teams “work” has come home more than ever. Of course, there are healthy ways to limit this but you can’t say work hasn’t fundamentally invaded our home space. Also factor in how much people work, where you spent 40+ hours a week (again, leaning towards more due to pandemic work situation) there isn’t much time for activism outside the office.

Pushing for their company to support social justice causes is the white, white-collar workers way of supporting these causes without inducing the level of discomfort of actually protesting.

And if you get fired for it, all the better. Sans NDA (which companies are making increasingly common) you have an excellent case for the social zeitgeist to support you on.

treeman79• 5 years ago

Current mentality is with us or against us.

Was in a woke office for awhile. I tried very hard to stay out of it. Learned quick that is very offense behavior. Was lectured on it.

wpietri12• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

I disagree. The notion that humans turn into employer-owned production machinery for 8 hours a day is one very particular way to conceptualize work. But it ignores both the individual as a whole person and the society that contains and enables the workplace to function.

To me, even as a former and perhaps future entrepreneur, I think it's a giant mistake to see a workplace as a place where the entrepreneur is a tiny god-king. Work is a social and societal activity at least as much as it is an economic one. If people want to play-act as robots, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work, and it's not the kind of person I hire.

SpicyLemonZest• 5 years ago

I don't think the argument is that it's some separate sphere entirely disconnected from normal human interaction. It's like saying "the point of a movie night is to hang out and enjoy a movie together". If me and my friends were halfway through a movie, and I stood up and staged a loud political protest against something one of the characters said, my friends would be pretty rightfully unhappy with me.

ramblerman3• 5 years ago

I agree with your sentiment that we are more than replacable robots.

But I think for a long time 'a whole person' referred to your character, your hobbies, your family, your quirks. And politics was a small, and usually private part of that.

We are in a time now where politics is tribal and has usurped a huge part of people's identities. To the point they see the other tribe as the devil merely by association.

And I could see how that would cause conflicts in a business that are detrimental to the bottom line

StanislavPetrov2• 5 years ago

I think it's a giant mistake to see a workplace as a place where the entrepreneur is a tiny god-king.

It isn't about being a god king, its about people being capable of collectively doing a task without saddling the execution of that task with all of their personal, political and emotional baggage.

If people want to play-act as robots, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work, and it's not the kind of person I hire.

If people want to play-act as priests of some new secular religion, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work. What interests me about work is collecting a paycheck so that I can pay my bills and have the economic freedom to pursue my personal interests when I'm not at work. The idea that those with whom I work feel entitled (much less obligated) to police my personal interests (that are completely unrelated to my time on the job) is anathema to me. Those are not the kind of people I would hire, or work with.

cercatrova3• 5 years ago

If I work somewhere, I am the tool that the founder uses to have wrought forth their vision. I accept that and do what must be done.

Therefore, at the same time, if I create a company, it is mine to do with as I please, to command forth to fulfill my vision.

I don't really understand the purpose of bringing "the whole person" if it doesn't matter to the work being done. It can not only be useless but actively harmful, as people get into tribalistic bouts without doing work.

deepGem• 5 years ago

I tend to agree to this viewpoint. Most of the impactful products are built by people who are inspired to build the product, sometimes even to the extent of hating the entrepreneur. For them work is almost a part of life.I don't mean that such people think of work all the time and don't have other interests in life, but largely what they are building is kind of ingrained into their life. It's really difficult to separate what they do from who they are. Almost every leader wants their team to exhibit these characters albeit on a spectrum.

But what comes with that is the personality attributes, political viewpoints etc. It's hard to disagree on some fundamental traits and still continue to work together. At least in these teams which tend to get closely knit.

This could potentially lead to homogenous teams which we don't want.We want teams to hash out diverse and conflicting ideas. Really hard balance to achieve.

lazyeye• 5 years ago

Is "the kind of person you hire" likely to share your politics? Because we are talking about workplaces where there is diversity of thought (if thats your kink)

swiley3• 5 years ago

I'd totally agree if we were still required to be in the office.

With WFH though you can actually more or less pick who you're spending those 8 hours with, in that case maybe keep the politics among the people you're physically around.

koonsolo• 5 years ago

Do you know the expression 'no politics or religion'? That is because you can't create a nice and fun environment where people start clashing over these topics.

You can discuss personal things, make jokes with your colleagues, etc. I think that is a very healthy environment.

An environment where people have strong opinions on politics an religion is never a nice environment. Never.

So I think it's fair that in a work environment, we decide "hey, we don't what that shit here".

slibhb• 5 years ago

If people want to play-act as robots, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work, and it's not the kind of person I hire.

If you want to see how far some people have lost the plot, consider that this poster is boasting about only hiring people who agree with his politics. You can be damn sure he wouldn't hire a passionate Trump supporter.

danmur• 5 years ago

You can have fun and socialise at work without devolving it into constant arguing. At my current job everyone's fairly mature and I think that even though there are lots of radical opinions it stays very congenial because people back off when it's unwelcome. I don't think there's anything to do with the bosses being gods, or people pretending to be robots. There are plenty of places where you can have heated discussions, it doesn't have to be at work.

Additionally: my employer pays me to fulfill their requirements. That's what I'm there for. If I don't enjoy some aspect of the work (or if it's a shitshow of unrelated and unresolvable arguments that I can't opt out of) I'll leave, I'm free to do that.

ridaj2• 5 years ago

That may be your point of view, but can you hire a lot of people with this attitude?

Companies in tech successfully attract talent on the basis that they provide an opportunity to "have impact in the world". I work in tech and I hear this all the time from candidates in interviews, when asking why do you want to work here. Nobody says they just want to make a lot of money for the shareholders and a little for themselves.

The meaning of work and quality of workplace environment is incredibly important to people who work in tech. That's part of the job market situation.

If there was a massive surplus of qualified candidates to do the work, sure the "entrepreneurs" could be telling their staff to "shut up and get to work" whenever they talked about anything non-work-related... But at this time, it just isn't something that employers can really afford to do, and they have set themselves up for it too by hyping up their workplace culture and perks, and by positioning themselves not just as money making machines but as beacons of societal progress.

nradov2• 5 years ago

That's what candidates say in interviews because that's what they think they're supposed to say. How many are telling the truth?

sl1ck731• 5 years ago

"Have an impact in the world" is a canned answer. I seriously doubt a large percentage of candidates really care, its just not appropriate (unfortunately) to say we're here for the money.

8note4• 5 years ago

The entrepreneur is perfectly willing to use my work to push political changes. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to too.

If you want to get politics away from the office, stop giving the wealthy and corporations political power

knorker3• 5 years ago

Because they pay you for the work?

You can use the money to further your political goals.

If you go to a pizza place and pay for a pizza, you don't expect them to alter the deal after you pay, and instead give the pizza to someone homeless without asking you or refunding you.

Fordec3• 5 years ago

Society is a democracy. One where we as people provide labor for money. During contracted hours you belong to the company, sure. Outside that you are free to do as you please. Wait no, you were at an Antifa rally on the news outside office hours? Or cancelled on twitter? Or had a drug charge? Sorry, you're fired.

If you can't have your own life outside work without consequences, companies can't reasonably expect people to not bring their own life into work.

Just as how you conduct your life outside work can have a reputational effect on a company, your employer's actions have a reputational effect on you.

ncpa-cpl• 5 years ago

From the Recurse Center manual:

If you see racism, sexism, etc. outside of RC, please don’t bring it in. For example, please don’t start a discussion about the latest offensive comment from Random Tech Person Y.

Everyone who comes to RC should have the same opportunity to focus on programming, and people from oppressed groups often find discussions of racism, sexism, etc. particularly hard to tune out.

There are many places to discuss and debate these issues, but there are few where people can avoid them. RC is one of those places.

https://www.recurse.com/social-rules#no-subtle-isms

jessedhillon2• 5 years ago

The excerpt quoted here sounds reasonable and pleasant, which is why I was surprised when I clicked through and found what appears to be the social rulebook of hell.

spoonjim5• 5 years ago

I don’t think your view of the workplace is canonical, but I do want there to be a marketplace of ideas on this where companies can choose different levels of personal/professional blending. I’d like to have some companies as the “family/bring your whole self to work” and others as “keep politics/social justice/etc out of here” and have these publicly listed somewhere with employees able to vote with their feet.

nobodyandproud• 5 years ago

The workplace necessarily is going to bring together people that do not agree on personal matters - but who best align on matters relating to... work.

I personally agree. Work and personal life should be completely separate.

Yet employers and other orgs are happy to intrude on one’s personal life.

If you can spy on me at home just because I have a work computer or a work app installed, then don’t be surprised that traditional boundaries will be crossed the other way.

vishnugupta• 5 years ago

Humans being humans can’t compartmentalze and seamlessly switch back and forth between work mode and non-work mode. Besides, they spend the best 8-9 hrs of their creative period of the day at work so the happenings of outside world will be subconsciously analyzed at work.

If a black kid has been killed by a cop the previous night the injustice of it all will linger on for a few days whether at work or outside of it.

throway987523436• 5 years ago

Compartmentalization is a valuable skill.

There are always external factors that can temporarily decrease work performance, like the death of a loved one. Those random dips are evened out over the workforce.

When large swaths of a business's employees can't even at work whenever there's tragic news, that becomes a problem for the business itself.

My point is even perceived discrimination imposes real economic cost.

mikojan• 5 years ago

Just stop to think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition condemning something that has nothing to do with work?

You spent most of your waking hours at work. The slave mentality required to basically turn off your moral compass while you are there (for 8+ hours) - that's mind bending to me

knorker3• 5 years ago

But this petition is not about changing the place you work at, but a place far far away.

xg152• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

Congrats, this is a political opinion.

coldtea• 5 years ago

People are human. But work is work. The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

The canonical point of a workplace should be to serve society!

powerapple• 5 years ago

In a company, some people may social with others after work, become close friends, those social groups are clusters, especially in big companies. Politics should be shared inside those social clusters. Treat it as social, not work.

I don't know why people are upset for not being able to flood others with their politics. If you want a conversation, you would want to make sure the receiving end is suitable for a discussion of some sort, probably better when you have 30 minutes to spare, sit together with tea or something.

One thing I don't like politics is that it is all about opinions, generally not about solutions. As an engineer I like solutions, I like tradeoffs, optimizations.

dunkelheit• 5 years ago

I think the problem lies not with mixing politics and work (which can obviously be political) but in pressuring companies to engage in activism on unrelated issues.

The problem starts with the slogan "everything is political" which utterly fails to recognize the varying degree with which any activity relates to some political cause. Take Coinbase - their long-term project is to advance the use of cryptocurrencies which is deeply political. And you are welcome to work there if you support this project or engage in activism against it if you don't. This much makes sense. But why do Coinbase management has to issue a statement supporting BLM? What do they even have to do with police brutality? Of course there is a line of argument that they are (just as everybody) complicit in systemic racism so it is their responsibility but it never made much sense to me. Making everybody responsible for everything is not going to work.

In a sense this slogan is similar to "everything is connected", which is in some sense true, but if one takes it too seriously there is a risk of failing to recognize very real differences between things and boundaries between different subsystems which will lead to paralysis or suboptimal actions.

dav43• 5 years ago

I’m not adding anything particular of value but just to say - I agree.

The current environment - at least online - is you have to be for something, picking a side.

Against you however, people may say - we can’t turn off that part of who we are and be different at work. People have forgotten that saying nothing is an option. Stop talking - especially the people which shout opinions loudly and add no value.

ohyes• 5 years ago

The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

See, that right there is a political viewpoint.

Some would argue that work is about fulfilling the needs of society to produce necessary and useful goods and services, the aims of the entrepreneurs take a backseat when they harm society.

Others might argue work is entirely about the needs of the workers, that the work game is mostly about the individuals who are there.

seibelj• 5 years ago

Why can’t we just let the market sort it out? Let the people who want to talk politics all day start, lead, and work at firms that encourage it. And those that don’t will do the same.

It’s my same issue with socialists who want democratic control of companies. If it’s so obviously better, why not start one yourself? Or use government money to do so (socialists, after all). I just wish everyone would voluntarily associate and live their best lives rather than forcing a “one size fits all” approach to every problem. We live in the greatest time ever for expressing yourself in any myriad of ways. Just live and let live.

throwaway2928932• 5 years ago

* others response to you *

Hey get that libertarian common sense out of here! Downvote!

kokanator4• 5 years ago

Am I to understand by your comment that libertarians are not tolerated on HN?

j2kun2• 5 years ago

I would say what is happening now _is_ the market sorting it out.

ricardobeat• 5 years ago

It's funny, but individuals with privileged positions using government money to do X is much more of a mark of capitalism.

tomp3• 5 years ago

Indeed. That's why capitalism is strictly better than communism - communism can exist within capitalism. Simply buy the land, invite people, build houses, farms & factories, and have everyone sign contracts saying that they co-own everything.

The lack of such communities (large-scale) demonstrates that stealing from others is essential for establishing communism.

flyinglizard3• 5 years ago

The only reason this is an issue in the first place is the outsized, insane amount of influence these firms have over our society and culture. It wouldn't be as interesting (or consequential) if these guys were in Ford or GM (in fact it's not rare for unions to have stated political positions).

kokanator4• 5 years ago

Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics—and failing

Really? Don't be surprised when you manipulate the political sphere outside your walls in ways never seen in the history of the world and that politic creeps inside and devours you from within.

whoisthemachine• 5 years ago

I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but companies (unreasonably large ones especially) have certainly manipulated the political sphere "outside their walls" in such ways for a long time. See East India Company, Standard Oil, etc. See also the Gilded Age for a time that is very reminiscent of the times we live in today [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age#National_politics

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/e25ud

Tycho2• 5 years ago

The weird thing is how it’s all seems so co-ordinated. As if the HR departments of every firm get their marching orders from some central advocacy group.

blast• 5 years ago

I bet this is a side effect of the internet and especially social media. Rapid spread of ideas/memes creates large zones of homogeneity, sort of like the fill-colour operation in paint programs. Suddenly we have "tribes", but with millions of people.

The same phenomenon drives the homogeneous subgroups to extremes, since externally they define themselves in opposition to other subgroups, and internally they egg each other on, rewarding the members who find the most intense new ways to express the identity.

It's not coordinated, except in the sense that the technology allows for forms of replication that never existed before. Because our brains don't expect that sort of world, this maps to a feeling of "it all seems so coordinated", even if we resist that explanation intellectually.

corty• 5 years ago

These things are like some kind of social software. Behaviour patterns that HR departments or other departments use, because they worked well for others, get around the consequences of some legal precedent, or simply because they are fashionable. As examples, take casual friday, adding "(m/f)" to job offers, or giving out stock options.

We are all just apes apeing each other after all ;)

twic• 5 years ago

HR is not usually an important or powerful part of a company. I wonder if HR people, consciously or subconsciously, are drawn to the idea of being important and powerful for once.

darkerside7• 5 years ago

The group responsible for executing the bureaucracy is indeed powerful

mr_toad2• 5 years ago

Management is all fads and cargo cults, and HR is basically pure distilled management.

genericone2• 5 years ago

Management without having to dirty themselves with the actual running of the business.

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

HR is a reasonably well-paying clerical field amenable to those with non-technical degrees. This and its human-orientation makes it a natural fit for soft-science/sociology majors working outside their field.

ramblerman3• 5 years ago

They are. Focault and critical race theory embedded themselves deeply in a lot of non STEM degrees a while ago, which is where HR candidates usually come from.

That generation is now running HR in a lot of these companies.

Critical race theory scholars question foundational liberal concepts such as Enlightenment rationality, legal equality, and Constitutional neutrality, and challenge the incrementalist, step-by-step approach of traditional civil-rights discourse;[12] they favor a race-conscious approach to social transformation, rejecting liberal embrace of affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle; and an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies.[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

stephc_int133• 5 years ago

The reason why politics is traditionally frowned upon in the workplace is to avoid toxic peer pressure and the resulting uniformity.

It is illegal to discriminate against employees for their political opinions, religion, sexual orientation, race, ethnic background, etc. Allowing or even encouraging open political debates in the workplace jeopardizes it.

SeanBoocock• 5 years ago

Political opinions are not protected in the same way, nor should they be, as the protected classes you cite (gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc).

stephc_int133• 5 years ago

Oh, really? I am not from the US, so I am a bit ignorant about the laws there.

In France it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because of his political views.

It is not allowed to ask.

strken• 5 years ago

Lawful political beliefs, affiliations, and actions are a protected attribute in Australia[0]. I have no idea whether this forces you to hire e.g. actual Nazis, although they'd probably have some unlawful beliefs.

[0] https://www.humanrights.vic.gov.au/for-individuals/political...

lliamander14• 5 years ago

Religion is a protected class. Why not politics?

We either need to add more protected classes or do away with the whole concept and return to free association.

Rebelgecko• 5 years ago

Political activities and affiliations are a protected for workers in California, where most of the companies in the article are based. However in extreme cases (like if you express your beliefs in a way that creates a hostile working environment) someone can still be fired

j2kun2• 5 years ago

Seems more likely it's so that employers can prevent their employees from discussing their working conditions with each other and enforce _more_ uniformity by stifling demands for better treatment.

kokanator4• 5 years ago

This is significantly and historically more the case.

The previous comment confuses Bullying with Political discussion. Though it is true bullies can participate in political discussions a bully is typically a bully in all areas.

foota3• 5 years ago

This isn't true, political opinions aren't a protected class in the US.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

It seems to be in some places like California.

https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/harassment/political-reta...

stephc_int133• 5 years ago

Wow.

throwaway36992• 5 years ago

Legality is not the same as morality. Remember that slaves were not a protected class at one point. A coarse analogy, I admit, but it's true: we can change this to include politics if necessary.

president• 5 years ago

What I learned recently is that a lot of the "woke" efforts in these large public companies are directed by boards who are answering to Wall St, who are answering to elites and politicians. It's no wonder none of the "wokism" feels so in-your-face instead of genuine and organic.

danbolt2• 5 years ago

Who are “elites” in this case?

weasel_words• 5 years ago

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how skewed a poll taken by "a diversity consultancy" would conclude that: "... two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work."

meowtimemania3• 5 years ago

Honestly I haven’t really had any bad experiences discussing these issues in person, but when I read the dumpster fire known as Twitter it makes me not want to get involved

ed25519FUUU4• 5 years ago

You’ll never have any issues as long as you stay between the lines, that’s the point.

volkl48• 5 years ago

I imagine it depends on how the question is framed.

No one wants to be fired for merely mentioning the top news story of the day in office conversation. And sometimes it's a "racial justice" topic.

On the other hand, I also don't think most people want to be forced to detail their exact racial-justice views in the office or feel pressured to openly support something.

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

One of my favorite examples of "how the question was framed" is from ~5 years ago. They asked one group if they were in favor of Obamacare, the other if they were in favor of the Affordable Care Act. Turns out the ACA polls better.

jollybean• 5 years ago

I think we would all like to be able to safely discuss most things anywhere. If you ask the question a certain way, it might not so much about about 'the desire' but the 'right / ability' to do it without getting fired.

Tricky question though.

Opt_Out_Fed_IRS3• 5 years ago

This sort of stuff happens when society reaches a level of prosperity so high that it starts worrying about nonsense

None of this happens in Mexico

The US needs to import fresh blood and fresh brains if it wants to survive.

Less people studying social trends and more studying consumer trends.

throwaway19592• 5 years ago

Legal, high-skilled immigrants from Mexico and other countries, - yes!

ed25519FUUU4• 5 years ago

Are you discussing politics?!

nefitty3• 5 years ago

The UN considers Mexico one of the most violent countries in the world for women. Is that cause outside of workplace-appropriate conversation? You may have chosen a country at random, but it’s disingenuous to say that worrying about femicide is “nonsense”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_women_in_Mexi...

postalrat• 5 years ago

Don't talk politics. Don't talk about how much you make. Just do as you are told!

disposekinetics• 5 years ago

That sounds way better than the current “parrot the right politics as you’re told”.

userbinator• 5 years ago

Or as the case may be, "parrot the left politics"...

(Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)

ed25519FUUU4• 5 years ago

You should openly discuss how much you make in order that you can negotiate with more leverage. But you’re right about politics.

wildrhythms3• 5 years ago

Terrifying to see sincere replies to this obviously sarcastic comment.

crackercrews5• 5 years ago

Coinbase and Basecamp, which each lost 60 employees after their bosses changed the rules, have apparently been inundated with applications from people wanting to work for politics-free firms.

Basecamp had 57 employees at the time of their announcement. Are they down to -3?

brown9-2• 5 years ago

It’s a sum

crackercrews5• 5 years ago

Coinbase alone lost 60 employees. [1] Doesn't seem like a sum. Also not phrased right. Should have been "together" not "each".

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp...

shkkmo• 5 years ago

That's not what the quote says. It clearly states that EACH company lost 60 employees. If the intent was to convey a sum then it would have needed to use words like "combined" "total" or "sum" or at the ambigous minimum noy included the "each" word that exclused the "sum" meaning from consideration.

bilekas• 5 years ago

Its heavily paywalled.. I'd love to read it though

trts2• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/e25ud

eruci• 5 years ago

People are bored at work. This leads to politics at work - especially fashionable politics of the day.

Same as with people who are bored in general.

rogers184452• 5 years ago

Politics is what it is precisely because it is vacuous - you signal allegiance and that is all. You as an individual cannot influence anything any more than discussing an incoming storm would influence its trajectory.

But unlike the storm we know that the results of what society produces are determined by the society. And people don't realize or care that they as an individual are not society and have no influence over it in any meaningful capacity.

Many of our problems may be alleviated if game theory was a mandatory class in highschool. But then democracy would perhaps be in peril as people realize voting is as useless to them as is discussing politics. Tragedy of the commons can be a depressing thing.

arpowers• 5 years ago

Game theory, finally someone gets it.

jmull3• 5 years ago

I don't get it. What's the insight here?

masterphilo• 5 years ago

Does anyone really believe that these giant companies actually care about the so-called 'woke' values being foisted upon them?

Once companies realize that getting political is no longer a virtue (and by 'virtuous' we mean anything that increases their bottom line), we'll slowly start seeing sanity crawl back to the workplace. I'm glad to see some companies clearing that path.

madrox2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure where we go from here, but not being able to escape anxiety-inducing situations in a workplace is the definition of a toxic work environment. I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work," but at the FAANG I worked at, politics was impossible to avoid. Even the desire to be apolitical is itself criticized at worst and not respected at best. Work doesn't afford the use of the "block user" button. I hope we figure out a better way that respects some people have a hard time immersing in it the way others do.

mk812• 5 years ago

I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work"

Why not?

madrox2• 5 years ago

Because the genie is out the bottle. For better or worse, many tech companies have worked hard to make your workplace your social hub in an effort to retain employees and get them to work longer hours. That's already happened, so now we have to deal with the good and bad that came from that. Going backward to how things were is as realistic as uninventing Twitter.

betwixthewires8• 5 years ago

Because this experiment has obviously failed and this attempt to create a less toxic work environment through activism has resulted in a thinly veiled attempt to create a more toxic work environment for those who do not want to conform to neo-marxist orthodoxy.

gnopgnip4• 5 years ago

Because "no politics at work" isn't neutral, it means supporting the status quo by way of defining what counts as "politics". Is calling someone by their preferred pronouns, or wearing a mask during the pandemic politics?

w0de02• 5 years ago

I doubt it was ever so simple. Maybe for a halcyon moment when incomes were rising and ideology was sparse on the ground - the 50s and early 60s - politics had little part in work, in as much as most people still agreed. But they all agreed on horrible things, like how to treat women in the workplace with disrespect.

People are politics, especially in a free land like ours. No politics at work is unrealistic, I believe.

fighterpilot6• 5 years ago

  "not being able to escape anxiety-inducing situations"

This sounds like an emotionally abusive environment unless you happen to agree with the political agenda being pushed. To feel socially pressured to go along or else be ostracized from your work is fairly awful.

I'm fortunate that I've worked in a rather politically balanced industry which naturally turns out to be apolitical as a consequence of mere demographics.

globular-toast5• 5 years ago

That's exactly what it's like. I've not seen it put like this before, but anxiety inducing is just right, and yes, it is abusive.

Take the letter people, for example. They will ridicule people for not understanding the difference between G and Q, for example. Phrases like "if you don't know what X means, you must live under a rock" are common.

Then you have the pronoun people who tell us anyone can choose any set of pronouns they like. They tell it's easy to relearn your native language and remember a set of pronouns for each and every person you interact with, from a basically infinite set of combinations.

I'm reminded of the secret languages children invent. But these are now adults doing it, at work. It's especially difficult for older people to change the language they use and can make them feel thoroughly alienated.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

To feel socially pressured to go along or else be ostracized from your work is fairly awful.

That's society in general, not just work.

https://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-38-think-as...

Moodles6• 5 years ago

This sounds like an emotionally abusive environment unless you happen to agree with the political agenda being pushed.

Yeah, 100%. Were you in California last summer? “Silence is violence” was the phrase of the day. I’ve got about a gazillion stories from living in San Francisco for three years.

darkerside7• 5 years ago

Anxiety is a normal emotion. If it's pervasive it can certainly be a problem, but I'll also point out that anxiety inducing situations can have nothing to do with politics, of course.

People who approach others like this are putting themselves out there. They are just as at risk, if not more, as you would be by expressing your own responses in a non threatening way. If you don't know how to do that, I suggest you learn. It'll give you a voice at work.

chitowneats5• 5 years ago

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Please, people, do NOT be honest about your conservative or non-woke political positions in this industry. You will absolutely be punished for them by your peers. It is not in any situation ever worth it. Clock in, clock out, take the check, and always always always keep interviewing constantly because they will have no issues firing you arbitrarily.

Work at a large enough company and the woke literally have an entire division of the company (DEI) dedicated to finding reasons not to hire you in the first place, reasons to not promote you, and identifying ways in which your opinions make others feel "unsafe", etc. The entire deck is stacked against you unless you blend in.

"Bring your whole self to work" is bait. It's how they identify friend and foe. Do not fall for it. Pretend to be apolitical if you must. It probably won't work 100%, but giving up plausible deniability is not in your interest.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees.

It's as though there is a bargain where in exchange for boards tolerating staff radicalization, these employee groups cheerfully overlook the dystopian, totalitarian surveillance infrastructure, environmental devastation, and political corruption machines they seem to have zero problem building and managing on their behalf, and decieving users into depending on them. One doesn't even need to take a side to recognize the bitterness and contempt in tech toward red state denizens. I've sat through numerous meetings where all the shibboleths were trotted out to make sure we were all on the same political page before senior executives engaged in what would be considered hate speech against working class people in any other context. If calling people "trash" isn't hate speech, I really don't know what is.

There still exists a group (perhaps even a majority) in society who are good and charitable people with an immense amount of tolerance for this stuff because they believe tolerance is the price of principles, and they're only principles when they are hard to keep.

Radicalized platform company employees do not have a single moral leg to stand on in this regard. Bringing your whole self to work to build defacto social credit systems and partisan social engineering and surveillance tools is just moral licensing. Maybe that's how they sleep at night. While they found a new way to take a few more minutes of peoples time to show them outrage and advertisements, at least they mouthed the right party lines in favor of distant oppressed people they don't know personally?

I know a number of people in tech who sincerely believe they do not need to be good men or women by any standard because they are self justified by being engaged not in discourse, but ideological warfare. I used to think they were misguided idealists and I thought their passion could be used for good, but I've come to realize they are just dispicable.

All I can recommend is, don't let yourself be bullied.

etrabroline2• 5 years ago

Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees.

The ownership of these companies are the ones pushing these politics. Their employees are just pointing out their hypocrisy.

fighterpilot6• 5 years ago

They are, and the reason for this was given in the GP:

  "It's as though there is a bargain"

The board and executives know who weilds the stick. If it's the left that generally wants higher corporate taxes, more regulation, more anti-trust, and they control the media, then they're the ones that you want to appease as a bargain.

Adopting wokeness is significantly cheaper than all the alternatives.

The right mostly wants to leave companies alone (aside from the "censorship" issue in social media), have little representation in mainstream media, and are not on social media as much (due to age), so companies don't see them as a threat and don't need to kowtow to them.

justbored1232• 5 years ago

I fail to see your point, you seem to contradict yourself in an attempt to justify your own bias.

Are you arguing that the solution to the problem you mentioned: "dystopian, totalitarian surveillance infrastructure, environmental devastation, and political corruption" is to avoid radical politics at work??? So, what do you propose? That the board (that is responsible for those horrors) steps in an remove / do away with these "radicals" in a "totalitarian" manner??? That is your solution? It sounds that you are no different from them, just have a different agenda and you are perfectly fine with them and their methods as long as they are aimed at the people you don't like.

nearbuy3• 5 years ago

tolerance is the price of principles, and they're only principles when they are hard to keep.

I like this line. I might steal it.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

All I can recommend is, don't let yourself be bullied.

well the shareholders are always free to write the software that earns them their money themselves then.

Completely aside whether I agree with the rest of your post, this isn't about people being bullied, it's simply about tech workers exercising their very considerable bargaining power to pursue their goals which have transcended earning a paycheck, which is their right.

This is the free market everyone in tech loves, negotiating for political leverage is just a higher form of compensation Turns out tech firms love disruption, except when their own work model gets disrupted

kemonocode• 5 years ago

They're reaping what they've sowed, so I don't exactly feel bad about big tech firms trying to flee "wokeness" (read: performative activism that hurts its causes more than it helps them) and finding out they won't be able to do so that easily, as it's exactly the kind of environment they've cultivated and the sort of people they've catered to for the past decade. Everything you do can be construed as a political statement in one way or another, and if you make an ideological battleground out of a workplace you'll be asking for trouble down the road.

itronitron2• 5 years ago

I see it as an indicator that although many tech firms have mythologized their missions as agents of positive change they remain largely ineffectual. If people felt that through their employment they were providing a net benefit to society on the issues they care about then they wouldn't really care much about internal company politics/culture.

efitz• 5 years ago

according to a new Harris poll commissioned by Paradigm, a diversity consultancy, more than two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work

I just plain do not believe this poll.

fapjacks3• 5 years ago

We live in the age of the lie. It's impossible to take anything at face value, because it seems like every organization we interact with is just lying to us all at every opportunity.

j_wtf_all_taken6• 5 years ago

Actually, we live in the age of one group of people constantly lying, and convincing everyone else that everyone lies. Soviet-style propaganda - making everyone believe that the truth cannot be known, everything is possible and everyone lies.

(I am talking about intentional, informed, strategic lies, I am not talking about people that just don't know better etc.)

lliamander14• 5 years ago

Me neither, but to the extent that it is a valid poll I'll bet what it actually means is the opposite of what they claim here.

phendrenad2• 5 years ago

This was never a problem pre-pandemic. People would discuss these issues at lunch or at the watercooler. If you were bothered by politics interrupting your little heads-down work bubble? Just take lunch at your desk or pack your own water bottle. But in the WFH age, there's no getting away from it. These discussions happen in company general chat, where often important business also happens.

itronitron2• 5 years ago

> in company general chat, where often important business also happens

I'm lucky in that I have never worked at such a company. My love for email continues to grow and knows no bounds.

bingbong703• 5 years ago

This was never a problem pre-pandemic

I think this was less of a problem pre-Trump more specifically.

At some point the idea that foreigners and minorities should be treated like human beings seemed to become controversial in some circles. Same circles that thought an alternate invented history was preferable to reality and spent a lot of time/money mainstreaming that idea.

The resulting push back was expected and necessary. There is a cycle of civil rights wins followed by backlash in the US, I don't think that cycle ever ends.

usaar333• 5 years ago

Source is at https://www.paradigmiq.com/2021/05/19/nearly-7-in-10-america....

First off, note the wording (which is actually "we should be able to discuss racial justice issues at work"). This question is a bit open to interpretation, but I'd interpret as "employees should not be prohibited from discussing racial justice issues". Which I certainly agree with... I would not want my employer censoring private conversations.

The 66% thinking businesses should take action on racial injustice issues is reasonable... most people would want their business taking action against racial discrimination or harassment internally at the bare minimum.

What's more controversial are specific DEI programs at the workspace (diversity training, race-targetted recruiting bonuses, company donations for certain causes, etc.) -- the survey high-level doesn't go into that.

Finally, this is an online poll where "no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated", so I suppose there is heavy room for error.

TheMightyLlama• 5 years ago

The line I draw in the sand is that of thinking that work _is_ the place where one should talk about social issues. To my mind it most certainly is not. Everyone in that organisation has been employed to a single end (hopefully) to create a product.

The software developer or marketing assistant or middle manager does not decide the strategic course of the organisation. This is not a democracy and those individuals (myself included for most of my life) simply do not get a vote.

Now, should work be an environment where we _can_ talk about social issues without repercussion? Sure! Should we be using significant chunks of that time to modify people's behaviour to be socially acceptable? Not in my opinion.

What this highlights is that we really haven't figured out a forum which is designed to discuss social issues. At the moment we've got the internet which guarantees maximal disagreement on all points and we've made the mistake of thinking the work environment is synonymous with the home environment and the social environment. Resulting in everyone being offended about everyone else's behaviour at all times.

permo-w8• 5 years ago

you could equally phrase it as “30% BELIEVE RACIAL JUSTICE TALK SHOULD BE BANNED IN WORKPLACES” and that would be just as shocking. Although that’s probably the same 30% as Trump’s core base

Fordec3• 5 years ago

I'd be willing to be the word "able" is doing the heavy lifting here. Not because everyone has vocal opinions on BLM, but that this is America, land of the free, you can't tell me what I can and can't say.

Not to mention, "racial-justice issues" doesn't necessarily mean they are PRO-racial justice either.

swiley3• 5 years ago

Yeah, I hold what I believe is the popular (and most correct) opinions and there is no way I'd want to have a conversation about any of that with my coworkers.

mbg721• 5 years ago

Some subset of adults want their work to provide the same warm and fuzzy validation of their beliefs that they get on Facebook. Another subset distrusts "anonymous polls" and will quickly click the right answers to make HR go away. That might add up to 66%.

whb07• 5 years ago

I’m just here for the jamming of “x” into words:

Latinx, womxn, etc.

fapjacks3• 5 years ago

As with anything, we need to ask ourselves how something can be used to attack political enemies and punish outsiders. The woke politics thing is dangerous, and I think organizations (like the CIA) will ultimately be the ones to wield this power against the people, even if they haven't fully mechanized it yet. That is because this isn't just "politics" as the article asserts. This is a form of ambiguous morality (one is expected to just know when something is wrong, and everyone is expected to agree) which requires the use of an oracle (CoC, D&I council, etc) that exists outside of the traditionally enumerable, rules-based systems based on the rule of law, except that it additionally can't be questioned or opted out of. This is the most ideal thing imagineable for people who want to weaponize the workplace to achieve their own ends. Proponents of this system, beware.

api• 5 years ago

There’s a very good reason there is an old tradition against politics and religion at work. You’re there to get stuff done, and topics like that tend to derail things.

isaacremuant2• 5 years ago

You don't really see them running away.

The big 4/5 are doubling down in their wokeness and courses that have a very American & democrat slant with absolutely no space for discourse because there's really nothing to gain, risking your job to fight a corporate machine that analyzes woke actions as a sort of compliance of PR to keep appearances.

You either sing the political tune or try to remain neutral. Censorship of a lot of ideas/opinions have become so normal and demanded even (FB, Twitter, Google, etc) that "those that bring themselves" will mostly be those furthering the woke narrative.

It's funny how Israel creates a conundrum because it's the one place were the bipartisan support from the US clashes with the woke view so they're trying to suppress it as fast as possible.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

I wonder why companies don't take advantage of such rivalries. Separate the wokes from the unwokes and make them compete who will deliver first

tachyonbeam3• 5 years ago

Hopefully the market will eventually sort it out.

w0de02• 5 years ago

Smarter people - the type that make good engineers who’d deliver early - think critically about everything, not just their job. What you think of as “woke” is often composed of the compassionate, deeply reasoned ideology that such a smart person creates. It acts, practically, as a theodicy, something any coherent non-nihilistic worldview requires.

Similarly, many smart engineers arrive at opposing world views with less emphasis on the problem of evil and more on a pure rational understanding of the nature and history of society.

These two clever camps, admixed with America’s ideological chaos, rarely see one another clearly. The rationalists think the “woke” people are idiots for engaging with irrational intangibles of identity, and the woke people think the rationalists are cruel for refusing to admit any place for subjective experience in their expectations and understanding of the world around them.

I do think the rationalists miss rather more of reality; we are not in a Greg Egan novel. But the wokeists are ignorant of the spectre of ethnic conflict in human history, of the evil foreshadowed in glorifying identity and subjective experience.

MillenialMan4• 5 years ago

I don't think they're fighting because they hold differing misconceptions. Politics is a bar fight, you won't change people's minds by giving them information because it's not about information. If it was, then the information exchanged in political arguments would actually settle disagreements.

kwdc3• 5 years ago

Most political discussions fall apart due to people's inability to tolerate dissenting views. The inability to tolerate disagreement in a civil manner is likely just one cause.

The amygdala hijack kicks in and suddenly people are frothing at the mouth shouting and are then soon reaching for their metaphorical pitchforks. Online its all about silencing that dissention. Shut up! You can't disagree! Steps are soon taken to make such disagreeing wrongthink disappear.

It suits a child-like yet patronising view of the world but really its anti-intellectual / anti-diversity / anti-tolerance.

planet-and-halo2• 5 years ago

This is pretty much why I've checked out. I used to love discussions with people who made me see something in a different way, but these rage-driven shouting matches are illiberal (in the classical sense) and toxic. It's politics for addicts.

throwaway3169436• 5 years ago

How’d you go from people not wanting open conflict and harassment to being anti-diversity? That’s a big leap. There is a place for civil discussion but if you get kicked out because you start screaming at people and flipping tables it’s not because you’re being oppressed, it’s because you’re being an asshole that no one wants to be around.

kwdc3• 5 years ago

"[...] a place for civil discussion but if you get kicked out [...]'

That "but" is the dividing line. As soon as you cross it you've left civil discussion. (And become the asshole who needs to be ejected because of it). Most times, especially in political debates, its caused by an inability to tolerate a diverse range of views, including those you don't agree with. Polarisation overwhelms this ability even further.

"Diverse" is an overloaded term. Its not always loaded with emotion or about oppression. Diversity of opinions is useful. Tolerance of that is important.

throwarayes• 5 years ago

A feature of US work culture is that you invest your “whole self” into work. As in work isn’t just a thing you do for money, but a calling... Additionally, there’s a lack of basic social services. Those that do well can carry guilt, this leads to USs tipping culture, among other things.. also in the US private companies wield a lot of political power and capital.

Companies work in this context to attract talent. And people look to large powerful employers to large, important projects for social good. This could mean working at SpaceX to colonize Mars or wanting AWS to have carbon neutral data centers. I want to at least hope my company isn’t a soulless behemoth, but actually lives up to the mission or advertising.

So it’s only natural any kind of social or political issue is going to fall into this category. Including issues of racial equity...

Of course the market can decide what things here they want in companies they work at. It’s not a black and white “politics or no politics” line. Everything and anything can be political.

smegger00114• 5 years ago

A feature of US work culture is that you invest your “whole self” into work. As in work isn’t just a thing you do for money, but a calling...

and it is utter bullshit. I have watched my father and grandfather been chewed up and spit out by their respective employers and that work culture. Work isn't your life its what you do to pay for your life. any time a employer tells you that they are a family or any such BS run the other way.

I am exchanging x number of hours of my time skills and effort for their cash period.

iandanforth• 5 years ago

I see a lot of anti-politics-at-work commentary here. This makes me wonder what the posters would do working for companies that have an explicit social agenda. If the politics are baked into the company, does that void the "politics and work should be separate" point?

filleduchaos• 5 years ago

Politics has become a dirty word in the US, so people simply don't think of their pet political causes as politics.

In my opinion, many Americans especially do not know how to talk politics (in large part because of how much of a dirty word it has become, and also for a bunch of historical reasons) and instead of addressing this - which, to be fair, is extremely difficult to do - people would simply rather sweep it all under the rug.

It's even more complicated when it comes to the workplace because if you don't know how to talk politics you definitely won't know how to compartmentalise political debate and professional duty. To have politics in the workplace you need to be able to passionately, even furiously disagree with someone in one moment and pleasantly collaborate or offer assistance in the next. Either that or maintain a business where everyone has the same political leanings. There aren't really any in-betweens.

PeterisP7• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if it should void that point.

For an example of "an explicit social agenda" I'm thinking about the various cases of explicitly Christian companies with a business that's not directly religious (i.e. not a church or the like) but with an explicit agenda of strictly keeping to the social values of their particular choosing. Should all employees share their values? IMHO not. Should they be able to require that employees share their values? IMHO not. Should employees with contradictory values (in that particular example, let's say abortion policy) be able to feel psychologically safe working there? IMHO yes. So from that perspective, if we consider some company with an explicit "woke" social agenda, the same things should apply - in my view, an anti-abortionist campaigner should be able to work for a feminist boss in a feminist company just as a pro-abortion-rights campaigner should be able to work for a Mormon boss in a company fully owned by a religious fundamentalist family, and the same for any other politically charged topics. Obviously, that doesn't work well now, especially in all the "fire at-will" USA states, but that's how I feel it should be.

jrsj• 5 years ago

My problem with politics at work isn’t so much that it’s politics but more that it’s always idiotic performative horseshit. Like please stop pretending you want to “help” a group of people who disproportionately hold the jobs you are automating out of existence etc. More often than not it has more to do with a small number of individuals trying to get more power for themselves than a genuine desire to help anyone.

pydry• 5 years ago

A lot of the time the performative bullshit is the company itself trying to make changes that garner approval and attention but that don't cost it anything significant.

One example would be GitHub keeping its contract with ICE but changing the master branch to main.

permo-w8• 5 years ago

this kind of captures my problem with the current progressive politics. It’s all about signalling that you’re in a support of all manner of identities, unless that identity is working class, or unemployed

It’s extremely convenient for the neo-liberal elite. They get to sit back and continually rip us all off economically, while the generation that would normally be fighting it is busy fighting an invisible “institutional racism”. The people in power are not racist. Not specifically anyway. They’re just greedy. Often, because of past racism, or just coincidence, that greed disproportionately affects minorities. But the issue is greed and corruption and an improperly regulated society. It is not the invisible racist man, or microaggressions.

These issues still matter, and there’s absolutely a place for social justice politics, but it’s much much less important than economic justice

banannaise• 5 years ago

There are a lot of racial justice advocates who agree with you pretty much entirely. Racial justice is economic justice, and economic justice has very little to do with who has what jobs.

Class reductionism and race reductionism are both enemies of progress; we have to understand the intersection of such things if we're going to get anywhere.

trts2• 5 years ago

As someone straddling the line between gen x and millennials, the concept of partnering with your corporate bosses to advocate for political causes far astray from your company's products, particularly without regard for the ability of capitalism to co-opt that energy in a cynical pursuit of profit, is basically insane to me.

It seems like people have become so desperate to fill the widening void of meaning and purpose that they are willing to graft it even onto their at-will employment contract.

And as someone who watched the internet exponentiate the number of niche subjects and communities it shocks me how much homogeneity there seems to be in how people think and speak today.

devfatigue• 5 years ago

I don't want a work "family". I don't want to be on camera or see coworkers on camera. It is a trope now but http://www.phrack.org/issues/7/3.html

betwixthewires8• 5 years ago

Technological shifts have tended to be framed in political terms, as was the case with open-source software, which initially had an anti-capitalist impetus.

This is not true at all. The idea behind free software was always that if you bought it or it was given to you, you should own it entirely. This is very free market. It was anti predatory in nature, and overall political motivations to support it ranged, but the bent was very libertarian. It was opposition to abuse of customers or users and opposition to monopoly and cartel formation, and where it was focused on community building it has always been based on the principle of free association, a foundational libertarian value.

Beyond that gripe, I think the reason for the push against politics at work is because people are tired of being immersed in politics 24/7 whether they like it or not, being and just inundated with every conceivable political anything all the time. Party politics, ideological politics, a constant demand to pick a (very particular) side or face professional repercussions, it is exhausting. More specifically, there's a certain political ideology that has a mantra "everything is political" and I think people are sick of appeasing them and playing their game because they vehemently scream at the top of their lungs every chance they get that they're the super good guys and call everyone that disagrees with them evil.

lsh123• 5 years ago

I always find myself amused at how the people who are involved in the political, social, and other flame wars in the workplace find time to do actual work. Just looking at the threads from earlier this week, I see a couple dozen people posting 50+ posts each every day for at least 2-3 days (each post is anywhere from a half-page to two pages of text with links, images, etc). It would take me at least 5-10 mins per post so we are looking at 6 hrs per day on average. Honestly it’s on low end since they also read other posts I would guess ;)

planet-and-halo2• 5 years ago

This reminds me of the research showing some tiny percentage of Twitter users, like 3%-4%, are responsible for the vast majority of flamewars. The asymmetry of the internet gives these people the ability to crowd reasonable people out of the commons.

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

I think another problem is that communicating by text in twitter posts. Its very hard to tell how serious someone is being. No facial expressions, mannerisms, or hand movements to guide. Like they could be making up the most absurd reactions, typing up a storm, and people will take them seriously more often than not.

move-on-by• 5 years ago

I disagree with the entire premise of this article, and the statements it makes to prove it’s points are flimsy.

The first three sentences:

When at work, steer clear of politics. This rule, generally accepted around the world, does not apply in techland. Employees bring their “whole self to work”, including their political beliefs.

As a software manager who has worked at a handful of companies I never once found this statement to be true. I’ve been around people who formed friendships at work and became comfortable enough to discuss political events among themselves on breaks - but never once met someone who thought that it was an acceptable topic for general discussion at the office.

Internal online forums are full of heated debates

Ok yes, this is a problem and it might be more problematic for tech companies who might be more willing to have internal forms. I believe society as a whole has failed to follow our own interaction guidelines when online. It’s too easy to cross the line without the immediate vocal or visual cues you get in person or on the phone.

Digital technology has always had a political bent

I disagree and the argument that apple is ‘counterculture’ is their marketing agenda and has nothing to do with the technology.

Technological shifts have tended to be framed in political terms

I disagree with this too. Open source is simply what it is. Beyond that one argument, it’s such a broad statement it’s insane. Yes, politics likes to frame change in favorable terms- that has nothing to do with the technology shifts themselves.

tech firms have felt obliged to offer plenty of perks, such as free food, but also “work that aligns with personal values”

How does wanting to have a positive impact on the world have anything to do with the tech field? Only thing I can think of is that there is a lot of really shady tech out their now- anything from tracking people to AI for drones. I don’t want to work for them. I also don’t want to work for a payday loan company- nothing to do with one being a tech company.

One reason is that more than in other sectors, discussions in tech firms mostly take place over Slack and other corporate communication services

Back to my first concession- this is the root cause of the problem, and with so many offices closed now isn’t really a ‘tech’ problem anymore. Society as a whole needs to learn to to behave in a asynchronous environment.

Gatsky• 5 years ago

This isn’t surprising, largely a consequence I think of the ‘Bowling Alone’ phenomenon, such that people don’t do much outside of work anymore which allows the expression or development of political views.

I also think that deep down some tech workers feel guilty about how much they earn (wokeness generally entails self-flagellation), and this manifests as workplace activism.

josh_today• 5 years ago

The challenge is defining the line between what’s considered politics and not. For example, would applying gender pronoun titles to internal corporate profile pages be considered politics or not

Cullinet• 5 years ago

Time and place : the place for political debate.

Your Place : the place where you have such freedoms as you wish.

Work Place : the place we work together with other dedicated professionals in order to fulfil given tasks so that we can enjoy :

A Place : the rightful place in society earned by individuals who abide by the rules and contribute positively to their social environment without causing damage, harm, upset or unfair expenses for others.

No Place : the place for woke campaigning folk in a healthy society.

nverno• 5 years ago

"according to a new Harris poll commissioned by Paradigm, a diversity consultancy, more than two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work"

Of course it does, they are a diversity consultancy (whatever the heck that is)

tachyonbeam3• 5 years ago

In other news, Marlboro has found, through rigorous scientific study, that cigarettes do not increase the risk of cancer. In fact, they may help reduce the risk of developing cancer by reducing workplace stress.

ThinkBeat• 5 years ago

One part of the article:

This is about a guy who wrote a book on his own time, published it outside of work.

Someone did not like some parts of the book and the guy had to quit his job?

There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work.

I write fictional stories in my spare time (never at work), I enjoy doing it. Some people enjoy reading them (I can't figure out why)

It is a sad day for a Democracy when I am supposed to worry about what self-appointed political officers acting entirely outside of HR, will feel about what I write.

That is an autocratic regime. Soon we will have struggle sessions at work.

e67f70028a46fba• 5 years ago

Soon?

jfengel• 5 years ago

If only he had a union. But the "right to work" is the right to be fired for any reason or none.

bagels• 5 years ago

Do you mean "at will employment"?

baryphonic7• 5 years ago

California is definitely not a right-to-work state.[0] It does have at-will employment, just like almost every other state. But Apple employees are free to unionize at any time and, if successful, require dues for unionized employees.

In fact, if CA is so friendly to unions and big tech companies are so progressive, why are none of the big tech companies unionized?

[0]https://statelaws.findlaw.com/california-law/california-righ...

sigstoat• 5 years ago

if he, and those demanding his firing were all members of the same union, how vigorously do you think it would defend him?

would they not just move their campaign to having him ejected from the union?

mempko• 5 years ago

You should look into the Democracy at Work movement. https://www.democracyatwork.info/

EDIT: Just downvoting. No opinions about the above?

asdfasgasdgasdg8• 5 years ago

There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work.

We've had this discussion already, but claiming sexist views is going to be a problem for you whether you do it at work or elsewhere because of how laws around hostile work environments and notice work. Particularly, if you go on to actually create a hostile work environment (as one might reasonably suppose you will, having publicly espoused the relevant views), then the company might be on the hook for enhanced damages based on the idea that they knew or ought to know you posed a risk. Best not to do it in a high profile way if you want to work for a big company where people are sensitive to that sort of thing.

If you want this to stop being the case, there are a few things that would need to happen. It might be that a combination of these would suffice:

You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them.

You'd need to convince workers to put aside their personal interests in this matter for the greater good (that being the right to write a book that says sexist things but still work at Apple, or wherever).

You'd need to change the law so that companies who know or should know that they have a risky worker don't pay any extra penalty if that worker goes on to harass someone.

There are probably more complex things you could do to solve this problem but I guess those three are the simplest.

narrator2• 5 years ago

You would never be able to hire a felon for anything since on that theory, the felon had done something outside of work that being a criminal act, might scare someone at work who had to work around them, even though their behavior at work was perfect.

ramblerman3• 5 years ago

claiming sexist views

This is a pretty vague statement especially as OP mentioned fiction. Not some book espousing his political views.

You can pick most of the great authors and find a character or scene that was obscene, but it would be unfair to cherry pick 2-3 sentences, post them on twitter and pretend this represented them.

ErikVandeWater4• 5 years ago

Do you have quotes that are sexist? The only quote I have seen in articles that is supposedly sexist is about Bay Area women.

hn_user82179• 5 years ago

You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them.

This resonated with me. Anecdotally, I sometimes wonder if small, unpleasant interactions (e.g. getting talked over multiple times in a meeting) have anything to do with my gender (I'm the only woman on my team) or are accidental/benign. I usually assume they're benign because I like my colleagues and they haven't otherwise seemed to think I'm incompetent or weak. It would be hard to give someone like Antonio García Martínez the benefit of the doubt and I'd constantly be on guard, specifically because he's already established that he thinks Bay Area women are weak and "generally full of shit". It would start off as an exhausting work environment even on day 1.

imgabe15• 5 years ago

You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them.

No. A million times no. If and when an employee creates a hostile work environment, then the employer may address it by disciplining or firing that employee.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, is under any obligation to preemptively address things someone imagines might happen based on their misinterpretation of an out-of-context fragment of writing.

linspace• 5 years ago

I think that in an advanced society people should be able to work with people that maybe think you are going to hell after you die for not worshipping the correct God. We don't discriminate based on religion, at least we shouldn't by law. People by the way usually leave religion outside work. I think there is consensus this is a good thing but it seems some people don't want to extend this principle that works so well to other aspects of life. Cargo cult is not just for programming.

I have worked with people coming from all the political spectrum and I prefer to evaluate their professional competence based on their acts, not their words. I have by the way seen misogynistic people change their opinion about women and homophobes change their opinion about homosexuals after some time being in the same company. Alienating people will just keep them in their bubble.

And I'm completely sure of something: the company may have fired the guy that wrote the book but what they really wanted was to fire the people campaigning for it.

overgard• 5 years ago

From what I've read/heard, the "sexist" stuff is way out of context. Even if it's not, there's no need to pre-charge someone with a crime because they might have opinions you don't like. IF he did something to create a hostile workspace (which from what I've heard of the guy's character is super unlikely), then that's when something should be done.

kortilla12• 5 years ago

Why is it acceptable for people who espouse currently popular racist ideas (e.g. the anti-white training put on by Coca Cola) to remain employed in your paradigm?

Do you carve out an exception where it’s acceptable to cause problems for people as long as they aren’t a minority?

nullifidian• 5 years ago

but claiming sexist views is going to be a problem for you whether you do it at work or elsewhere because of how laws around hostile work environments and notice work.

Then that would be an equivalent to congress creating "anti-sexist"(in reality a particular interpretation of what sexist is) speech-regulating laws, since it automatically bars anyone who expressed something incompatible with the court-mandated speech standard from employment. It also in-effect regulates religious speech, since many religions are sexist according to the critical feminist jurisprudence.

ir1232• 5 years ago

There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work.

That's where you are wrong. He wrote some things he genuinely believed in, and its reasonable to assume that his actions will follow similar lines. Would I want a self proclaimed nazi to work with me? Hell no. Would I want a misogynist to work with me? No.

0xy4• 5 years ago

Political beliefs are a protected class in practically every first world country, including the US. If an employee was a member of a fascist party it'd quite literally be illegal to fire them on that basis.

rimliu3• 5 years ago

It is not reasonable to assume. I may have different views about some traditions and customs but I may also understand that my views are not shared/accepted and act by the accepted norms even if I think they should change. "When in Rome…". Thoughtcrime moving from fiction to reality looks very scary.

49531• 5 years ago

I would argue that this has always been the case, it has never been uncommon to be fired for political activities done outside of work. Perhaps you're only noticing it now that people who think and act like you are experiencing it?

Ar-Curunir2• 5 years ago

The content of what was said matters. Stop trying to equate two situations that are only superficially similar.

Kye2• 5 years ago

You act like this is something new. Writers have used pseudonyms for as long as writing has existed, often to avoid this issue.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

I haven't figured out why more people don't use pseudonyms in this era?

Of all times in history, this seems like the time to use a nom de plume?

I haven't figured out if it's ego preventing people from anonymity, or they think their name will eventually get out there---so why not happily sign my name to my work?

I do get it that publishing has vastly changed over the years.

It seems like the most talented writers will never get a book if they don't publish themselfs?

While the guy whom gets the most internet publicity, for any reason, gets a book deal?

vl• 5 years ago

This is nothing new, in fact SV companies have a history of firing people for political beliefs.

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

They fire users too.

langitbiru• 5 years ago

I think in the future, people will start to embrace pseudonymous accounts. People will not share any opinions with their real identities. But they'll do it with their pseudonymous accounts.

This can go further than sharing opinions. People's livelihood will be based on their pseudonymous accounts. It happens already in cryptocurrencies projects. Some accounts who work in these projects are pseudonymous accounts. They can accept payment via cryptocurrencies.

Areading314• 5 years ago

This is also what people do in autocratic regimes. Effectively we have created a "democratic autocracy" by means of allowing mobs of people to steamroll people online and destroy their reputations.

0x10c0fe11ce• 5 years ago

Imagine a society similar to the internet where people roam hiding their identities while doing whatever comes to their head. We have great times ahead, in Mars. I’m seriously starting to consider buying those tickets after all.

noelsusman• 5 years ago

"He wrote some stuff and somebody didn't like it" isn't a good faith description of what actually happened. I also don't know what it has to do with democracy.

anonymoushn• 5 years ago

It is maybe rude to suppose that perspectives other than your own can only be held disingenuously

spoonjim5• 5 years ago

Most people like yourself are publishing pseudonymously.

If you are building your personal brand with your writing and can’t publish pseudonymously, then maybe don’t, until you’re free enough to not need the Apples of the world.

refurb6• 5 years ago

You joke about struggle sessions but that seems to be the direction we’re headed in, just using different words.

I’ve been in HR sessions where “self-criticism” is a core part of the training. All we need to do now is start throwing around terms like “counter-revolutionary ideas”. We’ve already started to label ideas as “dangerous” because they “foment discord”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-criticism_(Marxism–Leni...

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

I think the word is going to be "harmful". Harmful ideas, harmful expressions, harmful thoughts.

aksss4• 5 years ago

Long form article, but struggle sessions are actually being done in academia now. Coming soon to an institution near you. 25 years ago we used to laugh about how batshit looney Evergreen was, now they’re still on the fringe but what we used to laugh at has become the norm in academia. This is not the path of progress. As CS Lewis said, when you determine you’re going the wrong direction, progress is actually turning around.

https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-p...

philwelch2• 5 years ago

Soon we will have struggle sessions at work.

Soon? It’s already happening.

astrange• 5 years ago

This is about a guy who wrote a book on his own time, published it outside of work.
There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work.

Didn't his book talk about him having sex with his coworkers in the closet at work?

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

Eventually people will lose trust in the system, and will only work as hard as to not get fired. Like they did under Communism. Just a general decline in morale of the country. And lowering of standards of everything produced. This was also coupled with having secret police like the Stasi, and job site informants. Something like 1/3 of the population was making reports on their fellow citizens in East Germany. And work was the primary place to get dirt on someone. Any sign of not being a True believer in the system could get you reported. People should fear the authoritarian left, as much as the authoritarian right. Having communist party affiliation meant you could be terrible at your job, and be promoted. Having party connections, also meant your kids could go to University, with terrible grades. Get cars or housing, when others had to wait years.

tinyhouse• 5 years ago

It's usually the people with no life outside of work that insist on politics at work.

xupybd• 5 years ago

I'm trying to avoid getting involved in politics online. I have a bad habit of speaking my mind and getting into arguments. I'm starting to realize I'm not doing anyone any good, especially me. I think we are struggling to live in a world where everyone's opinion is everywhere. For me at least, I need to learn to live and let live.

aluminum96• 5 years ago

A major part of "politics at work" is actually politics about the workplace -- see also, the recent Basecamp kerfuffle, which turned out to be about actions taken by employees in the office. Trying to ban politics is well and good, but what happens when the politics are about things that happened in your office?

Politics are inevitable. Companies ought to try to manage discussion realistically, rather than covering their eyes and ignoring the problem.

ErikVandeWater4• 5 years ago

https://archive.ph/e25ud

travisgriggs• 5 years ago

I'm curious why it's a binary thing. The debate seems to wage between two camps: OnlyWorkRelated vs BareItAll.

The truth is, I want neither extreme. I want a nice comfortable balance that my peers and can both tolerate. I appreciate being able to "solve the world's problems" with fellow workers, but not all day. And especially when it starts to get emotional. I find that humor and self deprecation are great ingredients to throw in the mix when I think things are spiraling. In either direction.

baryphonic7• 5 years ago

Coinbase and Basecamp, which each lost 60 employees after their bosses changed the rules, have apparently been inundated with applications from people wanting to work for politics-free firms.

Basecamp lost 20 employees. 60 would be nearly their entire workforce.

Coinbase did indeed lose 60 people out of around 1200 at the time.[0]

[0]https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-08...

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

Coinbase is an interesting case because of how mission-driven it is. Basecamp should be more representative of a small B2B SaaS business.

maerF0x02• 5 years ago

I wonder if there is such a thing as a "politics free" job listing site?

baryphonic7• 5 years ago

`unwoke.hr` was one attempt, but I think it was even more poorly-engineered than Parler and was immediately trolled into oblivion.

permo-w8• 5 years ago

Do you actually mean “politics free”, or do you mean “progressive politics free”? Because unless the website is made absolutely perfectly with exactly the right intentions, it will become parler or gab for jobs.

Who are the people that care so much that they’ll choose a job based on it? Probably 80% hardline conservatives, 10% aggressively apolitical people and 10% unwoke left types like me

But even if the other 20% might theoretically use a site like that, the 80% hardline conservatives would be deeply off-putting.

It’s why I’d never use Gab or Parler. Yeah the free speech idea is nice, but when it comes down to it, mostly, who are getting banned from Twitter and Facebook? The really abrasive and rude right-wing people

Who feels ostracised in their job? I’d say generally it’s the hardcore right-wing people who lean towards being poor communicators

Dunedan• 5 years ago

According to Wikipedia, 23 out of 57 Basecamp employees left the company recently. [1][2]

Unfortunately verifying that using information from Basecamp doesn't seem to be possible anymore, as they took down both pages listing their employees. [3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basecamp_(company...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basecamp_(company)

[3] https://basecamp.com/about/team

[4] https://basecamp.com/humans.txt

Kye2• 5 years ago

The last non-redirected crawl on Internet Archive still showed it with all the employees they had before shooting their mouths off.

MillenialMan4• 5 years ago

Worth noting that ignoring the stated justification, Coinbase offered their workforce the limited-time voluntary severance package that was a lot more generous than normal. So it's hard to say how many of those that left did so for political reasons.

mtalantikite2• 5 years ago

“When at work, steer clear of politics. This rule, generally accepted around the world, does not apply in techland.”

Sure, let’s just ignore the long and important history of organized labor around the world. They’re imagining a fantasy land of white collar labor, which in the west was historically white and male. For everyone not in that sliver of white collar work, work for sure was a place where politics were both discussed and engaged in.

courtf• 5 years ago

This gets tricky when employers ask workers to internalize the company values (incorporating them into their identities). Probably helps with retention, but then you get everything else that comes with identity. If you represent the company, and vice versa, it's only natural to want the company to use its influence in ways that embody that, even if it seems superfluous from a purely financial standpoint.

There's a case to be made that we should tone back the importance of work in all of our lives, which would potentially help with these issues. I understand the need to defend minorities from bigots, and even from milder, less intentional forms of discrimination/bias that can accumulate over the years to cause a strong drag on your life. I still like to think there are ways to do that without a lot of outrage and constant, inane meetings, but who knows.

hytdstd• 5 years ago

Why was the title edited here?

ryanSrich• 5 years ago

They invited it in and fostered it. I say they get what they deserve.

Teknoman117• 5 years ago

I absolutely do not talk about politics at work. I really don't want my career derailed because someone doesn't think I'm progressive enough.

tjpnz2• 5 years ago

Sometimes if I have a spare moment and a thought pops into my head I'll put it into a notes app. Sometimes I'll go back and expand these notes to the point where I've essentially got a blog post. I've got dozens of these but I'm just too afraid to post them. It's not that I'm saying anything terribly provocative either, it's mostly about coding and my experiences living in Japan.

Yet there's always going to be a way of weaponizing what I've written against me - no matter how petty or far fetched.

Perhaps I'm not important enough for that to happen. But if that were to change there'll be this massive trove of thing's I've written and people with the time to deep dive through it. And then label me a racist, a misogynist, an ageist, a transphobe or any number of other words which can so swiftly destroy a person yet to make their fuck you money.

HardwareLust• 5 years ago

I would love to read or hear about your experiences while living in Japan. I spent 5 years there myself, and I'd be curious to see if your impressions were similar to mine or not.

ur-whale• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/Wnqq8

inglor_cz4• 5 years ago

Looking at this thread, references to Nazis, KKK etc. are fairly frequent.

One of the curses of the woke movement is the loss of the ability to distinguish between really bad things and banalities. Nothing is banal anymore.

If a Cuban guy writes something unflattering about SV women in his book, it might not be pretty, but it is a far cry from "let's roll our armored brigades through the continent, enslave unwanted ethnic groups and gas millions of people as subhumans" or "lynch blacks and terrorize entire cities".

Signatories of the "fire him" letter do not seem to distinguish that anymore. That is the fruit of the victim mentality tree, watered with everyday Twitter outrage. Nothing is banal and every crisis must be escalated to verbal equivalent of nuclear war.

I wonder if tech rotted our minds. Social networks are full of vicious, all-out conflicts that nevertheless do not cause any visible physical destruction and fatalities - or at least, most of the time. Thus, we are losing our ability to de-escalate, compromise and move beyond. But precisely this ability is the core of diplomacy, as opposed to constant wars that plagued the world previously. This is a dangerous way to go. It feels like a prelude to the religious wars of the 1600s and 1700s. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odium_theologicum

asdswe• 5 years ago

Politics of any kind should definitely be banned from work. Activist types that want to shove their ideology into other people's throat can definitely do that during their free time where other people can at least avoid their presence. There are always plenty of like-minded woke friends to be found from Twitter or r/socialism.

sjaak• 5 years ago

I just listened to a conversation where Sam Harris paints a bleak picture after having spoken with leaders in tech.

Sam Harris (SH):

I was recently at a meeting of very connected people in tech and media. I won't name anyone but they are people who are or were running some of the biggest companies. These are people with massive influence and are on the same page with everything we've said here. But when told that they really should just present a united front here and not tolerate these mutinies of their woke employees. So the example I gave in this meeting is ... (Sam goes over the situation of Nicholas Christakis at Yale, omitted for brevity) ... So I floated that example to these captains of industry, and said at what point do your companies just hold the line? And say: if you feel that way go work somewhere else. And everyone in the room agreed that that was not going to happen, that there was no way that was going to happen.

Jesse Singal (JS):

Just because of the backlash you mean?

SH:

Yeah that it has gone too far, it's too scary, there is too much money to lose. It went over like a lead balloon, it was a complete non-starter. I kept pushing it, the people in this room literally know everybody, you could have a star chamber meeting where everyone agreed to be on the same page here, so that the mutineers from Google couldn't just jump over to Amazon or Facebook or Apple. You could literally get everyone to agree to just wake up simultaneously. They said: there's no way it's going to happen. It's over. It was an incredibly bleak picture coming from people who either are at the top or were at the top of some of the biggest businesses in tech and media. Which suggested to me that the situation is worse than I thought, not better.

The above is a partial transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18mvHPN9mY from 36:55 forward.

cryptica• 5 years ago

I suspect they want to get rid of ethically-minded employees who could potentially become whistle-blowers later when they find out how the company really makes its money.

The next step will be to start increasing the salaries and bonuses of remaining employees.

If you're ethically-minded, the best strategy is to stay in the company, pretend to be one of them, then when you catch them doing something bad, blow the whistle on them.

xg152• 5 years ago

I guess politics are reserved for the higher-ups.

jacksonkmarley• 5 years ago

This 'article' is very short, and the evidence of 'failing' to run away from politics is dropped in the second last sentence.

I think there is a big difference between having a discussion about politics at work, and using your workplace as a tool to forward your political agenda. Somewhere in the middle is using company resources as a platform for (not directly work-related) political discussion.

Although I dislike the way that most employers take advantage of unequal power distributions with employees, I don't see any real issue with a company saying "our policy is to leave politics for non-work time". At some point as an employee you are actually expected to do things that your employer wants, and if you are doing non-work why should the company pay for it unless it's part of your work agreement?

A company transitioning between different policies is a challenging situation, and for a company in the public eye that will almost inevitably generate controversy, but actually "letting the market decide" about this issue seems good. It means that there are companies at various points on the politics-at-work spectrum that employees can choose from.

globular-toast5• 5 years ago

Are we allowed to discuss the fact that, nine times out of ten, it's women, not men, bringing politics to work? I've noticed this pattern in every place I've worked.

edem2• 5 years ago

Meanwhile at Basecamp: https://world.hey.com/dhh/after-the-storm-9370f871

I hope there will be more anti-woke companies in the near future where I can work instead of getting distracted by brainwashed wokes.

blablabla123• 5 years ago

I try to keep personal interests and views for myself while staying open to discuss any politics that the company is involved in. That can range from internal "woke topics" to external matters like doing business in countries with governments that don't care. The important thing is to stick to facts instead of personal opinion. It's not so difficult and if more people did it, the workplace would be much more pleasant for everyone.

I'm always confused that politics at work can now mean either internal corporate career politics or politics in society. Still, I think it applies to both types.

627467• 5 years ago

Alphabet, Google’s parent, had to deal with another internal petition circulating among employees, this one calling on the firm’s leadership to make a statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel”.

:facepalm: corporations, like nation states, now(ish) are lobbied to take geopolitical stances.

Mikho• 5 years ago

Companies provide too much freedom and they are too afraid to punish employees for not doing actual work they are paid to do. Not to mention not punishing those who create toxic unproductive work environment for others by pushing political agendas at work. This leads to workplace radicalization when arrogant self-proclaimed judges of other people morals and executioners of other people careers behave as uncontrolled passive-aggressive troublemakers.

stjohnswarts• 5 years ago

Cancel culture ruins free speech and free thought. Just keep politics out at work. Severely punish sexist and racist behavior. it's pretty simple. People will avoid wearing their politics on their sleeve. I think there should be a company wide dictate that you don't have to listen to anyone who tries to drag you into it and that you can take it to HR when someone tries to force your hand. Work is for work. I don't want to go there and become a social warrior. I donate to liberal political groups all the time but I don't think that has anything to do with my coding or working with others. Honestly I don't care about you or your politics at work, please leave me out of it.

emteycz• 5 years ago

I am really trying but I still have no idea what "being woke" means. I would like to try being woke tomorrow - what do I do?

j_wtf_all_taken6• 5 years ago

The problem isn't politics, though. The problem is that you have two mainstream belief systems that do not share the same reality, that are mutually exclusive. One has to be completely wrong. This is not about perceived polarization, black-and-white thinking and stuff. Those camps live in two different worlds, and the truth isn't somewhere in between. They don't disagree about some facts, they disagree more fundamentally about the question how facts are produced.

Naturally, the people in-between or the ones that are silent are seen as an enabler of the other side. And to a certain degree, in this polarized situation, that is true. After all, the other side wants to take away your fundamental rights. And again, that is factually true - the other side does want to take away or not grant some rights from/to you, and you see those rights as fundamental.

So the question is, can you ignore and escape politics? Should you? Do you have to get involved? Well, generally, you should get involved - of course: Society doesn't work otherwise. However, in this situation, its understandable if you skip out, with tensions running that high.

But then how can these two camps can ever come together? The solution can certainly not be that two separate groups enforce themselves in their beliefs - because unfortunately, it seems that this only works by vilifying the other side, only increasing tensions.

So it seems that talking politics at work is the lesser of two evils? Or is it too late for that and stuff's just gone too far?

haspoken• 5 years ago

http://archive.is/Wnqq8

Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

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