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> As I wrote later in the comment, I'm curious if there were people affected by it who were bothered and responded by leaving quickly (or hearing rumors and not

> As I wrote later in the comment, I'm curious if there were people affected by it who were bothered and responded by leaving quickly (or hearing rumors and not joining), in which case, yes, it's a serious problem. Is it even possible to have a workplace that everyone will like? Because at the time there were no strong taboos about this and everyone seems to have been enjoying themselves. > it's a serious problem. What's with the present tense? This is ancient history.

geofft 9y ago
> Is it even possible to have a workplace that everyone will like? Nope, but if every single workplace is structured in a way that one group of people likes them all and one group of people dislikes them all, that does seem like a problem for the second group. (Also I think that describing it as just not a workplace they "like" is a poor way to describe it, but.) I am actually of the opinion that, while I side with the opinions of the SJW folks at Google, for a Google-sized company to be so political in one direction is unfair to people of other political leanings, regardless of how strongly I disagree with those leanings. I do actually think that there should be a comparable workplace option in terms of pay and prestige for people with those political views who can't "bring their whole selves to work" at Google. I am more than happy to compete with them in the market and to recruit away any of their employees who don't hold those views, and I am extremely happy to fight via market and political means against specific policies they might seek to promote, but I don't think they should be cut out of employment entirely. And whether you feel like a sexualized culture is an uncomfortable place to work is a lot harder to change than your political views. (Partly because it's correlated with gender a little more strongly than political views are, but even ignoring gender, it's correlated with things like base personality and sexuality and cultural upbringing.) If some people like a sexualized culture, great, I'm glad they have places to work - if all the good places to work are sexualized, I think that's a problem. > What's with the present tense? This is ancient history. This story started out because a present-day conference is presently considering giving an award to one of the people in this story, who is still alive, because that conference believes there's some relevance to the industry in the present that they represent. Nobody is talking about whether to give an present-day award to Cato. Nobody is even talking about whether to give a present-day award to Nabokov, who died around the time being discussed here. If you want to call that ancient history, sure. But you can't simultaneously hold the position that this particular culture was ancient history and it's deserving of an award today. I'm fine with the conclusion "This is not our present-day culture, and we don't think that it's appropriate for us to either endorse or condemn it, so let's focus on giving awards for present-day achievements instead" - which is more or less what ended up happening, it sounds like.

geofft 9y ago

> Is it even possible to have a workplace that everyone will like? Nope, but if every single workplace is structured in a way that one group of people likes them all and one group of people dislikes them all, that does seem like a problem for the second group. (Also I think that describing it as just not a workplace they "like" is a poor way to describe it, but.) I am actually of the opinion that, while I side with the opinions of the SJW folks at Google, for a Google-sized company to be so political in one direction is unfair to people of other political leanings, regardless of how strongly I disagree with those leanings. I do actually think that there should be a comparable workplace option in terms of pay and prestige for people with those political views who can't "bring their whole selves to work" at Google. I am more than happy to compete with them in the market and to recruit away any of their employees who don't hold those views, and I am extremely happy to fight via market and political means against specific policies they might seek to promote, but I don't think they should be cut out of employment entirely. And whether you feel like a sexualized culture is an uncomfortable place to work is a lot harder to change than your political views. (Partly because it's correlated with gender a little more strongly than political views are, but even ignoring gender, it's correlated with things like base personality and sexuality and cultural upbringing.) If some people like a sexualized culture, great, I'm glad they have places to work - if all the good places to work are sexualized, I think that's a problem. > What's with the present tense? This is ancient history. This story started out because a present-day conference is presently considering giving an award to one of the people in this story, who is still alive, because that conference believes there's some relevance to the industry in the present that they represent. Nobody is talking about whether to give an present-day award to Cato. Nobody is even talking about whether to give a present-day award to Nabokov, who died around the time being discussed here. If you want to call that ancient history, sure. But you can't simultaneously hold the position that this particular culture was ancient history and it's deserving of an award today. I'm fine with the conclusion "This is not our present-day culture, and we don't think that it's appropriate for us to either endorse or condemn it, so let's focus on giving awards for present-day achievements instead" - which is more or less what ended up happening, it sounds like.