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Why should a workplace embody properties of the greater community, as opposed to being a place where a person’s identity is only defined by their work and profe
by mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Why should a workplace embody properties of the greater community, as opposed to being a place where a person’s identity is only defined by their work and professional interactions?
- thosakwe 7y agoHow can you embody properties of the “greater community,” if not all of the “greater community” is present?
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoI’m asking why should it be considered good for people in a workplace to express (while at work) properties of a community that exists outside of the workplace? Why should cultures (of any kind) be actively celebrated at work for example? Workplaces are comprised of people who possess cultural attributes. Why is it common to believe this matters in some way that necessitates acknowledgement, discussion or celebration of those attributes while specifically being in the workplace? An example from my own life is parenthood. I’m a parent, yet I feel a strong moral and ethical duty to keep my parenthood culture out of my professional workplace. None of my coworkers owe me any sort of acknowledgement of my identity as a parent. In fact, apart from non-work conversations in which others opt in to participating, my coworkers ostensibly should not even know if I am a parent or not — it is simply not relevant and needs no accounting. I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to any type of cultural attribute.
- y2bd 7y agoBecause the vast majority of people have personal biases that they cannot completely just put away at the workplace.
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoI don’t understand why this detail would be relevant to my original question. Can you say more?
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN on generic flamewar tangents. Nothing good comes of them, and in the end it amounts to trolling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoI _very_ sincerely do not understand how it’s a flame war tangent or in any way not explicitly on-topic and valuable as a discussion in response to the article.
- dang 7y agoI'm making a guess that you're as familiar with internet flamewars on these predictable, generic, and inflammatory topics as the rest of us are. If so, then your innocent-seeming question was concern trolling. If not, I'm sorry for the mistaken assumption. Moderation is guesswork.
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoThat sounds like an extreme false dichotomy to me. The only two possible options are that I’m either being disingenuous and coy about trope flame war topics or else I’m too disconnected to know that my comment can only be perceived that way? No, sorry. I understand moderation is not easy and I appreciate the work you do to facilitate this site, but that’s just not going to cut it. Posting a philosophical question about the foundational assumptions that go into a topic like workplace culture norms is absolutely sincere and on-topic here.
- dang 7y agoAs I said, it's guesswork, but my guess is that you're far too experienced an internet commenter not to know what concern trolling is. When I see someone seemingly-innocently try to relitigate workplace diversity in a thread about an article by Ellen Pao, of all authors, I ask myself what the odds are that they don't know what effect that is likely to have.