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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

• ratsmack 7y ago
  It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3 https://archive.ph/IkYQ3
  • geofft 7y ago
    I think it's just more awareness of employee power - or, perhaps, technological advancement making it such that employees actually do have meaningful power and much more liquidity in the job market, that GitHub is GitHub because of the technical skills of ICs and not the organizational skills of management, whereas your stereotypical successful company 50-100 years ago was successful because of infrastructure and business relationships that were hard to replicate. The Traitorous Eight was fairly unexpected, but today, Deadspin writers can walk even in a bad job market. Effective conflict resolution is always going to be lined up with who's got the power in the negotiation. If management has significant power and workers very little, most conflicts quickly resolve in the direction of what management wants. If management doesn't have quite as much power, you'll see the conflict last longer and not resolve quite as obviously.
    • ratsmack 7y ago
      Just sitting here thinking about it, I can't remember anything specific like this outside of the tech industry... I may be wrong though.
      • shadowgovt 7y ago
        The tech industry does have a strong fungibility / "seller's market for labor" advantage. A software engineer who leaves a position at a company (especially in the cities where the companies we've heard of have offices) is extremely likely to get snapped up quickly by another company, often at about the same salary. That gives individual employees a lot of freedom to exit on ideological grounds that other industries with tighter labor markets may not have.
      • CydeWeys 7y ago
        You're not considering the entire history of the labor movement in the United States, then. There were massive protests, literal battles, and many died, all to bring about better working conditions, shorter workweeks, higher pay, etc., not just for those inside those companies but across the entire economy. Workers fighting for the rights of themselves and others isn't a new thing. Hell, it even happened in the era of medieval serfdom following the Black Death; there was suddenly a serious shortage of labor, and the serfs realized they could push for reform because the landed gentry now needed them more than they needed the gentry.
        • ryanbrunner 7y ago
          Genuine question, but are there many examples from the labour movement where there were labour actions directed at the company's general business practices rather than the rights of the workers working in those companies? It feels like the obvious difference here is that GitHub employees aren't arguing for their own rights so much as the rights of people outside of GitHub.
          • CydeWeys 7y ago
            Genuine answer, you should read books on this stuff. It's a fascinating, complex history, and no one is gonna be able to summarize it well in a low effort Internet comment like I'm making now. But the answer is yes, there are very many. To pick just one example though, labor unions were heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement, and fought against racist/discriminatory actions by those companies.
    • mfer 7y ago
      There's also been a noted change in how people handle things thrown at them that make them uncomfortable. A little over a decade ago universities started to notice that students, when presented with something they didn't agree with, would attack the messenger in an attempt to discredit what they were communicating. There has been a shift in how people interact. Studies have found an increase in narcissism [1] and a decrease in empathy [2]. There is more than manager / IC power shifts going on here. [1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00507.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.... [2] http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7724-empathy-college-students-don-t-have-as-much-as-they-used-to http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7724-empathy-college-studen...
      • minikites 7y ago
        People are tired of being treated like garbage. They're tired of seeing their peers murdered for being black/gay/etc. They're tired of stagnant wages. >A little over a decade ago universities started to notice that students, when presented with something they didn't agree with, would attack the messenger in an attempt to discredit what they were communicating. 58% of Americans blamed the students for the shootings at Kent State in 1970.
        • will4274 7y ago
          I mean, nothing justifies shooting into a crowd, but some students at Kent State threw rocks at the heads of firefighters because the building they were fighting a fire in was the ROTC building. Some of the Kent State students (likely a small minority) do deserve some of the blame.
  • jacobsenscott 7y ago
    I think it is because human rights abuses by the US government are becoming more common. Or at least more brazen.
    • baggy_trough 7y ago
      What an absurd thing to believe.
      • shadowgovt 7y ago
        There are concentration camps on the southern US border.
        • baggy_trough 7y ago
          That kind of characterization is hysterical nonsense.
          • shadowgovt 7y ago
            That kind of characterization is definitional. See: the Japanese Internment camps the US ran during World War II.
            • baggy_trough 7y ago
              It's really outrageous to characterize them that way. It minimizes the Holocaust.
              • mattsfrey 7y ago
                It is outrageous because in both instances we're talking about actual legal citizens being persecuted by their own government for belonging to an ethnic group, not a group of foreign nationals that illegally entered the country and are being held temporarily for criminal prosecution.
  • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    "It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times?" I mean, in the past times, we had loom-smashing, scab-beating, and private armies to force people to work.
  • bluehazed 7y ago
    I think it's because people are uncomfortable with growing levels of authoritarianism and also don't like supporting genocide.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    It's because circumstances in the United States regarding how the government interfaces to the world are getting dangerously fascist, and people in the tech sector are sensitive to the risk of repeating the history of IBM and the Nazi party (i.e. enabling a government's ability to commit atrocities at scale). It's an open question how much responsibility one has regarding how one's technology is used and what services one is providing to whom. There isn't universal agreement on the topic, but there are plenty of software engineers who believe "more than zero," and quite a few who believe they have more responsibility than that.
    • nintendo1889 7y ago
      Chase Bank and Citi are in the Nazi mix. And the Bush family.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    That's very weird to conflate employees of tech companies caring more about other people's rights with a loss of "the maturity of past times". It wasn't the maturity of past times, it was the status quo of not really caring about anyone else's rights at all. The civil rights movement was only half a century ago!
    • zozbot234 7y ago
      > caring more about other people's rights Except when those rights involve things like freedom of speech. Or even privacy.
      • tenpies 7y ago
        Or the rights of people they don't like.
    • fiter 7y ago
      The maturity could be the ability to compartmentalize. Whether that's a good thing is up for debate. Should we keep religion out of politics? Should we keep politics out of work? I doubt there are any clear answers.
      • SolarNet 7y ago
        > Should we keep religion out of politics? Should we keep politics out of work? I doubt there are any clear answers. Sure we should probably keep politics out of work. Human rights abuses are not politics though. We can disagree on corporate regulation, taxes, transportation policy, zoning laws, bike lanes whatever. Hell we can disagree on gun control, abortion, climate change, whether the earth is flat or round. But if there is a government organization within our control (e.g. we vote for the people who vote on controlling it) that is killing people, is torturing people (raping thousands of kids), is oppressing reporting on it, that's not politics any more.
        • ryanbrunner 7y ago
          > Human rights abuses are not politics though. They absolutely are political. The entire concept of human rights is political. There's a widespread consensus in many, many countries that they are worth protecting, but there's nothing magical or special about human rights that gives them any power beyond any other political decision.
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    My hypothesis is that this is because so much governmental business is done by private corporations. The problem this brings is that there are very few ways you can influence the behavior of corporations.
  • whytaka 7y ago
    Or is it because people are becoming more morally aware?
  • killface 7y ago
    As well as a dramatically shifted power dynamic whereby the 40 hour workweek is a relic of the past, and people work 2-3 jobs just to scrape by. It's easier to say "burn it down" when you're already in the flames. It's also, depending on who you ask, one of the few avenues left for people to affect change on a larger scale. Literally nothing else is working, and internal revolts have changed quite a few minds. Employee activism is a necessary and under-powered force to help manage the insatiable greed of board members.
  • noelsusman 7y ago
    One man's maturity of past times is another man's unwillingness to confront injustice in society. But on a broader note, I think a lot of it can be traced to the current president. He seems to go out of his way to do things that stir up deep anger in his opponents. There's a reason why millions of people hit the streets the day after his inauguration to register their dissatisfaction with the fact that he's president. That was unprecedented in US history. Combine that with how little an average person can do to influence what happens in Washington, and you get a whole lot of angry people desperate for something they can actually impact. Tech employees have leverage over their employers, and they're using it for this because it's the only avenue they have to vent their anger at the current state of politics. The candidate they probably supported in 2016 got more votes but lost anyway. They probably don't live in a state that's competitive in the electoral college. Their local representatives probably represent their views well but are similarly limited in how much impact they can have. This is one of the only ways they can actually do something about what's making them angry, and they're taking advantage of it. I'm surprised it's not happening at more companies.
    • malvosenior 7y ago
      The way a lot of non tech employees vented their anger was by electing Trump. Just as ICE is an injustice to you, Trump's targets (corrupt media, lax immigration enforcement...) are seen as injustices by his supporters. He is not the cause but the proposed solution to existing injustices. You may not agree he's a good one but that's how his supporters see him.
    • mattlondon 7y ago
      > I think a lot of it can be traced to the current president. It is happening outside of America too, so I don't think it is entirely due to domestic politics.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    > conflict resolution is becoming a dying art Conflict escalation is a deliberate choice by those in charge. Such as ICE.
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Conflict escalation is a deliberate choice by those in charge. Such as ICE. To be fair, the decision on a policy of conflict escalation in ICE’s domain was, quite overtly, made several steps above the head of ICE in the chain of command.
• rpmisms 7y ago
  Whoop-de-do. If you don't like the company, leave.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    I believe that is the reason this is news, yes. """ One of those employees, staff engineer Sophie Haskins, resigned Monday, stating in her resignation letter that she was leaving because the company did not cancel its contract with ICE and “shows no indication of canceling the contract,” which she wrote was “morally unacceptable.” """
    • rpmisms 7y ago
      Great. That's what should happen.
  • vertex-four 7y ago
    If all the employees with morals leave, GitHub will be left with no employees with morals. That is probably a worse situation.
    • qaq 7y ago
      Aren't those who stay by definition are not moral people ? (provided they see the behavior of Github as immoral)?
      • vertex-four 7y ago
        Depends on whether they believe they are in a position to make the company more moral by their presence, and whether their particular branch of philosophy says that matters.
    • truthwhisperer 7y ago
      what kind of morals? These are probably the same guys who make 200-300k per year on wage + stock options If they have moral donate 50% of their wage towards these "poor" people or just tell them how woke you are and take on camera (with your 1000 euro iphone) I'm mean you don't invite people to your well build house who don't even know how to use the toilet right. So be harsh but fair on immigration and only allow the people who can contribute to a better society. The same as in their github environment. They don't allow people to work within Microsoft who are just fired at Burger king but don't have any relevant capabilities right
• tj-teej 7y ago
  I think that a lot of people see a rise and mainstreaming of White Nationalism and want to push back.
  • ratsmack 7y ago
    If you are pro-American and are Latino, African, Asian... etc, does that make you a White Nationalist? If not, then why can we just call it Nationalism?
    • JohnFen 7y ago
      White Nationalism is an entirely different thing than nationalism. But both are objectionable.
      • ratsmack 7y ago
        Please explain what you believe White Nationalism is.
        • JohnFen 7y ago
          White Nationalism (in the US) is a political movement that asserts that the US should be a nation run by and for Caucasians. There are people of other ethnicities that are part of the White Nationalist movement.
          • ratsmack 7y ago
            I've never heard of that organization. Do they have a web site?
            • ryanbrunner 7y ago
              What point are you trying to get at? There are plenty of ideologies and political ideas that aren't represented by a singular organization advocating for them.
• nrook 7y ago
  There is a well-known strategy by which employees can exert influence over their employer and change the decisions it makes. It is called a union. Unionization has been slow for various reasons in the tech sector; when it comes to rich, well-known companies, people don't want to go through the effort to unionize and get more money when they already are being paid a lot. But if workers want to influence decisions like these, they're going to have to organize.
  • xeromal 7y ago
    People complain when they're unhappy and most tech people are happy enough to not complain. That's how revolutions work on a micro and macro scale.
  • godzillabrennus 7y ago
    Unions have historically tended to reward seniority over merit. Tech workers should work to solve that if they organize. I think a lot of problems caused by unions trace back to that. Unions should come back to help recreate the middle class.
    • CydeWeys 7y ago
      It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. People keep bringing this up, but there's no reason tech unions would ever have to be structured in this particular manner. Given that, I don't find it a compelling argument against unionization in our sector. Most importantly, of all the people who are working on organizing the tech sector, to my knowledge none of them are trying to implement tenure-based seniority or pay scales.
      • killface 7y ago
        Every developer thinks their salary will be dragged down to "the average" -- aka they think they're all above-average. Libertarianism was the cancer of our generation.
      • shados 7y ago
        There's no reason they have to be structured this way, but unions usually work through voting, and the tech sector has a LOT of pretty shitty people coasting, and they'll get a vote that's worth the same as anyone else's. They'll vote to protect their coasting.
• geofft 7y ago
  > With the issue refusing to go away, GitHub executives have changed their internal messaging, including a memo to employees saying barring ICE from “access to GitHub could actually hurt the very people we all want to help,” in the words of Chief Operating Officer Erica Brescia. > “We have learned from a number of nonprofits and refugee advocates that one of the greatest challenges facing immigrants is a lack of technology at ICE and related agencies, resulting in lost case files, court date notifications not being delivered, or the wrong people being charged or deported,” read a companywide posting sent Oct. 22, signed by Brescia and the leadership team. [...] > The Times reviewed screenshots of an internal Slack channel after the contract was renewed on Sept. 4 that appear to show sales employees celebrating a $56,000 upgrade of the contract with ICE. The message, which congratulated four employees for the sale and was accompanied by emojis of a siren, bald eagle and American flag, read “stay out of their way. $56k upgrade at DHS ICE.” Five people responded with an American flag emoji. This makes one thing clear: this isn't just a matter of, if you're buying and it's not illegal for us to sell to you, we're selling. This is GitHub specifically believing in supporting ICE's mission. This is the sales department of GitHub getting involved in politics. This is GitHub leadership believing they are helping the country by letting ICE use GitHub - which is why they decided to give ICE their product for free. At that point the question isn't "Should we have political opinions on who we sell to," it's "Can you retain employees when your organization is so partisan."
  • mc32 7y ago
    It’s the opposite of politics. They’re leaving politics out of it and saying, if it’s legit business we won’t deny you business.
    • Miner49er 7y ago
      That is very much a political decision.
      • mc32 7y ago
        No it’s a neutral position not taking a stance for or against a particular business because of politics. So while it may look to someone like it’s “for” something, they’d also take business from an “ICE-alert” system, so from some PoV that would look like it’s “against”, but it’s not. It’s staying neutral.
• joshypants 7y ago
  I don't know if companies realize that contracts with ICE are going to hurt their talent recruitment too, but they do. I recently decided against applying to a role I saw posted for Wayfair because they ignored employee demands to end their ICE contract, and I know I'm not alone.
  • netsharc 7y ago
    Sad to see you get downvoted... I guess one would need to send an "anti-job application" to HR to let them know that their policy has turned you off to them (and I guess you'd need to attach your CV to show them what they'll be missing out on...). It would be the right thing to do, IMO, but I would be scared to do it in case the company does become more attractive (shall we invent the newspeak phrase "more morally compatible"?) for me in the future, but they still have that letter of mine on file...
    • joshypants 7y ago
      I’ve thought about doing it anonymously, and might now. Thanks for the encouragement.
• duxup 7y ago
  I'd like to get a feel about what volume of employees have an issue with these things. From issue to issue I hear about various forms of employees making themselves heard but it is REALLY hard to jive with what that means. We've seen Google employees post about some ideas that seemed to be genuinely popular (measure that how you will...) but later ideas or advocacy were reportedly far less supported by the general employees, but news reports seem to reports that don't know / specify make it sound like issue to issue "employee anger" is somehow uniform / equally supported each time. I've worked enough places to see a popular topic / concern taken by the same employee advocates into new topics that very much were not popular.
  • commandlinefan 7y ago
    I also have to wonder what percentage of GitHub’s employees _are_ non-US citizens. Every programming job I’ve ever had in the U.S. was for a company that was staffed by at least 90% foreigners; if they see U.S. immigration as an adversary, they may be opposing any contract on personal grounds.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      And I don't think one should restrict that reasoning to only the foreign-born employees. Native-born US citizens working side-by-side with employees who have regular contact with our immigration process get a second-row seat to how broken it is. (Spoilers: personal observation, it's pretty broken.)
    • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      > Every programming job I’ve ever had in the U.S. was for a company that was staffed by at least 90% foreigners. Where the hell are you working? I'm going to call bullshit, because it's really not that easy to get a work visa in the US. You're saying 90% of your colleagues weren't US citizens?
      • mgraczyk 7y ago
        At every large company where I have worked (Intel, Qualcomm, Google, Facebook) the majority of my colleagues have been non-citizens. In some cases (Qualcomm SD, Google) 100% of the people on my team were non-citizens.
• mfer 7y ago
  Topics like this, I think, give us an opportunity to go deeper on the issues and concepts surrounding what's going on. I realize that the common quick answer these days is to harshly reject people and organizations we deeply disagree with. But, there may be some things worth pondering, like... Is there a way technology companies can influence these organizations and the situations of the people they touch for the better? For example, ICE is going to do what's it's going to do whether or not GitHub has a contract with them. Is there a way that technologies from companies can help ICE and organizations like it treat the people they deal with better? Does that make a difference? I'm not suggesting an opinion on this particular case. Just offering this up as an opportunity to go deeper than we tend to these days.
  • geofft 7y ago
    > Is there a way that technologies from companies can help ICE and organizations like it treat the people they deal with better? One thing GitHub could have done, if it was serious about its "but ICE also stops human trafficking and terrorists" narrative, is insisted on selling them professional services / consulting work (perhaps at a discount - they'd already decided to donate more than the revenue of the contract, so working for ICE out of the goodness of their hearts is definitely not out of the question) which let them understand what teams and projects at ICE are using their work and how. But in their letter to employees, they listed it as a positive that they weren't doing this, they just gave ICE the product and told them to have fun. https://github.blog/2019-10-09-github-and-us-government-developers/ https://github.blog/2019-10-09-github-and-us-government-deve... "GitHub does not have a professional services agreement with ICE, and GitHub is not consulting with ICE on any of their projects or initiatives. GitHub has no visibility into how this software is being used, other than presumably for software development and version control." I think if you believed you could make some change for the better working within the system, the way to start is by, first, deciding what your principles are and what your approach is when your customer wants to be at odds with that (refuse to support projects you disagree with? try to change hearts and minds? etc.) in a codified way and getting agreement within the company on it, and second, insisting on a close enough consulting relationship where you can enforce that. (I also suspect that unless you have an uncommonly good product, most customers won't be a fan and will just buy from someone else.) Also GitHub, being a platform and not a direct tool for work, isn't really in a great position to influence ICE's work. "You can check in the code you use to track terrorists, but not the code you use to track DACA recipients" isn't particularly technically meaningful.
• nimbius 7y ago
  The question I am most curious about is this: would Github have done this before Microsoft acquired them? Redmond has a long running history of doing backflips for Washington.
  • jassmith87 7y ago
    They already were doing this before Microsoft, so yes... yes they would.
• whalesalad 7y ago
  A lot of these companies need to start sticking to their guns and simply letting people go for conflicts like this. If you’re not gonna be a team player there are a billion other tech companies you can go be a part of. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the core issue here – but at some point the message needs to be sent that you don’t deserve a job and aren’t owed anything. You work in exchange for cash, plain and simple. If you aren’t on board with the company mission, go find a different one.
  • thereare5lights 7y ago
    Nah, turn tail and leave when you could fight to change the company? Not gonna happen.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      It depends. At a small company? Sure. But no individual employee, or even small collective of employees that aren't VP or key contributor in an irreplaceable knowledge-base, have the clout to turn a Microsoft or a Google. At a major company? The only thing you can do as an individual is take the wind out of their sales or refrain from working for them. Which these companies do notice; Google hiring keeps tabs on candidates who tell them "I won't work for you for ethical reason X."
      • thereare5lights 7y ago
        > It depends. At a small company? Sure. But no individual employee, or even small collective of employees that aren't VP or key contributor in an irreplaceable knowledge-base, have the clout to turn a Microsoft or a Google. I see this claim thrown around a lot with no evidence for it.
        • shadowgovt 7y ago
          I have no strong evidence other than "It's actually happening right now and the companies have only made minor deviations from their courses." That second half is purely subjective, and we won't really have a good idea on how much of a difference it made until historians can look back on this era with a quarter-century of hindsight.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  If anyone thinks Github boycotting ICE will change anything of ICE's conduct, that to me is some kind of Delusions of Grandeur. The money involved are a tiny part of a forgotten section of their budget. If they don't think it will change anything, we can agree that this boycott is purely symbolic and will accomplish nothing.
  • yazboo 7y ago
    It’s not “nothing” to refuse to profit, directly or indirectly, from behaviors you find unethical.
    • BurningFrog 7y ago
      What I mean is that it does nothing to help the victims of ICE. It only helps some rich people feel morally superior. That doesn't impress me much, but I see others find it important. To each their own, I guess.
  • codyb 7y ago
    This feels like a pretty defeatist attitude to me. Just because your portion of ICE’s budget is insignificant doesn’t mean you have to support ICE. And even if it is purely symbolic, lots of symbolic actions do more than nothing. At the very least it may improve employee morale to not support ICE which may increase Github’s employee retention rate, which may not be a big deal for ICE but may be a bigger deal for Github. And finally, death by a thousand cuts is certainly a thing.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • jacquesm 7y ago
    Username checks out. No, but you really don't want to be a collaborator either. If other parties are willing to step up then they can be addressed if and when that time comes. Principles always were a 'circle of influence' thing.
  • 7y ago
• sneak 7y ago
  It’s really sad that GitHub, once a great company, sold to total military-industrial complex bastards.
  • killface 7y ago
    You knew when it was sold to MS that this was gonna happen. It's why that was the day github died.
    • sneak 7y ago
      You’re 100% correct, it’s still just sad to watch.
• ken 7y ago
  > The results of GitHub’s quarterly anonymous employee survey — which showed a decline in trust of leadership ... In 100% of cases where I've known a small company that got bought by a much bigger company, this has occurred. It's amazing anyone still believes that their small company can get bought and somehow they'll be able to preserve (what they think is) their "company culture".
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    > It's amazing anyone still believes Has anyone ever believed that?
    • hinkley 7y ago
      Management implies, the old owners imply this, and some large fraction of the rank and file employees buy this. When the rank and file realize there is no lottery ticket for them, or that they are the lottery ticket, then there's a lot of burnout. And yes, I am fun in interviews. :)
    • brogrammernot 7y ago
      Yes. I’ve worked at a couple of companies now where this has happened. It’s really hard for founders to let go of their “baby” and as such, there’s a lot of rationalization that goes into the decision when they sell the company or go public. One of the common ones is that they will have a large enough say to keep the culture of the small company intact and often say things like “we’re just going to continue being ourselves but with more funding or resources or XYZ so it’s really great!” In the end, they don’t accept the fact that the larger company’s values/culture is their company now and they can try to enact change as much as they want but they are no longer the key decision maker for the company overall. For a public company at scale, it’s incredibly hard to 1.) grow exponentially or greatly and 2.) keep the hiring bar high enough to maintain your culture. There’s a trade-off made there that you’re public & you cannot slow growth at the risk of upsetting shareholders but it’s a catch-22 cause you can’t also let your salaries go out of control to hire the right talent for your culture cause you have to explain that cost increase to your stakeholders.
    • 7y ago
• bookofjoe 7y ago
  http://archive.is/9pIAh http://archive.is/9pIAh
• m0zg 7y ago
  And yet, all of this is still bullshit. Trump is posting nowhere near the deportation numbers of Obama, and everyone involved was fine with ICE back then. Hmm, I wonder why. https://www.axios.com/immigration-ice-deportation-trump-obama-a72a0a44-540d-46bc-a671-cd65cf72f4b1.html https://www.axios.com/immigration-ice-deportation-trump-obam...
• no_opinions 7y ago
  As as for the ICE thing, wouldn't the thing to do be to complain to the legislature or IG of ICE if they wanted to see change? What is trying to be accomplished? Just relieving stress by acting out against authority figures? Or are they trying to improve the law? What part of immigration law / regulation is at issue? Is it the actions of particular employees? Is it with CBP, ICE, or USCIS? I am of the understanding this is about undocumented immigrants. Isn't filling out a landing form required by every country? What specifically needs changing? If you want to get together and "replace ICE", why not? People love improvement. Go and write a better law than Joe Lieberman, he created DHS. (He also also was the independent that voted against the public healthcare option in ACA, 59 votes, he said something like, "I'm going to be stubborn on this one")
• ossworkerrights 7y ago
  Uncontrolled immigration does damage to legals from the same countries. I know as i am one of them. Once the uk freely opened the boarders to immigrants from my native country not only did the reputation of “my people” plummet but so did i get annoyed at what some new arrivals spoke about the locals in our native language while in the tram, street or shops. The us needs a points based immigration system, as does the uk, as the rest if the sane world. I am from Romania and before open borders Romania meant vampires and Dracula, and afterwards it meant gypsies and crime. And boy do some of the unchecked immigrants deserve to stay in Romania. N.b. Gypsies are fine imo but not the beggars Or pickpockets. Edit: go ahead and downvote instead of taking on board some feedback from actual legal immigrants and how they are affected by illegal immigration. Blame github for helping ICE instead.
• 75dvtwin 7y ago
  what would HN commentators would recommend to conservatives in tech sector, who want to show their support for Brexit, for MAGA, for US ICE ? What can be done to combat the left activism, but in a civil way, yet be effective, and without endangering careers in tech & entertainment? .. asking for a friend... Or is the ballot box, anonymous posts and their own kitchen table, are the only places to express?
• supernova87a 7y ago
  I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also to further their functions. Ford/GM probably supply ICE with vehicles. Farmers grow crops that get into their the meals that ICE personnel eat. Pilots and flight attendants probably have knowingly transported ICE employees. Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Where do we start? Where do we stop?
  • tomschlick 7y ago
    > Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Wokeness and the recent trend of trying to cancel anything that doesn't align within a narrow spectrum of progressive viewpoints is a big reason here.
    • si1entstill 7y ago
      I'm sure these people have varying viewpoints across the spectrum on a variety of issues, but this is a direct contract with a client that currently has a large target on it's back. These employees agree they would prefer not to be a partner. Saying all of those who petitioned share a narrow viewpoint is reductive.
    • KyeRussell 7y ago
      "ICE is currently doing some bad things" is a viewpoint shared by a pretty large group of people. Honestly it just sounds like you're projecting.
• azirbel 7y ago
  The comments here seem very negative compared to e.g. the Google employee protests over Project Dragonfly. [1] There are two questions here: whether GitHub should allow ICE to buy its software, and whether employees should influence the direction of their company via protests, petitions, and threats to quit. GitHub specifics aside, I think employees absolutely should organize and quit over issues they feel strongly about (at least when they have the flexibility to find other jobs). Company policy should be guided by the people who work there, and the a company's leadership structure is set up well to resolve the conflict. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542830
  • Ar-Curunir 7y ago
    Thats because HN is a US-based website, and that automatically entails "US = good, China = bad" comments. (Even though in this case both US and China = bad)
  • dta5003 7y ago
    The important distinction is that Project Dragonfly was being built to serve a single customer and purpose, both of which employees were not comfortable with. GitHub is built to serve any customer and has a defined purpose that is generally useful. Employees are now uncomfortable with their generally useful tool being used as intended by a customer they do not approve of. It's not really an apples to apples comparison.
• ganitarashid 7y ago
  It's not an employee's role to determine with whom the employer does business. The employee is always free to switch to a different employer if they can't support the work.
  • the_pwner224 7y ago
    Having 'leave if you don't like it' be the only choice never ends well (except for those who do leave). It's a great way to make extremist toxic echo chambers.
    • ganitarashid 7y ago
      It’ll be their only choice
• opnitro 7y ago
  God forbid I have some sort of say in how my labor is used.
  • zer00eyz 7y ago
    I'm baffled by this statement. Sure you have a say, you also (likely) have the luxury of having a skill set that makes you able to make these choices. A while back there was an ask HN post about surviving through the first bubble (2001). If you find a group of engineers of that vintage it is likely that you can quickly find someone who worked putting up adult content. (Note I don't have an objection to the topic but realize that some do and this isn't exactly the most glamorous work in tech).
    • opnitro 7y ago
      I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates. I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case.
      • zer00eyz 7y ago
        > I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case. Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history, and is a luxury for MOST Americans today. Im not sure it is a realistic stance for most people (but probably for most of HN). I don't think GitHub is going to (or should) change its stance. I'm sure there are plenty of things on GitHub that are worse, or have been used to worse ends than providing source control for ICE. > I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates. I do a lot of contract/freelance work. The trade off is that control means I am also liable in the event that my work causes an issue (legally as well as from the stand point of being a good citizen and business person). Indemnity is a wonderful thing. Indemnity is why we have open source. Lots of things work because labor, and its products are decoupled from the end use. Should we stop making guns because someone might kill another person? Should we stop making fertilizer because it can be turned into a bomb? The end result of both products is the same but the intent in the production of either is not HARM.
• kaikai 7y ago
  "I was just doing my job" is not an excuse. It is absolutely not only our right to decide how our work is used in the world, but our duty to make sure we're not enabling human rights violations. I applaud and support tech workers making ethical calls around their work. Unfortunately we may need to put our money where our mouths are and leave employers that refuse to stand by any ethical code, and that's already happening all across the tech industry.
  • slykat 7y ago
    But how is Github's product enabling human rights violations? I can understand if Github employees were protesting a product that created human rights violations (for example if Github offered a security service for ICE detention centers that was abusing prisoners). Would you be ok if Github was a restaurant and it had a policy of not serving anyone who is an ICE employee?
    • dunstad 7y ago
      Yeah, I would love that actually. ICE runs concentration camps. Not enough people treat them how they deserve.
      • slykat 7y ago
        Ok so would you ok with a restaurant not serving republicans because the party currently supports ICE's actions?
        • dunstad 7y ago
          Yep! The current GOP is corrupt in every way you can imagine, and by all accounts doing their best to turn the United States into a dictatorship.
        • andrei_says_ 7y ago
          A bit of Slippery Slope combined with Strawman fallacy here.
• lacampbell 7y ago
  I don't understand wealthy Americans at all. It seems like they want to abolish the concepts of borders and immigration control entirely. I assume it's so they can more readily access cheaper labour, which would explain why poorer americans generally take the opposite stance.
• slykat 7y ago
  I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks). You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do business with customers considered immoral If you are ok with #2 you are running into a slippery slope in my view. And if you are ok with #2 and you are one of the largest companies in the world, it is a very huge slippery slope.
  • marmada 7y ago
    The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement. Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has the option to change their behavior and ICE is genuinely bad. Slippery slope is one of those silly things I see from free speech advocates. I tend not to see the bad impacts in real life because if the government isgoing to restrict free speech, they will do it regardless of what anti-hate speech laws currently exist.
    • chillwaves 7y ago
      If racists had self awareness, they wouldn't be racists.
    • slykat 7y ago
      Do you not see the negative repercussions for businesses serving the public to be allowed to make a moral judgement on who they do business with?
      • drjesusphd 7y ago
        If that's the case then there's no room whatsoever for capitalism to be anything other than an amoral system we should be ashamed of. Vote with your dollar. You're allowed to make your own moral choices and refuse to contribute to evil.
• williesleg 7y ago
  Seems like a lot of people with TDS these days. And sites like this don't help
• d-smoke 7y ago
  We get it, Will, you’re awful
• d-smoke 7y ago
  for other folks reading — this poster is [redacted] and he never signed the letter
• nintendo1889 7y ago
  9/11.
• d-smoke 7y ago
  You didn’t sign, though. It’s pretty obvious from your posting history here who you are and the letter is hosted in a repo with all of its history available for any GH employee to see. Your name never went on it. What’s good, bro?
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  If enough of this happens, the government will begin to act as a monolith-- refuse services to organization A, you get no business from orgs B-Z. I think it's a temporary thing. When the economy turns down and jobs are harder to find, people won't feel so strongly about such things.
• Thorentis 7y ago
  Refusing to give business to a government department because you personally morally object to what they do? Perfectly fine, Github is a private business, nothing to see here. Refusing to give business to a same-sex couple because you personally morally object to what they do? Utterly bigoted, bake the cake or go to prison. Private businesses can only make decisions on who they serve if I agree with them. See the problem here?
  • justanotherjoe 7y ago
    Yes. You will never let that go will you?
    • Thorentis 7y ago
      It's a good example that many people know about due to the wide-spread media coverage it got. But it won't be the last. Perform the sex-change, bigot. Perform the abortion, bigot. Perform the Git upgrade for the Ministry of Truth, bigot.
• Thorentis 7y ago
  The upside here, is that maybe this will mean growth of in-house government IT departments? There are already large IT departments, but there is a growing trend to outsource work. Perhaps the gov will start hiring good people and let them use modern tooling, now they realise that tech companies wield too much power. I'd love to get a job for a big gov department and be in charge of integrating GitLab into their workflow and modernising the infrastructure.
  • CapricornNoble 7y ago
    At the Federal level? Highly unlikely IMO. The GS payscale is sub-par by my understanding of SFBA compensation. There are some lean/start-up influenced offices that are trying to change the culture and modernize things but I expect progress to be BRUTALLY slow, unless another tech bubble bursts and for some reason rock star coders are on USAJobs.gov trying to get positions that pay ~$50k-$60k (plus a substantial housing subsidy).
• paggle 7y ago
  The reason that this kind of protest is happening now is that companies like GitHub have to continuously serve the product, they can’t just sell into a channel and forget about what happens like a boxed software vendor or a furniture company. I wonder if this can create a new business model for an arms-length distributor, a company that maintains GitHub deployments for customers and pays royalties to GitHub. This distributor could sell to all kinds of unsavories while giving GitHub plausible deniability.
• Teknoman117 7y ago
  In response to a lot of the comments here, isn't the whole "people with power have the moral imperative to defend (their view of) morality" how the US got into the "America, World Police" problem in the first place?
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > isn't the whole "people with power have the moral imperative to defend (their view of) morality" how the US got into the "America, World Police" problem in the first place? Since that didn't actually happen (the US has never been particularly enthusiastic about applying power internationally for any reason except it's own geopolitical interest, and has never been particularly shy about ignoring moral constraints to do so—though it's often struck with moral pangs after the fact), I don't think any explanation for why it happened can be accepted. The “America, World Police” problem is a fiction railed against by advocates of even more aggressively amoral foreign policy, not something that actually concretely exists or existed.
• allday 7y ago
  I love that I can count on the Top Minds of Hacker News to tie themselves into knots debating whether or not it is morally and ethically justifiable to try to stop the We-Kidnap-Children-And-Put-Them-In-Cages Agency from doing their job.
  • fatbird 7y ago
    Indeed. In another comment, someone suggests that it might be immoral, as someone in a position to exert some small influence on the situation, to impose their judgement on the rest of us who are not in a position to do anything at all. That's... that's just some incredible mental yoga there.
• neonate 7y ago
  http://archive.is/Rx1kG http://archive.is/Rx1kG
• fatbird 7y ago
  Aristotle divided causality into four kinds that are useful to remember: material, formal, efficient, and final. Consider a table: the material cause is the wood from which it's made; the formal cause is the concept or design of a table; the efficient cause is the act of carpentry that resulted in its construction; and the final cause is the intention to have the table to use. The workers of github are an incremental part of the material cause of ICE's actions and the consequences thereof. Any individual employee's contributions are fractional at best, but they clearly own a share of the results of ICE's use of their product, and were I in their position, I'd be balancing whether I want to own some of those shares or not.