6 ms·

My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. I'd gladly go work at a company where I didn't have to engage with endless political activism.

My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. I'd gladly go work at a company where I didn't have to engage with endless political activism. If I want to hear everyone's opinions on everything, I'd find their facebook page or the HN usernames and follow them.

throwaway894345 6y ago
My last company was trending in a similar direction. They would allow one ideological group to post completely unsubstantiated political claims, but opposing views were not allowed to be presented at all, even if they were thoroughly researched (this wasn't "official" policy, of course). Note that while I'm not a lawyer, I suspect that these permitted ideological viewpoints were sufficiently sexist and racist as to open the company up to some legal liability.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  My gut feeling is that allowing this at a workplace is a (rather perverse) variation of the "employee of the month" nonsense. I.e. instead of rewarding your subordinates monetarily, you give them a power to bully their peers, but not to compete with yourself. It is also useful in pushing out "troublemakers". People that will not call BS on the unsubstantiated political claims are also less likely to call out corruption/nepotism/inefficiency of the middle management. In the long term the company will stagnate and die, but we live in such a wonderful time of government bailouts, low interest rates and desperate investors, so it may take a long time to unravel.
- throwaway581029 6y ago
  Increasingly aggressive activism of this sort started ramping up at my employer a couple of years ago. Several outspoken activists started complaining and demanding all-company meetings, which were granted by HR and company leadership. In these mandatory meetings, which were attended by hundreds of employees, all sorts of contradictory accusations were lodged by the activists. For example, in the first meeting, one of activists complained about being (accidentally) mis-gendered by a new employee. In another meeting, a different activist complained about an employee apologizing for mis-gendering them. Apparently this made the activist feel awkward, so they'd have preferred no apology at all. It was at this point I realized there is no reasoning with activists such as these. Their demands weren't coherent. They were just a bunch of people complaining about hurt feelings. These meetings must have cost the company millions of dollars and huge amounts of lost development time. And they certainly didn't resolve anything. I and a lot of my colleagues just want to do our work without being forced to participate in regular struggle sessions.
  - staticautomatic 6y ago
    An acquaintance of mine worked for a company that stocked tampons in the men’s restroom because someone lobbied for it despite the company having no female->male trans employees. My acquaintance, who is male->female trans, was baffled.
    - nefitty 6y ago
      Doesn’t that just mean providing equal facilities? If you put hand sanitizer in one bathroom, you should try to provide it in all of them.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Should we test men for ovarian cancer to provide equal medical services?
      - Qub3d 6y ago
        A separation here is that these facilities are inherently unequal due to the existence of gendered signs declaring one restroom "Men" and the other "Women". In this existing framework, it doesn't make as much sense to go to the expense of stocking an item 99.99..% of users won't use. Instead, the signs could be changed to simply state "Restroom". Sure, one might have urinals and the other a tampon dispenser, but anyone can use either and everyone could agree to be adults about it.
        jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
        Many women feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral bathrooms alongside men, for reasons that have nothing to do with transphobia.
  - narrator 6y ago
    Everyone who is interested in the current wave of hyper-politicization should learn about struggle sessions. These originated in Maoist China and were a bullying tactic used by red guards to humiliate anyone who had any opposition to the radical ideology being imposed at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
- jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
  Isn't it interesting that I know nothing about you or where you worked but I can predict with near 100% certainty which unsubstantiated, contentious opinions your company permitted and which ones weren't allowed no matter how well-researched?
coffeemaniac 6y ago
Yeah, but it would probably also be pretty terrible to work next to people you're pretty sure are okay with (say) police murdering people of your skin color. In America, this is the default position, as evidenced by both major political parties largely supporting police despite this behavior. So in order to say "we aren't okay with that opinion in this workplace" and to have a pretty good idea your coworkers don't want you dead, you have to say it -- it isn't assumed.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
It's amazing how thoroughly prestige tech and its imitators have abandoned basic norms of professional culture like "don't wear bunny slippers at work" and "don't alienate your coworkers by calling their perfectly legitimate politics hate speech".
Nuzzerino 6y ago
You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS has zero tolerance for this.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?
  - Nuzzerino 6y ago
    Those organizations (if they are 501(c)(3)) are permitted to discuss politics within the narrow scope of the organization's mission. As I said, the laws are nuanced.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    The ACLU is a 501c4. There's also the ACLU Foundation which is a 501c3 and in exchange for being able to receive tax deductible donations accepts limits on what it can do politically. See https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-the-differences-between-501c3-and-501c4-non-profits/ https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-th... The NRA is also a 501c4. The EFF is a 501c3, which limits what sorts of political work it can do.
    - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
      Oh, interesting, thanks. The only one I verified before posting was EFF, and I hadn't heard of a 501c4 previously.
  - ZhIPh3zW5R 6y ago
    I am with you on this one. The definition of a having a non-political mission must mean all but mentioning a candidate's name. You can transparently see that some 501(c)(3)s are mostly political groups. As this becomes more common I expect politicians will use them to bypass campaign finance election laws. They will create charities that 'educate' voters about how bad their opponent is without naming that opponent.
heimatau 6y ago
> My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. IMHO, this is not the problem. The problem are the managers of the work. One doesn't need to micromanage to stop this from happening. Nor does one need to limit free speech to prevent this. Companies aren't working enough, that's the problem and managers aren't keeping people focused on the actual challenge at hand. P.S. I feel this is a white-collar problem. These soft skills are paramount but also come from leadership. Restricting speech doesn't really deal with the people that the decision affects. Instead, one needs to become a better manager/leader to get 'buy-in' from the workers and then work!
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  No, the problem is really about politicization and more specifically the fact that in most US tech companies there is an enormous bias towards those on the political left, and a believe that those who lean left are more “scientifically educated” or intelligent or well-read, etc. As one example you can see it in the way you can make hostile comments about “straight white males” and nobody says anything, but if you were to make a hostile comment for a perceived racial or sexual minority you’d be fired before even finishing your sentence
  - heimatau 6y ago
    > No You're speaking from a personal experience. I'm not minimizing your experience with my comments. But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      > But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop. What you describe is a sweat shop, not knowledge work. You can have downtime while still getting your work done and acting like an adult with colleagues. If you don’t have this skill set, make the effort to cultivate some tact and decorum.
sershe 6y ago
It was instructive to hear the discussions in a Russian-speaking developer community about this... how the current stuff going on in the big companies reminded the older generation of the performative ideological cheering going on at their workplaces back in the late Soviet times. Think about it this way - sometimes, you have to be on call and stay up till 5am because of some crappy code you didn't write, and it sucks. Sometimes, you have to go to the May 1st workers parade and help carry a banner you disagree with, and it sucks. Sometimes, you have to go to a silly training session and explore the feelings you don't have, and it sucks. It's all part of the job - it was all fun activities, they wouldn't pay you to do it :)
- john_moscow 6y ago
  The problem is that they are going for our kids at schools. Trying to hammer into their heads that instead of shooting for the stars, they should hate themselves for being White and spend most of their life yielding the way to the poor oppressed minorities. That's child abuse if you ask me.
  - jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
    I know many people will find your comment alarmist and hyperbolic, but you're understating it. I follow this issue closely and some of the crap that's being fed to schoolchildren in the US at the moment is jaw-dropping. Check out the site whataretheylearning.com for the tip of the iceberg. If you're a parent of a child in K-12 schooling right now, you have a lot of reasons to be worried.
- rednerrus 6y ago
  Right, but if alternatives exist, I could go work there instead.

throwaway894345 6y ago

My last company was trending in a similar direction. They would allow one ideological group to post completely unsubstantiated political claims, but opposing views were not allowed to be presented at all, even if they were thoroughly researched (this wasn't "official" policy, of course). Note that while I'm not a lawyer, I suspect that these permitted ideological viewpoints were sufficiently sexist and racist as to open the company up to some legal liability.

john_moscow 6y ago
My gut feeling is that allowing this at a workplace is a (rather perverse) variation of the "employee of the month" nonsense. I.e. instead of rewarding your subordinates monetarily, you give them a power to bully their peers, but not to compete with yourself. It is also useful in pushing out "troublemakers". People that will not call BS on the unsubstantiated political claims are also less likely to call out corruption/nepotism/inefficiency of the middle management. In the long term the company will stagnate and die, but we live in such a wonderful time of government bailouts, low interest rates and desperate investors, so it may take a long time to unravel.
throwaway581029 6y ago
Increasingly aggressive activism of this sort started ramping up at my employer a couple of years ago. Several outspoken activists started complaining and demanding all-company meetings, which were granted by HR and company leadership. In these mandatory meetings, which were attended by hundreds of employees, all sorts of contradictory accusations were lodged by the activists. For example, in the first meeting, one of activists complained about being (accidentally) mis-gendered by a new employee. In another meeting, a different activist complained about an employee apologizing for mis-gendering them. Apparently this made the activist feel awkward, so they'd have preferred no apology at all. It was at this point I realized there is no reasoning with activists such as these. Their demands weren't coherent. They were just a bunch of people complaining about hurt feelings. These meetings must have cost the company millions of dollars and huge amounts of lost development time. And they certainly didn't resolve anything. I and a lot of my colleagues just want to do our work without being forced to participate in regular struggle sessions.
- staticautomatic 6y ago
  An acquaintance of mine worked for a company that stocked tampons in the men’s restroom because someone lobbied for it despite the company having no female->male trans employees. My acquaintance, who is male->female trans, was baffled.
  - nefitty 6y ago
    Doesn’t that just mean providing equal facilities? If you put hand sanitizer in one bathroom, you should try to provide it in all of them.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Should we test men for ovarian cancer to provide equal medical services?
    - Qub3d 6y ago
      A separation here is that these facilities are inherently unequal due to the existence of gendered signs declaring one restroom "Men" and the other "Women". In this existing framework, it doesn't make as much sense to go to the expense of stocking an item 99.99..% of users won't use. Instead, the signs could be changed to simply state "Restroom". Sure, one might have urinals and the other a tampon dispenser, but anyone can use either and everyone could agree to be adults about it.
      - jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
        Many women feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral bathrooms alongside men, for reasons that have nothing to do with transphobia.
- narrator 6y ago
  Everyone who is interested in the current wave of hyper-politicization should learn about struggle sessions. These originated in Maoist China and were a bullying tactic used by red guards to humiliate anyone who had any opposition to the radical ideology being imposed at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
Isn't it interesting that I know nothing about you or where you worked but I can predict with near 100% certainty which unsubstantiated, contentious opinions your company permitted and which ones weren't allowed no matter how well-researched?

coffeemaniac 6y ago

Yeah, but it would probably also be pretty terrible to work next to people you're pretty sure are okay with (say) police murdering people of your skin color. In America, this is the default position, as evidenced by both major political parties largely supporting police despite this behavior. So in order to say "we aren't okay with that opinion in this workplace" and to have a pretty good idea your coworkers don't want you dead, you have to say it -- it isn't assumed.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

It's amazing how thoroughly prestige tech and its imitators have abandoned basic norms of professional culture like "don't wear bunny slippers at work" and "don't alienate your coworkers by calling their perfectly legitimate politics hate speech".

Nuzzerino 6y ago

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS has zero tolerance for this.

mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?
- Nuzzerino 6y ago
  Those organizations (if they are 501(c)(3)) are permitted to discuss politics within the narrow scope of the organization's mission. As I said, the laws are nuanced.
- jefftk 6y ago
  The ACLU is a 501c4. There's also the ACLU Foundation which is a 501c3 and in exchange for being able to receive tax deductible donations accepts limits on what it can do politically. See https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-the-differences-between-501c3-and-501c4-non-profits/ https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-th... The NRA is also a 501c4. The EFF is a 501c3, which limits what sorts of political work it can do.
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    Oh, interesting, thanks. The only one I verified before posting was EFF, and I hadn't heard of a 501c4 previously.
- ZhIPh3zW5R 6y ago
  I am with you on this one. The definition of a having a non-political mission must mean all but mentioning a candidate's name. You can transparently see that some 501(c)(3)s are mostly political groups. As this becomes more common I expect politicians will use them to bypass campaign finance election laws. They will create charities that 'educate' voters about how bad their opponent is without naming that opponent.

heimatau 6y ago

> My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. IMHO, this is not the problem. The problem are the managers of the work. One doesn't need to micromanage to stop this from happening. Nor does one need to limit free speech to prevent this. Companies aren't working enough, that's the problem and managers aren't keeping people focused on the actual challenge at hand. P.S. I feel this is a white-collar problem. These soft skills are paramount but also come from leadership. Restricting speech doesn't really deal with the people that the decision affects. Instead, one needs to become a better manager/leader to get 'buy-in' from the workers and then work!

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
No, the problem is really about politicization and more specifically the fact that in most US tech companies there is an enormous bias towards those on the political left, and a believe that those who lean left are more “scientifically educated” or intelligent or well-read, etc. As one example you can see it in the way you can make hostile comments about “straight white males” and nobody says anything, but if you were to make a hostile comment for a perceived racial or sexual minority you’d be fired before even finishing your sentence
- heimatau 6y ago
  > No You're speaking from a personal experience. I'm not minimizing your experience with my comments. But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    > But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop. What you describe is a sweat shop, not knowledge work. You can have downtime while still getting your work done and acting like an adult with colleagues. If you don’t have this skill set, make the effort to cultivate some tact and decorum.

sershe 6y ago

It was instructive to hear the discussions in a Russian-speaking developer community about this... how the current stuff going on in the big companies reminded the older generation of the performative ideological cheering going on at their workplaces back in the late Soviet times. Think about it this way - sometimes, you have to be on call and stay up till 5am because of some crappy code you didn't write, and it sucks. Sometimes, you have to go to the May 1st workers parade and help carry a banner you disagree with, and it sucks. Sometimes, you have to go to a silly training session and explore the feelings you don't have, and it sucks. It's all part of the job - it was all fun activities, they wouldn't pay you to do it :)

john_moscow 6y ago
The problem is that they are going for our kids at schools. Trying to hammer into their heads that instead of shooting for the stars, they should hate themselves for being White and spend most of their life yielding the way to the poor oppressed minorities. That's child abuse if you ask me.
- jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
  I know many people will find your comment alarmist and hyperbolic, but you're understating it. I follow this issue closely and some of the crap that's being fed to schoolchildren in the US at the moment is jaw-dropping. Check out the site whataretheylearning.com for the tip of the iceberg. If you're a parent of a child in K-12 schooling right now, you have a lot of reasons to be worried.
rednerrus 6y ago
Right, but if alternatives exist, I could go work there instead.