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If the workplace did not have its own issues I would agree. But, since, to take one example, sexism is a known problem in tech - and throughout corporate Americ

If the workplace did not have its own issues I would agree. But, since, to take one example, sexism is a known problem in tech - and throughout corporate America and society, to be fair - in order to not have a sexist workplace, one would need to be proactive. Broadly speaking. Point being, it's easy to not want "politics" in the workplace when the workplace works well for you. If you're someone whom the workplace doesn't work well for, like a person of color, a pregnant woman, new mother, or new father, for that matter, well, then it's a different story. If you yourself believe that sexism/systemic racism aren't issues that show up (even inadvertently or despite the best intentions of individuals) in the workplace, well, then that's a different conversation entirely. I think this is different from someone in a position of power promoting a particular candidate in the workplace. That is more complex and problematic. The 2020 election was obviously an extreme example, and, tbh, with things like global warming, I think we'll be seeing more politics like that in the workplace, not less. Which, to me, means it's not an easy or one-size-fits all solution, but rather, a challenge which requires each of us to exercise care and our own judgement. For example, personally, I would have liked to see Hacker News take even a small explicit step of endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement (such as putting 'Black lives matter' on the top of the homepage), seeing as how it's one of the major civil rights issues of our present moment. I can also understand their concerns around doing so, even though I disagree with them. IMHO it's too easy for those of us doing well and making money to forget that the institutions we work for have a social impact and are a part of society.

tuesdayrain 6y ago
I agree with the phrase "black lives matter". But I absolutely do not support the political group "BLM", which stands for a number of liberal ideas that have nothing to do with black people. For example their "what we believe page" states: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable." Frankly I think this idea has awful implications that BLM does not grasp. It has since been deleted, but can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20200816155814/https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200816155814/https://blacklive...
- FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
  Context: I believe that BLM quote is (implicitly) a feminist reaction against the Moynihan Report.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
If the issue directly hinders the company’s goals as determined by the leadership then it should be addressed, that could include sexism. Main point is that the issue has to be relevant to the company’s goals as determined by the leadership.
- adamsea 6y ago
  For sure. But right now we're in an era of change. Should addressing the existential threat of climate change be a goal for every company, or not? That's one example. The Expensify CEO believed that democracy itself was on the line in the 2020 election, and that supporting democracy was relevant to the company's goal. We can disagree with him but I respect him for exercising his judgement about the situation. EDIT: I'd like to add, IMHO, workers should have more control over their own labor and see more of the profits of their labor, so, actually I'd like to see companies evolve to become less hierarchial institutions and thus decide priorities in a more democratic / consensus-based fashion. I don't know how we'd do this. But I know we collectively are smart enough to figure out how to get closer than we are now : ).
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Even many on the left don’t agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-americans-my-long-read-qa-with-matthew-yglesias/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-ameri... “Science” does not agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-climate-change-existential-threat-20191019-kdluxxt45vfdhkfavdppz2yjaa-story.html https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-climate-change-existent... > Such talk has scared many young people. Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, a young Clinton volunteer named Zach was upset the Democrats failed to beat Trump. According to cbsnews.com, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Zach yelled at a senior official: “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.” > Do scientists agree with Zach? The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last November. Hundreds of scientists from 13 government agencies compiled the 1,500-page report. It finds no existential threat from climate change. Zach is likely to have a long life.
adamsea 6y ago
Would love for downvoters to explain their downvotes and contribute to the discussion : ). IMHO it's the ethical thing to do. IMHO downvoting without an explanation, without contributing to the discussion, is just code for "I don't like how what you said made me feel."
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Your posts take what may sound like a benign or reasonable position (civil rights are good, right?) and uses that as a means to assert that supporting BLM is the same thing. For some it is, for some it isn’t. And for some it’s green grocerism or a Kafkatrap.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    How in any possible reality is BLM not a civil rights issue? Did you read about the murder of George Floyd? You're totally wrong.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by those same organizations. Those organizations view the policing issue as just one symptom of a larger societal problem and advocates particular solutions not only to that problem, but to other problems that are, within their intellectual framework, related. It’s the difference between “child malnutrition” and activist organizations that have particular explanations for and proposed solutions to that problem.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by those same organizations. That's historically false. The slogan was popularized before the key organizations existed; the organizations were, in part, a response to the criticism that the movement united by the slogan lacked a clear and coherent agenda.
rayiner 6y ago
Your post actually exemplifies why this is so fraught. The first part of your post is hard to criticize—every workplace has to think about how they’re accommodating and trying to foster quality amongst employees with different backgrounds. Companies should be talking about how their promotion practices affect working mothers, etc. But your example of HN endorsing “Black Lives Matter” is different. Taken literally it’s a straightforward slogan, but it’s also the name of a specific political organization with a broad political agenda: https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-anti-american-marxist-language-from-its-website https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant.... It’s not just an articulation of a single problem. It identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to solve that problem and others. What part of the various political ideologies that could be deemed to fall within the umbrella of “BLM” are you asking HN to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think others will perceive HN as endorsing? This is not a criticism of BLM—I go to a church that has a BLM banner and I understand what’s being conveyed and not conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of expression of ideological alignment from organizations that aren’t ideological and activist to begin with is very problematic.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Doesn't this whole comment depend on me believing that organizations like the Go Programming Language are endorsing Marxism when they post "Black Lives Matter" banners? For that matter, all of my very-well-off Oak Park neighbors? Obviously, they are not doing that. Where does that leave your argument?
- adamsea 6y ago
  The link you shared - from the Post-Millenial - is troubling. First, when reading it, to me, the language from the BLM site the article discussed did not line up w/what the article was accusing it of. Second, the very beginning of the Wikipedia page about The Post-Millenial says this (and cites decent-looking sources for each point): "The Post Millennial is a conservative Canadian online news magazine started in 2017. It publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has been criticized for releasing misinformation and articles written by fake personas,[1] for having unknowingly employed an editor with ties to white supremacist-platforming and pro-Kremlin media outlets,[2] and for opaque funding and political connections.[3][4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial IMHO that invalidates your critique. Simply put, Black Lives Matter, or BLM, is fundamentally about racist police violence and systemic racism in the justice system. That's at the core of it. IMHO most critiques such as the one you raise seem to mainly be an attempt to obfuscate that simple fact.
roenxi 6y ago
Thread ancestor was hedging carefully with the word 'irrelevant'. I'm not drawing any instances to mind where someone argued that sexism was irrelevant to the workplace, only people arguing that the current crop of policies are unfair or counterproductive. Damore springs to mind, he had a section titled "Non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap" and so it would be difficult to argue that he thought inaction was the goal. What is politics is in itself political, but I expect there will be a fair majority of people who want corporations to focus on carrying out basic tasks effectively rather than devoting resources to experimental (or divisive) social reform. The risks of corruption and bad outcomes are real.
ALittleLight 6y ago
Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female employees so they can talk about their careers and how to advance and get promoted. I don't know, due to lack of experience, but I assume this is beneficial to one's career. Presumably benefiting careers is why they're doing it. And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and documented process. Even before that, in college, we had events for women who code, women in STEM, career opportunities for women, etc. I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact that men have better representation in upper levels is meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless. On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by my coworkers as a deplorable sexist. My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using them to make decisions about what happens at work.
- tuesdayrain 6y ago
  That is absolutely sexism. It deeply bothers me that some people think tech must be exactly 50% male/female, and anything else is inherent sexism. It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.
  - lsiebert 6y ago
    If there are provable differences that effect performance, by all means cite them. But it's more likely that unseen bias affects hiring and promotions. Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math... Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-...
mrcrowqaw 6y ago
The HN banner idea would only antagonize the HN folks. In my childhood, parents made me eat tomatoes, because, you know, it's healthy. Since then I despise tomatoes, even though at a rational level I understand that my parents were right. The techies types are knowledge first people. If you want to win their support, appeal to knowledge, make a rational case, but avoid trying to fool them, as the moment they notice a logical inconsistence in your ideas, they'll dismiss them entirely. Most activism appeals to emotions, to feelings, because it matters a lot to most people. But techies put dry knowledge first and so needs to change your tactic. Nevertheless, I'm upvoting your comment because I believe it presents an important viewpoint.
- yedava 6y ago
  The any number of flame wars that techies have (like editor X vs Y, operating system A vs B) should put to rest any assertions of us privileging knowledge over emotions.
- bitmunk 6y ago
  The subset of techies you are talking about like to think that about themselves like that. They're as emotional and biased as the rest of us mortals, proof of that for example is characterizing the comment as irrational just because it doesn't "feel" rational to you, other comments talking about feminist re-educations camps or how climate change isn't that big of a deal. I'm not trying to be antagonistic but one should be careful of thinking that they are inherently a more rational person.
  - mrcrowqaw 6y ago
    They're biased, but in a different way. Most people are steered by wrong feelings: they feel strongly about something, although don't quite understand it, and act on those feelings. Techies are less suspectible to feelings (they are deaf in some sense), but they often get trapped in mental illusions, i.e. elaborate mental structures and ideas that incorrectly describe the world. This is also why techies dont make it far in power structures: they don't get that emotional aspect of human relationships.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Sexism is not a known problem in tech, and I certainly appreciate that HN did not write racist slogans in support of marxist domestic terrorist groups. This site is about startups, and they want to abolish capitalism. It would make no sense.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  If this site is about startups, why are you only ever in the politics threads?

tuesdayrain 6y ago

I agree with the phrase "black lives matter". But I absolutely do not support the political group "BLM", which stands for a number of liberal ideas that have nothing to do with black people. For example their "what we believe page" states: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable." Frankly I think this idea has awful implications that BLM does not grasp. It has since been deleted, but can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20200816155814/https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200816155814/https://blacklive...

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
Context: I believe that BLM quote is (implicitly) a feminist reaction against the Moynihan Report.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

If the issue directly hinders the company’s goals as determined by the leadership then it should be addressed, that could include sexism. Main point is that the issue has to be relevant to the company’s goals as determined by the leadership.

adamsea 6y ago
For sure. But right now we're in an era of change. Should addressing the existential threat of climate change be a goal for every company, or not? That's one example. The Expensify CEO believed that democracy itself was on the line in the 2020 election, and that supporting democracy was relevant to the company's goal. We can disagree with him but I respect him for exercising his judgement about the situation. EDIT: I'd like to add, IMHO, workers should have more control over their own labor and see more of the profits of their labor, so, actually I'd like to see companies evolve to become less hierarchial institutions and thus decide priorities in a more democratic / consensus-based fashion. I don't know how we'd do this. But I know we collectively are smart enough to figure out how to get closer than we are now : ).
- rayiner 6y ago
  Even many on the left don’t agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-americans-my-long-read-qa-with-matthew-yglesias/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-ameri... “Science” does not agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-climate-change-existential-threat-20191019-kdluxxt45vfdhkfavdppz2yjaa-story.html https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-climate-change-existent... > Such talk has scared many young people. Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, a young Clinton volunteer named Zach was upset the Democrats failed to beat Trump. According to cbsnews.com, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Zach yelled at a senior official: “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.” > Do scientists agree with Zach? The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last November. Hundreds of scientists from 13 government agencies compiled the 1,500-page report. It finds no existential threat from climate change. Zach is likely to have a long life.

adamsea 6y ago

Would love for downvoters to explain their downvotes and contribute to the discussion : ). IMHO it's the ethical thing to do. IMHO downvoting without an explanation, without contributing to the discussion, is just code for "I don't like how what you said made me feel."

remarkEon 6y ago
Your posts take what may sound like a benign or reasonable position (civil rights are good, right?) and uses that as a means to assert that supporting BLM is the same thing. For some it is, for some it isn’t. And for some it’s green grocerism or a Kafkatrap.
- adamsea 6y ago
  How in any possible reality is BLM not a civil rights issue? Did you read about the murder of George Floyd? You're totally wrong.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by those same organizations. Those organizations view the policing issue as just one symptom of a larger societal problem and advocates particular solutions not only to that problem, but to other problems that are, within their intellectual framework, related. It’s the difference between “child malnutrition” and activist organizations that have particular explanations for and proposed solutions to that problem.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by those same organizations. That's historically false. The slogan was popularized before the key organizations existed; the organizations were, in part, a response to the criticism that the movement united by the slogan lacked a clear and coherent agenda.

rayiner 6y ago

Your post actually exemplifies why this is so fraught. The first part of your post is hard to criticize—every workplace has to think about how they’re accommodating and trying to foster quality amongst employees with different backgrounds. Companies should be talking about how their promotion practices affect working mothers, etc. But your example of HN endorsing “Black Lives Matter” is different. Taken literally it’s a straightforward slogan, but it’s also the name of a specific political organization with a broad political agenda: https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-anti-american-marxist-language-from-its-website https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant.... It’s not just an articulation of a single problem. It identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to solve that problem and others. What part of the various political ideologies that could be deemed to fall within the umbrella of “BLM” are you asking HN to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think others will perceive HN as endorsing? This is not a criticism of BLM—I go to a church that has a BLM banner and I understand what’s being conveyed and not conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of expression of ideological alignment from organizations that aren’t ideological and activist to begin with is very problematic.

tptacek 6y ago
Doesn't this whole comment depend on me believing that organizations like the Go Programming Language are endorsing Marxism when they post "Black Lives Matter" banners? For that matter, all of my very-well-off Oak Park neighbors? Obviously, they are not doing that. Where does that leave your argument?
adamsea 6y ago
The link you shared - from the Post-Millenial - is troubling. First, when reading it, to me, the language from the BLM site the article discussed did not line up w/what the article was accusing it of. Second, the very beginning of the Wikipedia page about The Post-Millenial says this (and cites decent-looking sources for each point): "The Post Millennial is a conservative Canadian online news magazine started in 2017. It publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has been criticized for releasing misinformation and articles written by fake personas,[1] for having unknowingly employed an editor with ties to white supremacist-platforming and pro-Kremlin media outlets,[2] and for opaque funding and political connections.[3][4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial IMHO that invalidates your critique. Simply put, Black Lives Matter, or BLM, is fundamentally about racist police violence and systemic racism in the justice system. That's at the core of it. IMHO most critiques such as the one you raise seem to mainly be an attempt to obfuscate that simple fact.

roenxi 6y ago

Thread ancestor was hedging carefully with the word 'irrelevant'. I'm not drawing any instances to mind where someone argued that sexism was irrelevant to the workplace, only people arguing that the current crop of policies are unfair or counterproductive. Damore springs to mind, he had a section titled "Non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap" and so it would be difficult to argue that he thought inaction was the goal. What is politics is in itself political, but I expect there will be a fair majority of people who want corporations to focus on carrying out basic tasks effectively rather than devoting resources to experimental (or divisive) social reform. The risks of corruption and bad outcomes are real.

ALittleLight 6y ago

Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female employees so they can talk about their careers and how to advance and get promoted. I don't know, due to lack of experience, but I assume this is beneficial to one's career. Presumably benefiting careers is why they're doing it. And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and documented process. Even before that, in college, we had events for women who code, women in STEM, career opportunities for women, etc. I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact that men have better representation in upper levels is meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless. On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by my coworkers as a deplorable sexist. My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using them to make decisions about what happens at work.

tuesdayrain 6y ago
That is absolutely sexism. It deeply bothers me that some people think tech must be exactly 50% male/female, and anything else is inherent sexism. It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.
- lsiebert 6y ago
  If there are provable differences that effect performance, by all means cite them. But it's more likely that unseen bias affects hiring and promotions. Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math... Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-...

mrcrowqaw 6y ago

The HN banner idea would only antagonize the HN folks. In my childhood, parents made me eat tomatoes, because, you know, it's healthy. Since then I despise tomatoes, even though at a rational level I understand that my parents were right. The techies types are knowledge first people. If you want to win their support, appeal to knowledge, make a rational case, but avoid trying to fool them, as the moment they notice a logical inconsistence in your ideas, they'll dismiss them entirely. Most activism appeals to emotions, to feelings, because it matters a lot to most people. But techies put dry knowledge first and so needs to change your tactic. Nevertheless, I'm upvoting your comment because I believe it presents an important viewpoint.

yedava 6y ago
The any number of flame wars that techies have (like editor X vs Y, operating system A vs B) should put to rest any assertions of us privileging knowledge over emotions.
bitmunk 6y ago
The subset of techies you are talking about like to think that about themselves like that. They're as emotional and biased as the rest of us mortals, proof of that for example is characterizing the comment as irrational just because it doesn't "feel" rational to you, other comments talking about feminist re-educations camps or how climate change isn't that big of a deal. I'm not trying to be antagonistic but one should be careful of thinking that they are inherently a more rational person.
- mrcrowqaw 6y ago
  They're biased, but in a different way. Most people are steered by wrong feelings: they feel strongly about something, although don't quite understand it, and act on those feelings. Techies are less suspectible to feelings (they are deaf in some sense), but they often get trapped in mental illusions, i.e. elaborate mental structures and ideas that incorrectly describe the world. This is also why techies dont make it far in power structures: they don't get that emotional aspect of human relationships.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

Sexism is not a known problem in tech, and I certainly appreciate that HN did not write racist slogans in support of marxist domestic terrorist groups. This site is about startups, and they want to abolish capitalism. It would make no sense.

PascLeRasc 6y ago
If this site is about startups, why are you only ever in the politics threads?