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New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

• nanagojo 5y ago
  This is a pretty bleak look at the future tbh. Guess the bullies won in the end, except this time the bullies believe they are in the right.
  • dudul 5y ago
    Don't bullies always believe they are in the right?
    • yerwhat01010 5y ago
      Doesn't everybody?
  • phinnaeus 5y ago
    I feel pretty comfortable saying that all bullies feel they are right.
    • topkai22 5y ago
      I suspect many bullies are indifferent to right or wrong.
      • baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        Everybody needs to sleep at night. Not many people are psychopaths; the rest of us need to weave stories to tell ourselves that "we're really the good guys".
    • lmm 5y ago
      Nah. Plenty know that they're doing what they want at the expense of other people. But the bullies who think they're doing something good are the most dangerous, since they don't have any moral qualms about how far they take things.
      • dataduck 5y ago
        “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ― C. S. Lewis
  • wpietri 5y ago
    If you are concerned about bullying, you might also look at the long past history of oppression that we've been undoing in recent decades.
    • haram_masala 5y ago
      I’ll call your comment an example of “intertemporal whataboutism.”
  • lamontcg 5y ago
    The bullies at the top are getting worried that people are standing up to them.
  • thu2111 5y ago
    Maybe. To me this article is useful because it precisely bounds the size of the group that genuinely feels this way. 13%. Not that large, really. Could a determined company get rid of half of those, sending a strong message to the other half to get back to work? Yeah, definitely. Could you refuse to hire people with these views without significantly losing out in the market for skilled employees? I think so, especially as they skew young (i.e. inexperienced). It wasn't really clear before how large this group of radicals is because they are so aggressive and noisy. But they're a small minority.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    I can't connect anything in the article to bullying.
• ajkjk 5y ago
  I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good thing.
  • marricks 5y ago
    Reminds me of conservatives arguing for diversity of views at US colleges because so many professors lean left/liberal. Even more horrifying than this really, if knowledge of a field informs your view mandating equal weight to ridiculous notions (i.e climate change denial) is would be seriously damaging to whatever scientific integrity existed.
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    For the same reason I always look skeptically on other research about "polarization". The trend tends to be that in the past it was common for otherwise-sane people to advocate crazy stuff like bans on interracial marriage. Now the only people who are against interracial marriage are straight-ticket crazy people, and this sorting of society is superficially "polarization" but I can't find the negative in it, because there is a wrong side of those issues.
    • guythedudebro 5y ago
      Replace interracial marriage with something like abolish the police. Is the ethical/sane choice still clear cut?
      • KMag 5y ago
        More importantly, most of us hold moral judgements that our grandchildren will find horrifying, and it's a tautology that we're unable to see our moral blind spots (or have a good guess where they are). I'm happily in an interracial marriage, but I'm not sure that I would have been in favor of (or even neutral toward) interracial marriage had I been a product of the culture a century earlier. I'm very glad we've made moral progress as a culture, and that progress has required some voices in the wilderness speaking out. History has shown that these moral errors aren't all attributable to one side of the political isle, either. We should have some humility in our policies. Almost all of us are on the wrong side of history in ways we are blind to. An absolute belief of being on the right side of history has lead to most of the major disasters of the last century.
• anonytrary 5y ago
  This happens in American workplaces, too. In my experience, most people at tech startups think the same, especially non-product people (anyone who isn't in engineering, design or product). If you want to unconditionally love the mission of your company, chances are you have to set aside your own personal opinions. It is statistically very unlikely that your personal viewpoints are exactly parallel to the company's. Nobody wants to hire someone who thinks for themselves. Which is a bit ironic, because the best people are the ones who don't give a shit what other people think and are willing to call bullshit on their own product and even their own co-workers if they have to. Seen a lot of groupthink in SF tech especially, and it gets old. SF tech is like fight club -- everyone knows it's cult-like, but nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to be the one misfit who rains on the parade, even if the parade is headed off a cliff. In my experience, VC money makes smart people less smart. Having an outsider's viewpoint is going to be extremely valuable in the coming years, but it's currently out of fashion.
  • kiawe_fire 5y ago
    This is the paradoxical struggle I've had, from day one, at the startup for which I work. I was praised for being "fresh eyes" and having "creative ideas", only to be reminded "how we do things here" after producing something that I thought would be a progressive way of addressing the company's challenges. I continue to try new directions, and every once in a while something sticks, but often times I just have to be "another pair of hands" and do things the established way, flaws and all, because often that's what they really want me to do but don't want to admit. It's especially frustrating when I can see the consequences of this a mile away and know that I'll be the one to have to deal with it, but what can I do?
    • ramphastidae 5y ago
      This is normal. If you are an IC or middle manager you are there to execute (do what your boss says). Defining process and culture is not your job. Whether your process is better or not is besides the point. Fighting this will only lead to political pain.
• foolfoolz 5y ago
  > Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any political content on their social channels in the previous year > When it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. “A powerful and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their identity,” as More in Common describes them. i see this more and more. the loud few make a lot of noise, the majority just want to do their jobs. companies have to cater to everyone... but at some point there’s too much virtue signaling at work
  • laurencerowe 5y ago
    Should companies cater to racists?
    • Clewza313 5y ago
      This is a pitch perfect example of polarization: the previous poster said "there’s too much virtue signaling at work", and now you're strongly implying that anybody who feels this way is a "racist".
      • Covzire 5y ago
        It's all the news shows anymore. They could cover many other things, maybe throw in a few positive stories, but cable news and largely the whole industry is just one growing dark cloud.
        • Loughla 5y ago
          Local news (small town of <35k population) in the midwest regularly covers bus crashes and other negative news from other states. States that are like 14-20 hours away. How does that matter to me? It sucks, and it's a tragedy, but it has literally zero impact on my life. But it sure makes good news for people to worry about.
          • 5y ago
• olivermarks 5y ago
  'For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. ' This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in the pub afterwards. 'Ethical Systems' appear to be a great way to stir up rancor and division with the usual cocktail of racialisation (the new segregationists) and genderisation of everything. I can't see how this would help productivity or enhance people's work lives in any shape or form. It reminds me of the first frame of a Dilbert cartoon.
  • Causality1 5y ago
    I love working in a place where using work resources for non-work tasks is strictly forbidden. It's been years since I got an email with even a scent of politics.
  • Thorentis 5y ago
    People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.
    • isoskeles 5y ago
      I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings. Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory. I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.
• laurencerowe 5y ago
  This article suffers from the assumption that all viewpoints are symmetrical. Supporting discrimination in the workplace and opposing it are not equally acceptable political perspectives. Equating the two from a management perspective as equally problematic is simply absurd. Excluding racists from the workplace is not the same as excluding people based on their race. The first excludes a section of the workforce and the second opposes that exclusion. Maintaining an unequal status quo is not a value-free position.
  • dbrueck 5y ago
    A big part of the problem is that terms like 'racist' are often used as synonyms for 'people who don't share my viewpoint'. As long as that level of hyperbole is present, you can't have meaningful conversations on this stuff.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    There is no evidence that article implies the workplace, or even society at large, is divided between those who 'support negative discrimination' and those who don't. The very presumption of this is a kind of a problematic radicalism. Almost everyone wants people to be treated fairly and with dignity, it's just the 'equity' types think that is still a problem, and that other things should be done. Paradoxically, it is the '13%' who want us to use race, gender and other artifacts as primary elements of professional identity for hiring, promotion, delegation etc.. Edit: I should add, I don't have a problem with the 13% view that they think they should 'do more'. I'm 'part' of the 13% in that sense. What I'm (very) against is the intolerance and absolution that anyone who doesn't share their agenda is problematic, immoral etc..
  • Huwyt_Nashi036 5y ago
    >Excluding racists from the workplace is not [excluding] a section of the workforce I think you disproved your own point.
  • whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    racism = judging people / taking actions based on race. Reality in many workplaces is that the racists making decisions based on race are on the left these days - not the right. When you say exclude folks who practice racism you need to be very careful. I've no problem with affirmative action, but running around saying folks making judgements based on race should be excluded from the workplace will do a LOT of harm to diversity efforts which generally explicitly recognize race and take actions around race.
• wpietri 5y ago
  Funny that they don't mention what "certain, commonplace views" people "stay silent" about. That might put a different spin on things. As I mentioned [1] about the Basecamp debacle, you can't get full "viewpoint diversity" and full "identity diversity" because some viewpoints are hostile to some identities. Given our society's long history of those viewpoints being endemic, and given the slow movement away from identity-based oppression that has sped up a bit recently, workplaces will have to choose whether they value "viewpoint diversity" or "identity diversity" when they conflict. [1] https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1387409628271562755 https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1387409628271562755
  • notsureaboutpg 5y ago
    But many conservative viewpoints are not hostile to identities. If I don't agree with Affirmative Action, am I hostile to someone's identity? A majority of Californians at the ballot box will disagree with AA but none of them will say it out loud at the workplace. It's the misconception that identities are "opposed" by certain viewpoints that leads to this.
    • klyrs 5y ago
      Many conservative viewpoints are perfectly acceptable to share in the workplace. Down with taxes, small government, privatize and monetize, down with regulations, etc. Well. Except there's some lines. If you work in the oil industry and you complain about regulation of food products, fine. But if you complain about environmental regulations that pertain to your business and an inspector happens to overhear, then your company can expect the worst. So it's in your boss's interest to come down on you, even when the inspector isn't around to hear.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • notsureaboutpg 5y ago
        Fine, but some which should be acceptable aren't and I'm talking about ones unrelated to one's business.
• prince781 5y ago
  The author conflates "viewpoint diversity" as it pertains to a workplace setting with political diversity. There are many benefits in a workplace to a diversity of views on how to approach the work and this kind of diversity improves the quality of the product the organization produces. But is this true for political diversity? Maybe, but the author doesn't explain why, and it's not clear what studies exist that support his view. I don't think this is an intellectually honest article.
  • nanagojo 5y ago
    The author links to https://hbr.org/2019/07/are-politically-diverse-teams-more-effective https://hbr.org/2019/07/are-politically-diverse-teams-more-e...
    • prince781 5y ago
      So this is a study about political diversity where it's specifically relevant to the organization's work. In this case, Wikipedia. I'll admit that political diversity is necessary when the "product" is unbiased articles written on politically controversial topics. But how would this affect how a software company develops products, how a car manufacturer develops cars, etc, where political diversity is not relevant?
      • elefanten 5y ago
        Well, if one accepts the argument that identity-based diversity among the workforce is important to more fully represent the perspectives of everyone in society... then that logic extends to political diversity and other kinds of viewpoint/idea diversity as well. Seems those decrying the article are often aligned with the one diversity assumption... curious why they seem to be rejecting the others.
• lindy2021 5y ago
  We'll see more companies go the way of Coinbase and Basecamp. Companies sidetracked with politics will bleed the apolitical.
  • monoideism 5y ago
    I wish you were right. Unfortunately, it's already too late for that.
  • flukus 5y ago
    I don't understand what you mean by "go the way", most places I've worked it is the way and always has been. Keeping politics and religion out of the workplace is just called "being professional". Seems like we're just rediscovering why things are that way.
    • Thlom 5y ago
      Just remember that what is politics is also politics. Ideology can be found in everything, including what you consider "being professional".
  • klyrs 5y ago
    No, the apolitical don't feel the need to discuss politics at work; they'll get on just fine. It's the political who will leave places they disagree with, accelerating polarization.
    • lazyasciiart 5y ago
      Plenty of people (from any point on the spectrum) identify as apolitical because they think their beliefs about the world are the neutral standard. They don't feel the need to discuss politics, but in their mind that doesn't cover things like that crazy story on the news about parents who were letting their daughter pretend to be a boy, or mentioning that their sister's wife is visiting.
      • klyrs 5y ago
• jim-jim-jim 5y ago
  I'm neither old nor experienced enough to back this with even anecdotal evidence, but I can't imagine this is a new development; surely most workplaces have always been hostile to viewpoints at odds with contemporary business norms. It's just the norms themselves that have changed during the shift to a globalized economy that favors knowledge work. Despite the "progressive activist" moniker applied in the article and allusions to radical-left-cancel-this-woke-that blah blah blah from even more sensational sources, the prevailing ideology of the professional class runs in lockstep with global neoliberalism. Having anti-immigrant/Euroskeptic views is a surefire way to draw ire from your colleagues/manager/HR, because you're gumming up the gears of the way business is conducted in this day and age. But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons. Most "activism", especially from within a company, is just cheerleading for the status quo.
  • goalieca 5y ago
    I remember things about a generation ago. It wasn’t always rosy; some unacceptable things were causally said. But, there seemed to be less hate for the other team. We seem to live in a hyper-polarized world exemplified by the shift in late night talk shows where you can no longer escape politics. Both teams are playing to win and there is never any rest.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      I just about remember the Miner's Strike, and IRA bombs going off in London. Let's not de-polarise the past in our memories. What has changed is the way dishonesty has spread up the media and political system.
      • goalieca 5y ago
        There were certainly polarizing events in the past. Canada has no shortage of important events including the Quebec referendum. But i've never felt like i was under continuous pressure from one news cycle to the next.
• lamontcg 5y ago
  Is your washroom breeding bolsheviks?
• neallindsay 5y ago
  Advocating for “viewpoint diversity” is sometimes just code for “I don’t want to be held accountable for my racist views”. Not all political opinions should be tolerated in the workplace. White supremacists, if allowed to run unchecked within your company, will push out people of color. Misogynists will push out women.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• throwawaysea 5y ago
  This is definitely not just a British phenomenon. American workplaces have little to no viewpoint diversity these days, and no psychological safety for anyone who is moderate or conservative. Corporations have adopted numerous political stances that are right in the middle of the culture wars - support for Black Lives Matter, support for trans activists' stances, support for affirmative action (racially discriminatory hiring practices), and so on. Reasonable viewpoints like not supporting the BLM organization due to its Marxist founders, or not support transwomen's participation in women's sports, or wanting race-neutral hiring are not allowed. If you display any of these opinions, chances are you will not only be a social outcast at work, but that you'll be fired for "putting others at risk" or "creating an unsafe work environment" or "not representing the company's values" or any number of other vague justifications. I initially thought this trend would be confined to Google and Facebook but it is everywhere now, including non-tech companies, government agencies, schools, universities, hospitals, and so on. Every space has been turned by dedicated activists into a battlefield for politics, usually with room only for one set of viewpoints (progressive ones). In the case of schools, they have been turned into indoctrination centers as radical activist curricula have replaced more balanced, standard material - all without parents' knowledge or consent. For those worried about viewpoint diversity in our society, please consider following or supporting some of the organizations that are speaking up below, and consider supporting school choice (https://reason.com/2021/01/27/viewpoint-diversity-will-get-a-boost-from-school-choice/ https://reason.com/2021/01/27/viewpoint-diversity-will-get-a...). --- Foundation for Individual Rights in Education AKA FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/ https://www.thefire.org/) Heterodox Academy (https://heterodoxacademy.org/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/) Reclaim the Net (https://reclaimthenet.org/ https://reclaimthenet.org/)
  • luckylion 5y ago
    With regard to why it wasn't confined to Google etc, I'm under the impression that a lot of it is just fear of media coverage. If you have very progressive activists in the large media companies (or have the large media companies often cover/follow the activists), you'll automatically get corporations wanting to insure themselves against attacks. I do believe that it sorts itself out in the long run, as more and more consumers will drop activist media products and they lose their relevance (who's afraid of having a hit piece about their multinational corporation published in a local school paper vs the New York Times).
• kazinator 5y ago
  > We found that, when it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. Unsurprising, given that their is the script that conforms to every paragraph of the company HR manual.
• Huwyt_Nashi036 5y ago
  You choose your political views about as much as you choose your sexual orientation. There are genetic factors, childhood influences, etc. It's even likely to correlate somewhat with your particular combination of race and location - for example, an ethnic Swede might see a strong border and tight immigration controls as essential for the survival and prosperity of his culture and people; an Ethiopian might see an open Swedish border with very lax immigration controls as an incredible opportunity to improve the lot of his own kind. Criminally, we call the first a "racist".
  • dang 5y ago
    Please stop creating accounts to abuse HN or we will ban your main account as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• hilbert42 5y ago
  "In the United Kingdom, most people don’t feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work. For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable." I don't live in the UK but have been there many times including having worked there and I believe this view is reasonably commonplace elsewhere, especially so in all Anglophone countries. I've always been a highly political person even to the extent of having studied Political Science as part of Philosophy Studies and I would also strongly agree with the article's third sentence which concludes that 'People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward'. Even with my strong political views, I've always applied that rule of not discussing politics and religion when in the company of the majority of people I know, and especially so in the workplace environment. In fact, my posts here on HN are about as political as I get in public, as I know that even the few who know that I post on HN would never bother to read my comments anyway—as they are just not interested in discussing politics. Even those who hold similar political positions to me will not engage in or sustain a discussion on a political matter for very long. Thus, I'd not only agree with the Ethical Systems blog that 'workplaces are losing their viewpoint diversity' but I'd also suggest that this position holds generally across the whole population. Moreover, I also add that this view of keeping quiet is much more commonplace nowadays than it was decades ago during the 1960s when my politics were forming. That said, back then there was not the same degree of polarization as there is now—and when it existed it was cleanly divided along the well defined political left-right axis. These days, an axis of view can exist on any number of subjects and it's this wide diversity that's a large part of the problem. Many people are becoming even more timid and thus unprepared to discuss their views, as now there is increased potential to tread on someone's political toes. It's clear to me why this problem exists and it's because our societies are now much more culturally diverse and far less homogeneous than they were when I was a kid. Back then, many of the issues that confront us today were essentially unknown let alone the subject of hot political discussion—unlike many of those of today where everyone is forced to engage in and espouse the politically correct position whether they like doing so or not. For example, in the '50s it was just accepted that women stayed home and minded the kids; there was no problem in discussing Islam or Moslems as there were essentially none in Western society; and the word 'gay' had a completely different meaning to what it does these days. And as for the subject itself, being completely taboo it was never discussed (in fact, I didn't get to know the word's new connotation and meaning until I was in my late teens). I was like many others, when we found out its new meaning we were somewhat miffed, as we had suddenly lost a valuable word from our vocabulary and there was no replacement. (Back then, there was a subtle but distinct difference between 'gay' and 'happy' that everyone understood, however by the mid 1970s usage of its original meaning had all but disappeared from the language.) Most of you who will read this weren't even born in the '50s and '60s so it is extremely difficult for me to convey how very different those times were from now. The shifts that have taken place in many societal values have been enormous and I'd venture to say there would be few times in history when values have changed so much and in so many different areas within a single lifetime. Thus, it's little wonder that many people have found it very difficult to adapt to these massive changes. Similarly, the rise of identity politics has further complicated matters as it has added many more threads to the problem. If one looks at the problem globally, speaking one's mind in public nowadays is fraught with dangers. No wonder that so few actually do so.
• Huwyt_Nashi037 5y ago
  Shutting down even discussion of anti-White racism. So brave. What would your grandfather think of you, dang?
• Huwyt_Nashi037 5y ago
  That was quick. Happy Hanukkah buddy.
• livinginfear 5y ago
  I consider myself a very politically informed person. I'm not a politically active person however, largely for the reasons mentioned in the article. I considered myself a liberal by the standards of the time I grew up in. My views on some social issues, particularly 'free speech', are considered a conservative now. I am one of the people the article is concerning who will not publicly voice their political opinions in the workplace for fear of potential repercussions. One thing that particularly upsets me, is how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace. I regularly hear woefully uninformed diatribes on geopolitics and American domestic politics (I do not live in America) in the workplace. Even correcting people who are clearly misinformed on clear matters of fact can cause offense. As a result, I do not enter into such discussions. I feel as though I am more open-minded than many others. I am always ready to be corrected if I am wrong, and I am always willing to discuss my views with people subscribing to other political ideologies. However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind. I also feel as though many politically active people are not acting in good faith. I feel that the safest option I will not regret is not to engage.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    I think one aspect of Polarization in the US is that a big part of it is our expectations of polarization. I think we strongly overestimate the degree to which we can predict someone's political views and world outlook from a single statement. I am worried we are in a positive feedback were perceptions of polarization lead to self-censorship among the less polarized, which further drives the perceptions of polarization.
    • andromeduck 5y ago
      Worse yet, the language gets so abstract and contorted it becomes hard to find areas where there is strong consensus matter of practice. We can't agree on concrete policies because people can't agree on why something shoud be done and not how. And even when there exists consensus for both for some subset everyone wants to use it as leverage to get their entire position so we end up with more status quo. You see this with Republicans and Obamacare, as well as the DSA crowd and Medicare expansions proposed by Warren/Clinton/Butti.
• drivingmenuts 5y ago
  I find it far easier to get along in work environments by never discussing sports, religion or politics. Sports, because I don't care; religion and politics - because I want to get my work done and go home. I have worked with people who wore both on their sleeves all day long and found them to be uniformly unpleasant to work with.
• alvah 5y ago
  If you select for diversity in everything except viewpoint, which (in my experience) has increasingly been the case over the last ~20 years of my career, is it surprising that you end up with little diversity in (expressed) viewpoint?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • josteink 5y ago
    Initially the theory was that a hiring people with more diverse backgrounds (the means) would translate into more diverse viewpoints (the goal). Somewhere someone mistook the means for the goal, and never bothered to check if the initial theory even held up. To make matters worse they also institutionalised racism and sexism in encoded it into the ideology. It’s unscientific and racist, but the people complaining about online disinformation and fake news will be the first people to spread this drivel in the corporate sphere.
• phroobster 5y ago
  I am so tired of constantly hearing about politics at my workplace. Politics have already made their way into the tv shows, music, video games, and online forums that I enjoy. At least let me disconnect from that outrage-fuel at work. It also affects team cohesion. I can easily collaborate with just about anyone when I don’t know their political beliefs. As soon as I find out someone holds opposing views on a topic I feel strongly about, I can’t help but dread my interactions with them. I would strongly prefer to not know what my coworkers think about (most) non-work related topics.
  • systemvoltage 5y ago
    Agree and resonate with my personal observation. I've personally completely and utterly stopped following politics. I do follow local elections and things that affect me and my neighborhood (HOA, municipality decisions, etc.). What we're seeing is an emergence of anti-political movement that is directly in response to the echo-chambered, uncivilized and nauseating social media that's profited from this rage. Twitter and Facebook along with the entire for-profit media machine is going to be historically marked as the dark footnote of human disgrace, greed and exceptional lack of responsibility. I predict that the anti-political movement is going to take off and pick up steam in the intellectual circles. We're exhausted and I can feel it.
    • sgift 5y ago
      > I predict that the anti-political movement is going to take off and pick up steam in the intellectual circles. Only in anti-intellectual circles could an anti-political movement take off. Anyone with even a shred of intellect understands how important politics is for everyday life and that being anti-political means "I will have to accept what others decide for me without any recourse." Politics may be an uncomfortable topic, but it's still a very important one.
      • iso1210 5y ago
        I've just received an email asking me for more for a work permit application to work in the netherlands in a few months. More cost, more expense, less agility. This is a direct result of retired people voting to leave the UK. Politics matters, and votes have consequences. Sadly with many votes, the consequences are disproportionately felt by the ones that lose the vote.
• CyberRabbi 5y ago
  While I think it’s wrong for people to be generally afraid of being penalized for their political beliefs, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with a lack of “viewpoint diversity” at the workplace. By “viewpoint” I’m taking them to mean political and political beliefs just aren’t very relevant to the majority of jobs.
• rasengan0 5y ago
  I'm exhausted
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jl6 5y ago
  Personal politics has absolutely no place in the workplace unless you’re working in politics. Nothing good can come of it. Leave it to the pub and Hacker News. My workplace is a wonderful bastion of big-P-Politics-free collaboration. It is an apolitical safe space. My colleagues and I absolutely do have political views, but there is just no reason whatsoever to share them at work. “Bring your whole self to work” is a flawed goal unless you live to maximise shareholder returns.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    I think this is missing the thrust of the issue which is that is, for some groups, certain kinds of politics invariably involve work and are a moral imperative. If this were about issues likee 'big vs. small government' then it wouldn't be a problem. But it's about political issues like 'diversity in the workplace' and 'Corporate support for Social Justice' (such as BLM) - as the big Elephant in the Room subject. So things like 'Thanksgiving is Covert White Supremacy' as part of your job training [1] and 'we must achieve certain diversity targets or we are racist'. That kind of stuff. There's a group (part of the 13%) that thinks unless you're on board all of that, you're a problem, basically it's a moral imperative and anything else is racism. There's other groups that believe in some of those things, but are open minded with respect to other's views. And of course a wide array of other opinions. I really don't believe that most other political subjects are entirely so sensitive. 'Privatization of Amtrack' or whatever is simply not going to engender in/out groups. Abortion, Gun Rights are probably trigger issues for some, but they are really easy to just avoid at the office. [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/only-white-people-can-be-racist-inside-global-affairs-anti-racism-course-materials https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/only-white-people-can-b...
    • jl6 5y ago
      It’s a valid point that some political issues are workplace-oriented, but in my organization they manifest as HR policies and are not up for personal debate round the water cooler.
    • KaiserPro 5y ago
      > But it's about political issues like 'diversity in the workplace' and 'Corporate support for Social Justice' (such as BLM) but the problem with this view is that we are implementing a policy in a political way. There are many ways to argue for diversity that are either purely economic or practical. The issue here isn't the policy, its who and how its sold/pushed through. There are companies that are run by, or full of shouty political types. Part of the interview process is to sniff out that kind of company and avoid like the plague. The post you linked to is evidence of that. The other thing to mention is that US based companies are far more willing to let their works talk politics in the open. In the UK you are rightly looked at as suspect if you speak out on politics or religion.
• nathias 5y ago
  Viewpoints collapse into religion/politics, it takes a lot of philosophical literacy to prevent this.
• samvher 5y ago
  I might be one of these progressive activists, and this is interesting to read and reflect on. I am quite vocal about culture, hiring, compensation etc, though I would definitely not say that I feel "confident being vocal" - it actually feels very exposed and quite vulnerable (in part because others don't necessarily share their own views). The reason I'm still vocal about it is that I care, I would feel much more satisfied if I can look back on my working life and feel like I was able to introduce structural improvements than if all I see is that I did what I was told and grew my bank account. I am very worried about inequality and climate change causing massive issues down the road and the current system does not seem sufficiently equipped to address this - the "short term productivity" signal seems unlikely to lead to a solution by itself. So I guess fear plays a role as well. What I would definitely not want is a mono-culture where everyone thinks like me, or large scale central planning, or anything of that kind. But I am desperate to find a feasible gradual path from where we are now to something more sustainable - if we don't find something gradual, I'm afraid change will be sudden and uncontrollable. I know there is a lot of frustration about cancel culture, political correctness, virtue signaling, social justice warriors, etc. I think the issue here is mainly one of polarization and lack of effective discourse - it's easier to call people names than engage thoughtfully (which goes both ways). I hope we will find a way to get better at this collectively.
  • concordDance 5y ago
    As someone who is very much not one of the 13%, I'm curious: how would you react to objections and disagreement on those issues?
    • samvher 5y ago
      Objections and disagreements are pretty common (many of the things that I would like to change are not easily compatible with neoliberalism/the modern corporation). I try to use them as learning opportunities to understand other people's viewpoints and refine/revise my own. I do get frustrated as well though, sometimes things seem self-evident to me and then it's painful when that view is not shared - in some cases it's not about arguments but about the underlying value systems from which people derive their arguments (e.g. what does fair mean to a person). These things are definitely not easy to talk about and I also don't think that I always manage to find the right tone or approach, but I try to be persistent and adjust as I find out how things work.
• callamdelaney 5y ago
  Is there a way we can detect these people and not hire them? It takes enough restraint to refrain from commenting on rampant virtue signalling on LinkedIn and I often fail. Having to deal with it at work would be a step too far.
  • logicchains 5y ago
    How about something like, ask their opinion on a contentious technical issue (like dynamic vs static typing). Then, after they've finished answering, ask them to argue sincerely for the opposite viewpoint, and see if they can. A common trait among cancel culture types is they're unwilling to hear/consider the perspectives of people who disagree with them, so they wouldn't be able to fairly present the opposing argument. Another thing is to make it explicit company policy that people's non-work activities cannnot in any way affect their performance evaluation at work, to disincentivise cancel cuture behaviour. I think in some European countries this is even part of labor law (so a company can't e.g. fire a worker for hearing he went out drinking heavily on the weekend).
    • steve_gh 5y ago
      > I think in some European countries this is even part of labor law (so a company can't e.g. fire a worker for hearing he went out drinking heavily on the weekend). That would depend. The industry I work in (infrastructure management) is very H&S focused, so if you weren't completely sober and able to work safely on Monday morning you would be at best sent home, and at worst fired.
    • thinkingemote 5y ago
      I initially liked the idea of empathy tests, however I'm not sure if it's a global personality variable - that someone might be emphatic to someone else and not be open to other technological viewpoints. I now think that it's not empathy that's missing. The woke are able to empathize with many people. It's primarily that they believe certain others are not actually people and worthy of their empathy. Bigotry. Othering. Perhaps questions about Ethical Source licensing might be rewarding? Or talking about types of users?
  • 5y ago
• mustafa_pasi 5y ago
  Progressivism is the new Christianity, taking over the pagan landscape. It used to be that politics (in the UK) was class based. You are this or that based on your background. Two people from different classes would understand why the other did not support the same political party. That was how it was, and nobody felt the other should not exist. Everyone felt the other had a place in society. These progressive ideologies are different. Everyone can be part of them. You can be a pauper progressive and also a billionaire progressive. Secondly if you are not one of them, you are the enemy, and you do not belong in society, and the aim is to eradicate you. This is what changed. No conservative in the 1970s would have thought, everyone in Britain should be a conservative. That would not make sense. They would not have felt that was something reasonable to demand, or even at all possible. But now you got progressives who think that is indeed what should happen. Everyone should be progressive. If you are not you need to be exterminated. And paradoxically, they want to include everyone in their ranks, but they also stand for very little. When you have all kinds, within your ranks you cannot accomplish much of substance without upsetting your own comrades.
  • the-smug-one 5y ago
    >Everyone felt the other had a place in society I'm sure that in the depth of their hearts the coal miners not only understood but also accepted Thatcher as a fundamental and important part of society.
  • arcturus17 5y ago
    > Progressivism is the new Christianity, taking over the pagan landscape Perhaps your comment is a bit of a rant with highs and lows, but this is a rather powerful analogy. Growing up in Spain, a country with a very strong Catholic tradition, I hated the Church and its invasive prescriptions. Still to this day I count my lucky stars not having spent my younger years during the Franco dictatorship, where being Spanish was inseparable from being Catholic by law, or worse yet, during the Inquisition where by law you could end up in burnt alive in a public square. Now, however, it's mostly Progressives who assume this role of telling people what to do. This includes companies of dubious moral standing (Google, Uber, and others) who are constantly reminding us of what's Good, mostly for marketing reasons. I can't stand it now, as I couldn't back in the day with conservative Catholics. Can't everyone just fuck off and stop preaching their shitty gospel?
• TomSwirly 5y ago
  This empty article is very short on details. "People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward." Certain _commonplace_ views, hmm? A lot of abhorrent beliefs about race and gender are commonplace - that doesn't make them acceptable. "And yet, despite winning a landslide victory in 2019’s General Election, British Conservative voters are nine points more reticent to say what they believe than Labour voters. Why does the larger group fear judgement more than the smaller group?" Could it be that in this _self-reported_ survey, one group would like to portray themselves as an embattled minority, when in fact they've been in complete control of the country for most of the last decade, and have made a series of appallingly bad decisions based on their "commonplace" but wildly false "views", decisions which have devastated the economy, with even worse yet to come? Could it be - and I'm only spitballing here - that a lot of truly repugnant or even false beliefs are no longer acceptable in the workplace?
• globular-toast 5y ago
  That's because people look for diversity based on skin colour (ie. racism) and genitals (ie. sexism) rather than anything on the inside.
• dagothur 5y ago
  It might be true that opposing some progressive social issues (which ones?) could get you in trouble in the workplace, but it's always been true that expressing economic left wing views will get you in trouble. Try telling your boss that personal wealth should be capped and heavily redistributed, or that their industry would be better off nationalized, or any of a number of socialist views, and you may get fired as well.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    Try advocating for a union.
• nraynaud 5y ago
  Remember that the conservative cancel culture uses anti-terror tools : secret lists, administrative persecutions, and other sneaky means. Do not believe that cancel culture is a left leaning trope.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    Mary Whitehouse's cancel culture was rewarded with a CBE.
  • namelessoracle 5y ago
    Except that I remember the left looking askance at those tactics. Decrying them as immoral and wrong and a bad thing. Yet when political and cultural power shifted to the left what happened? They did the same things. What this conveys to me is that there were never any principals or morals in play. It was all an exercise in power. Those without power posturing until it was their turn and then doing the exact same kind of things. I think thats what secretly terrifies people the most about the equity types, the complete lack of belief that they believe anything they say. And that the ultimate result will be that some of those actors feel it's their turn to conduct what they say are injustices. That is how the wheel of history has almost always played out. It feels like a real lack of first principles when it comes to equity politics. Racism is bad, but racism we do is good. Oh what we do isn't racism because we changed the definition of racism to not include what we are doing at the moment. Oh we PROMISE we wont change it again when we have all the power. Pinky swear.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• M2Ys4U 5y ago
  >Similarly, 62 percent of adults told us that journalism was “too political” I don't understand what this even means. Is it that people think that there is too much reporting on politics? Does it mean that people think that journalism is too biased towards political ideologies? Does it mean that people think every story is excessively told through a political lens? Without knowing what these people mean by that it's a completely useless statistic to use.
  • rvieira 5y ago
    I'm assuming it's journalism being biased towards certain political factions. I can't comment on other countries, but this is definitely true for the UK. If you look at the top 10 newspapers in terms of circulation (which, AFAIK, are also the biggest online news providers) there is little objective journalism there. It's plain political propaganda for the most of it.
  • speeder 5y ago
    I am from Brazil, here mainstream journalism for most part support blatantly a few political parties and ideologies, and do their best to sabotage the others, including with blatant lies. I think people start believing journalism is "political", when it stops being "factual" for political reasons.
• yodelshady 5y ago
  I'm going to be honest, ethicalsystems.org couldn't scream "bad faith actor" to me harder if it had a high-shouldered leather office chair, a facial scar, and a grumpy white cat. Own your ideology or don't.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  One of the most depressing/irritating things in modern political and current affairs discourse is how standard it has become to say things like “X group is stopped more frequently by police” with the implication that the expectation is for equal rates of stopping. Basically the entire point of the entire discipline of statistics is that there are covariates, and substructure within a population, that cause expected rates to differ, even in the absence of the sorts of bias that are the focus. I wouldn’t want my children to think that sort of content was anything less than stupid since if they did not, they would be unable to think rationally about data.
• cybervegan 5y ago
  The right wing whingeing that they are too timid to express their deplorable views.
• SunlightEdge 5y ago
  It's great that hacker news avoid politics. Long may it continue.
• kewrkewm53 5y ago
  Many "progressive" activists are like Soviet apologists a few decades ago. Totally sure of their righteousness, blinded by their ideology, unable to accept differing viewpoints. I sure don't want to work with those who bring their hateful ideology to the workplace.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    >I sure don't want to work with those who bring their hateful ideology to the workplace. >unable to accept differing viewpoints. Please, read what you are writing.
    • jjcon 5y ago
      I think that was intentional?
• CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  Before I discuss anything complex with another person (politics, religion, etc.), I check to see if they're an idiot. Do they think for themselves or parrot a standard position? Can they explain how they came to a conclusion? When they say "I think . . . ", did they? It doesn't matter they subject; either they think or they don't. If a person doesn't think (many don't), you're not arguing with them, but with a set of recordings.
• fergie 5y ago
  At the time of writing there is violence on the streets of Northern Ireland due to a not unfairly held sense that NI has become more closely aligned with Eire that the UK, and an election in Scotland in which the nationalists are once again going to win a majority, with the stated aim of using this mandate to organise a referendum on independence (which current opinion polls show the public would support). Yet ironically, in an article the purports to support "viewpoint diversity" in the UK, none of this is mentioned. Not even at a time when the UK is literally breaking apart (which sounds like hyperbole, but is not). You could change the title to read "New evidence that _English_ workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity", and it would be less egregiously incorrect, but it would still lack perspective. The whole article is basically a long-winded way of saying that English conservatives don't feel comfortable speaking up for what they believe in, and that is fair enough, with the caveat that conservatives views are now being treated with the same suspicion as, say, communist or republican views were a few years ago. Also they seem to be using and spelling "polarisation" incorrectly.
• whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  If you live in the uk you’ll realize the only place you’ll probably hear honest viewpoints aired in public is small village pubs. The only place I’ve heard people vocally support Brexit or say anything other than support for the Labour party is when visiting relatives and going to the pub while there. I’ve never met a single supporter of Brexit or Tories outside of that. What you generally hear on the street, in media and in the workplace clearly isn’t reflected in the voting booth.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    Do you find the small village pubs are open to left-wing viewpoints?
    • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      Generally in the pub you can air an opinion and have a quite heated debate about something then just move on and still be civil.
      • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
        Keir Starmer was kicked out of a pub last week.
        • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
          Think there is a big difference between being a nobody with an opinion and being a politician.
      • PeterisP 5y ago
        Depends on the pub, you might also get a quick escalation to violence.
  • eyko 5y ago
    I've met many supporters of Brexit in local pubs here in London, I don't think it's that uncommon. I've had work colleagues that argued for and voted for Brexit, here in London. We had fun conversations on the topic, changed our opinions on many points, but still ultimately agreed to disagree. In the meantime, the media helped polarise the debate by making it about them hating those damn "forriners" on one side, or the EU being akin to a stalinist dictatorship on the other side. The "gammons" to the right, the "remoaners" to the left. I think the issue is that most progressives in cities in the UK live in progressive bubbles and are unlikely to come across people with very opposing viewpoints on a daily basis. They're also quite arrogant, which is something I've noticed amongst friends (most of whom are progressive). I'm a non-white EU citizen (forriner to the average brexiteer in a village pub) living in the UK so it's already a matter of fact that the majority of people I speak to are of a different identity. If anyone gets their information about a group from what the media reports instead of from actually speaking to members of said group, then they ought to reconsider their views.
• thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  Why on Earth would I feel comfortable 'bringing my whole self to work'? I don't want my colleagues to know about my hobbies, I don't want them to know about my personal life. I certainly don't want them to know my views on big-tech monopolisation, taxation, and intellectual property law. Choosing to present this as a bad point is doing it to create a springboard into the real point, complaining about other's politics. Which Hacker News is gladly leaping from.
• varispeed 5y ago
  Something has changed in the last year or two. Basically it is impossible to talk with someone about anything other than weather and the tasks in the pipeline. Everyone is afraid of being cancelled. Even if you tell something politically correct today, you don't know if this will be cancellable in 10 years and then a co-worker who doesn't like you will make a tweet about what you said. Something has gone terribly wrong in the society...
  • axiosgunnar 5y ago
    One can only hope for the situation to overheat completely for and the lynchmobs to eat one another that the pendulum swings the other way.
    • uvnq 5y ago
      Hopefully this "wokeness" in our culture can be corrected peacefully and sensibly, as opposed to having a massive overreaction that may itself have an overreaction
• seanhunter 5y ago
  I don't voice political opinions in the workplace because I don't think that's what the workplace is for. I don't "bring my whole self" to work any more than I "bring my whole self" anywhere else - different aspects of personality are appropriate in different settings. My family see different sides to me that others do not. Not only do I believe that's healthy, I believe it's normal and inevitable. I was also brought up to think that it was not polite to discuss politics or religion except with your closest friends. Generally this seems still to be good advice. As a slight aside to people talking about "cancel culture" etc, where I grew up if you voiced the wrong opinions you could just disappear and never be found again. This is still the case in many parts of the world. Most of the time when people mention this they seem to inherently be speaking from a position of privilege where they believe they have a right to be listened to without consequence, which I'm not sure has ever existed.
• sharikone 5y ago
  The real problem is the lack of proportions around "viewpoint diversity". A flat earther, a neo-Nazi, an anarchist, a conspiracy theorist have all different viewpoints. But we can't ask people to stop referring to the Earth as flat not to offend flat-Earthers. And, particularly from the leftwing there is a phenomenon where if you as much as disagree to some minor policy point you become the enemy of the people the same as Hitler. There is no solution to this conflict, since the very principles that encourage tolerance towards different views is an ideology in itself so you should tolerate that people can be intolerant. I believe workplaces should just make it clear that the most important thing is to produce good work (a reasonable demand since they pay you) and that any political view should be acceptable if you do your job
• villgax 5y ago
  Reminds me how how Basecamp would have acted during WW2 as well. Nothing to do with business so take it outside.
• javier10e6 5y ago
  The movie ex machina approaches intelligence as the ability to manipulate others. When you encounter people way more intelligent than you having contrary opinions from yours the best option is to remain silent or subject yourself to the whims of those with superior intellect trying to dissect you. Nobody wants to feel like a victim or a martyr or impostor. Better to be the fly on the wall.
• clarkevans 5y ago
  For many progressives, workplaces are inherently political by their very structure and processes. In this perspective, to ask a progressive to "not bring politics to work" is telling them that the established political norms shall be victorious (without debate). It's not like conservatives don't do virtue signaling: there are catch phrases like "respect for capital" and "work hard" that are just as prevalent in the workplace, it's just that those phrases may not be seen as being political. In my opinion, there is room for many political perspectives in the workplace, moreover, they can all be correct at the same time. In particular, once people stop talking in abstract generalities, but in concrete actions regarding concrete challenges, many of these perceived differences melt away to reveal far more consensus than political posturing might indicate. In my experience, the best way to handle political speech in the workplace is to ask the speaker to contextualize their perspective into a concrete action that they'd like to be taken, taking into account all of the moving parts and stakeholders. At this point, the ones who have a serious point to make have an opportunity to present a process improvement, or be educated about considerations they are not thinking about.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > For many progressives, workplaces are inherently political by their very structure and processes. If so, then I wouldn't want them in my company. If I'm hiring, I'm (almost always) hiring someone to do some work, not to try to destroy my company's structure and processes.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• steele 5y ago
  viewpoint diversity? get real. oh no, luxury class oppression.
• tmaly 5y ago
  I work with and for people of different political view points. We get along great. We just do not discuss politics at the office. Our focus is on getting the job done.