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> no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; Agreed. But frequently calling that out IS what is

> no one should be allowed to say or do anything at work that makes anyone uncomfortable in a personal way; Agreed. But frequently calling that out IS what is deemed "political" by the person who was "just expressing an opinion", and "i just have a different ideology from you" > ; no one should really care much about other peoples’ politics. Some people's politics is other people's human rights. Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. (Even if they believed you individually were okay)

browningstreet 5y ago
But taking the conversation there -- that politics is about racism -- is exactly the kind of extremism we struggle with these days. For the most part, we should be able to co-exist across the political spectrum, but equating politics to something extreme, or having to bring up a false equivalency in conversation, keeps things heated.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Politics isn't about racism. Politics isn't ONLY about racism. Politics isn't ONLY about NOT racism. If you ban politics, you also ban politics about racism. But if politics was about whether the city should spend a budget surplus on a sidewalk upgrade or a new park bench, then nobody would even think about banning those discussions. So when you ban politics, you ban politics about racism. Because those are the controversial ones. And less abstractly, more concretely, about the basecamp situation, the politics that led to this ban were explicitly politics about racism.
  - bumbastique 5y ago
    Too much of politics is about racism and similar identarian issues these days, at the expense of more fundamental topics. For example, BLM should really have been about police brutality and police abuse in general. It's not just black people who get regularly shit on by the cops. But by making it all about race, the more general point is missed and no progress is made. Another example, you get Biden paying lip service to trans rights, but nothing about introducing Medicare For All - which would actually make things better for everyone, including those with gender dysphoria who require access to healthcare professionals. Of course, people who see all the country's problems through an identity politics lens don't like it when you point out things like this.
  - wl 5y ago
    Gun control. Abortion. Climate change. Drugs. The death penalty. Racism isn't the only controversial political topic out there.
ideal_stingray 5y ago
I’m trans and disabled, and I’d rather work with someone who thinks people like me shouldn’t exist but keeps their mouth shut about it at work than someone who thinks work is a great place to debate hot-button trans issues. Of course, other marginalized people may feel differently.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Do you think your opinion is the common one in others like you? Or do you think you're an outlier?
  - ideal_stingray 5y ago
    I think it’s hard to tell; people like me tend to not be heard a lot in these kinds of conversations. But I feel like there are enough of us that it’s better to exercise caution and specifically carve out opt-in spaces for political discussion if you really want them to exist — marginalized people often have a lot of trauma related to their marginalization and it’s easy to inadvertently hurt people with careless political discussion.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    It's a very common opinion amongst Asians, speaking as one who knows many who agree. Work is work.
- hellomyguys 5y ago
  What if your company built a feature or product that inadvertently discriminated against trans or disabled people? Would you want someone to advocate for those groups? Would that discussion be deemed political?
  - FFRefresh 5y ago
    What's an example of a product that would inadvertently discriminate against trans people? What does it mean to inadvertently discriminate? As an example, a lot of websites drop support for IE. If the makeup of IE users affected by it over-indexed on any particular type of race/gender/class/sexual orientation, would you classify that as inadvertent discrimination? If a first version of a new website/product wasn't built to be perfectly compatible with accessibility standards, are they inadvertently discriminating against those with disabilities? Are software bugs that may not be equally felt by all users an example of inadvertent discrimination? Is the only way to not inadvertently discriminate to ensure products are built to be optimized for every single human and use case? Every edge case needs to be solved for before launch?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. (Even if they believed you individually were okay) This sound frighteningly religious. Here you are trying to read people's hearts and refusing to work with them. It is this Manichean us versus them and not just judging actions but trying to look at a person's heart that has turned up the heat of discourse and is tearing our country apart.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Not at all. It was an imprecise choice of phrasing, I'm not saying you should be trying to guess what their thoughts are. I'm saying if that coworker revealed that information directly.
simonh 5y ago
Personally yes, because I’m an optimist and I believe people can change for the better and one way that could happen is through civil and professional working relationships. I agree it’s not a comfortable situation and specific circumstances can trump a generalisation, but it’s not impossible that I could tolerate that sort of situation and in fact people do it al, the time. How many of us have worked at places where everyone knew there was one guy who was a misogynist but plenty of women there put up with it? For me it’s about the actual behaviour. I can’t police what people think or believe, nobody really can in truth, but we can expect basic standards of behaviour.
prepend 5y ago
> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. I’m not able to know someone’s heart, so if I reached this conclusion I would abort out due to faulty logic. Also, I don’t really want to know Karen in accounting’s heart, even if it’s awesome. I’d rather just be professional and not know. Reading the experience in base camp equating this with genocide, hr complaints, etc it seems people were really convinced of things. But they seem really wrong to me. But they acted on it. Having such certainty is foolish. I’d rather not try to adjust my workplace based on people’s hearts and would rather risk working with people who secretly, racistly hate me than to try to vet people at this level.
bradleyjg 5y ago
> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. In Judaism there’s a tolerance for people that are orthoprax (right behavior) even if in their heart of hearts they are not orthodox (right beliefs). Despite the increasing percentage of non-believers, America is culturally deeply Protestant and so we don’t allow this sort of thing. But I think we might be better off if we did.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I have heard that regarding judaism referenced at similarly high level frequently over the years. What is a reasonably accessible way one might learn more?
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything. I grew up not-quite-orthodox (in a stream of Judaism that doesn’t really exist anymore) and that provided a, in retrospect, very interesting slightly outsider vantage point.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  >America is culturally deeply Protestant // Could you highlight some of the characteristics that you consider go along with this. "Deeply protestant" to me brings to mind the Quaker (a Protestant denomination) Cadbury & Fry chocolate companies. They did things like build municipal buildings, housing, schools. Fry family members addressed prison reform (Elizabeth Fry) and studied and acted to counter poverty and it's causes, for example. They reduced working hours too! Sure, it was paternalistic, and they grew wealthy from their employees, but it seems they acted benevolently and genuinely tried to make a difference in their communities and for their workers. https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-sweet-charity-how-cadbury-rowntree-and-fry-gave-us-some-of-our-d8e84f6f9fcc https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-sweet... gives a brief view. What we hear of USA this side of the pond and these sorts of attributes don't seem to mesh.
  - 5y ago
bumbastique 5y ago
> Some people's politics is other people's human rights. Yeah but this all started because some of the more hysterical employees started saying nonsense like: a list of funny customer names is the first step towards genocide. Some people's politics are just retarded.
leadingthenet 5y ago
> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. Ideally, you wouldn't even know this was the case.
- kelnos 5y ago
  How is that an ideal? What if this person gets promoted and ends up being your boss, and you keep getting passed up again and again for promotion before finally learning the real reason: your boss keeps tearing you down in promotion meetings because he's racist? Wouldn't you want to know ahead of time? That way you'd know what to expect, and could make plans to switch teams or find a new job.
  - monkeywork 5y ago
    So you think there should be some sort of survey where you get to judge a persons morality and personal beliefs even if they have no want in sharing them with you - just so you can feel comfortable about there being a CHANCE you might get passed over for something and that the reason for the MIGHT be because they have some sort of bias against you? When someone says ideally you wouldn't know it's because unless you and I are personally close ideally you wouldn't know any of my personal beliefs / views on morality or politics. They aren't any of your business and I shouldn't want / nor need to explain them to you.
jshen 5y ago
I think eating a lot of red meat is one of the greatest moral problems in our society today from climate change, factory farming, and habitat destruction. I don’t think I should be haranguing people at work about it.
- pavlov 5y ago
  You’re invited to a work dinner that only has meat on the menu. Do you bring up the lack of a vegetarian option? Or should you shut up and not eat anything (or skip the social event) because colleagues know you’re a vegetarian and you don’t want to be perceived as haranguing people at work about it? I once had a job where I’d just signed the offer and was invited to their team dinner before my official start date. It was at a restaurant that only served chicken that you were supposed to eat with rubber gloves (I have no idea what that was about). It was uncomfortable to realize that I stood out like a sore thumb even before I’d started just because of a dietary preference. It had never occurred to the managers that a regular-looking man who joins their team might not eat meat.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Well, I was invited, shortly after starting a new job, to a restaurant that I couldn't afford. So I said, I'm sorry I can't go, and that was that. Definitely a very awkward way to start as it was from their point of view a welcoming meal. I can't quite tell, did you go to the chicken place? Have things improved?
    - pavlov 5y ago
      I did go because I hadn’t realized it was a weird chicken place until I got there and was offered the rubber gloves. I left that job after six months. The four male founders turned out to be old buddies who wanted everyone in their little club to be exactly like them but with a deference to their incredible competence as employers. Maybe I’ve been unlucky, but I have the impression that small business tech jobs mostly suck. (Basecamp has a bit of that vibe, to be honest.)
    - baggy_trough 5y ago
disgrunt 5y ago
Do you consider someone holding an opinion you find offensive to be a human right?

browningstreet 5y ago

But taking the conversation there -- that politics is about racism -- is exactly the kind of extremism we struggle with these days. For the most part, we should be able to co-exist across the political spectrum, but equating politics to something extreme, or having to bring up a false equivalency in conversation, keeps things heated.

deanCommie 5y ago
Politics isn't about racism. Politics isn't ONLY about racism. Politics isn't ONLY about NOT racism. If you ban politics, you also ban politics about racism. But if politics was about whether the city should spend a budget surplus on a sidewalk upgrade or a new park bench, then nobody would even think about banning those discussions. So when you ban politics, you ban politics about racism. Because those are the controversial ones. And less abstractly, more concretely, about the basecamp situation, the politics that led to this ban were explicitly politics about racism.
- bumbastique 5y ago
  Too much of politics is about racism and similar identarian issues these days, at the expense of more fundamental topics. For example, BLM should really have been about police brutality and police abuse in general. It's not just black people who get regularly shit on by the cops. But by making it all about race, the more general point is missed and no progress is made. Another example, you get Biden paying lip service to trans rights, but nothing about introducing Medicare For All - which would actually make things better for everyone, including those with gender dysphoria who require access to healthcare professionals. Of course, people who see all the country's problems through an identity politics lens don't like it when you point out things like this.
- wl 5y ago
  Gun control. Abortion. Climate change. Drugs. The death penalty. Racism isn't the only controversial political topic out there.

ideal_stingray 5y ago

I’m trans and disabled, and I’d rather work with someone who thinks people like me shouldn’t exist but keeps their mouth shut about it at work than someone who thinks work is a great place to debate hot-button trans issues. Of course, other marginalized people may feel differently.

deanCommie 5y ago
Do you think your opinion is the common one in others like you? Or do you think you're an outlier?
- ideal_stingray 5y ago
  I think it’s hard to tell; people like me tend to not be heard a lot in these kinds of conversations. But I feel like there are enough of us that it’s better to exercise caution and specifically carve out opt-in spaces for political discussion if you really want them to exist — marginalized people often have a lot of trauma related to their marginalization and it’s easy to inadvertently hurt people with careless political discussion.
- icelancer 5y ago
  It's a very common opinion amongst Asians, speaking as one who knows many who agree. Work is work.
hellomyguys 5y ago
What if your company built a feature or product that inadvertently discriminated against trans or disabled people? Would you want someone to advocate for those groups? Would that discussion be deemed political?
- FFRefresh 5y ago
  What's an example of a product that would inadvertently discriminate against trans people? What does it mean to inadvertently discriminate? As an example, a lot of websites drop support for IE. If the makeup of IE users affected by it over-indexed on any particular type of race/gender/class/sexual orientation, would you classify that as inadvertent discrimination? If a first version of a new website/product wasn't built to be perfectly compatible with accessibility standards, are they inadvertently discriminating against those with disabilities? Are software bugs that may not be equally felt by all users an example of inadvertent discrimination? Is the only way to not inadvertently discriminate to ensure products are built to be optimized for every single human and use case? Every edge case needs to be solved for before launch?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. (Even if they believed you individually were okay) This sound frighteningly religious. Here you are trying to read people's hearts and refusing to work with them. It is this Manichean us versus them and not just judging actions but trying to look at a person's heart that has turned up the heat of discourse and is tearing our country apart.

deanCommie 5y ago
Not at all. It was an imprecise choice of phrasing, I'm not saying you should be trying to guess what their thoughts are. I'm saying if that coworker revealed that information directly.

simonh 5y ago

Personally yes, because I’m an optimist and I believe people can change for the better and one way that could happen is through civil and professional working relationships. I agree it’s not a comfortable situation and specific circumstances can trump a generalisation, but it’s not impossible that I could tolerate that sort of situation and in fact people do it al, the time. How many of us have worked at places where everyone knew there was one guy who was a misogynist but plenty of women there put up with it? For me it’s about the actual behaviour. I can’t police what people think or believe, nobody really can in truth, but we can expect basic standards of behaviour.

prepend 5y ago

> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. I’m not able to know someone’s heart, so if I reached this conclusion I would abort out due to faulty logic. Also, I don’t really want to know Karen in accounting’s heart, even if it’s awesome. I’d rather just be professional and not know. Reading the experience in base camp equating this with genocide, hr complaints, etc it seems people were really convinced of things. But they seem really wrong to me. But they acted on it. Having such certainty is foolish. I’d rather not try to adjust my workplace based on people’s hearts and would rather risk working with people who secretly, racistly hate me than to try to vet people at this level.

bradleyjg 5y ago

> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. In Judaism there’s a tolerance for people that are orthoprax (right behavior) even if in their heart of hearts they are not orthodox (right beliefs). Despite the increasing percentage of non-believers, America is culturally deeply Protestant and so we don’t allow this sort of thing. But I think we might be better off if we did.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
I have heard that regarding judaism referenced at similarly high level frequently over the years. What is a reasonably accessible way one might learn more?
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything. I grew up not-quite-orthodox (in a stream of Judaism that doesn’t really exist anymore) and that provided a, in retrospect, very interesting slightly outsider vantage point.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>America is culturally deeply Protestant // Could you highlight some of the characteristics that you consider go along with this. "Deeply protestant" to me brings to mind the Quaker (a Protestant denomination) Cadbury & Fry chocolate companies. They did things like build municipal buildings, housing, schools. Fry family members addressed prison reform (Elizabeth Fry) and studied and acted to counter poverty and it's causes, for example. They reduced working hours too! Sure, it was paternalistic, and they grew wealthy from their employees, but it seems they acted benevolently and genuinely tried to make a difference in their communities and for their workers. https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-sweet-charity-how-cadbury-rowntree-and-fry-gave-us-some-of-our-d8e84f6f9fcc https://medium.com/@cafonline/meet-the-philanthropists-sweet... gives a brief view. What we hear of USA this side of the pond and these sorts of attributes don't seem to mesh.
- 5y ago

bumbastique 5y ago

> Some people's politics is other people's human rights. Yeah but this all started because some of the more hysterical employees started saying nonsense like: a list of funny customer names is the first step towards genocide. Some people's politics are just retarded.

leadingthenet 5y ago

> Would you want to work with someone who you knew in their heart was racist and thought that people of your race were inherently less capable than their own. Ideally, you wouldn't even know this was the case.

kelnos 5y ago
How is that an ideal? What if this person gets promoted and ends up being your boss, and you keep getting passed up again and again for promotion before finally learning the real reason: your boss keeps tearing you down in promotion meetings because he's racist? Wouldn't you want to know ahead of time? That way you'd know what to expect, and could make plans to switch teams or find a new job.
- monkeywork 5y ago
  So you think there should be some sort of survey where you get to judge a persons morality and personal beliefs even if they have no want in sharing them with you - just so you can feel comfortable about there being a CHANCE you might get passed over for something and that the reason for the MIGHT be because they have some sort of bias against you? When someone says ideally you wouldn't know it's because unless you and I are personally close ideally you wouldn't know any of my personal beliefs / views on morality or politics. They aren't any of your business and I shouldn't want / nor need to explain them to you.

jshen 5y ago

I think eating a lot of red meat is one of the greatest moral problems in our society today from climate change, factory farming, and habitat destruction. I don’t think I should be haranguing people at work about it.

pavlov 5y ago
You’re invited to a work dinner that only has meat on the menu. Do you bring up the lack of a vegetarian option? Or should you shut up and not eat anything (or skip the social event) because colleagues know you’re a vegetarian and you don’t want to be perceived as haranguing people at work about it? I once had a job where I’d just signed the offer and was invited to their team dinner before my official start date. It was at a restaurant that only served chicken that you were supposed to eat with rubber gloves (I have no idea what that was about). It was uncomfortable to realize that I stood out like a sore thumb even before I’d started just because of a dietary preference. It had never occurred to the managers that a regular-looking man who joins their team might not eat meat.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Well, I was invited, shortly after starting a new job, to a restaurant that I couldn't afford. So I said, I'm sorry I can't go, and that was that. Definitely a very awkward way to start as it was from their point of view a welcoming meal. I can't quite tell, did you go to the chicken place? Have things improved?
  - pavlov 5y ago
    I did go because I hadn’t realized it was a weird chicken place until I got there and was offered the rubber gloves. I left that job after six months. The four male founders turned out to be old buddies who wanted everyone in their little club to be exactly like them but with a deference to their incredible competence as employers. Maybe I’ve been unlucky, but I have the impression that small business tech jobs mostly suck. (Basecamp has a bit of that vibe, to be honest.)
  - baggy_trough 5y ago

disgrunt 5y ago

Do you consider someone holding an opinion you find offensive to be a human right?