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This article makes a great point about what might be considered "politics at work": > What that view misses, I think, is how confusing rules like these are to
by CydeWeys 6y ago
This article makes a great point about what might be considered "politics at work":
> What that view misses, I think, is how confusing rules like these are to employees. One Basecamp worker I spoke with today, who requested anonymity, wondered the extent to which parenting issues could be raised at work. “How do you talk about raising kids without talking about society?” the employee said. “As soon as I bring up public schools, then it’s already political.”
Or what if you're black, is talking about your race or your own lived experiences considered political?
I don't tend to talk about political stuff at work too much personally, but recently we've been talking about the pandemic a lot (like everyone else). Is that political? Sure seems like it could be construed to be political. Even public health advice from the CDC is considered to be political these days.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoLike any category of social behavior, the boundaries are fuzzy. It's also hard to draw a crisp line between passion and rudeness, yet I don't think anyone would conclude that being rude to your coworkers should be allowed. If you have a healthy culture, mutual respect and benefit of the doubt will smooth over the fuzziness; I've worked in multiple teams across multiple companies that manage to generally avoid politics, while still talking about parenting and lived experiences and the CDC.
- mandevil 6y agoThis story makes clear that it wasn't 'politics' the way all the outsiders thought of it. The way this rule was instituted makes it clear that it was about protecting company leaders (and DHH's ego) from criticism over their failures w.r.t the widely circulated list of funny names of customers.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoYes, I agree. This is what I said in my original comment.