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Our experience when we issued our "No Politics / No Religion" policy at work was very positive. The few people who had an issue with it, subsequently quit or w

• rPlayer6554 6y ago
  I'm sorry...what fantasy land do you have to live in where you think it's ok to use a company social media account to promote your own politics not only without permission from the company, but an explicit denial.
  • koonsolo 6y ago
    It was with the best intentions to improve the world! ;)
    • hparadiz 6y ago
      There is nothing you can tweet that will improve the world. Lol
      • prepend 6y ago
        Tweeting nothing will improve the world.
  • awj 6y ago
    By "your own politics" are we still referring to things like "hey it's not okay that you're making fun of people and their different-sounding names"?
    • EvilEy3 6y ago
      Even if we're referring to this case. What right do you think you have to use company name to push your agenda? Even if you're morally right about the matter, you're morally wrong to use company entity to push your opinion. If you're uncomfortable with the company then go to management. If it doesn't work with management then leave and try to get your retribution or whatever bullcrap using your name.
    • moveson 6y ago
      I think we are referring to things like "making fun of people and their different-sounding names is the first step on the road to genocide."
• BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I've noticed an overlap between activist personalities and attention seeking personalities. Some people, either consciously or subconsciously, enjoy the dopamine hit from anger and confrontation and they will seek it out at work.
  • palijer 6y ago
    There is probably an overlap between attention seeking personalities and every group from which you hear individual voices. Those attention seeking personalities are just the ones who get your attention and stand out.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • iainctduncan 6y ago
    you mean.... twitter? ;-)
    • sorum 6y ago
      Can someone fund a study where they measure cortisol levels before and after test subjects turn off Twitter notifications? My assumption is that levels plummet
      • linuxftw 6y ago
        Well, if the studies are anything like FDA approve pharmaceuticals, the studies will be funded by twitter, no raw data will be made available, no attempts to replicate the studies by 3rd parties will even be allowed, much less made, and the FDA will approve the results.
      • thesz 6y ago
        I've found this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610684/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610684/ Facebook use after acute social stress impair recovery of cortisol levels. I translate it as "Facebook use after social altercation makes stress longer". Thanks for idea!
• themolecularman 6y ago
  I'm hoping the company I work for will follow suit and ban discussions about this stuff in the workplace. Two years ago we had Ibrahim X Kendi speak at our company, he's now considered by many to be a "neo racist". Within months our open Slack channel for Q&A was shut-down. However we still have a lot of the internal activists.
  • jjeaff 6y ago
    I don't think he's considered by very many to be a neo-racist. Only in right wing circles and few of them would even know who he is anyway.
    • krrrh 6y ago
      It seems like the term neoracist has been promoted by John McWhorter more than any other public intellectual and you can hardly call him right wing unless your vision of the political spectrum is severely warped.
      • jessaustin 6y ago
        McWhorter recently wrote an entire Atlantic column about the actual word "racism" without once using the neologism for which you've blamed him. So, maybe he has reconsidered? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/nation-divided-language/618461/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/nation-div...
        • krrrh 6y ago
          I’m referring to his use of the word in his new book (which he is serializing for free on his substack), “The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and Their Threat to a Progressive America”. [1] The first place I saw the term used (he has also used it on the Glenn Show podcast). Regardless, I came not to blame him, but to praise him. Though I do agree with Kmele Foster’s insistence that the term “racist” is well and good enough to describe the type of segregationist thinking and reification of the fiction of race that is promoted by so-called anti-racists. [1] https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-po...
• dboreham 6y ago
  I'm confused. Aren't such discussions banned by social norms everywhere for a very long time? I can't recall any public political or religious discussions at any place I've worked in decades.
  • bradleyjg 6y ago
    I see you don’t work with very many American fresh college graduates.
    • mixmastamyk 6y ago
      This may be the answer. Some useful traditions are not being passed down, especially at startup-type places which don’t allow older employees.
      • bradleyjg 6y ago
        Chesterson’s fence comes to mind.
        • twiddling 6y ago
          I love that observation by G.K. about the fence you find and thinking through why it was erected.
      • res0nat0r 6y ago
        I think this is more of the issue. Young startups and management are much more lax with this type of thing and let it fester and become a bigger issue than it ever should have been. I’ve worked at fortune 10 companies and smaller startups founded by older folks and there has never been any overt sexual innuendo or politics talk which would be obviously divisive. Most everyone has enough emotional intelligence to know these things should be left at home since there’s no reason to bring them up at work.
        • jessaustin 6y ago
• fallingknife 6y ago
  Yeah, anybody who quits over a no politics policy is probably someone you don't want in the first place.
  • gscott 6y ago
    How did Basecamp fill 1/3 of the company with people they didn't want. That is something they should try to have a lot of introspection on.
    • Udik 6y ago
      Seen the generous buyouts offered, it's probable that several of them left just because they liked the offer.
      • throwawaygh 6y ago
        Not sure why you're downvoted. I'm mulling over an employer change right now for pure career progression / compensation reasons. I have a few good options lined up. If I were offered a generous buyout tomorrow for some random stupid reason, I would probably take it, even without first deciding exactly where I'm going to be next and without any regard to the underlying reason for the buyout. Wikipedia says they only have 57 employees (???). If so, that's less than 20 people jumping from a company with bad PR anyways and during a time when tech hiring is actually quite hot.
  • tootie 6y ago
    Just to be clear, they banned "politics" after people complained about what they considered to be racism and cultural belittlement. This is the inherent problem with people wanting to avoid politics when what they really want is to avoid difficult topics. Topics that aren't just ballot issues but may be palpably real for actual people you work with.
    • chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      This is a point which I think is really tough for people to come to grips with. If you're in the majority, if you're what's considered "normal," then a whole lot of things aren't "political" for you but become political when someone else starts talking about them. When Bob talks about his wife, he's just making small talk; when Fred talks about his husband, he's "a gay activist." And god forbid one of your employees be transgender or nonbinary: requesting that they be acknowledged as such can be interpreted as an overtly political statement. Look at how many people get super, super angry with anyone who voluntarily lists their pronouns somewhere.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jollybean 6y ago
  "The way to keep politics out of work is to keep your work environment professional." Both yours and the OP are side-stepping the main issue which is 'Identity Politics' -> it cannot be avoided. It's 'very easy' frankly, to avoid 'Politics and Religion' at the office, frankly, it's normal. Also fairly easy to avoid 'abortion and gun control'. But - 'the companies position on BLM' for example, is something that basically hardly be avoided. An initiative by a few staffers to create a 'Diversity Council' which they control ... well that's not technically political but that's effectively the same thing - it will happen, the company has to take a position. And of course 'making fun of people's' names' isn't political either. Obviously, it shouldn't be done in a formal setting, but for god's sake if people can't have fun then the world is over. If a bunch of low-level customer service reps are having beers and laughing / venting about a bunch of stuff then obviously nobody should care. (Not that I think they would for the most part). Companies are now teaching 'diversity sensitivity' and they have to decide whether to go the classical route, or to go with 'CRT' which uses some really inflammatory language about how all White people are guilty of upholding White Supremacy, literally for issues like 'Thanksgiving', 'Focusing on Correct Answers', 'Objectivity' (and I'm not remotely aggrandizing or being hyperbolic here - this is the extent of some of that training). This training in some form has to be given and it reaches beyond just the '2 hours' you get when you start. So aside from the possibly bone-headed / lack-of-self-awarness moves by the leadership here, the issues cannot be swept under the rug. Finally, even though 1/3 did take the money, and that is is probably an unhealthy number, it's possible that it's a 'accidentally smart move' by leadership to just avoid the types of people he doesn't want. I utterly loathe the WeWork leadership - but I have to admit, when they signalled that they will not allow employees to submit invoices for meat - I thought it was brilliant. Machiavellian, unfair, yes - but it was a really smart way to define 'culture', even if they were effectively turning away a large group of people (and quietly suppressing others). So in the end, 1) we have to navigate the 'politics of diversity' there's no avoiding it and 2) from a Realpolitik perspective, this may not be so completely bad for the company.
  • jack_riminton 6y ago
    I think it’ll be good for them in the long run too (if they don’t go under in the short term)
• kaitai 6y ago
  Why not just... manage people well? No need to make it no politics/no religion at work. Endless talking about keto or veganism or BeachBody or CrossFit or vaccines or children or being anti-child or emacs or vim or whatever can be just as divisive and counterproductive if it's not managed. Lots of people are assholes or misinformed about a lot of stuff. Big deal. Manage. That's the active part of the word "manager". Don't use the company social media to advance your politics or sell your MLM products or shill for cryptocurrencies -- company social media must be managed. Financial policies must be managed, and if people don't like them or aren't able to accept it, talk to them directly. Clear up misunderstandings if they exist and lay out the parameters of the job. This is not about Trump or politics or activists. This is about bad management. I manage and work with people of a wide variety of political persuasions. Out of work I have plenty of opinions about politics and causes. In work, I demand mutual respect and professionalism. I won't let A misgender B, I won't let C make fun of D's evangelical church, we're going to keep all the politics talk to a minimum but we're not going to ban it. If someone doesn't want to engage, that must be respected as well. But it's just foolishness to think that my "employees can come to work... without having to deal with heavy political or societal debates unconnected to that work". Not when heavy political debates unconnected to that work affect where and when they can pee or whether they fear for their lives at the speed trap that's stationed about a mile up the road from the office. We don't need to debate it, we can't solve the world's problems, and we don't need litmus tests, but the basic mutual respect and professionalism demanded of every employee applies to me too and I need to recognize that different employees walked in the door from different worlds, and their skin color/presence or lack of uteruses/accents come along. I need to proactively make this a good place to work for my valued employees because they deserve human respect and they're f(*^ing expensive to replace. That's the bottom line.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    The problem with managing people, is that they are managed by people. Managing people is hard to do well. It's like writing code. There are bugs, everyone has their own style, everyone thinks the other person's management process was faulty. At some point, your organization needs to set company wide standards. ...and like coding standards, they aren't perfect, they can have grey areas, and in some contexts they don't even make sense. But on the whole, they do more good than bad. Don't put GOTO statements in your code. Don't hard code passwords in your scripts. Don't talk about politics or religion in the office.
• Rapzid 6y ago
  > We later discovered that one of them had been considering reporting us to the state financial authorities because she didn't agree with our policy of accruing interest on client debts Wow, and I thought the HR complaint against David was nuts. Sounds like basecamp was infiltrated by Ben Kuchera's or Randi Harpers. Can't recall the name of the person GitHub miss-hired.. Recall a few years back seemed like everyone was hiring "diversity consultants" or something only to find out they were creating toxic environments by seizing political power via threatening to "cancel" anyone that didn't think and say the right things. This set them up as a type of "thought leader", or perhaps even a cult type leader, where they controlled things.. That was a weird trend and perhaps the tail end of an age in the post-gamergate era.
  • linuxftw 6y ago
    Was a weird trend? They've doubled-down. There are now Chief Diversity Officers. Duties typically consist of 1) Being a white woman 2) Sending out the monthly 'diverity of the month' celebration/awareness email 3) Rubber stamping the 'gender pay equality assessment' annual report 4) Using the word 'empathy'
    • Rapzid 6y ago
      The trend was taking social media influencers that were hijacking social justice issues on Twitter, and other social media, who were already creating toxic environments there, hiring them, and thinking something other than creating a toxic environment at work was going to happen. Tail end of an age. But yes, we are in a new age now.
    • trentnix 6y ago
      Was a weird trend? They've doubled-down. There are now Chief Diversity Officers. Yep. Most companies were hiring 'Chief Diversity Officer' types to inoculate themselves from the mob. Instead, the people they hired are leading the mob. They basically let the vampire in.
      • joshribakoff 6y ago
• tshaddox 6y ago
  To me, that doesn’t look like a strong defense of the “no politics/religion” policy, because the actual reasons those people were fired seem mostly unrelated and obvious grounds to fire someone, regardless of any particular workplace discussion policy. Deliberate unauthorized usage of the company Twitter account is certainly grounds for firing, as is using company time and resources for a plan to report the company to authorities (assuming the report was frivolous and the employee knew it). I honestly don’t see where the policy about political discussions is relevant here at all.
• segmondy 6y ago
  It's the season of ramadan, how would you support muslims that are fasting now or need to take off time to pray or go to their mosque on Fridays?
  • j11m 6y ago
    What's the problem? Workplaces are required to allow for "reasonable flexibility" in the practice of religion. An employee may need to take some PTO for certain types of jobs, but every job I've worked has a decent amount of leeway. This is all covered under US employment law.
• stcredzero 6y ago
  Placating "activists" in the work place may initially seem like the new norm in corporate responsibility, but it is actually a self-destructive spiral, as there are ever-changing foci for woke outrage. The risk of these same employees turning on the company is extremely high in the long term. A big problem in 2021, going back some years, is that the internet makes it easy for anyone to put out their slate and call themselves an "activist." Years ago people used to say that politics was the last refuge of a scoundrel. This is what activists engage in: politics. Outrage is one of the emotions that's easiest to garner virality. Many "activists" are not conversant in ethics and philosophy. Many of them aren't good people. Many of them seem to be quite bitter and hateful while they talk about justice. Many of the loudest voices in this arena are engaging in outrage mongering. They limit legal liabilities by removing easily-disgruntled employees. "Easily disgruntled" is a signpost. Activism in 2021 needs better filters, because far too many people who should be in counseling and therapy are proselytizing to the masses and young people, with public results that corroborate this. At least in the 60's and 70's, one had to be capable of organization.
  • philistine 6y ago
    Did you invent a field of psychology to be able to decide if people need counseling based on what is happening online? For all I know, outrage culture is mainly happening through bots of foreign enemies intent on destabilizing the anglophone world.
    • LegitShady 6y ago
      outrage culture is out of control all over. If it's happening through foreign enemies too that doesn't change the media coverage etc.
      • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        This has been coming for a while. Once upon a time, when I was in college one of the times (twenty odd years ago), the university debating society invited David Irving, well known Holocaust denier. The Anti-Facist/Socialist Workers party people got involved, and threatened protests and violence, and pressured the University to not allow the talk. This started happening then, and not enough of us (including me) spoke up, so it got normalised. Obviously the internet et al has had huge impacts on this (as well as the messed up world we live in), but I do kinda remember those experiences as a turning point, looking back.
• austincheney 6y ago
  I have two separate mega huge employers and they both have similar approaches on this matter. My bank employer’s approach is maximum inclusivity and mutual respect. That generally mean no politics just because it isn’t professional. Religion is a grey area. If religion is an excuse for social gatherings and celebrations then it’s fully allowed so long as everybody is allowed to participate. If a religious focused context is cause for distraction or disagreement then the conversation isn’t professional and the behavior, regardless of the religious content, can be punished. My military employer is absolutely adamant that politics must be far away from the office. They also strongly nurture and require maximum inclusivity. Their view on religion is maximum support for any professed religion or faith as necessary to advance the religious Liberty of all employees. They have dedicated employees to ensure and guarantee religious support and exercise for any employee that requests support.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• EvilEy3 6y ago
  A glimmer of hope. Thank you for writing this. Feels like most of the companies gone insane, where vocal minority controls everything.