4 ms·

Can somebody please explain to me this modern fashion of employees attempting to strongarm CEOs to publicly voice views irrelevant to the company's mission? I'v

Can somebody please explain to me this modern fashion of employees attempting to strongarm CEOs to publicly voice views irrelevant to the company's mission? I've been seeing a lot of this lately and I simply don't understand it. Should CEOs also be forced to publicly state that smoking is bad for you and recycling is good?

ksec 5y ago
Quoting from another HN member post [1] not long ago ( I remember this post so vividly ) >When I talk to my family and non-tech non-coasts non-city friends about the sort of political polarization I encounter at my high-tech Seattle job, they often think I'm messing with them, that I'm being facetious or exaggerating. Unfortunately, I'm not. It's all so tiresome. The increasing politicization of everything, and tech being at the center of it, made me realize I have no interest anymore in climbing the corporate ladder. I realize that my lack of political fervor is a liability. I wish I cared more about these things, I really do, but I don't. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044664
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
One term I have heard for this phenomenon is a "purity spiral".
benmmurphy 5y ago
There is something special about being able to buy your food from the store and not having it be a political issue. I feel like we are slowly losing this. Commerce should really be separate from politics. Pushing politics into everything risks reducing cooperation between people and all these positive sum trades that naturally occur.
- scruffyherder 5y ago
  I’m looking forward to having to use a tracking app that will determine my price “discount” wether it’s positive or negative, and more importantly if I’m even allowed to even be there. It’s been working great in China, and it feels like Yuu and other stupid things are going to bring it to Hong Kong so why not the west too?
thinkingemote 5y ago
It's sort of a new thing. All the major tech companies were forced in the last decade to move away from the neutral platform position and started to do more proactive moderation or some would say censorship, turning themselves into responsible publishers. Thus, in being willing censors (or at least moderators) for the powers of good, they have also let themselves be strongarmed by whomever says what is good. from another angle, the Arab Spring uprisings or Ukrainian Euromaiden events from last decade which were organised on neutral tech platforms, would not be able to take place now because these tech companies have much more moderation and internal responsibilities to be a clean publisher.
websites420 5y ago
It’s a combination of a few things: (1) Tech demands a lot from its employees. We are dedicating a significant portion of our waking hours. They expect us to believe in their mission, and so we also expect that mission to align with our values. (2) Technology itself is much more far reaching than any other industry. These corporations are massive, and with them massive budgets for lobbying etc. Not demanding that they reflect the values of their employees and customers would be a massive waste of that power or worse — letting them actively use that power to make the world worse.
- grillvogel 5y ago
  >we also expect that mission to align with our values. "we" do? personally i expect my employer to provide financial compensation in exchange for me doing things for them. beyond that i don't really care about whether the giant corporation i work at is truly reflecting my core beliefs. i suspect that they probably aren't. > reflect the values of their employees do all employees truly feel the same way about every issue? do employees with a minority opinion feel comfortable expressing those views?
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    You left out an important part of the first sentence you quoted. Companies that expect employees believe in the mission end up with employees who expect a mission they can believe in. Talking about employee values in aggregate doesn't imply all of them feel the same about every issue.
sendbitcoins 5y ago
When you give people a lever, they tend to pull it. Silicon Valley CEOs have signaled they will respond to this kind of pressure.
WhySoCEREAL 5y ago
This seems to be a pretty expected outcome of an American narrative that societal decisions should be made through or in partnership with the private sector. If we've gone through decades of policy and ideological thought taught that action should happen through the private sector, that people would start acting through private companies rather government acting as our method of social action. I know plenty of individuals in the tech sector that ascribe to some form of the "government is so woefully incapable, it's best left to the private sector" or "I'd rather solve problems through entrepreneurship rather than government or non-profit" school of thought. This seems to me to be a pretty direct expected consequence. We've made private companies pretty central to the way our society is organized.

ksec 5y ago

Quoting from another HN member post [1] not long ago ( I remember this post so vividly ) >When I talk to my family and non-tech non-coasts non-city friends about the sort of political polarization I encounter at my high-tech Seattle job, they often think I'm messing with them, that I'm being facetious or exaggerating. Unfortunately, I'm not. It's all so tiresome. The increasing politicization of everything, and tech being at the center of it, made me realize I have no interest anymore in climbing the corporate ladder. I realize that my lack of political fervor is a liability. I wish I cared more about these things, I really do, but I don't. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044664

__turbobrew__ 5y ago

One term I have heard for this phenomenon is a "purity spiral".

benmmurphy 5y ago

There is something special about being able to buy your food from the store and not having it be a political issue. I feel like we are slowly losing this. Commerce should really be separate from politics. Pushing politics into everything risks reducing cooperation between people and all these positive sum trades that naturally occur.

scruffyherder 5y ago
I’m looking forward to having to use a tracking app that will determine my price “discount” wether it’s positive or negative, and more importantly if I’m even allowed to even be there. It’s been working great in China, and it feels like Yuu and other stupid things are going to bring it to Hong Kong so why not the west too?

thinkingemote 5y ago

It's sort of a new thing. All the major tech companies were forced in the last decade to move away from the neutral platform position and started to do more proactive moderation or some would say censorship, turning themselves into responsible publishers. Thus, in being willing censors (or at least moderators) for the powers of good, they have also let themselves be strongarmed by whomever says what is good. from another angle, the Arab Spring uprisings or Ukrainian Euromaiden events from last decade which were organised on neutral tech platforms, would not be able to take place now because these tech companies have much more moderation and internal responsibilities to be a clean publisher.

websites420 5y ago

It’s a combination of a few things: (1) Tech demands a lot from its employees. We are dedicating a significant portion of our waking hours. They expect us to believe in their mission, and so we also expect that mission to align with our values. (2) Technology itself is much more far reaching than any other industry. These corporations are massive, and with them massive budgets for lobbying etc. Not demanding that they reflect the values of their employees and customers would be a massive waste of that power or worse — letting them actively use that power to make the world worse.

grillvogel 5y ago
>we also expect that mission to align with our values. "we" do? personally i expect my employer to provide financial compensation in exchange for me doing things for them. beyond that i don't really care about whether the giant corporation i work at is truly reflecting my core beliefs. i suspect that they probably aren't. > reflect the values of their employees do all employees truly feel the same way about every issue? do employees with a minority opinion feel comfortable expressing those views?
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  You left out an important part of the first sentence you quoted. Companies that expect employees believe in the mission end up with employees who expect a mission they can believe in. Talking about employee values in aggregate doesn't imply all of them feel the same about every issue.

sendbitcoins 5y ago

When you give people a lever, they tend to pull it. Silicon Valley CEOs have signaled they will respond to this kind of pressure.

WhySoCEREAL 5y ago

This seems to be a pretty expected outcome of an American narrative that societal decisions should be made through or in partnership with the private sector. If we've gone through decades of policy and ideological thought taught that action should happen through the private sector, that people would start acting through private companies rather government acting as our method of social action. I know plenty of individuals in the tech sector that ascribe to some form of the "government is so woefully incapable, it's best left to the private sector" or "I'd rather solve problems through entrepreneurship rather than government or non-profit" school of thought. This seems to me to be a pretty direct expected consequence. We've made private companies pretty central to the way our society is organized.