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Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

• archsurface 5y ago
  I have no tolerance for politics at work. As far as woke at work goes, not too long ago someone in my office commented on slack "I don't approve of unnecessarily gendered emoji" - I can't even begin to imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts. First world problems? No idea.
  • flyinglizard 5y ago
    It's like deriving and then acting upon several layers worth of meta-information from very mundane things. People would take the bit that was said (or not said), build some story around that, possibly derive a second story from the first and then go out and attack you based on that. Nothing is taken on face value.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • lliamander 5y ago
    I'm not sure the idea of "no politics at work" is exactly the right mindset. I like the idea that a narrow mission (corporate or otherwise) allows for coalition building, and that you can sometimes put your differences aside and build something great the world can benefit from (this was an idea pushed by the early defenders of open source and the OSI). When you build these coalitions, it also somewhat forces you to humanize the people not from your political faction.
  • eh9 5y ago
    As a PoC, I’ve also fielded those comments from white co-workers and it honestly feels like a contemporary version of being blind to race.
    • nailer 5y ago
      To me it seemed less racist when we all had yellow hands. Then again I think poc is a silly term - non Europeans have completely different experiences and cultures from each other even within the US.
      • darkhorse22 5y ago
        It's surely a firable offense, but part of me is so tempted to give a dark-skin-tone thumbs up in Slack as a white guy.
        • xenocratus 5y ago
          I've seen it happen - I'm just curious why? Don't think it's fireable or anything, just... weird.
          • darkhorse22 5y ago
            When I'm bored at work I imagine ways to sew discord with tasteless emoji. It's not a sincere temptation.
            • alchemst 5y ago
              Super minor note: it's "sow" (as in spread seeds, "reap what you sow" "sow wild oats) as opposed to "sew" (needle and thread...)
          • fighterpilot 5y ago
            There was a piece on NPR saying that it's trivializing the experiences of black people. As usual, normal people don't have any problem with it, it's just a small clique of journalists and activists.
        • prepend 5y ago
          I’ve wondered about this but I’ve never seen anyone use an emoji thumbs up in anything but yellow. I can’t imagine ever setting it to match my skin color, but it would be neat to learn about people who want emojis that look more like them. If anything, I’d be more likely to choose a color far away from my skin.
  • nxmnxm99 5y ago
    Yeah. I grew up in a third world country and moved to North America pretty late. I never realized how sheltered and weak Americans were till I joined a well known YC company.
    • meowtimemania 5y ago
      Can you expound? In what ways do you find them weak? I can think of many but curious on your perspective
      • thrownaway564 5y ago
        Antonio García Martínez: "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
        • baryphonic 5y ago
          If you quoted him in context, you'd show that he regarded this particular lady friend of his as a "strong woman" in both body and mind. Why didn't you do that?
          • anigbrowl 5y ago
            Most likely because we don't all know his individual lady friend, but we definitely know people who are 'women in the bay area'. If a person makes a broad sweeping statement then qualifying it with an individual exception is no more significant than some tiny disclaimer int he corner of a billboard.
            • lliamander 5y ago
              I'm fairly sure that if his comment had been about (for instance) white men in the bay area, he would still have his job.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • runarberg 5y ago
    But your workplace is full of politics. Are you not allowed to use GPL dependencies? Do you get bonuses paid in stock options? Is there a senior developer that takes no input from new hires as a general rule? Does your boss get paid a lot more then you? Are parents allowed flexible work hours? Are more and more positions being filled in low paying areas? Does your company sell software to the American Military? to ICE? Does it have manufacturing in the occupied Palestinian territories? Leaving politics outside of the office is simply not possible.
  • smegger001 5y ago
    the one that gets me is adding race to emoji. they all used to be 'Simpsons yellow', a skin tone not found in any ethnic or racial group, and as such not representing or excluding any group but now we have black white and other various skin tones for our happy-faces. WHY? Does black happy face mean something different than white happy face isn't happiness universal? why bring race into something that was simply meant to express emotion?
    • krapp 5y ago
      I don't understand why so many people get so angry about something so inconsequential.
      • dimgl 5y ago
        No one is angry. That's the point. The point is that no one should care about race, but everyone all of the sudden is.
        • krapp 5y ago
          But we're talking about expanding the color palette on a set of icons. If no one is angry about it, why do people keep complaining about it? >The point is that no one should care about race, but everyone all of the sudden is. This doesn't read like the opinion of someone who isn't angry about something.
          • smegger001 5y ago
            Not angry, exhausted. Tired of everything becoming new theater in the culture war. Tired of things that were intrinsically neutral and apolitical before are being changed for no reason other than to make it another battleground.
            • open0 5y ago
              Maybe things were neutral for you, but not for others? Man I wish I could see a face attached to every comment in this thread.
  • rantwasp 5y ago
    you do have tolerance. you just don’t know it. a lot of things are “political”. You cannot share virtually anything about you or your life without some political subtext. Try sharing something, anything and I’ll make it political in 2 easy steps. Unless you’re a machine, there is politics at work. does everything have to be a woke political discussion? prolly not
    • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      A lot of things are "political", but not that many are political. > Try sharing something, anything and I’ll make it political in 2 easy steps. Yeah, see, that's the problem. The problem isn't that everything is in some way political. It's people who are looking to make things political. (In fact, that could be a functional definition of woke-ness.) You don't want that at work. Eventually, the woke people will find a way to turn on some of your most valuable and most talented employees. That's not going to end well, no matter who wins the fight.
      • rantwasp 5y ago
        so you saw what i was trying to point out. the problem is not political things. it’s people that are turning a difference of opinion into “cancelling” someone else. my opinion is that you literally cannot ban politics at work. people will still talk about things. you need a culture of tolerance and openness.
      • anigbrowl 5y ago
        The problem isn't that everything is in some way political. It's people who are looking to make things political. But often they are political and people are simply pointing it out, which makes other people uncomfortable. 'That's just how X is' or 'things have always been that way, what's the big deal' are very often the product of past political decisions whose results have become the default.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • qudat 5y ago
    The more our communication defaults to chat (e.g. slack) the more I feel like it is detrimental to our productivity. I think we will wake up from this fever dream of Slack and realize there are better ways to communicate.
  • globular-toast 5y ago
    I can imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts: an unoccupied one. Lots of people are going to work just to get out of the house and doing make-work. They aren't invested in their work. It isn't what they want to do. The work isn't real with real outcomes and real responsibility. It's not hard.
    • matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > I can imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts: an unoccupied one. A distracted mind, perhaps. I think it's interesting how far from the economy politics has shifted. I have the impression that before the 21st century people used to fight a lot more for worker's rights, unionization, better working and living conditions... You know, things that actually impacted the bottom line of capitalists. Curiously, all this mainstream "wokeness" seems to have begun after Occupy Wall Street. Politics seems to have been de-economized and the economy seems to have been de-politicized.
• yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  > last week Alphabet, Google’s parent, had to deal with another internal petition circulating among employees, this one calling on the firm’s leadership to make a statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel”. It's a special kind of hubris to believe that despite over a thousand years of conflict in the region, the right people to comprehensively understand and solve the problem are some people who make a search engine from the other side of the planet.
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    It doesn’t sound like the internal petition was calling for the firm to solve the conflict. That would be unrealistic, but it’s not at all the case here.
    • lliamander 5y ago
      What then is the purpose of demanding others make a public stand on an issue over which they have no practical control?
      • tshaddox 5y ago
        There are plenty of purposes. Why are you and I talking about the issue right now despite presumably having little influence over the outcome?
        • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
          We are willingly engaging in a discussion, which is different from compelling people in a position of power over others to make a statement.
        • nailer 5y ago
          The grandparent was asking what those purposes are, not what amount of them there are.
          • 5y ago
• oogabooga123 5y ago
  These problems fix themselves given enough time. Less productive firms go out of business and take their cultures with them. Social norms are evolved, not designed.
  • genericone 5y ago
    Sometimes businesses/organizations are propped up for their missions by wealthy sponsors and not markets. There are no market pressures that make them go out of business unless the sponsors themselves feel financial loss and stop sponsorship.
  • moomin 5y ago
    Yes, which is why it’s neither a good look nor good business for tech firms to be holding back the tide on social norms’ evolution.
  • worik 5y ago
    But there are many solutions to that. Many "better" states firms could evolve into. I agree that social norms are evolved, but part of that evolution is the activism of the people within. So the fact that social norms evolve does not mean we should stop working on them
• andrew_ 5y ago
  tip: Disable javascript to get around the paywall I'm a huge fan of what Coinbase and Basecamp have done. Coinbase is thriving and Basecamp appears to be no worse for wear. I hope we see a continuance of this trend; whereby we continue to encourage DE&I whilst keeping the worst and most toxic topics out of day to day business.
  • CPLNTN 5y ago
    In his most recent blog post DHH said that the small group of people leaving Hey was offset by a lot of new customers for Basecamp
  • andrew_ 5y ago
    If you're going to downvote, at least provide objective reasoning for it. Otherwise it's just petty disagreement, which violates the spirit of HN.
    • andrew_ 5y ago
      Amusing, cowards.
• eric4smith 5y ago
  People are human. But work is work. The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work. Just stop to think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition condemning something that has nothing to do with work? The workplace necessarily is going to bring together people that do not agree on personal matters - but who best align on matters relating to... work. Color me naive, but shouldn’t what happens in the office be about the office??? Shouldn’t we be advocating on non office things outside of the office??
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    > The point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work. What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs (like literally my most basic needs, think food and shelter).
    • devoutsalsa 5y ago
      I think the parent comment is saying work is all ultimately all about making money. That’s in sync with what you’re saying. I think.
      • yyeess 5y ago
        Not quite. It’s also about producing society. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wage-labour-capital.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wag...
    • jdgoesmarching 5y ago
      I was about to say, this is the most chilling HN sentence I’ve ever read. The totality of our existence from 8-5 is not owed to someone who profits from our labor and skills because they got lucky with some seed money or an inheritance a decade ago. That’s just the divine right of kings with extra steps.
• seibelj 5y ago
  Why can’t we just let the market sort it out? Let the people who want to talk politics all day start, lead, and work at firms that encourage it. And those that don’t will do the same. It’s my same issue with socialists who want democratic control of companies. If it’s so obviously better, why not start one yourself? Or use government money to do so (socialists, after all). I just wish everyone would voluntarily associate and live their best lives rather than forcing a “one size fits all” approach to every problem. We live in the greatest time ever for expressing yourself in any myriad of ways. Just live and let live.
  • throwaway292893 5y ago
    * others response to you * Hey get that libertarian common sense out of here! Downvote!
    • kokanator 5y ago
      Am I to understand by your comment that libertarians are not tolerated on HN?
      • throwaway292893 5y ago
        Well his comment was greyed out from downvotes and nothing he said was wrong, just there's a different atmosphere for everyone. His views aligned with a libertarian which I think were once accepted here. It's gotten more leftist here for sure. Part of woke socialism/marxism is shouting dissenters down, downvoting in this case.
        • kokanator 5y ago
          That was my assumption. Just wanted to pull more focus into what was occurring. Then, as if on cue, they proved your point by instantly down voted you!
          • throwaway292893 5y ago
• flyinglizard 5y ago
  The only reason this is an issue in the first place is the outsized, insane amount of influence these firms have over our society and culture. It wouldn't be as interesting (or consequential) if these guys were in Ford or GM (in fact it's not rare for unions to have stated political positions).
• kokanator 5y ago
  > Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics—and failing Really? Don't be surprised when you manipulate the political sphere outside your walls in ways never seen in the history of the world and that politic creeps inside and devours you from within.
  • whoisthemachine 5y ago
    I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but companies (unreasonably large ones especially) have certainly manipulated the political sphere "outside their walls" in such ways for a long time. See East India Company, Standard Oil, etc. See also the Gilded Age for a time that is very reminiscent of the times we live in today [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age#National_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age#National_politics
  • justbored123 5y ago
    Buddy, have you heard about lobbyist??? You really need to get out of your own bubble. Manipulating the "political sphere outside your walls" is what companies do from time immemorial. And the idea that propaganda online is more influential that literally writing the laws and legally bribing the politicians that the people that propaganda is supposed to influence voted is simply laughable.
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/e25ud https://archive.is/e25ud
• Tycho 5y ago
  The weird thing is how it’s all seems so co-ordinated. As if the HR departments of every firm get their marching orders from some central advocacy group.
  • blast 5y ago
    I bet this is a side effect of the internet and especially social media. Rapid spread of ideas/memes creates large zones of homogeneity, sort of like the fill-colour operation in paint programs. Suddenly we have "tribes", but with millions of people. The same phenomenon drives the homogeneous subgroups to extremes, since externally they define themselves in opposition to other subgroups, and internally they egg each other on, rewarding the members who find the most intense new ways to express the identity. It's not coordinated, except in the sense that the technology allows for forms of replication that never existed before. Because our brains don't expect that sort of world, this maps to a feeling of "it all seems so coordinated", even if we resist that explanation intellectually.
  • corty 5y ago
    These things are like some kind of social software. Behaviour patterns that HR departments or other departments use, because they worked well for others, get around the consequences of some legal precedent, or simply because they are fashionable. As examples, take casual friday, adding "(m/f)" to job offers, or giving out stock options. We are all just apes apeing each other after all ;)
  • twic 5y ago
    HR is not usually an important or powerful part of a company. I wonder if HR people, consciously or subconsciously, are drawn to the idea of being important and powerful for once.
    • darkerside 5y ago
      The group responsible for executing the bureaucracy is indeed powerful
  • mr_toad 5y ago
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  The reason why politics is traditionally frowned upon in the workplace is to avoid toxic peer pressure and the resulting uniformity. It is illegal to discriminate against employees for their political opinions, religion, sexual orientation, race, ethnic background, etc. Allowing or even encouraging open political debates in the workplace jeopardizes it.
  • SeanBoocock 5y ago
    Political opinions are not protected in the same way, nor should they be, as the protected classes you cite (gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc).
    • stephc_int13 5y ago
      Oh, really? I am not from the US, so I am a bit ignorant about the laws there. In France it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because of his political views. It is not allowed to ask.
      • frankbreetz 5y ago
        What if they have extreme political views? Are you allowed to wear KKK robes to work?
        • xenocratus 5y ago
          Having some political views and expressing them at the workplace are different things - that's the whole point of this thread. If your views are that extreme maybe it isn't a workplace that should be taking action? Just a thought
        • nefitty 5y ago
          Why jump to the extreme? There are plenty of people who seemingly behave “normally”, but are internally sympathetic to some abhorrent views. Does that mean they can’t write JavaScript as well as the next person? If I’m privy to their beliefs that I find disagreeable, does that mean I should “out” them, even if their internalized beliefs have no discernible effect on the workplace? I’m trying to find my place in the conversation as well. More questions bubble up the more I think. Do I really care that my neighbor is racist if I never interact with them?
• president 5y ago
  What I learned recently is that a lot of the "woke" efforts in these large public companies are directed by boards who are answering to Wall St, who are answering to elites and politicians. It's no wonder none of the "wokism" feels so in-your-face instead of genuine and organic.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • danbolt 5y ago
    Who are “elites” in this case?
• weasel_words 5y ago
  I'm just trying to wrap my head around how skewed a poll taken by "a diversity consultancy" would conclude that: "... two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work."
  • meowtimemania 5y ago
    Honestly I haven’t really had any bad experiences discussing these issues in person, but when I read the dumpster fire known as Twitter it makes me not want to get involved
    • ed25519FUUU 5y ago
      You’ll never have any issues as long as you stay between the lines, that’s the point.
      • etrabroline 5y ago
        Coming up with a poll question where any answer you give will be interpreted as support for the pollster's politics is an art. I totally believe that poll. A lot of those people probably wish they could express an ANTI-work opinion at work, but we'll never know how many because the poll was designed to not reveal exactly how popular or unpopular woke politics are.
  • volkl48 5y ago
    I imagine it depends on how the question is framed. No one wants to be fired for merely mentioning the top news story of the day in office conversation. And sometimes it's a "racial justice" topic. On the other hand, I also don't think most people want to be forced to detail their exact racial-justice views in the office or feel pressured to openly support something.
    • dehrmann 5y ago
      One of my favorite examples of "how the question was framed" is from ~5 years ago. They asked one group if they were in favor of Obamacare, the other if they were in favor of the Affordable Care Act. Turns out the ACA polls better.
• Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
  This sort of stuff happens when society reaches a level of prosperity so high that it starts worrying about nonsense None of this happens in Mexico The US needs to import fresh blood and fresh brains if it wants to survive. Less people studying social trends and more studying consumer trends.
  • throwaway1959 5y ago
    Legal, high-skilled immigrants from Mexico and other countries, - yes!
    • ed25519FUUU 5y ago
      Are you discussing politics?!
  • nefitty 5y ago
    The UN considers Mexico one of the most violent countries in the world for women. Is that cause outside of workplace-appropriate conversation? You may have chosen a country at random, but it’s disingenuous to say that worrying about femicide is “nonsense”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_women_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_women_in_Mexi...
    • Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
      The attitude towards women in Mexican tech companies, telecoms and IT companies is the same there was in American companies a mere 10 years ago or so... Where were the UN blue helmets back then? Were they storming Verizon back in 2010? Let's be real, please!
• postalrat 5y ago
  Don't talk politics. Don't talk about how much you make. Just do as you are told!
  • disposekinetics 5y ago
    That sounds way better than the current “parrot the right politics as you’re told”.
    • userbinator 5y ago
      Or as the case may be, "parrot the left politics"... (Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)
  • ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    You should openly discuss how much you make in order that you can negotiate with more leverage. But you’re right about politics.
    • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      Downvoted for giving good advice: truly, this place is more indistinguishable from Reddit than any of us care to admit.
  • wildrhythms 5y ago
    Terrifying to see sincere replies to this obviously sarcastic comment.
• crackercrews 5y ago
  > Coinbase and Basecamp, which each lost 60 employees after their bosses changed the rules, have apparently been inundated with applications from people wanting to work for politics-free firms. Basecamp had 57 employees at the time of their announcement. Are they down to -3?
  • brown9-2 5y ago
    It’s a sum
    • crackercrews 5y ago
      Coinbase alone lost 60 employees. [1] Doesn't seem like a sum. Also not phrased right. Should have been "together" not "each". 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-employees-leave-coinbase-over-ceos-pledge-to-be-apolitical/?sh=789b43a75a06 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp...
    • shkkmo 5y ago
      That's not what the quote says. It clearly states that EACH company lost 60 employees. If the intent was to convey a sum then it would have needed to use words like "combined" "total" or "sum" or at the ambigous minimum noy included the "each" word that exclused the "sum" meaning from consideration.
• bilekas 5y ago
  Its heavily paywalled.. I'd love to read it though
  • trts 5y ago
    https://archive.is/e25ud https://archive.is/e25ud
• eruci 5y ago
  People are bored at work. This leads to politics at work - especially fashionable politics of the day. Same as with people who are bored in general.
• rogers18445 5y ago
  Politics is what it is precisely because it is vacuous - you signal allegiance and that is all. You as an individual cannot influence anything any more than discussing an incoming storm would influence its trajectory. But unlike the storm we know that the results of what society produces are determined by the society. And people don't realize or care that they as an individual are not society and have no influence over it in any meaningful capacity. Many of our problems may be alleviated if game theory was a mandatory class in highschool. But then democracy would perhaps be in peril as people realize voting is as useless to them as is discussing politics. Tragedy of the commons can be a depressing thing.
  • arpowers 5y ago
    Game theory, finally someone gets it.
    • jmull 5y ago
      I don't get it. What's the insight here?
      • rogers18445 5y ago
        How often does a single vote decide an election? Never? Therefore your optimal move is not to waste your time voting - you gain nothing. If everyone thought that way it would be bad perhaps? But they don't so it doesn't matter to you. It might be argued discussing politics contributes to some emergent consensus forming that benefits society, but that consensus will form whether you participate or not and in exactly the same way unless you win the social lottery and have a disproportionate influence. So you are better off not wasting your time on political discussion, just keep track of the political trends the same way you would keep track of the trajectory of a storm heading towards you. Tragedy of the commons applies to potential just as much as it does to existing resources. The Nash equilibrium is to consume all the resources you can right down to exhaustion because you alone cannot preserve them and others will consume them whether you do or not. It is also a Nash equilibrium to conserve your time and not spend it on activities that would benefit the collective but not yourself - in the presence of a collective your contribution (and therefore influence and gain) approaches zero.
• masterphilo 5y ago
  Does anyone really believe that these giant companies actually care about the so-called 'woke' values being foisted upon them? Once companies realize that getting political is no longer a virtue (and by 'virtuous' we mean anything that increases their bottom line), we'll slowly start seeing sanity crawl back to the workplace. I'm glad to see some companies clearing that path.
• madrox 5y ago
  I'm not sure where we go from here, but not being able to escape anxiety-inducing situations in a workplace is the definition of a toxic work environment. I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work," but at the FAANG I worked at, politics was impossible to avoid. Even the desire to be apolitical is itself criticized at worst and not respected at best. Work doesn't afford the use of the "block user" button. I hope we figure out a better way that respects some people have a hard time immersing in it the way others do.
  • mk81 5y ago
    >I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work" Why not?
    • madrox 5y ago
      Because the genie is out the bottle. For better or worse, many tech companies have worked hard to make your workplace your social hub in an effort to retain employees and get them to work longer hours. That's already happened, so now we have to deal with the good and bad that came from that. Going backward to how things were is as realistic as uninventing Twitter.
      • chitowneats 5y ago
        That dynamic has not existed since March 2020.
        • cutemonster 5y ago
          I.e. since covid-19 (just in case someone finds this discussion 20 years later and wonders what was special about that March month)
          • pgwhalen 5y ago
            I'm curious if Americans won't really understand the meaning of that in 20 years. I feel like it would be equivalent to saying "September of 2001", and surely Americans now understand what that refers to.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees. It's as though there is a bargain where in exchange for boards tolerating staff radicalization, these employee groups cheerfully overlook the dystopian, totalitarian surveillance infrastructure, environmental devastation, and political corruption machines they seem to have zero problem building and managing on their behalf, and decieving users into depending on them. One doesn't even need to take a side to recognize the bitterness and contempt in tech toward red state denizens. I've sat through numerous meetings where all the shibboleths were trotted out to make sure we were all on the same political page before senior executives engaged in what would be considered hate speech against working class people in any other context. If calling people "trash" isn't hate speech, I really don't know what is. There still exists a group (perhaps even a majority) in society who are good and charitable people with an immense amount of tolerance for this stuff because they believe tolerance is the price of principles, and they're only principles when they are hard to keep. Radicalized platform company employees do not have a single moral leg to stand on in this regard. Bringing your whole self to work to build defacto social credit systems and partisan social engineering and surveillance tools is just moral licensing. Maybe that's how they sleep at night. While they found a new way to take a few more minutes of peoples time to show them outrage and advertisements, at least they mouthed the right party lines in favor of distant oppressed people they don't know personally? I know a number of people in tech who sincerely believe they do not need to be good men or women by any standard because they are self justified by being engaged not in discourse, but ideological warfare. I used to think they were misguided idealists and I thought their passion could be used for good, but I've come to realize they are just dispicable. All I can recommend is, don't let yourself be bullied.
  • etrabroline 5y ago
    > Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees. The ownership of these companies are the ones pushing these politics. Their employees are just pointing out their hypocrisy.
    • fighterpilot 5y ago
• kemonocode 5y ago
  They're reaping what they've sowed, so I don't exactly feel bad about big tech firms trying to flee "wokeness" (read: performative activism that hurts its causes more than it helps them) and finding out they won't be able to do so that easily, as it's exactly the kind of environment they've cultivated and the sort of people they've catered to for the past decade. Everything you do can be construed as a political statement in one way or another, and if you make an ideological battleground out of a workplace you'll be asking for trouble down the road.
  • itronitron 5y ago
    I see it as an indicator that although many tech firms have mythologized their missions as agents of positive change they remain largely ineffectual. If people felt that through their employment they were providing a net benefit to society on the issues they care about then they wouldn't really care much about internal company politics/culture.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• efitz 5y ago
  > according to a new Harris poll commissioned by Paradigm, a diversity consultancy, more than two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work I just plain do not believe this poll.
  • fapjacks 5y ago
    We live in the age of the lie. It's impossible to take anything at face value, because it seems like every organization we interact with is just lying to us all at every opportunity.
    • j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      Actually, we live in the age of one group of people constantly lying, and convincing everyone else that everyone lies. Soviet-style propaganda - making everyone believe that the truth cannot be known, everything is possible and everyone lies. (I am talking about intentional, informed, strategic lies, I am not talking about people that just don't know better etc.)
      • fapjacks 5y ago
        While I agree with your assertion in the general case, I think the response from other factions is that they, too, must lie in order to compete, leading to much more systemic, intentional, strategic lies.
  • lliamander 5y ago
    Me neither, but to the extent that it is a valid poll I'll bet what it actually means is the opposite of what they claim here.
  • phendrenad2 5y ago
    This was never a problem pre-pandemic. People would discuss these issues at lunch or at the watercooler. If you were bothered by politics interrupting your little heads-down work bubble? Just take lunch at your desk or pack your own water bottle. But in the WFH age, there's no getting away from it. These discussions happen in company general chat, where often important business also happens.
• williesleg 5y ago
  Clowns in control now.
• whb07 5y ago
  I’m just here for the jamming of “x” into words: Latinx, womxn, etc.
• fapjacks 5y ago
  As with anything, we need to ask ourselves how something can be used to attack political enemies and punish outsiders. The woke politics thing is dangerous, and I think organizations (like the CIA) will ultimately be the ones to wield this power against the people, even if they haven't fully mechanized it yet. That is because this isn't just "politics" as the article asserts. This is a form of ambiguous morality (one is expected to just know when something is wrong, and everyone is expected to agree) which requires the use of an oracle (CoC, D&I council, etc) that exists outside of the traditionally enumerable, rules-based systems based on the rule of law, except that it additionally can't be questioned or opted out of. This is the most ideal thing imagineable for people who want to weaponize the workplace to achieve their own ends. Proponents of this system, beware.
• api 5y ago
  There’s a very good reason there is an old tradition against politics and religion at work. You’re there to get stuff done, and topics like that tend to derail things.
• isaacremuant 5y ago
  You don't really see them running away. The big 4/5 are doubling down in their wokeness and courses that have a very American & democrat slant with absolutely no space for discourse because there's really nothing to gain, risking your job to fight a corporate machine that analyzes woke actions as a sort of compliance of PR to keep appearances. You either sing the political tune or try to remain neutral. Censorship of a lot of ideas/opinions have become so normal and demanded even (FB, Twitter, Google, etc) that "those that bring themselves" will mostly be those furthering the woke narrative. It's funny how Israel creates a conundrum because it's the one place were the bipartisan support from the US clashes with the woke view so they're trying to suppress it as fast as possible.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  I wonder why companies don't take advantage of such rivalries. Separate the wokes from the unwokes and make them compete who will deliver first
  • tachyonbeam 5y ago
    Hopefully the market will eventually sort it out.
  • w0de0 5y ago
    Smarter people - the type that make good engineers who’d deliver early - think critically about everything, not just their job. What you think of as “woke” is often composed of the compassionate, deeply reasoned ideology that such a smart person creates. It acts, practically, as a theodicy, something any coherent non-nihilistic worldview requires. Similarly, many smart engineers arrive at opposing world views with less emphasis on the problem of evil and more on a pure rational understanding of the nature and history of society. These two clever camps, admixed with America’s ideological chaos, rarely see one another clearly. The rationalists think the “woke” people are idiots for engaging with irrational intangibles of identity, and the woke people think the rationalists are cruel for refusing to admit any place for subjective experience in their expectations and understanding of the world around them. I do think the rationalists miss rather more of reality; we are not in a Greg Egan novel. But the wokeists are ignorant of the spectre of ethnic conflict in human history, of the evil foreshadowed in glorifying identity and subjective experience.
    • MillenialMan 5y ago
      I don't think they're fighting because they hold differing misconceptions. Politics is a bar fight, you won't change people's minds by giving them information because it's not about information. If it was, then the information exchanged in political arguments would actually settle disagreements.
• kwdc 5y ago
  Most political discussions fall apart due to people's inability to tolerate dissenting views. The inability to tolerate disagreement in a civil manner is likely just one cause. The amygdala hijack kicks in and suddenly people are frothing at the mouth shouting and are then soon reaching for their metaphorical pitchforks. Online its all about silencing that dissention. Shut up! You can't disagree! Steps are soon taken to make such disagreeing wrongthink disappear. It suits a child-like yet patronising view of the world but really its anti-intellectual / anti-diversity / anti-tolerance.
  • planet-and-halo 5y ago
    This is pretty much why I've checked out. I used to love discussions with people who made me see something in a different way, but these rage-driven shouting matches are illiberal (in the classical sense) and toxic. It's politics for addicts.
  • throwaway316943 5y ago
    How’d you go from people not wanting open conflict and harassment to being anti-diversity? That’s a big leap. There is a place for civil discussion but if you get kicked out because you start screaming at people and flipping tables it’s not because you’re being oppressed, it’s because you’re being an asshole that no one wants to be around.
    • kwdc 5y ago
      "[...] a place for civil discussion but if you get kicked out [...]' That "but" is the dividing line. As soon as you cross it you've left civil discussion. (And become the asshole who needs to be ejected because of it). Most times, especially in political debates, its caused by an inability to tolerate a diverse range of views, including those you don't agree with. Polarisation overwhelms this ability even further. "Diverse" is an overloaded term. Its not always loaded with emotion or about oppression. Diversity of opinions is useful. Tolerance of that is important.
      • throwaway316943 5y ago
• throwarayes 5y ago
  A feature of US work culture is that you invest your “whole self” into work. As in work isn’t just a thing you do for money, but a calling... Additionally, there’s a lack of basic social services. Those that do well can carry guilt, this leads to USs tipping culture, among other things.. also in the US private companies wield a lot of political power and capital. Companies work in this context to attract talent. And people look to large powerful employers to large, important projects for social good. This could mean working at SpaceX to colonize Mars or wanting AWS to have carbon neutral data centers. I want to at least hope my company isn’t a soulless behemoth, but actually lives up to the mission or advertising. So it’s only natural any kind of social or political issue is going to fall into this category. Including issues of racial equity... Of course the market can decide what things here they want in companies they work at. It’s not a black and white “politics or no politics” line. Everything and anything can be political.
  • smegger001 5y ago
    >A feature of US work culture is that you invest your “whole self” into work. As in work isn’t just a thing you do for money, but a calling... and it is utter bullshit. I have watched my father and grandfather been chewed up and spit out by their respective employers and that work culture. Work isn't your life its what you do to pay for your life. any time a employer tells you that they are a family or any such BS run the other way. I am exchanging x number of hours of my time skills and effort for their cash period.
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• iandanforth 5y ago
  I see a lot of anti-politics-at-work commentary here. This makes me wonder what the posters would do working for companies that have an explicit social agenda. If the politics are baked into the company, does that void the "politics and work should be separate" point?
  • filleduchaos 5y ago
    Politics has become a dirty word in the US, so people simply don't think of their pet political causes as politics. In my opinion, many Americans especially do not know how to talk politics (in large part because of how much of a dirty word it has become, and also for a bunch of historical reasons) and instead of addressing this - which, to be fair, is extremely difficult to do - people would simply rather sweep it all under the rug. It's even more complicated when it comes to the workplace because if you don't know how to talk politics you definitely won't know how to compartmentalise political debate and professional duty. To have politics in the workplace you need to be able to passionately, even furiously disagree with someone in one moment and pleasantly collaborate or offer assistance in the next. Either that or maintain a business where everyone has the same political leanings. There aren't really any in-betweens.
    • deleted 5y ago
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  • PeterisP 5y ago
    I'm not sure if it should void that point. For an example of "an explicit social agenda" I'm thinking about the various cases of explicitly Christian companies with a business that's not directly religious (i.e. not a church or the like) but with an explicit agenda of strictly keeping to the social values of their particular choosing. Should all employees share their values? IMHO not. Should they be able to require that employees share their values? IMHO not. Should employees with contradictory values (in that particular example, let's say abortion policy) be able to feel psychologically safe working there? IMHO yes. So from that perspective, if we consider some company with an explicit "woke" social agenda, the same things should apply - in my view, an anti-abortionist campaigner should be able to work for a feminist boss in a feminist company just as a pro-abortion-rights campaigner should be able to work for a Mormon boss in a company fully owned by a religious fundamentalist family, and the same for any other politically charged topics. Obviously, that doesn't work well now, especially in all the "fire at-will" USA states, but that's how I feel it should be.
• ransElectronics 5y ago
  The only way that wokeness will go away is if there is a monetary incentive for it to go away. Once that happens, if it ever happens, it will likely take 20+ years for these cancerous wretches to be purged from their institutional power. Just like it took about 20 years for them to weasel in and destroy everything.
• jrsj 5y ago
  My problem with politics at work isn’t so much that it’s politics but more that it’s always idiotic performative horseshit. Like please stop pretending you want to “help” a group of people who disproportionately hold the jobs you are automating out of existence etc. More often than not it has more to do with a small number of individuals trying to get more power for themselves than a genuine desire to help anyone.
  • pydry 5y ago
    A lot of the time the performative bullshit is the company itself trying to make changes that garner approval and attention but that don't cost it anything significant. One example would be GitHub keeping its contract with ICE but changing the master branch to main.
    • deleted 5y ago
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  • permo-w 5y ago
    this kind of captures my problem with the current progressive politics. It’s all about signalling that you’re in a support of all manner of identities, unless that identity is working class, or unemployed It’s extremely convenient for the neo-liberal elite. They get to sit back and continually rip us all off economically, while the generation that would normally be fighting it is busy fighting an invisible “institutional racism”. The people in power are not racist. Not specifically anyway. They’re just greedy. Often, because of past racism, or just coincidence, that greed disproportionately affects minorities. But the issue is greed and corruption and an improperly regulated society. It is not the invisible racist man, or microaggressions. These issues still matter, and there’s absolutely a place for social justice politics, but it’s much much less important than economic justice
    • banannaise 5y ago
• trts 5y ago
  As someone straddling the line between gen x and millennials, the concept of partnering with your corporate bosses to advocate for political causes far astray from your company's products, particularly without regard for the ability of capitalism to co-opt that energy in a cynical pursuit of profit, is basically insane to me. It seems like people have become so desperate to fill the widening void of meaning and purpose that they are willing to graft it even onto their at-will employment contract. And as someone who watched the internet exponentiate the number of niche subjects and communities it shocks me how much homogeneity there seems to be in how people think and speak today.
• devfatigue 5y ago
  I don't want a work "family". I don't want to be on camera or see coworkers on camera. It is a trope now but http://www.phrack.org/issues/7/3.html http://www.phrack.org/issues/7/3.html
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  > Technological shifts have tended to be framed in political terms, as was the case with open-source software, which initially had an anti-capitalist impetus. This is not true at all. The idea behind free software was always that if you bought it or it was given to you, you should own it entirely. This is very free market. It was anti predatory in nature, and overall political motivations to support it ranged, but the bent was very libertarian. It was opposition to abuse of customers or users and opposition to monopoly and cartel formation, and where it was focused on community building it has always been based on the principle of free association, a foundational libertarian value. Beyond that gripe, I think the reason for the push against politics at work is because people are tired of being immersed in politics 24/7 whether they like it or not, being and just inundated with every conceivable political anything all the time. Party politics, ideological politics, a constant demand to pick a (very particular) side or face professional repercussions, it is exhausting. More specifically, there's a certain political ideology that has a mantra "everything is political" and I think people are sick of appeasing them and playing their game because they vehemently scream at the top of their lungs every chance they get that they're the super good guys and call everyone that disagrees with them evil.
• lsh123 5y ago
  I always find myself amused at how the people who are involved in the political, social, and other flame wars in the workplace find time to do actual work. Just looking at the threads from earlier this week, I see a couple dozen people posting 50+ posts each every day for at least 2-3 days (each post is anywhere from a half-page to two pages of text with links, images, etc). It would take me at least 5-10 mins per post so we are looking at 6 hrs per day on average. Honestly it’s on low end since they also read other posts I would guess ;)
  • planet-and-halo 5y ago
    This reminds me of the research showing some tiny percentage of Twitter users, like 3%-4%, are responsible for the vast majority of flamewars. The asymmetry of the internet gives these people the ability to crowd reasonable people out of the commons.
    • dukeofdoom 5y ago
      I think another problem is that communicating by text in twitter posts. Its very hard to tell how serious someone is being. No facial expressions, mannerisms, or hand movements to guide. Like they could be making up the most absurd reactions, typing up a storm, and people will take them seriously more often than not.
      • tachyonbeam 5y ago
        Twitter is worse than other platforms because the format is really contrived. The 280 character limit doesn't give people space to write a nuanced, fair, well thought out response to things. Also, if you contrast twitter and reddit, I would say that on reddit, everyone is kind of on the same footing more or less. Anyone can post a thread and if the content is interesting, it can rise to the top, then every response in that thread also has an equal chance to have visibility. The design of twitter is made so that masses of people follow some small number of "influencers", and these people have an outsized voice. There is no upvote or downvote, it seems to be largely based on how many followers you have. The fact that there's no specific topical discussion groups I think also really amplifies the toxicity of the platform, because twitter can suck a bunch of people who have nothing to do with the discussion into the flamewar, as a way to increase "engagement". On a platform like HN, you have discussions about programming, and they're split into threads which people can choose to read or not. Reddit is split into subreddits on a variety of topics. It doesn't actively try to rope random people into some bullshit drama they have nothing to do with. And uh, fun fact: twitter is not profitable, more than 15 years after they were founded, 8 years after their IPO. The stock has basically gone nowhere. It's a wonder they're still here, despite their lack of innovation and lack of business sense. IMO, the world would be better without this platform, but uh, I guess once your tech company gets past a certain size, it can never go bankrupt?
• move-on-by 5y ago
  I disagree with the entire premise of this article, and the statements it makes to prove it’s points are flimsy. The first three sentences: > When at work, steer clear of politics. This rule, generally accepted around the world, does not apply in techland. Employees bring their “whole self to work”, including their political beliefs. As a software manager who has worked at a handful of companies I never once found this statement to be true. I’ve been around people who formed friendships at work and became comfortable enough to discuss political events among themselves on breaks - but never once met someone who thought that it was an acceptable topic for general discussion at the office. > Internal online forums are full of heated debates Ok yes, this is a problem and it might be more problematic for tech companies who might be more willing to have internal forms. I believe society as a whole has failed to follow our own interaction guidelines when online. It’s too easy to cross the line without the immediate vocal or visual cues you get in person or on the phone. > Digital technology has always had a political bent I disagree and the argument that apple is ‘counterculture’ is their marketing agenda and has nothing to do with the technology. > Technological shifts have tended to be framed in political terms I disagree with this too. Open source is simply what it is. Beyond that one argument, it’s such a broad statement it’s insane. Yes, politics likes to frame change in favorable terms- that has nothing to do with the technology shifts themselves. > tech firms have felt obliged to offer plenty of perks, such as free food, but also “work that aligns with personal values” How does wanting to have a positive impact on the world have anything to do with the tech field? Only thing I can think of is that there is a lot of really shady tech out their now- anything from tracking people to AI for drones. I don’t want to work for them. I also don’t want to work for a payday loan company- nothing to do with one being a tech company. > One reason is that more than in other sectors, discussions in tech firms mostly take place over Slack and other corporate communication services Back to my first concession- this is the root cause of the problem, and with so many offices closed now isn’t really a ‘tech’ problem anymore. Society as a whole needs to learn to to behave in a asynchronous environment.
• Gatsky 5y ago
  This isn’t surprising, largely a consequence I think of the ‘Bowling Alone’ phenomenon, such that people don’t do much outside of work anymore which allows the expression or development of political views. I also think that deep down some tech workers feel guilty about how much they earn (wokeness generally entails self-flagellation), and this manifests as workplace activism.
• josh_today 5y ago
  The challenge is defining the line between what’s considered politics and not. For example, would applying gender pronoun titles to internal corporate profile pages be considered politics or not
• aluminum96 5y ago
  A major part of "politics at work" is actually politics about the workplace -- see also, the recent Basecamp kerfuffle, which turned out to be about actions taken by employees in the office. Trying to ban politics is well and good, but what happens when the politics are about things that happened in your office? Politics are inevitable. Companies ought to try to manage discussion realistically, rather than covering their eyes and ignoring the problem.
• Cullinet 5y ago
  Time and place : the place for political debate. Your Place : the place where you have such freedoms as you wish. Work Place : the place we work together with other dedicated professionals in order to fulfil given tasks so that we can enjoy : A Place : the rightful place in society earned by individuals who abide by the rules and contribute positively to their social environment without causing damage, harm, upset or unfair expenses for others. No Place : the place for woke campaigning folk in a healthy society.
• nverno 5y ago
  > "according to a new Harris poll commissioned by Paradigm, a diversity consultancy, more than two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work" Of course it does, they are a diversity consultancy (whatever the heck that is)
  • tachyonbeam 5y ago
    In other news, Marlboro has found, through rigorous scientific study, that cigarettes do not increase the risk of cancer. In fact, they may help reduce the risk of developing cancer by reducing workplace stress.
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  One part of the article: This is about a guy who wrote a book on his own time, published it outside of work. Someone did not like some parts of the book and the guy had to quit his job? There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work. I write fictional stories in my spare time (never at work), I enjoy doing it. Some people enjoy reading them (I can't figure out why) It is a sad day for a Democracy when I am supposed to worry about what self-appointed political officers acting entirely outside of HR, will feel about what I write. That is an autocratic regime. Soon we will have struggle sessions at work.
  • jfengel 5y ago
    If only he had a union. But the "right to work" is the right to be fired for any reason or none.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • bagels 5y ago
      Do you mean "at will employment"?
    • baryphonic 5y ago
      California is definitely not a right-to-work state.[0] It does have at-will employment, just like almost every other state. But Apple employees are free to unionize at any time and, if successful, require dues for unionized employees. In fact, if CA is so friendly to unions and big tech companies are so progressive, why are none of the big tech companies unionized? [0]https://statelaws.findlaw.com/california-law/california-right-to-work-laws.html https://statelaws.findlaw.com/california-law/california-righ...
    • sigstoat 5y ago
      if he, and those demanding his firing were all members of the same union, how vigorously do you think it would defend him? would they not just move their campaign to having him ejected from the union?
  • 5y ago
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Eventually people will lose trust in the system, and will only work as hard as to not get fired. Like they did under Communism. Just a general decline in morale of the country. And lowering of standards of everything produced. This was also coupled with having secret police like the Stasi, and job site informants. Something like 1/3 of the population was making reports on their fellow citizens in East Germany. And work was the primary place to get dirt on someone. Any sign of not being a True believer in the system could get you reported. People should fear the authoritarian left, as much as the authoritarian right. Having communist party affiliation meant you could be terrible at your job, and be promoted. Having party connections, also meant your kids could go to University, with terrible grades. Get cars or housing, when others had to wait years.
  • atc 5y ago
    > Having the right immutable-characteristic/identity meant you could be terrible at your job, and be promoted.
• tinyhouse 5y ago
  It's usually the people with no life outside of work that insist on politics at work.
• deleted 5y ago
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• xupybd 5y ago
  I'm trying to avoid getting involved in politics online. I have a bad habit of speaking my mind and getting into arguments. I'm starting to realize I'm not doing anyone any good, especially me. I think we are struggling to live in a world where everyone's opinion is everywhere. For me at least, I need to learn to live and let live.
• ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  https://archive.ph/e25ud https://archive.ph/e25ud
• travisgriggs 5y ago
  I'm curious why it's a binary thing. The debate seems to wage between two camps: OnlyWorkRelated vs BareItAll. The truth is, I want neither extreme. I want a nice comfortable balance that my peers and can both tolerate. I appreciate being able to "solve the world's problems" with fellow workers, but not all day. And especially when it starts to get emotional. I find that humor and self deprecation are great ingredients to throw in the mix when I think things are spiraling. In either direction.
• baryphonic 5y ago
  > Coinbase and Basecamp, which each lost 60 employees after their bosses changed the rules, have apparently been inundated with applications from people wanting to work for politics-free firms. Basecamp lost 20 employees. 60 would be nearly their entire workforce. Coinbase did indeed lose 60 people out of around 1200 at the time.[0] [0]https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-08/coinbase-losing-staffers-over-political-activism-ban https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-08...
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    Coinbase is an interesting case because of how mission-driven it is. Basecamp should be more representative of a small B2B SaaS business.
  • maerF0x0 5y ago
    I wonder if there is such a thing as a "politics free" job listing site?
    • baryphonic 5y ago
      `unwoke.hr` was one attempt, but I think it was even more poorly-engineered than Parler and was immediately trolled into oblivion.
      • maerF0x0 5y ago
        Yeah, naturally it will need to be more positively marketed rather than defining itself as basically "anti-" something. For example maybe they should highlight the "focus" angle ie both DHH/Coinbase indicated that a big part of the reasoning was to remove distractions. Who knows the fact of the matter, but it seems like a reasonable razor (spending finite resources in one area means they're not available for another area)
    • permo-w 5y ago
      Do you actually mean “politics free”, or do you mean “progressive politics free”? Because unless the website is made absolutely perfectly with exactly the right intentions, it will become parler or gab for jobs. Who are the people that care so much that they’ll choose a job based on it? Probably 80% hardline conservatives, 10% aggressively apolitical people and 10% unwoke left types like me But even if the other 20% might theoretically use a site like that, the 80% hardline conservatives would be deeply off-putting. It’s why I’d never use Gab or Parler. Yeah the free speech idea is nice, but when it comes down to it, mostly, who are getting banned from Twitter and Facebook? The really abrasive and rude right-wing people Who feels ostracised in their job? I’d say generally it’s the hardcore right-wing people who lean towards being poor communicators
• mtalantikite 5y ago
  “When at work, steer clear of politics. This rule, generally accepted around the world, does not apply in techland.” Sure, let’s just ignore the long and important history of organized labor around the world. They’re imagining a fantasy land of white collar labor, which in the west was historically white and male. For everyone not in that sliver of white collar work, work for sure was a place where politics were both discussed and engaged in.
• courtf 5y ago
  This gets tricky when employers ask workers to internalize the company values (incorporating them into their identities). Probably helps with retention, but then you get everything else that comes with identity. If you represent the company, and vice versa, it's only natural to want the company to use its influence in ways that embody that, even if it seems superfluous from a purely financial standpoint. There's a case to be made that we should tone back the importance of work in all of our lives, which would potentially help with these issues. I understand the need to defend minorities from bigots, and even from milder, less intentional forms of discrimination/bias that can accumulate over the years to cause a strong drag on your life. I still like to think there are ways to do that without a lot of outrage and constant, inane meetings, but who knows.
• hytdstd 5y ago
  Why was the title edited here?
• ryanSrich 5y ago
  They invited it in and fostered it. I say they get what they deserve.
• cryptica 5y ago
  I suspect they want to get rid of ethically-minded employees who could potentially become whistle-blowers later when they find out how the company really makes its money. The next step will be to start increasing the salaries and bonuses of remaining employees. If you're ethically-minded, the best strategy is to stay in the company, pretend to be one of them, then when you catch them doing something bad, blow the whistle on them.
• xg15 5y ago
  I guess politics are reserved for the higher-ups.
• marsven_422 5y ago
  Fire the woke people, they are probably useless anyway.
• Teknoman117 5y ago
  I absolutely do not talk about politics at work. I really don't want my career derailed because someone doesn't think I'm progressive enough.
• tjpnz 5y ago
  Sometimes if I have a spare moment and a thought pops into my head I'll put it into a notes app. Sometimes I'll go back and expand these notes to the point where I've essentially got a blog post. I've got dozens of these but I'm just too afraid to post them. It's not that I'm saying anything terribly provocative either, it's mostly about coding and my experiences living in Japan. Yet there's always going to be a way of weaponizing what I've written against me - no matter how petty or far fetched. Perhaps I'm not important enough for that to happen. But if that were to change there'll be this massive trove of thing's I've written and people with the time to deep dive through it. And then label me a racist, a misogynist, an ageist, a transphobe or any number of other words which can so swiftly destroy a person yet to make their fuck you money.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • HardwareLust 5y ago
    I would love to read or hear about your experiences while living in Japan. I spent 5 years there myself, and I'd be curious to see if your impressions were similar to mine or not.
• ur-whale 5y ago
  https://archive.is/Wnqq8 https://archive.is/Wnqq8
• inglor_cz 5y ago
  Looking at this thread, references to Nazis, KKK etc. are fairly frequent. One of the curses of the woke movement is the loss of the ability to distinguish between really bad things and banalities. Nothing is banal anymore. If a Cuban guy writes something unflattering about SV women in his book, it might not be pretty, but it is a far cry from "let's roll our armored brigades through the continent, enslave unwanted ethnic groups and gas millions of people as subhumans" or "lynch blacks and terrorize entire cities". Signatories of the "fire him" letter do not seem to distinguish that anymore. That is the fruit of the victim mentality tree, watered with everyday Twitter outrage. Nothing is banal and every crisis must be escalated to verbal equivalent of nuclear war. I wonder if tech rotted our minds. Social networks are full of vicious, all-out conflicts that nevertheless do not cause any visible physical destruction and fatalities - or at least, most of the time. Thus, we are losing our ability to de-escalate, compromise and move beyond. But precisely this ability is the core of diplomacy, as opposed to constant wars that plagued the world previously. This is a dangerous way to go. It feels like a prelude to the religious wars of the 1600s and 1700s. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odium_theologicum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odium_theologicum
• asdswe 5y ago
  Politics of any kind should definitely be banned from work. Activist types that want to shove their ideology into other people's throat can definitely do that during their free time where other people can at least avoid their presence. There are always plenty of like-minded woke friends to be found from Twitter or r/socialism.
• sjaak 5y ago
  I just listened to a conversation where Sam Harris paints a bleak picture after having spoken with leaders in tech. Sam Harris (SH): I was recently at a meeting of very connected people in tech and media. I won't name anyone but they are people who are or were running some of the biggest companies. These are people with massive influence and are on the same page with everything we've said here. But when told that they really should just present a united front here and not tolerate these mutinies of their woke employees. So the example I gave in this meeting is ... (Sam goes over the situation of Nicholas Christakis at Yale, omitted for brevity) ... So I floated that example to these captains of industry, and said at what point do your companies just hold the line? And say: if you feel that way go work somewhere else. And everyone in the room agreed that that was not going to happen, that there was no way that was going to happen. Jesse Singal (JS): Just because of the backlash you mean? SH: Yeah that it has gone too far, it's too scary, there is too much money to lose. It went over like a lead balloon, it was a complete non-starter. I kept pushing it, the people in this room literally know everybody, you could have a star chamber meeting where everyone agreed to be on the same page here, so that the mutineers from Google couldn't just jump over to Amazon or Facebook or Apple. You could literally get everyone to agree to just wake up simultaneously. They said: there's no way it's going to happen. It's over. It was an incredibly bleak picture coming from people who either are at the top or were at the top of some of the biggest businesses in tech and media. Which suggested to me that the situation is worse than I thought, not better. The above is a partial transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18mvHPN9mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18mvHPN9mY from 36:55 forward.
  • louwrentius 5y ago
    That’s funny, if you deliberately say the actual N-word instead of using ‘N-word’, even in the described context, I actually can see why you would fire somebody. Because I can’t see a valid reason why you would actually say that very laden word out loud in almost any context.
    • Tycho 5y ago
      That’s how it works with literally any other word.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jacksonkmarley 5y ago
  This 'article' is very short, and the evidence of 'failing' to run away from politics is dropped in the second last sentence. I think there is a big difference between having a discussion about politics at work, and using your workplace as a tool to forward your political agenda. Somewhere in the middle is using company resources as a platform for (not directly work-related) political discussion. Although I dislike the way that most employers take advantage of unequal power distributions with employees, I don't see any real issue with a company saying "our policy is to leave politics for non-work time". At some point as an employee you are actually expected to do things that your employer wants, and if you are doing non-work why should the company pay for it unless it's part of your work agreement? A company transitioning between different policies is a challenging situation, and for a company in the public eye that will almost inevitably generate controversy, but actually "letting the market decide" about this issue seems good. It means that there are companies at various points on the politics-at-work spectrum that employees can choose from.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  Are we allowed to discuss the fact that, nine times out of ten, it's women, not men, bringing politics to work? I've noticed this pattern in every place I've worked.
• edem 5y ago
  Meanwhile at Basecamp: https://world.hey.com/dhh/after-the-storm-9370f871 https://world.hey.com/dhh/after-the-storm-9370f871 I hope there will be more anti-woke companies in the near future where I can work instead of getting distracted by brainwashed wokes.
• blablabla123 5y ago
  I try to keep personal interests and views for myself while staying open to discuss any politics that the company is involved in. That can range from internal "woke topics" to external matters like doing business in countries with governments that don't care. The important thing is to stick to facts instead of personal opinion. It's not so difficult and if more people did it, the workplace would be much more pleasant for everyone. I'm always confused that politics at work can now mean either internal corporate career politics or politics in society. Still, I think it applies to both types.
• 627467 5y ago
  > Alphabet, Google’s parent, had to deal with another internal petition circulating among employees, this one calling on the firm’s leadership to make a statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel”. :facepalm: corporations, like nation states, now(ish) are lobbied to take geopolitical stances.
• Mikho 5y ago
  Companies provide too much freedom and they are too afraid to punish employees for not doing actual work they are paid to do. Not to mention not punishing those who create toxic unproductive work environment for others by pushing political agendas at work. This leads to workplace radicalization when arrogant self-proclaimed judges of other people morals and executioners of other people careers behave as uncontrolled passive-aggressive troublemakers.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Cancel culture ruins free speech and free thought. Just keep politics out at work. Severely punish sexist and racist behavior. it's pretty simple. People will avoid wearing their politics on their sleeve. I think there should be a company wide dictate that you don't have to listen to anyone who tries to drag you into it and that you can take it to HR when someone tries to force your hand. Work is for work. I don't want to go there and become a social warrior. I donate to liberal political groups all the time but I don't think that has anything to do with my coding or working with others. Honestly I don't care about you or your politics at work, please leave me out of it.
• emteycz 5y ago
  I am really trying but I still have no idea what "being woke" means. I would like to try being woke tomorrow - what do I do?
• j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  The problem isn't politics, though. The problem is that you have two mainstream belief systems that do not share the same reality, that are mutually exclusive. One has to be completely wrong. This is not about perceived polarization, black-and-white thinking and stuff. Those camps live in two different worlds, and the truth isn't somewhere in between. They don't disagree about some facts, they disagree more fundamentally about the question how facts are produced. Naturally, the people in-between or the ones that are silent are seen as an enabler of the other side. And to a certain degree, in this polarized situation, that is true. After all, the other side wants to take away your fundamental rights. And again, that is factually true - the other side does want to take away or not grant some rights from/to you, and you see those rights as fundamental. So the question is, can you ignore and escape politics? Should you? Do you have to get involved? Well, generally, you should get involved - of course: Society doesn't work otherwise. However, in this situation, its understandable if you skip out, with tensions running that high. But then how can these two camps can ever come together? The solution can certainly not be that two separate groups enforce themselves in their beliefs - because unfortunately, it seems that this only works by vilifying the other side, only increasing tensions. So it seems that talking politics at work is the lesser of two evils? Or is it too late for that and stuff's just gone too far?
• haspoken 5y ago
  http://archive.is/Wnqq8 http://archive.is/Wnqq8