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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 w

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.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??
    - _jal 5y ago
      > When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too? I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved. But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
      - aerosmile 5y ago
        I wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here. Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space. And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
      - andreilys 5y ago
        Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities. Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
        Apocryphon 5y ago
- mc32 5y ago
  You’re both right. As a member of a company one is to further the mission of the company but it’s based on an agreement that in exchange for that, you and the company come to an agreement on compensation.
- deleted 5y ago
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- lliamander 5y ago
  I think it's fair to say the reason the business employed you is to fulfill the aims of the owners of the business. This does not negate you have your own aims and needs, but for the employment relationship to continue those aims need to be in alignment.
- jonas21 5y ago
  That seems like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of the comment. I think what they're saying is that you should view an employment relationship as an exchange, where you get money (which can be used to fulfill your basic needs), and your employer gets your labor for a certain number of hours per week. As you are voluntarily exchanging your labor for money, it's reasonable that the focus of the workplace should be to advance the goals of your employer and not your personal goals. Of course it's best if these goals align and everyone can achieve their goals simultaneously. But when there's a conflict, the employer's goals should take priority. That's why they're paying you.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    > But when there's a conflict, the employer's goals should take priority. Employees don't need to blindly follow the pre-existing structures, rules, dynamics, and culture of their workplace 100% of the time, never attempting to modify them. It is possible to change these things, both in small and in large ways. Sure, efforts to make large changes are probably not successful the majority of the time. But change does occur. An employer is an abstract entity composed of humans. Who else can change the nature of this entity but the humans who make it up? And small changes, while seemingly insignificant, can add up over time in a very meaningful way. One can also vote with their feet and leave if the clash of values is large enough. This requires having other options or resources, but for those with the option, it is a powerful way of making a statement.
  - lanstin 5y ago
    I disagree. They are paying you because of your judgment and character to do what they want in the best possible way. When employees just go along to get along, that is when company sized disasters happen. You have an obligation to speak up for what you perceive as good and oppose what you see is evil. That is a part of being a professional, it is taking responsibility for the big picture. Why do customers want this, how can we build a sustainable business delighting them and avoid the temptations to take shortcuts that are seductive but short sighted.
    - knorker 5y ago
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs well I do, but I've noticed that employers in interviews always want to know about how interested I will be in their problems and what I find attractive about their problem space and I get the distinct feeling they don't want to hear "if you pay my target wage I will be interested in what you want for 8 hours a day"
- mypalmike 5y ago
  Are these not just two different perspectives on the same thing? The "aims of the entrepreneur" is overly specific to certain work arrangements, but overall the point stands. You have motivations to work which align with fulfilling your needs, and the organization you work for has motivations which align with what the owners/leaders want. The latter is served in part by your labor.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  Seems like you're agreeing with them. You do what you need to do at work so that you can afford to buy food and shelter outside of work. But even if not, they seem to mean personal aims to be philosophical in nature, such as political ideological furthering, not concrete like food and shelter.
moomin 5y ago
It’s well worth reading up on the details of the Basecamp disaster. At every point in the process, it was about work. How people behaved at work, how clients were treated, how people reacted to feedback, how information was communicated. It may have been “politics” but it was in no way separable from Basecamp‘s core business.
- nailer 5y ago
  From having read about the details: someone took a list making fun of mainly European (‘white’ in American) names and posted an image saying mocking people leads to genocide. Yes this is easily separable from making productivity tools.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Although my immediate reaction to the Pyramid of Hate [1] was a similar jump to, “is this saying jokes will lead to genocide?!”, ultimately I don’t think that was the intent. People seemed to have interpreted it in different ways, specifically “You’re telling me I support genocide if I think someone’s name is funny?” I think the people who brought the pyramid into the equation were pointing out how individual behaviors, in aggregate, lead to greater possibilities of increased oppression. I think it’s a simplification to say that they lead to genocide, because those sorts of results are dependent on many other factors (ie economic problems, political instability, etc). When combined, these factors result in greater oppression. More apropos to the conversation regarding workplaces, I would consider them evolving into institutions where certain cultural norms are upheld. The more institutions within which a certain cultural norm is respected by individuals, the more other people/institutions in power have leeway to move in certain directions. [1] https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of-hate.pdf https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      My perspective on this is you don't lob any sort of infographic about genocide at somebody without meaning to tarnish them. That's escalating the seriousness of a conversation drastically. Making fun of people named Dickinson is not remotely cool, but bringing genocide into the resulting conversation seems way over the line.
pitspotter 5y ago
Are we, in fact, waking up to woke?
duped 5y ago
The office exists within society. Some things exist everywhere you go in society. You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business. Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society. The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect the most change. Just in recent history, the Civil Rights movement was built by people disrupting workplaces through boycotts and sit-ins. As we move forward in society it goes to reason that future movements should follow that example.
- deleted 5y ago
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- buzzy_hacker 5y ago
  I feel there is room in the middle. While we should not leave ethics at the door, not every ethical issue is applicable to work (as I’m sure you would agree.) So while it might be relevant to discuss “woke” issues like discrimination on group characteristics at work because that’s an issue that could manifest itself at work, I don’t think it’s relevant to call for a statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Google, as is suggested in the article. Open-minded to contrary opinions though.
- ixacto 5y ago
  Advocating for what things exactly? It might be a strawman, but I’m going to guess and it would be something like an end to perceived workplace raceism/sexism/*isms. If you let in political advocacy movements from the left do you really want political movements from the right? Or is it just ok if the left is advocating for it? I kinda think the left is trying to have their equity cake and eat it too… To some people (I am not one of them at all, but I understand the argument) any abortion is literally murder, and it as a sincerely held belief as the recent movements like BLM and #metoo were. So do you really want to hear about abortion/guns/illegals/debt/satanism/furries in the workplace? This is just setting up workplaces for problems or maybe we can just realize work is for work?
ModernMech 5y ago
> The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work. I agree with this idea at face value. But most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, traveling to work, or recovering from work -- not for the benefit of entrepreneurs, but to afford the cost of living. I think as a society we'd be less likely to inject our politics into our workplaces if we didn't have to spend such a large portion of our lives at work.
hluska 5y ago
I can’t help but wonder if the tech industry did this to itself. Tech companies offer so many amenities at the office from free food, to laundry, to massages that the line between office and home has blurred. Maybe the solution is making offices feel like offices and normalizing forty hour work weeks?
- dukeyukey 5y ago
  You think it was the benefits, rather than the we're-a-family, always on-call, live your work culture employers have been pushing?
  - anon7725 5y ago
    I think it started with college campus activism 10-20 years ago. If you feel empowered to shut down the dean’s office to oust a professor, you’ll probably think the same techniques can be applied to your workplace. It certainly doesn’t help that your workplace strives to walk and quack like some kind of college campus.
    - content_sesh 5y ago
      Campus activism is much older than 10-20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Philadelphia_student_demonstration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Philadelphia_student_demo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_strike_of_1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_strike_of_1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_of_1968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_o...
      - anon7725 5y ago
        Yes, but this particular flavor is new.
        lanstin 5y ago
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The workplace is the best place if you are incredibly lonely and don’t interact much with society outside of work.
skybrian 5y ago
More generally, most organizations have a mission. Even if the mission is explicitly political (like getting a candidate elected) there are still going to be things that people care about that aren't mission-related and getting into an internal dispute about them is a distraction from the mission. An example of that for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc... But this hardly solves all political disputes. It's enough to rule some issues off-topic and have it generally be understood, but there are always grey areas, and plenty of politics that's directly mission-related.
imbnwa 5y ago
In that same vein, shouldn't office dating/sexual pursuits be a no-no?
- pmorici 5y ago
  They generally are.
  - odiroot 5y ago
    Maybe in US. Meeting people at work usually was (and probably still is) the most common way to find a romantic partner in Europe.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    Perhaps de jure, definitely not de facto in my experience
bsanr2 5y ago
Unfortunately, in the never-ending struggle to force employees to conform to some platonic ideal of efficient production, companies have spent a lot of time and energy - not just in their own policy, but also in lobbying to the government and the public at large - trying to make work the center of the average American's life. Think of all the things you have to pass by your boss before making decisions about your own life: which doctor you go to, where you might live, when you might take time for yourself and your family. So, this is the flipside. We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot. Our companies spend millions and millions of dollars going over our heads to influence our legislative representatives, and seek ever greater and ever more direct influence on employees. You have to expect pushback. And political activism within companies, and pressure from employees for companies to be active in the way they desire, is the predictable - and, frankly, justifiable - form that that pushback takes. Kick everyone out of the office at 5PM and you'll see a lot fewer people so invested in the political environment within and driven by their employers.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  > We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot This is a curious fantasy that many Americans hold. After having spent the best part of a decade working mostly in Sweden and Germany, I can tell you this has no basis in reality.
  - bsanr2 5y ago
    It's the impression that I've gotten from every review of the subject, even from natives, so, "no basis in reality" seems like a stretch. At the very least, it is objectively true that people in these countries work fewer hours than Americans do. But I tend to believe that it extends beyond this, and that there is a fundamentally different approach to work in these countries than in America. If people here want the paradigm to be "work is work," then the sacrifice is that you carve out of the work-centered lifestyle Americans live more time and energy that work cannot touch. If your contention is that Europe is not perfect in this regard, that's orthogonal to my point, which used those (perhaps idealized) examples as naught more than illustrations.
geofft 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Absolutely not, and for a very clear reason: the aims of the entrepreneurs are to make money and reduce costs. My aim, in asking for raises, is to increase costs. Are you saying this is inappropriate? I am at work because the company and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. They need things done that are better done if I'm there; in exchange, I have a number of demands of them, starting with a sizable chunk of money. They're willing to meet those demands, so I work. If I make political demands of my employer, it may be novel, but it is not a fundamental change of a relationship where I am already making financial demands of my employer. If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases.
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
  presumably you would also be ok with getting paid less money in exchange for more political freedoms at work?
  - smegger001 5y ago
    as I am one that doesn't seek to evangelize my political views at work, I would rather go the other direction pay me more if I agree not too bring them up. (and that includes political causes I agree with. I don't like it because it inevitably causes arguments between other coworkers that hold opposing views and i have to put up with both sides.)
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases. That's not the problem though. The problem is that your political advocacy causes problems with your co-workers, not your employer. If you have political activism at the work place then you're possibly making the workplace hostile for people who disagree politically with you. You might never hear about it, especially if you're in the majority, but you're still turning people off.
  - 5y ago
thrower123 5y ago
Yes. You go to work because they pay you. That's it. I do not care about your politics, and I beg that you don't care about mine. I am not your family. Odds are, I will not choose to be your friend. A professional relationship as coworkers is the goal here.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  This naive take seems to imply that companies, in America today, do not have political influence. Or, companies do have political influence, but its workers deserve no say despite spending 40 hours of every week devoted to serving its interests.
gsich 5y ago
>Shouldn’t we be advocating on non office things outside of the office?? If you want robots, then yes.
dukeyukey 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. No? For me, it's to give me somewhere to earn money while practicing/improving my valuable skills. I couldn't give a monkeys about the dreams and aspirations of my millionaire CEO.
ggggtez 5y ago
Yes, you're naive. Maybe if your a worker on a factory line and only being paid to turn a wrench, then sure. But at tech firms, you're being paid to think.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  Yeah - you are being paid to think to solve the problem specifically related to your work, not being lost in thoughts about your personal political beliefs.
  - ggggtez 5y ago
    That's not my experience at all. Maybe if you're a junior engineer, then you are told what to do, but generally speaking these companies have many senior people who have to decide for themselves. The idea that a company has money and that workers are just cogs is an outdated way of thinking. These stories are often focusing on the ethical concerns of senior engineers, often ones whose job is directly tackling problems of ethics (such as ethics of AI, or censorship systems).
antihero 5y ago
The workplace is 8+ hours of most people's day. You cannot divorce it from the very real problems that exist in the world.
- smegger001 5y ago
  honestly i think the problem here is the standard 40 work week monopolizing societies time. in the last 50 years worker productivity has shot up but the hours worked have stayed the same. we have multiple studies showing greater productivity with shorter work days or shorter work weeks but we insist on keeping 40 hour 5 day weeks. If people had more time outside of work they could do this outside of work.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    I think we're encouraged to reflexively refuse that notion. But if we consider its feasibility, everything kind of makes sense. But that initial reflexive urge to reject the reality you painted is interesting. There is a bit of a chilling effect going on, for sure.
- paul_f 5y ago
  Actually you can. And it has been done successfully for decades. Proselytizing has no place in the workplace.
  - kulig 5y ago
    If it were for people like you we'd still be working 18 hour days from the age of 7 until death
  - halostatue 5y ago
    …for mostly straight white men, making more money than more qualified women while getting away with sexual harassment. Advocating for equal treatment isn’t proselytization, it’s asking for treatment like an equal human being.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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EMM_386 5y ago
> Color me naive, but shouldn’t what happens in the office be about the office??? Yes I don't understand any of this either. Maybe I'm just an old dog who's been in software engineering for 20+ years, but when I get hired by a company they exchange one thing (money) for what I can offer (programming). If I am uncomfortable with what they are asking me to do regarding my skill of programming, I can quit at any time and go somewhere else. I can't for the life of me understand how employees are debating things like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during their time at work, on public channels. There is plenty of time outside of work to do whatever you want.
- fires10 5y ago
  Not everyone has the option of going somewhere else. I would like to see that as a viable option for everyone. I have often wondered if we ensured everyone had a viable option how it would allow us to change discrimination laws. An employer of last resort that you can legitimately support yourself with. Not poverty wages.
groby_b 5y ago
The problem here is that the office is deeply interwoven with the political. Part of this is that, as they say, "the personal is political". But let's set that aside for a moment, because we could make the case that in-office personal matters (e.g discrimination) is legally covered. (I'd debate that, but that's more political than HN likes to get, so... setting aside) Even then, companies have political impact. When the CEO of Citizen decides hate mobs are a good idea, and he sponsors homeless hunting for sport with a $30k bounty, that's political. If your company decides to sell surveillance software, that's political. More so if they pick specifically whom they sell it to or not. If your company decides to oppose or not oppose attempts to get at user data, that too is political - either way. And worse, if your company decides that since they have money, they should get a voice in the political process, that too is political.
kwdc 5y ago
Perhaps hiring should measure people's ability to tolerate opposing views? It can't be good to work with people who can't stay civil in the face of disagreements. Surely that is a sign of a lack of emotional intelligence?
lamontcg 5y ago
Just try and jam that genie back in the bottle as hard as you possibly can...
tzs 5y ago
> 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? I don't think that is very persuasive, because it is quite common in most other places petitions are circulated for the petitions to have nothing to do with the activity at that place. For example, of all the petitions I've been asked to sign outside grocery stores or inside shopping malls I don't recall a single one being about things concerning grocery stores or malls. A better argument would be that when someone circulates a petition at work they are circulating it among people they know, and those people know that they know the petitioner, and that the people who will be offered the petition after them know them. If I sign a petition at a mall, probably no one I know will notice. If I don't sign the petition, no one I know will know that I was offered the chance and declined. Not so at work. A petition at work as a side effect is essentially asking everyone to publicly declare their stance on the subject of the petition. I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work, and to not have such non-contribution held against you. A petition essentially forces you to contribute, and it is a bad form of contribution because your contribution is not accompanied by an explanation greatly increasing the chances of it being misunderstood.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  > I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work I think you already have that right. > and to not have such non-contribution held against you That is the tricky part. How do you know if they will or will not be held against you? Maybe your skills aren't great but not bad enough to fire you but now with your non-contribution on an opinion is taken as you opposing it and your shortfall of skills is used as a platform to masquerade the real reason. Maybe the people judging you this way operate in a way that doesn't provide any clear cut evidence of their ulterior motives. Subjective areas like these have lots of shadows and shades of grey to hide things.
hypertexthero 5y ago
> “The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation underlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he spent several weeks volunteering at Auschwitz, clearing paths for visitors and sleeping in a former barracks. His father had served in the German Army, and Steidl participated in a program that had been established, he said, to show young Germans “what the parents had done. The experience helped him confront ‘the dark side of Germany.’ One thing that he contemplated was the ethics of separating one’s work from one’s domestic life. ‘I read about how the homes of the officers were outside the concentration camp, where they had a wife and children, and a little dog, and they were the nicest people you can expect,’ he told me. ‘And then they were going to work—they were shooting and murdering and sending people to death. So I also thought that it makes a huge difference when you are not isolated from your work, when working and living is a symbiosis. Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment. You are working there all day, and then in the evening you drive home and you have your pleasant place to stay, with clean air, while poor people have to live with the dirt you are producing. I control my noise, because I am sleeping there, with an open window, every night.’” —Gerhard Steidl https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl-is-making-books-an-art-form https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl...
- Aunche 5y ago
  People don't spontaneously decide that conducting murder in a concentration camp is a morally acceptable career path. The Nazis succeeded in the first place because they injected their politics into every aspect of life. Politics-free spaces create additional friction that impedes the rise of radical ideology.
  - greesil 5y ago
    That would be true if there was no difference between seeking equality and justice vs. scapegoating Naziesque goose-stepping grievances. I say this as someone who gets annoyed by politically active coworkers. Not all ideologies are created equally.
ajkjk 5y ago
I think that's totally absurd. You're a human wherever you go, you should not be required to put aside what's important to you for most of every day, keeping your head down and paying tribute to capitalism. Work is, and should be, real life.
fukmbas 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?? entrepreneur? LOL
arvinsim 5y ago
For some people, work is life. So it isn't surprising that one spills over the other for them.
modriano 5y ago
I sleep about 6 hours a day, I work about 9 hours a day, and the rest is for life sustaining activities, housework, personal projects, and leisure. Work is where I spend most of my time. Being a positive force in the world is important to me, so I only work on important problems, and to defend against falling into a motivated reasoning culture, I only work places where people can freely discuss ethical issues. I don't want to trick myself into thinking I'm connecting the world, but then discover I'm actually building tools that facilitate genocides in Myanmar or ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs or something. So no, at least for me, attempting to compartmentalize my life like that seems like a really bad life strategy. I just don't want to regret how I spend a major part of my life.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition... We've set commerce at the center of our society and gone so far as to grant corporations "personhood", allowing them to wield enormous political influence. As such, they're able to donate unlimited sums of money under the guise of "free speech". With regard to its effect on the spirit of a functioning democracy, this is illogical to say the least. To some extent, this outsized influence disenfranchises the citizen voter. So, given this system, it's actually quite logical for workers to express their social/political preferences through the corporations for which they work. It's a means of reclaiming some of their power by influencing an entity that itself has more influence. If this deference to corporations were not the case, then I might be inclined to agree with you. >*People are human. But work is work." At least here in the U.S., our work-life balance is totally out of whack. We're expected to give so much to employers and invest so much of ourselves in the success of the company. We take time away from our families, etc. As such, the lines between our personal and work lives are already quite blurred. So I think this is where it seems strange to some that they are expected to leave select parts of their personal lives at the door.
ohazi 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Have you ever worked for a large company, that's flush with cash, that likes to offer borderline ridiculous perks to employees (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.)? Usually there are relatively few people at these companies who do the work that actually moves the proverbial needle. There are a lot of people at these companies who only ever get to work on some vanity project motivated by internal politics. Work that literally doesn't matter, that the owners don't actually care about, and that's eventually going to get thrown away after being used as some sort of bargaining chip. But smart people often want to feel like they're doing "important" work, so we dress it up with goals and deadlines and KPIs to make it seem important. A lot of these workplaces can more accurately be described as "day care for adults."
- Rapzid 5y ago
  > day care for adults I've never heard it put like this. Amazing. I shy away from these places towards small to mid size companies with more critical work..
SomaticPirate 5y ago
“Outside of office” Part of this is that office has come home (literally when it comes to the current pandemic work situation). With tools like Slack and Teams “work” has come home more than ever. Of course, there are healthy ways to limit this but you can’t say work hasn’t fundamentally invaded our home space. Also factor in how much people work, where you spent 40+ hours a week (again, leaning towards more due to pandemic work situation) there isn’t much time for activism outside the office. Pushing for their company to support social justice causes is the white, white-collar workers way of supporting these causes without inducing the level of discomfort of actually protesting. And if you get fired for it, all the better. Sans NDA (which companies are making increasingly common) you have an excellent case for the social zeitgeist to support you on.
treeman79 5y ago
Current mentality is with us or against us. Was in a woke office for awhile. I tried very hard to stay out of it. Learned quick that is very offense behavior. Was lectured on it.
wpietri 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. I disagree. The notion that humans turn into employer-owned production machinery for 8 hours a day is one very particular way to conceptualize work. But it ignores both the individual as a whole person and the society that contains and enables the workplace to function. To me, even as a former and perhaps future entrepreneur, I think it's a giant mistake to see a workplace as a place where the entrepreneur is a tiny god-king. Work is a social and societal activity at least as much as it is an economic one. If people want to play-act as robots, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work, and it's not the kind of person I hire.
- yyeess 5y ago
  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wage-labour-capital.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wag...
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I don't think the argument is that it's some separate sphere entirely disconnected from normal human interaction. It's like saying "the point of a movie night is to hang out and enjoy a movie together". If me and my friends were halfway through a movie, and I stood up and staged a loud political protest against something one of the characters said, my friends would be pretty rightfully unhappy with me.
  - rStar 5y ago
    > my friends would be pretty rightfully unhappy with me. most people don’t go to work to recreate, so this is a bad example.
  - jckahn 5y ago
    That’s fair, but if a character in said movie was making brazenly anti-Semitic views (for instance) I think it would be reasonable to share that it made you uncomfortable and have a discussion about it at some reasonable time shortly thereafter.
ridaj 5y ago
That may be your point of view, but can you hire a lot of people with this attitude? Companies in tech successfully attract talent on the basis that they provide an opportunity to "have impact in the world". I work in tech and I hear this all the time from candidates in interviews, when asking why do you want to work here. Nobody says they just want to make a lot of money for the shareholders and a little for themselves. The meaning of work and quality of workplace environment is incredibly important to people who work in tech. That's part of the job market situation. If there was a massive surplus of qualified candidates to do the work, sure the "entrepreneurs" could be telling their staff to "shut up and get to work" whenever they talked about anything non-work-related... But at this time, it just isn't something that employers can really afford to do, and they have set themselves up for it too by hyping up their workplace culture and perks, and by positioning themselves not just as money making machines but as beacons of societal progress.
- nradov 5y ago
  That's what candidates say in interviews because that's what they think they're supposed to say. How many are telling the truth?
  - ridaj 5y ago
    I also see it very often in internal survey open answers as the answer for why you enjoy working here. These are anonymous, there is no incentive to lie.
    - throway98752343 5y ago
      Unless you're certain it's anonymous, there's incentive to not be fully open.
- sl1ck731 5y ago
  "Have an impact in the world" is a canned answer. I seriously doubt a large percentage of candidates really care, its just not appropriate (unfortunately) to say we're here for the money.
8note 5y ago
The entrepreneur is perfectly willing to use my work to push political changes. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to too. If you want to get politics away from the office, stop giving the wealthy and corporations political power
- knorker 5y ago
  Because they pay you for the work? You can use the money to further your political goals. If you go to a pizza place and pay for a pizza, you don't expect them to alter the deal after you pay, and instead give the pizza to someone homeless without asking you or refunding you.
Fordec 5y ago
Society is a democracy. One where we as people provide labor for money. During contracted hours you belong to the company, sure. Outside that you are free to do as you please. Wait no, you were at an Antifa rally on the news outside office hours? Or cancelled on twitter? Or had a drug charge? Sorry, you're fired. If you can't have your own life outside work without consequences, companies can't reasonably expect people to not bring their own life into work. Just as how you conduct your life outside work can have a reputational effect on a company, your employer's actions have a reputational effect on you.
ncpa-cpl 5y ago
From the Recurse Center manual: If you see racism, sexism, etc. outside of RC, please don’t bring it in. For example, please don’t start a discussion about the latest offensive comment from Random Tech Person Y. Everyone who comes to RC should have the same opportunity to focus on programming, and people from oppressed groups often find discussions of racism, sexism, etc. particularly hard to tune out. There are many places to discuss and debate these issues, but there are few where people can avoid them. RC is one of those places. https://www.recurse.com/social-rules#no-subtle-isms https://www.recurse.com/social-rules#no-subtle-isms
- jessedhillon 5y ago
  The excerpt quoted here sounds reasonable and pleasant, which is why I was surprised when I clicked through and found what appears to be the social rulebook of hell.
spoonjim 5y ago
I don’t think your view of the workplace is canonical, but I do want there to be a marketplace of ideas on this where companies can choose different levels of personal/professional blending. I’d like to have some companies as the “family/bring your whole self to work” and others as “keep politics/social justice/etc out of here” and have these publicly listed somewhere with employees able to vote with their feet.
nobodyandproud 5y ago
> 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. I personally agree. Work and personal life should be completely separate. Yet employers and other orgs are happy to intrude on one’s personal life. If you can spy on me at home just because I have a work computer or a work app installed, then don’t be surprised that traditional boundaries will be crossed the other way.
vishnugupta 5y ago
Humans being humans can’t compartmentalze and seamlessly switch back and forth between work mode and non-work mode. Besides, they spend the best 8-9 hrs of their creative period of the day at work so the happenings of outside world will be subconsciously analyzed at work. If a black kid has been killed by a cop the previous night the injustice of it all will linger on for a few days whether at work or outside of it.
- throway98752343 5y ago
  Compartmentalization is a valuable skill. There are always external factors that can temporarily decrease work performance, like the death of a loved one. Those random dips are evened out over the workforce. When large swaths of a business's employees can't even at work whenever there's tragic news, that becomes a problem for the business itself. My point is even perceived discrimination imposes real economic cost.
xg15 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Congrats, this is a political opinion.
- deleted 5y ago
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mikojan 5y ago
> 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? You spent most of your waking hours at work. The slave mentality required to basically turn off your moral compass while you are there (for 8+ hours) - that's mind bending to me
- knorker 5y ago
  But this petition is not about changing the place you work at, but a place far far away.
coldtea 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 canonical point of a workplace should be to serve society!
powerapple 5y ago
In a company, some people may social with others after work, become close friends, those social groups are clusters, especially in big companies. Politics should be shared inside those social clusters. Treat it as social, not work. I don't know why people are upset for not being able to flood others with their politics. If you want a conversation, you would want to make sure the receiving end is suitable for a discussion of some sort, probably better when you have 30 minutes to spare, sit together with tea or something. One thing I don't like politics is that it is all about opinions, generally not about solutions. As an engineer I like solutions, I like tradeoffs, optimizations.
dunkelheit 5y ago
I think the problem lies not with mixing politics and work (which can obviously be political) but in pressuring companies to engage in activism on unrelated issues. The problem starts with the slogan "everything is political" which utterly fails to recognize the varying degree with which any activity relates to some political cause. Take Coinbase - their long-term project is to advance the use of cryptocurrencies which is deeply political. And you are welcome to work there if you support this project or engage in activism against it if you don't. This much makes sense. But why do Coinbase management has to issue a statement supporting BLM? What do they even have to do with police brutality? Of course there is a line of argument that they are (just as everybody) complicit in systemic racism so it is their responsibility but it never made much sense to me. Making everybody responsible for everything is not going to work. In a sense this slogan is similar to "everything is connected", which is in some sense true, but if one takes it too seriously there is a risk of failing to recognize very real differences between things and boundaries between different subsystems which will lead to paralysis or suboptimal actions.
dav43 5y ago
I’m not adding anything particular of value but just to say - I agree. The current environment - at least online - is you have to be for something, picking a side. Against you however, people may say - we can’t turn off that part of who we are and be different at work. People have forgotten that saying nothing is an option. Stop talking - especially the people which shout opinions loudly and add no value.
ohyes 5y ago
> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. See, that right there is a political viewpoint. Some would argue that work is about fulfilling the needs of society to produce necessary and useful goods and services, the aims of the entrepreneurs take a backseat when they harm society. Others might argue work is entirely about the needs of the workers, that the work game is mostly about the individuals who are there.
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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.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??
  - _jal 5y ago
    > When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too? I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved. But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
    - aerosmile 5y ago
      I wouldn't have chosen the term noble either, but remember there are some non-native English speakers here. Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space. And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
    - andreilys 5y ago
      Society would be better off glorifying entrepreneurs than instagram celebrities. Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
mc32 5y ago
You’re both right. As a member of a company one is to further the mission of the company but it’s based on an agreement that in exchange for that, you and the company come to an agreement on compensation.
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lliamander 5y ago
I think it's fair to say the reason the business employed you is to fulfill the aims of the owners of the business. This does not negate you have your own aims and needs, but for the employment relationship to continue those aims need to be in alignment.
jonas21 5y ago
That seems like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of the comment. I think what they're saying is that you should view an employment relationship as an exchange, where you get money (which can be used to fulfill your basic needs), and your employer gets your labor for a certain number of hours per week. As you are voluntarily exchanging your labor for money, it's reasonable that the focus of the workplace should be to advance the goals of your employer and not your personal goals. Of course it's best if these goals align and everyone can achieve their goals simultaneously. But when there's a conflict, the employer's goals should take priority. That's why they're paying you.
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  > But when there's a conflict, the employer's goals should take priority. Employees don't need to blindly follow the pre-existing structures, rules, dynamics, and culture of their workplace 100% of the time, never attempting to modify them. It is possible to change these things, both in small and in large ways. Sure, efforts to make large changes are probably not successful the majority of the time. But change does occur. An employer is an abstract entity composed of humans. Who else can change the nature of this entity but the humans who make it up? And small changes, while seemingly insignificant, can add up over time in a very meaningful way. One can also vote with their feet and leave if the clash of values is large enough. This requires having other options or resources, but for those with the option, it is a powerful way of making a statement.
- lanstin 5y ago
  I disagree. They are paying you because of your judgment and character to do what they want in the best possible way. When employees just go along to get along, that is when company sized disasters happen. You have an obligation to speak up for what you perceive as good and oppose what you see is evil. That is a part of being a professional, it is taking responsibility for the big picture. Why do customers want this, how can we build a sustainable business delighting them and avoid the temptations to take shortcuts that are seductive but short sighted.
  - knorker 5y ago
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs well I do, but I've noticed that employers in interviews always want to know about how interested I will be in their problems and what I find attractive about their problem space and I get the distinct feeling they don't want to hear "if you pay my target wage I will be interested in what you want for 8 hours a day"
mypalmike 5y ago
Are these not just two different perspectives on the same thing? The "aims of the entrepreneur" is overly specific to certain work arrangements, but overall the point stands. You have motivations to work which align with fulfilling your needs, and the organization you work for has motivations which align with what the owners/leaders want. The latter is served in part by your labor.
cercatrova 5y ago
Seems like you're agreeing with them. You do what you need to do at work so that you can afford to buy food and shelter outside of work. But even if not, they seem to mean personal aims to be philosophical in nature, such as political ideological furthering, not concrete like food and shelter.

moomin 5y ago

It’s well worth reading up on the details of the Basecamp disaster. At every point in the process, it was about work. How people behaved at work, how clients were treated, how people reacted to feedback, how information was communicated. It may have been “politics” but it was in no way separable from Basecamp‘s core business.

nailer 5y ago
From having read about the details: someone took a list making fun of mainly European (‘white’ in American) names and posted an image saying mocking people leads to genocide. Yes this is easily separable from making productivity tools.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Although my immediate reaction to the Pyramid of Hate [1] was a similar jump to, “is this saying jokes will lead to genocide?!”, ultimately I don’t think that was the intent. People seemed to have interpreted it in different ways, specifically “You’re telling me I support genocide if I think someone’s name is funny?” I think the people who brought the pyramid into the equation were pointing out how individual behaviors, in aggregate, lead to greater possibilities of increased oppression. I think it’s a simplification to say that they lead to genocide, because those sorts of results are dependent on many other factors (ie economic problems, political instability, etc). When combined, these factors result in greater oppression. More apropos to the conversation regarding workplaces, I would consider them evolving into institutions where certain cultural norms are upheld. The more institutions within which a certain cultural norm is respected by individuals, the more other people/institutions in power have leeway to move in certain directions. [1] https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of-hate.pdf https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    My perspective on this is you don't lob any sort of infographic about genocide at somebody without meaning to tarnish them. That's escalating the seriousness of a conversation drastically. Making fun of people named Dickinson is not remotely cool, but bringing genocide into the resulting conversation seems way over the line.

pitspotter 5y ago

Are we, in fact, waking up to woke?

duped 5y ago

The office exists within society. Some things exist everywhere you go in society. You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business. Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society. The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect the most change. Just in recent history, the Civil Rights movement was built by people disrupting workplaces through boycotts and sit-ins. As we move forward in society it goes to reason that future movements should follow that example.

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- deleted 5y ago
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buzzy_hacker 5y ago
I feel there is room in the middle. While we should not leave ethics at the door, not every ethical issue is applicable to work (as I’m sure you would agree.) So while it might be relevant to discuss “woke” issues like discrimination on group characteristics at work because that’s an issue that could manifest itself at work, I don’t think it’s relevant to call for a statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Google, as is suggested in the article. Open-minded to contrary opinions though.
ixacto 5y ago
Advocating for what things exactly? It might be a strawman, but I’m going to guess and it would be something like an end to perceived workplace raceism/sexism/*isms. If you let in political advocacy movements from the left do you really want political movements from the right? Or is it just ok if the left is advocating for it? I kinda think the left is trying to have their equity cake and eat it too… To some people (I am not one of them at all, but I understand the argument) any abortion is literally murder, and it as a sincerely held belief as the recent movements like BLM and #metoo were. So do you really want to hear about abortion/guns/illegals/debt/satanism/furries in the workplace? This is just setting up workplaces for problems or maybe we can just realize work is for work?

ModernMech 5y ago

> The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work. I agree with this idea at face value. But most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, traveling to work, or recovering from work -- not for the benefit of entrepreneurs, but to afford the cost of living. I think as a society we'd be less likely to inject our politics into our workplaces if we didn't have to spend such a large portion of our lives at work.

hluska 5y ago

I can’t help but wonder if the tech industry did this to itself. Tech companies offer so many amenities at the office from free food, to laundry, to massages that the line between office and home has blurred. Maybe the solution is making offices feel like offices and normalizing forty hour work weeks?

dukeyukey 5y ago
You think it was the benefits, rather than the we're-a-family, always on-call, live your work culture employers have been pushing?
- anon7725 5y ago
  I think it started with college campus activism 10-20 years ago. If you feel empowered to shut down the dean’s office to oust a professor, you’ll probably think the same techniques can be applied to your workplace. It certainly doesn’t help that your workplace strives to walk and quack like some kind of college campus.
  - content_sesh 5y ago
    Campus activism is much older than 10-20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Philadelphia_student_demonstration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Philadelphia_student_demo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_strike_of_1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_strike_of_1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_of_1968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_o...
    - anon7725 5y ago
      Yes, but this particular flavor is new.
      - lanstin 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago

The workplace is the best place if you are incredibly lonely and don’t interact much with society outside of work.

skybrian 5y ago

More generally, most organizations have a mission. Even if the mission is explicitly political (like getting a candidate elected) there are still going to be things that people care about that aren't mission-related and getting into an internal dispute about them is a distraction from the mission. An example of that for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc... But this hardly solves all political disputes. It's enough to rule some issues off-topic and have it generally be understood, but there are always grey areas, and plenty of politics that's directly mission-related.

imbnwa 5y ago

In that same vein, shouldn't office dating/sexual pursuits be a no-no?

pmorici 5y ago
They generally are.
- odiroot 5y ago
  Maybe in US. Meeting people at work usually was (and probably still is) the most common way to find a romantic partner in Europe.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  Perhaps de jure, definitely not de facto in my experience

bsanr2 5y ago

Unfortunately, in the never-ending struggle to force employees to conform to some platonic ideal of efficient production, companies have spent a lot of time and energy - not just in their own policy, but also in lobbying to the government and the public at large - trying to make work the center of the average American's life. Think of all the things you have to pass by your boss before making decisions about your own life: which doctor you go to, where you might live, when you might take time for yourself and your family. So, this is the flipside. We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot. Our companies spend millions and millions of dollars going over our heads to influence our legislative representatives, and seek ever greater and ever more direct influence on employees. You have to expect pushback. And political activism within companies, and pressure from employees for companies to be active in the way they desire, is the predictable - and, frankly, justifiable - form that that pushback takes. Kick everyone out of the office at 5PM and you'll see a lot fewer people so invested in the political environment within and driven by their employers.

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
> We're not like Germany or Sweden, where the means to simply exist are widely accessible outside of work, and where work ends when it ends, on the dot This is a curious fantasy that many Americans hold. After having spent the best part of a decade working mostly in Sweden and Germany, I can tell you this has no basis in reality.
- bsanr2 5y ago
  It's the impression that I've gotten from every review of the subject, even from natives, so, "no basis in reality" seems like a stretch. At the very least, it is objectively true that people in these countries work fewer hours than Americans do. But I tend to believe that it extends beyond this, and that there is a fundamentally different approach to work in these countries than in America. If people here want the paradigm to be "work is work," then the sacrifice is that you carve out of the work-centered lifestyle Americans live more time and energy that work cannot touch. If your contention is that Europe is not perfect in this regard, that's orthogonal to my point, which used those (perhaps idealized) examples as naught more than illustrations.

geofft 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Absolutely not, and for a very clear reason: the aims of the entrepreneurs are to make money and reduce costs. My aim, in asking for raises, is to increase costs. Are you saying this is inappropriate? I am at work because the company and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. They need things done that are better done if I'm there; in exchange, I have a number of demands of them, starting with a sizable chunk of money. They're willing to meet those demands, so I work. If I make political demands of my employer, it may be novel, but it is not a fundamental change of a relationship where I am already making financial demands of my employer. If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases.

ghufran_syed 5y ago
presumably you would also be ok with getting paid less money in exchange for more political freedoms at work?
- smegger001 5y ago
  as I am one that doesn't seek to evangelize my political views at work, I would rather go the other direction pay me more if I agree not too bring them up. (and that includes political causes I agree with. I don't like it because it inevitably causes arguments between other coworkers that hold opposing views and i have to put up with both sides.)
Aerroon 5y ago
>If the employer doesn't like my demands, they are free to try to find someone else, and the process works the same in both cases. That's not the problem though. The problem is that your political advocacy causes problems with your co-workers, not your employer. If you have political activism at the work place then you're possibly making the workplace hostile for people who disagree politically with you. You might never hear about it, especially if you're in the majority, but you're still turning people off.
- 5y ago

thrower123 5y ago

Yes. You go to work because they pay you. That's it. I do not care about your politics, and I beg that you don't care about mine. I am not your family. Odds are, I will not choose to be your friend. A professional relationship as coworkers is the goal here.

wildrhythms 5y ago
This naive take seems to imply that companies, in America today, do not have political influence. Or, companies do have political influence, but its workers deserve no say despite spending 40 hours of every week devoted to serving its interests.

gsich 5y ago

>Shouldn’t we be advocating on non office things outside of the office?? If you want robots, then yes.

dukeyukey 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. No? For me, it's to give me somewhere to earn money while practicing/improving my valuable skills. I couldn't give a monkeys about the dreams and aspirations of my millionaire CEO.

ggggtez 5y ago

Yes, you're naive. Maybe if your a worker on a factory line and only being paid to turn a wrench, then sure. But at tech firms, you're being paid to think.

noisy_boy 5y ago
Yeah - you are being paid to think to solve the problem specifically related to your work, not being lost in thoughts about your personal political beliefs.
- ggggtez 5y ago
  That's not my experience at all. Maybe if you're a junior engineer, then you are told what to do, but generally speaking these companies have many senior people who have to decide for themselves. The idea that a company has money and that workers are just cogs is an outdated way of thinking. These stories are often focusing on the ethical concerns of senior engineers, often ones whose job is directly tackling problems of ethics (such as ethics of AI, or censorship systems).

antihero 5y ago

The workplace is 8+ hours of most people's day. You cannot divorce it from the very real problems that exist in the world.

smegger001 5y ago
honestly i think the problem here is the standard 40 work week monopolizing societies time. in the last 50 years worker productivity has shot up but the hours worked have stayed the same. we have multiple studies showing greater productivity with shorter work days or shorter work weeks but we insist on keeping 40 hour 5 day weeks. If people had more time outside of work they could do this outside of work.
- tolbish 5y ago
  I think we're encouraged to reflexively refuse that notion. But if we consider its feasibility, everything kind of makes sense. But that initial reflexive urge to reject the reality you painted is interesting. There is a bit of a chilling effect going on, for sure.
paul_f 5y ago
Actually you can. And it has been done successfully for decades. Proselytizing has no place in the workplace.
- kulig 5y ago
  If it were for people like you we'd still be working 18 hour days from the age of 7 until death
- halostatue 5y ago
  …for mostly straight white men, making more money than more qualified women while getting away with sexual harassment. Advocating for equal treatment isn’t proselytization, it’s asking for treatment like an equal human being.
  - 5y ago

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EMM_386 5y ago

> Color me naive, but shouldn’t what happens in the office be about the office??? Yes I don't understand any of this either. Maybe I'm just an old dog who's been in software engineering for 20+ years, but when I get hired by a company they exchange one thing (money) for what I can offer (programming). If I am uncomfortable with what they are asking me to do regarding my skill of programming, I can quit at any time and go somewhere else. I can't for the life of me understand how employees are debating things like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during their time at work, on public channels. There is plenty of time outside of work to do whatever you want.

fires10 5y ago
Not everyone has the option of going somewhere else. I would like to see that as a viable option for everyone. I have often wondered if we ensured everyone had a viable option how it would allow us to change discrimination laws. An employer of last resort that you can legitimately support yourself with. Not poverty wages.

groby_b 5y ago

The problem here is that the office is deeply interwoven with the political. Part of this is that, as they say, "the personal is political". But let's set that aside for a moment, because we could make the case that in-office personal matters (e.g discrimination) is legally covered. (I'd debate that, but that's more political than HN likes to get, so... setting aside) Even then, companies have political impact. When the CEO of Citizen decides hate mobs are a good idea, and he sponsors homeless hunting for sport with a $30k bounty, that's political. If your company decides to sell surveillance software, that's political. More so if they pick specifically whom they sell it to or not. If your company decides to oppose or not oppose attempts to get at user data, that too is political - either way. And worse, if your company decides that since they have money, they should get a voice in the political process, that too is political.

kwdc 5y ago

Perhaps hiring should measure people's ability to tolerate opposing views? It can't be good to work with people who can't stay civil in the face of disagreements. Surely that is a sign of a lack of emotional intelligence?

lamontcg 5y ago

Just try and jam that genie back in the bottle as hard as you possibly can...

tzs 5y ago

> 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? I don't think that is very persuasive, because it is quite common in most other places petitions are circulated for the petitions to have nothing to do with the activity at that place. For example, of all the petitions I've been asked to sign outside grocery stores or inside shopping malls I don't recall a single one being about things concerning grocery stores or malls. A better argument would be that when someone circulates a petition at work they are circulating it among people they know, and those people know that they know the petitioner, and that the people who will be offered the petition after them know them. If I sign a petition at a mall, probably no one I know will notice. If I don't sign the petition, no one I know will know that I was offered the chance and declined. Not so at work. A petition at work as a side effect is essentially asking everyone to publicly declare their stance on the subject of the petition. I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work, and to not have such non-contribution held against you. A petition essentially forces you to contribute, and it is a bad form of contribution because your contribution is not accompanied by an explanation greatly increasing the chances of it being misunderstood.

noisy_boy 5y ago
> I think a good argument can be made that at work there should be a right to not contribute to discussions not related to work I think you already have that right. > and to not have such non-contribution held against you That is the tricky part. How do you know if they will or will not be held against you? Maybe your skills aren't great but not bad enough to fire you but now with your non-contribution on an opinion is taken as you opposing it and your shortfall of skills is used as a platform to masquerade the real reason. Maybe the people judging you this way operate in a way that doesn't provide any clear cut evidence of their ulterior motives. Subjective areas like these have lots of shadows and shades of grey to hide things.

hypertexthero 5y ago

> “The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation underlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he spent several weeks volunteering at Auschwitz, clearing paths for visitors and sleeping in a former barracks. His father had served in the German Army, and Steidl participated in a program that had been established, he said, to show young Germans “what the parents had done. The experience helped him confront ‘the dark side of Germany.’ One thing that he contemplated was the ethics of separating one’s work from one’s domestic life. ‘I read about how the homes of the officers were outside the concentration camp, where they had a wife and children, and a little dog, and they were the nicest people you can expect,’ he told me. ‘And then they were going to work—they were shooting and murdering and sending people to death. So I also thought that it makes a huge difference when you are not isolated from your work, when working and living is a symbiosis. Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment. You are working there all day, and then in the evening you drive home and you have your pleasant place to stay, with clean air, while poor people have to live with the dirt you are producing. I control my noise, because I am sleeping there, with an open window, every night.’” —Gerhard Steidl https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl-is-making-books-an-art-form https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl...

Aunche 5y ago
People don't spontaneously decide that conducting murder in a concentration camp is a morally acceptable career path. The Nazis succeeded in the first place because they injected their politics into every aspect of life. Politics-free spaces create additional friction that impedes the rise of radical ideology.
- greesil 5y ago
  That would be true if there was no difference between seeking equality and justice vs. scapegoating Naziesque goose-stepping grievances. I say this as someone who gets annoyed by politically active coworkers. Not all ideologies are created equally.

ajkjk 5y ago

I think that's totally absurd. You're a human wherever you go, you should not be required to put aside what's important to you for most of every day, keeping your head down and paying tribute to capitalism. Work is, and should be, real life.

fukmbas 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?? entrepreneur? LOL

arvinsim 5y ago

For some people, work is life. So it isn't surprising that one spills over the other for them.

modriano 5y ago

I sleep about 6 hours a day, I work about 9 hours a day, and the rest is for life sustaining activities, housework, personal projects, and leisure. Work is where I spend most of my time. Being a positive force in the world is important to me, so I only work on important problems, and to defend against falling into a motivated reasoning culture, I only work places where people can freely discuss ethical issues. I don't want to trick myself into thinking I'm connecting the world, but then discover I'm actually building tools that facilitate genocides in Myanmar or ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs or something. So no, at least for me, attempting to compartmentalize my life like that seems like a really bad life strategy. I just don't want to regret how I spend a major part of my life.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

>think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition... We've set commerce at the center of our society and gone so far as to grant corporations "personhood", allowing them to wield enormous political influence. As such, they're able to donate unlimited sums of money under the guise of "free speech". With regard to its effect on the spirit of a functioning democracy, this is illogical to say the least. To some extent, this outsized influence disenfranchises the citizen voter. So, given this system, it's actually quite logical for workers to express their social/political preferences through the corporations for which they work. It's a means of reclaiming some of their power by influencing an entity that itself has more influence. If this deference to corporations were not the case, then I might be inclined to agree with you. >*People are human. But work is work." At least here in the U.S., our work-life balance is totally out of whack. We're expected to give so much to employers and invest so much of ourselves in the success of the company. We take time away from our families, etc. As such, the lines between our personal and work lives are already quite blurred. So I think this is where it seems strange to some that they are expected to leave select parts of their personal lives at the door.

ohazi 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Have you ever worked for a large company, that's flush with cash, that likes to offer borderline ridiculous perks to employees (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.)? Usually there are relatively few people at these companies who do the work that actually moves the proverbial needle. There are a lot of people at these companies who only ever get to work on some vanity project motivated by internal politics. Work that literally doesn't matter, that the owners don't actually care about, and that's eventually going to get thrown away after being used as some sort of bargaining chip. But smart people often want to feel like they're doing "important" work, so we dress it up with goals and deadlines and KPIs to make it seem important. A lot of these workplaces can more accurately be described as "day care for adults."

Rapzid 5y ago
> day care for adults I've never heard it put like this. Amazing. I shy away from these places towards small to mid size companies with more critical work..

SomaticPirate 5y ago

“Outside of office” Part of this is that office has come home (literally when it comes to the current pandemic work situation). With tools like Slack and Teams “work” has come home more than ever. Of course, there are healthy ways to limit this but you can’t say work hasn’t fundamentally invaded our home space. Also factor in how much people work, where you spent 40+ hours a week (again, leaning towards more due to pandemic work situation) there isn’t much time for activism outside the office. Pushing for their company to support social justice causes is the white, white-collar workers way of supporting these causes without inducing the level of discomfort of actually protesting. And if you get fired for it, all the better. Sans NDA (which companies are making increasingly common) you have an excellent case for the social zeitgeist to support you on.

treeman79 5y ago

Current mentality is with us or against us. Was in a woke office for awhile. I tried very hard to stay out of it. Learned quick that is very offense behavior. Was lectured on it.

wpietri 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. I disagree. The notion that humans turn into employer-owned production machinery for 8 hours a day is one very particular way to conceptualize work. But it ignores both the individual as a whole person and the society that contains and enables the workplace to function. To me, even as a former and perhaps future entrepreneur, I think it's a giant mistake to see a workplace as a place where the entrepreneur is a tiny god-king. Work is a social and societal activity at least as much as it is an economic one. If people want to play-act as robots, I won't deny them their kink. But that's not what interests me about work, and it's not the kind of person I hire.

yyeess 5y ago
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wage-labour-capital.pdf https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wag...
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I don't think the argument is that it's some separate sphere entirely disconnected from normal human interaction. It's like saying "the point of a movie night is to hang out and enjoy a movie together". If me and my friends were halfway through a movie, and I stood up and staged a loud political protest against something one of the characters said, my friends would be pretty rightfully unhappy with me.
- rStar 5y ago
  > my friends would be pretty rightfully unhappy with me. most people don’t go to work to recreate, so this is a bad example.
- jckahn 5y ago
  That’s fair, but if a character in said movie was making brazenly anti-Semitic views (for instance) I think it would be reasonable to share that it made you uncomfortable and have a discussion about it at some reasonable time shortly thereafter.

ridaj 5y ago

That may be your point of view, but can you hire a lot of people with this attitude? Companies in tech successfully attract talent on the basis that they provide an opportunity to "have impact in the world". I work in tech and I hear this all the time from candidates in interviews, when asking why do you want to work here. Nobody says they just want to make a lot of money for the shareholders and a little for themselves. The meaning of work and quality of workplace environment is incredibly important to people who work in tech. That's part of the job market situation. If there was a massive surplus of qualified candidates to do the work, sure the "entrepreneurs" could be telling their staff to "shut up and get to work" whenever they talked about anything non-work-related... But at this time, it just isn't something that employers can really afford to do, and they have set themselves up for it too by hyping up their workplace culture and perks, and by positioning themselves not just as money making machines but as beacons of societal progress.

nradov 5y ago
That's what candidates say in interviews because that's what they think they're supposed to say. How many are telling the truth?
- ridaj 5y ago
  I also see it very often in internal survey open answers as the answer for why you enjoy working here. These are anonymous, there is no incentive to lie.
  - throway98752343 5y ago
    Unless you're certain it's anonymous, there's incentive to not be fully open.
sl1ck731 5y ago
"Have an impact in the world" is a canned answer. I seriously doubt a large percentage of candidates really care, its just not appropriate (unfortunately) to say we're here for the money.

8note 5y ago

The entrepreneur is perfectly willing to use my work to push political changes. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to too. If you want to get politics away from the office, stop giving the wealthy and corporations political power

knorker 5y ago
Because they pay you for the work? You can use the money to further your political goals. If you go to a pizza place and pay for a pizza, you don't expect them to alter the deal after you pay, and instead give the pizza to someone homeless without asking you or refunding you.

Fordec 5y ago

Society is a democracy. One where we as people provide labor for money. During contracted hours you belong to the company, sure. Outside that you are free to do as you please. Wait no, you were at an Antifa rally on the news outside office hours? Or cancelled on twitter? Or had a drug charge? Sorry, you're fired. If you can't have your own life outside work without consequences, companies can't reasonably expect people to not bring their own life into work. Just as how you conduct your life outside work can have a reputational effect on a company, your employer's actions have a reputational effect on you.

ncpa-cpl 5y ago

From the Recurse Center manual: If you see racism, sexism, etc. outside of RC, please don’t bring it in. For example, please don’t start a discussion about the latest offensive comment from Random Tech Person Y. Everyone who comes to RC should have the same opportunity to focus on programming, and people from oppressed groups often find discussions of racism, sexism, etc. particularly hard to tune out. There are many places to discuss and debate these issues, but there are few where people can avoid them. RC is one of those places. https://www.recurse.com/social-rules#no-subtle-isms https://www.recurse.com/social-rules#no-subtle-isms

jessedhillon 5y ago
The excerpt quoted here sounds reasonable and pleasant, which is why I was surprised when I clicked through and found what appears to be the social rulebook of hell.

spoonjim 5y ago

I don’t think your view of the workplace is canonical, but I do want there to be a marketplace of ideas on this where companies can choose different levels of personal/professional blending. I’d like to have some companies as the “family/bring your whole self to work” and others as “keep politics/social justice/etc out of here” and have these publicly listed somewhere with employees able to vote with their feet.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

> 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. I personally agree. Work and personal life should be completely separate. Yet employers and other orgs are happy to intrude on one’s personal life. If you can spy on me at home just because I have a work computer or a work app installed, then don’t be surprised that traditional boundaries will be crossed the other way.

vishnugupta 5y ago

Humans being humans can’t compartmentalze and seamlessly switch back and forth between work mode and non-work mode. Besides, they spend the best 8-9 hrs of their creative period of the day at work so the happenings of outside world will be subconsciously analyzed at work. If a black kid has been killed by a cop the previous night the injustice of it all will linger on for a few days whether at work or outside of it.

throway98752343 5y ago
Compartmentalization is a valuable skill. There are always external factors that can temporarily decrease work performance, like the death of a loved one. Those random dips are evened out over the workforce. When large swaths of a business's employees can't even at work whenever there's tragic news, that becomes a problem for the business itself. My point is even perceived discrimination imposes real economic cost.

xg15 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. Congrats, this is a political opinion.

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mikojan 5y ago

> 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? You spent most of your waking hours at work. The slave mentality required to basically turn off your moral compass while you are there (for 8+ hours) - that's mind bending to me

knorker 5y ago
But this petition is not about changing the place you work at, but a place far far away.

coldtea 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 canonical point of a workplace should be to serve society!

powerapple 5y ago

In a company, some people may social with others after work, become close friends, those social groups are clusters, especially in big companies. Politics should be shared inside those social clusters. Treat it as social, not work. I don't know why people are upset for not being able to flood others with their politics. If you want a conversation, you would want to make sure the receiving end is suitable for a discussion of some sort, probably better when you have 30 minutes to spare, sit together with tea or something. One thing I don't like politics is that it is all about opinions, generally not about solutions. As an engineer I like solutions, I like tradeoffs, optimizations.

dunkelheit 5y ago

I think the problem lies not with mixing politics and work (which can obviously be political) but in pressuring companies to engage in activism on unrelated issues. The problem starts with the slogan "everything is political" which utterly fails to recognize the varying degree with which any activity relates to some political cause. Take Coinbase - their long-term project is to advance the use of cryptocurrencies which is deeply political. And you are welcome to work there if you support this project or engage in activism against it if you don't. This much makes sense. But why do Coinbase management has to issue a statement supporting BLM? What do they even have to do with police brutality? Of course there is a line of argument that they are (just as everybody) complicit in systemic racism so it is their responsibility but it never made much sense to me. Making everybody responsible for everything is not going to work. In a sense this slogan is similar to "everything is connected", which is in some sense true, but if one takes it too seriously there is a risk of failing to recognize very real differences between things and boundaries between different subsystems which will lead to paralysis or suboptimal actions.

dav43 5y ago

I’m not adding anything particular of value but just to say - I agree. The current environment - at least online - is you have to be for something, picking a side. Against you however, people may say - we can’t turn off that part of who we are and be different at work. People have forgotten that saying nothing is an option. Stop talking - especially the people which shout opinions loudly and add no value.

ohyes 5y ago

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. See, that right there is a political viewpoint. Some would argue that work is about fulfilling the needs of society to produce necessary and useful goods and services, the aims of the entrepreneurs take a backseat when they harm society. Others might argue work is entirely about the needs of the workers, that the work game is mostly about the individuals who are there.

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