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This is framed as a bad thing but it seems like the purpose of these “no politics at work” “culture memos” is specifically to encourage people to the door who r
by spoonjim 5y ago
This is framed as a bad thing but it seems like the purpose of these “no politics at work” “culture memos” is specifically to encourage people to the door who require or desire a more modern/activist/diverse/BLM work environment. I suppose we see an experiment playing out between the companies that want to preserve the “old” ways of companies with their politically incorrect employees who would be considered “toxic” and “bros” and “problematic” (and to adapt to modern standards, to adopt a don’t ask don’t tell policy with respect to their personalities) whose animating principle is “coffee is for closers” and the newer diverse, “intersectional,” “antiracist” culture that claims “diversity is our strength.”
It will be interesting to see which model wins.
- ehnto 5y agoYou have made a false dichotomy of it I feel. I don't think there are two models, just various points on a spectrum of tolerance. I don't entirely disagree that politics is not needed in the workplace, but people spend almost all their time at work now and so it has become their defacto social space. If you spend 8 hours a day there it is important to make sure it's comfortable. That increase in diversity is a direct result of talking about the issue of intolerance in the workplace, making it more comfortable for different people to work there. You can be a hard working closer and tolerant of others all the same.
- redis_mlc 5y ago> That increase in diversity is a direct result of talking about the issue of intolerance in the workplace, making it more comfortable for different people to work there. "Intolerance in the workplace" is pretty vague. > You can be a hard working closer and tolerant of others all the same. Nobody should be tolerant of Marxists and Critical Race Theorists. Half of the US population has sadly lost their way. Guess we need another World War to cure the rampant navel-gazing.
- dkarras 5y agoFrom the employer's perspective, there is one type of employee that can pretty much work in any environment given that they are paid - and there is another type that needs ALL the other coworkers doing things and acting in a particular way for them to feel safe and productive. I'm not even against their need to feel safe, included, heard, or their claimed victim status, ptsd, lack of representation, whatever they are concerned with at any point in time - but it is very hard and expensive to build and maintain an environment where they will prosper - very expensive too. A new drama every week, dealing with bad press from a resigned "activist" employee every other month. Even with sympathy towards those people, I probably wouldn't want to touch them with a ten foot pole when money and livelihood of all my employees are at stake. I'd probably just try to help their cause by other means but would not try to torture them in an environment where they'll inevitably suffer and be unproductive. Their utopia does not exist in planet earth (yet), is it reasonable to expect that to exist in a company working environment? From a certain perspective, more is wrong with the world than right, and it is impossible to provide an environment that is "right" when most of the world is wrong. When you are the employer, you take the implicit role of building miniature model of that world in their working environment and I reckon that is impossible, at the very least very very expensive.
- patrick451 5y ago> From the employer's perspective, there is one type of employee that can pretty much work in any environment given that they are paid - and there is another type that needs ALL the other coworkers doing things and acting in a particular way for them to feel safe and productive. I'm not even against their need to feel safe, included, heard, or their claimed victim status, ptsd, lack of representation, whatever they are concerned with at any point in time - but it is very hard and expensive to build and maintain an environment where they will prosper - very expensive too. This is why any smart employer should start aggressively filtering such candidates out of their hiring pipeline.
- fancyfish 5y agoEven though this isn’t official guidance at my FAANG, I’ve started weeding out anyone who (as best as I can infer) cares about political activism. They are damaging to an organization. Even if they don’t start political interest groups at work, they will bring up political topics in casual conversation which will exclude certain people’s viewpoints. My stance is, we pay you to be an engineer, so I hire people devoted solely to engineering.
- me_again 5y agoI think you are leaving out the pretty expansive middle ground where everyone lives. The options are not "pretty much any environment where they get paid" and "woketopia". Do you expect female employees to put up with harassment because it's too expensive to improve the working environment? Should employees "just deal with" being yelled at by managers? I'll pass thanks, but I don't think that qualifies me as an activist.
- dudul 5y ago> people spend almost all their time at work now I see this claim made a lot every time the "politics in the workplace" conversation happens, but really? "Almost all their time"? Isn't a normal person supposed to work 8 hours a day, sleep 8/10hours at night and spent 8/6 hours doing something else? If my math is correct that's not "almost all their time". If some people are incapable of having a life outside of work, well balanced people shouldn't have to pay the price of their obsessions.
- DangitBobby 5y agoI do not have an unbalanced life outside of work, not because of obsession (I only work 40 hours a week, roughly), but because I mainly spend my personal time recovering from the mental fatigue of work. I just don't have a desire to do much of anything until I've had a few days off and my creativity can be directed towards my own interests.
- bendbro 5y agoDiversity of culture between workplaces is collateral damage of diversity and inclusion efforts. All cultures are not compatible. Not everyone will not be comfortable in a particular culture. Not everyone will not be wanted in a particular culture. [0] The left call this immoral, believing that any exclusion or disparity is the result of circumstances that enslave humanity, from which humanity should be liberated [1]. The result of this thinking is the limiting and constricting of various liberties, and a push towards the formation of a soulless, foundationless, conglomerated monoculture. Instead of fighting to produce this horrible monoculture, we should accept that people don't get along, and then find a way to allow all cultures to thrive. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203651 https://mobile.twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1283372233730203... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
- imiric 5y agoWhat I don't understand about this ideology is what the end goal is. Will the fight be over once every facet of society is equally distributed among everyone, effectively abolishing majorities? And which human attributes will we choose to make diverse? Today it's gender, race and ethnicity. Yet there are countless other attributes we can choose to select on where not every group will be represented equally, so why stop with these? This argument also ignores inherent imbalances in society, like the fact that professions are largely chosen by interest. The same male-female inequality that exists in tech also exists in nursing, construction, hairdressing, etc.[1] I hope that we can one day accept that this is OK and not the result of some huge conspiracy and systemic discrimination (not that this doesn't exist, but that it's not the main cause for the imbalance). [1]: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bawolff 5y agoI feel like this is a weird dichotomy I don't want actual politics at work. I don't want to be debating politically contentious events at work. E.g. (to pick a contentious topic that was in the news recently) a long winded debate on the palestine/israel conflict is not something i want to have at work. That doesn't mean i don't have opinions on the subject or that in a different context i wouldn't want to debate it, work is just not the time to get into it. However that doesn't mean i think racism/bigotry/etc is acceptable at work. I don't see these two things in conflict.
- concordDance 5y ago> However that doesn't mean i think racism/bigotry/etc is acceptable at work. A big issue is different people have different definitions of these terms. For example, say a very religous conservative doesn't want to use a trans persons preferred pronouns as they consider said pronouns to be untrue and sinful. They are otherwise polite and nondiscriminatory (e.g. they will listen to and implement ideas from the trans person and don't bring up their opinions of trans issues). Is this bigotry? Or say some people in the company want to run a BLM donation drive and a conversation then ensues where someone states that they don't think racism has anything to do with USA police killings of blacks and it's actualy down to problems in the main african american culture. Is this racism?
- notRobot 5y ago> Is this bigotry? Prioritizing made-up, vague and abstract ideas of "sins" and refusing to respect the identity of a fellow human? Yes, that is bigotry. > Is this racism? Yes, because there's plenty of research that's been done that says racism within police departments is responsible for the killing of black people in the USA. Not to mention countless videos of innocent black people being shot down by cops. Believing something stupid doesn't excuse your bigotry or racism.
- Thorentis 5y ago> Yes, because there's plenty of research that's been done that says racism Woah, so disagreeing with particular research is racist now? I've heard it all.
- ppf 5y agoI am not sure that is the intent of this memo. > Williams wrote that while counterperspectives and unpopular opinions are “always encouraged” to help make decisions, “repeated interactions that are nonconstructive, cast doubt, assume bad intent, make unsubstantiated accusations, or otherwise do not contribute to a positive environment have a massive negative impact on the team and working environment.” >He added: “These behaviors are not tolerated.” That doesn't sound like an unbiased removal of politics from the workplace to me. I think I would be out of the door, too.
- goatinaboat 5y agoThat doesn't sound like an unbiased removal of politics from the workplace to me. I think I would be out of the door, too. Why, do you "assume bad intent" and "make unsubstantiated accusations"? Do you want to, or do you want to work with people that do? I don't think anyone who quits because those "behaviours are not tolerated" will be missed by their former colleagues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule
- ppf 5y agoYou have just perfectly demonstrated how these new rules can be used to crush even a hint of dissent. I'm out.
- bordercases 5y agoThe rules work!
- wearywanderer 5y agoIn what sense were you crushed by goatinaboat? If somebody publicly disagrees with you, does that mean they have crushed you?
- chevill 5y agoI think a few of the things from the quote are troubling because they were phrased so ambiguously the management could interpret them in disingenuous ways that mean you could theoretically push anyone you wanted out of a company. But at this point isn't it just a memo from the CEO and not a formalized SOP? I would hope the SOP would clarify more. However, I think lots of people wondered why in the quote you included a few things that don't seem to be anything aside from objectively bad, such as "assuming bad intent" and "making unsubstantiated accusations." How did someone simply asking you about it "crush" you into silence?
- inglor_cz 5y agoI feel that employers can no longer silently ignore call-out culture, as it moved from Twitter to corporate Slack and real meatspaces where petitions to punish X and Y are now circulated. Either they hop on the wagon fully or do something against it, but looking the other way means that real power within the community of employees will snowball to the most effective organizers of new call-out campaigns. Who may or may not have the best intentions, but their incentives do not really align with that of the corporation. This is really a case of "everything can be overdone". Most people want to have the ability to protest against big outrages such as a KKK-themed party in the workplace. But calling out everything that someone on Slack finds offensive is an overkill that polarizes the community and diverts attention from the actual job tasks that need to be done. Constant culture wars are, among others, a giant waste of energy and time. Most private sector institutions cannot afford to join them full time.
- LB232323 5y agoThis comment perfectly represents the same lengthy corporate nonsense that the CEO wrote.
- spoonjim 5y agoIn what way?
- bendbro 5y agoI'm fine with both models existing. I'm happy the "old" model is seemingly gaining popularity. It seemed like every organization I have been a part of has been going the "woke" route, and it worried me.
- ngc248 5y agoExactly just like separation of church ad state, we need to have separation of work and everything else.
- eplanit 5y agoI think the CEO who encourages emotionally charged political activism at the office will fail, and rightfully so.
- andyxor 5y agowhoever brings up BLM in workplace context deserves to be fired. we don't support domestic terrorism.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoNASA hired literal Nazis to start its space program. The Soviet space program was somewhat kneecapped by having its management shift with the political winds as people fell into or out of favor and having good people stuck in marginalized roles because of their political history. I'd bet good money on the winner being the the model that doesn't care what people believe on topics not related to work.
- geofft 5y ago... and the Soviets beat NASA to space, both in getting a satellite in orbit and in getting a human in orbit. (There's a bit of inherent Great Man Fallacy in figuring out the contributions of the Nazis, because while on the one hand von Braun did lead the design for the rocket that got NASA on the moon and the Soviets failed miserably at their equivalent, on the other hand, the Soviet rocketry lead who was behind their two previous successes died in 1966. There's an argument that they would have pulled it off if he had survived, but more generally, there's an argument that people other than von Braun were perfectly capable of competently building rockets, and in particular that they could do better work than the Americans while under Soviet-style politics.)
- alisonkisk 5y agoThe USA's sentimental protection of human life slowed down experimentation.
- neoromantique 5y agoAs opposed to?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- edgyquant 5y agoI don’t think it’s a Great Man Fallacy but more Nazis had the institutional knowledge that the US and USSR lacked at the end of WWII.
- visarga 5y ago> “coffee is for closers” To be replaced with "merit doesn't matter, only group identity"? > “diversity is our strength.” That's rich coming from an ideology that actively depersonalises and reduces people to a group identity. Merit, intelligence, accomplishments, effort, passion - these things don't matter. Personal choice when it contradicts the narrative - seen as misguided, not respected! What diversity is that, when they ignore exactly what makes one different from another in the same group? How is it fair when it proposes group guilt and punishment, to ignore all personal circumstances except race, gender and a few more attributes? It's diversity meant for group identities, not for people. The ugly thing is that identity politics emphasises differences while being silent about cooperation. We all benefit from the work and advancement of the other groups, we cooperate more than we fight each other. There's more value in being together, but that's uncool to praise for them. For reference take a look at how guilting and punishing for ideological motives and based on group identities went in the French Revolution. They started with an absolute monarchy and ended with an absolute dictator, in the meantime any wrong think could send you to the guillotine.
- CiceroCiceronis 5y agoTo paraphrase Rand, the smallest and most vulnerable minority, and the one most deserving of protection, is the individual.
- aeoleonn 5y agoIt's simply the "Rules for Radicals" playbook. It's a pathway of: subterfuge -> corporate/governmental entryism -> control.