7 ms·

I might be wrong, but this update is addressing a real problem that company is facing. This is not some hypothetical, slippery slope kinda thing. For instance,

by vood 5y ago

I might be wrong, but this update is addressing a real problem that company is facing. This is not some hypothetical, slippery slope kinda thing. For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. Poland and neighbourhood countries offer emergency visa plans for people in trouble (business harbour visa). I think what happened is that GitLab started receiving a lot of emergency requests to be relocated immediately that did not comply the existing policy. Hence the update.

tablespoon 5y ago
> For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. Poland and neighbourhood countries offer emergency visa plans for people in trouble (business harbour visa). Would this apply to a typical Belarusian engineer in Belarus, though? They'd be White, European, and (correct me if I'm wrong) violence there seems mainly directed at protesters and protest leaders. It seems to me like this tailored for the kinds of racial and sexual minorities the US likes to obsess about. > Tenure of less than 1 year at GitLab may be possibly waived as a requirement if: > - You are a member of a(n [underrepresented](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definitions https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...)) group that is unsafe or in any way mistreated in your country. > - Violence in your country does not provide a safe environment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dvdkon 5y ago
  First off, there's hardly anyone other than europeans in East European countries. And I don't see why Gitlab engineers wouldn't be involved in the protests. They're probably well-educated and therefore statistically more likely to care about the political situation.
  - curiousgal 5y ago
    If caring about the political situation translated into action then the US would have no issues at all. Engineers are very much less likely to take part of protests anywhere because they're busy and think they're well off.
    - dkirill 5y ago
      No need to generalise based on your limited experience if you are unfamiliar with situation in Belarus
- hnbad 5y ago
  Belarus is currently considered one of the least safe places in Europe to be LGBTQ+. I'm not sure if they enacted the Russian-style "anti gay propaganda" law they spitballed a few years ago, but even without it, it's safe to say LGBTQ+ people in Belarus are "being mistreated". In my experience tech workers in Eastern Europe are not significantly more progressive than other residents, but if Gitlab's company culture is at least somewhat progressive, it's likely that it attracts people in those countries who tend towards the progressive end of their respective countries' political spectrum. Given that Belarus has a very low bar for what the government considers a "political activist", it's reasonable to assume that some of these people might find themselves in trouble without having to go as far as donning black masks and tossing rocks at police officers. It's also worth keeping in mind that software development is one of the professions easiest to get into as a marginalized person because you can teach yourself enough to get started and especially when freelancing it's possible to work without ever meeting the other person face-to-face. You'd be surprised how many programmers are queer, disabled or neurodivergent. EDIT: QED?
- pqs 5y ago
  >> - You are a member of a(n [underrepresented](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...)) group that is unsafe or in any way mistreated in your country. The racial classification found in this document seems surreal for me (I'm from SW Europe). Seen from here, the US racial categories often seem absurd.
  - f6v 5y ago
    Makes me wonder if you can have both: constantly bringing the race up and eliminating racism.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Speaking as a citizen of the french colonial empire which has pretended since at least WWII that being blind to race would erase racism, it definitely has not. Moreover, ignoring racial issues only reinforces racism by making it harder to denounce. Under Sarkozy's very authoritarian and racist presidency (though in retrospect Hollande and Macron have pushed those same tendencies even further), there were public debates on national television about removing racial equality from human rights declaration (or was it constitution?) because "race does not exist so mentioning it is reinforcing racism". Putting problems under the carpet does not make them go away. It's important that race does not become the central factor in explaining things (because there's many other factors) because that would be an essentialist reduction that reinforces racism... there needs to be place for class, gender, ability and other components in social studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism EDIT: It's common here in France to hear someone say "How can you talk about racism when there's no such thing as human races! It's scientifically proven, so your claims of racism are ridiculous!"
      - Tade0 5y ago
        > Moreover, ignoring racial issues only reinforces racism by making it harder to denounce. This is interesting. Shouldn't it be as easy as "this guy here thinks races exist and that some are somehow better/worse"?
- sulam 5y ago
  In Belarus we’ve had employees arrested for literally being outside at the wrong time, even if it’s just to look at what’s going on from the front of their building. Things have calmed down somewhat since then, but they’ve also put in border controls so people can’t leave the country. You literally need to get smuggled over the border. Thankfully I hear that is not too difficult. The visa situation once you get to wherever you go isn’t awesome tho, since you’re still at the mercy of a large bureaucracy.
- terramars 5y ago
  yeah.... a good friend of mine (dual citizen) who manages a large engineering team there for US startup was picked up randomly not at the protest shortly after they started, thrown in jail, denied access to consular services, his very good lawyers got his jail term taken down from 15 days to 12 days despite the guys who picked him up not showing for the hearing or testifying that he was in fact not at the protest when they picked him up. a couple weeks after they started rubber stamping everyone picked up for protests with 2 years regardless of actual involvement. this isn't even including the extreme random violence some people are subjected to and horrible general conditions. fuck everything about this attitude - belarus is just around the corner from civil war it's not cool at all.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I note that in that case they may agree to waive the 1 year tenure requirement but not the requirement not to be on a PIP. Like any company they are willing to help the good employees that they want to keep.
- andi999 5y ago
  I think having your life depend on your performance improvement either gives you strong motivation or ptsd. (probably both)
f6v 5y ago
> For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. It’s funny cause I heard the same in 2014 in Ukraine. Why exactly is it funny? Because it seemed like a made-up problem. Engineers weren’t hunted down. Instead, they were driving new cars from their new homes to their new offices while drinking artisan coffee. But for some reason they wanted to be a victim. I guess goes in the same bucket as “I’ll leave the US if Trump gets elected!”
- southerntofu 5y ago
  I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, as engineers are often very privileged positions in society and the people who suffer the most from dictatorship and civil wars are definitely not engineers, because any regime needs the engineers to collaborate with the powers that be and so treats them rather well (compared to the global population). However, likening Trump's election with the civil war in Ukraine or dictatorship in Belarus is definitely disconnected from reality. Under Trump like before, and as in most pretend-democracies of the global north, cops have been a force of occupation of popular districts and have murdered a certain number of citizens. But in Ukraine, we're talking about an actual civil war with barricades in the city centers, with militias fighting off each other with kalashnikovs. In Belarus, we're talking about state police and intelligence services physically torturing activists to force confessions (whether true or not, who knows?). Once again, i'm not saying such things don't exist in the global north or are perfect around here... Far from it. The power structures are very similar, but the level of repression is considerably higher. The dangers we face here are no match for what happens in BUR (Belarus-Ukraine-Russia). See also: https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en for information about anti-anarchist repression in Belarus, or https://pramen.io/en/ https://pramen.io/en/ for wider political analysis
  - kozak 5y ago
    What happened in Ukraine in mid-2014 was not a civil war at all. One side poorly pretended to be a militia, while the other side were regular military forces of Ukraine. It's not a civil war when one country attacks another country.

by vood 5y ago

tablespoon 5y ago

> For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. Poland and neighbourhood countries offer emergency visa plans for people in trouble (business harbour visa). Would this apply to a typical Belarusian engineer in Belarus, though? They'd be White, European, and (correct me if I'm wrong) violence there seems mainly directed at protesters and protest leaders. It seems to me like this tailored for the kinds of racial and sexual minorities the US likes to obsess about. > Tenure of less than 1 year at GitLab may be possibly waived as a requirement if: > - You are a member of a(n [underrepresented](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definitions https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...)) group that is unsafe or in any way mistreated in your country. > - Violence in your country does not provide a safe environment.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dvdkon 5y ago
First off, there's hardly anyone other than europeans in East European countries. And I don't see why Gitlab engineers wouldn't be involved in the protests. They're probably well-educated and therefore statistically more likely to care about the political situation.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  If caring about the political situation translated into action then the US would have no issues at all. Engineers are very much less likely to take part of protests anywhere because they're busy and think they're well off.
  - dkirill 5y ago
    No need to generalise based on your limited experience if you are unfamiliar with situation in Belarus
hnbad 5y ago
Belarus is currently considered one of the least safe places in Europe to be LGBTQ+. I'm not sure if they enacted the Russian-style "anti gay propaganda" law they spitballed a few years ago, but even without it, it's safe to say LGBTQ+ people in Belarus are "being mistreated". In my experience tech workers in Eastern Europe are not significantly more progressive than other residents, but if Gitlab's company culture is at least somewhat progressive, it's likely that it attracts people in those countries who tend towards the progressive end of their respective countries' political spectrum. Given that Belarus has a very low bar for what the government considers a "political activist", it's reasonable to assume that some of these people might find themselves in trouble without having to go as far as donning black masks and tossing rocks at police officers. It's also worth keeping in mind that software development is one of the professions easiest to get into as a marginalized person because you can teach yourself enough to get started and especially when freelancing it's possible to work without ever meeting the other person face-to-face. You'd be surprised how many programmers are queer, disabled or neurodivergent. EDIT: QED?
pqs 5y ago
>> - You are a member of a(n [underrepresented](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...)) group that is unsafe or in any way mistreated in your country. The racial classification found in this document seems surreal for me (I'm from SW Europe). Seen from here, the US racial categories often seem absurd.
- f6v 5y ago
  Makes me wonder if you can have both: constantly bringing the race up and eliminating racism.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Speaking as a citizen of the french colonial empire which has pretended since at least WWII that being blind to race would erase racism, it definitely has not. Moreover, ignoring racial issues only reinforces racism by making it harder to denounce. Under Sarkozy's very authoritarian and racist presidency (though in retrospect Hollande and Macron have pushed those same tendencies even further), there were public debates on national television about removing racial equality from human rights declaration (or was it constitution?) because "race does not exist so mentioning it is reinforcing racism". Putting problems under the carpet does not make them go away. It's important that race does not become the central factor in explaining things (because there's many other factors) because that would be an essentialist reduction that reinforces racism... there needs to be place for class, gender, ability and other components in social studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism EDIT: It's common here in France to hear someone say "How can you talk about racism when there's no such thing as human races! It's scientifically proven, so your claims of racism are ridiculous!"
    - Tade0 5y ago
      > Moreover, ignoring racial issues only reinforces racism by making it harder to denounce. This is interesting. Shouldn't it be as easy as "this guy here thinks races exist and that some are somehow better/worse"?
sulam 5y ago
In Belarus we’ve had employees arrested for literally being outside at the wrong time, even if it’s just to look at what’s going on from the front of their building. Things have calmed down somewhat since then, but they’ve also put in border controls so people can’t leave the country. You literally need to get smuggled over the border. Thankfully I hear that is not too difficult. The visa situation once you get to wherever you go isn’t awesome tho, since you’re still at the mercy of a large bureaucracy.
terramars 5y ago
yeah.... a good friend of mine (dual citizen) who manages a large engineering team there for US startup was picked up randomly not at the protest shortly after they started, thrown in jail, denied access to consular services, his very good lawyers got his jail term taken down from 15 days to 12 days despite the guys who picked him up not showing for the hearing or testifying that he was in fact not at the protest when they picked him up. a couple weeks after they started rubber stamping everyone picked up for protests with 2 years regardless of actual involvement. this isn't even including the extreme random violence some people are subjected to and horrible general conditions. fuck everything about this attitude - belarus is just around the corner from civil war it's not cool at all.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I note that in that case they may agree to waive the 1 year tenure requirement but not the requirement not to be on a PIP. Like any company they are willing to help the good employees that they want to keep.

andi999 5y ago
I think having your life depend on your performance improvement either gives you strong motivation or ptsd. (probably both)

f6v 5y ago

> For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. It’s funny cause I heard the same in 2014 in Ukraine. Why exactly is it funny? Because it seemed like a made-up problem. Engineers weren’t hunted down. Instead, they were driving new cars from their new homes to their new offices while drinking artisan coffee. But for some reason they wanted to be a victim. I guess goes in the same bucket as “I’ll leave the US if Trump gets elected!”

southerntofu 5y ago
I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, as engineers are often very privileged positions in society and the people who suffer the most from dictatorship and civil wars are definitely not engineers, because any regime needs the engineers to collaborate with the powers that be and so treats them rather well (compared to the global population). However, likening Trump's election with the civil war in Ukraine or dictatorship in Belarus is definitely disconnected from reality. Under Trump like before, and as in most pretend-democracies of the global north, cops have been a force of occupation of popular districts and have murdered a certain number of citizens. But in Ukraine, we're talking about an actual civil war with barricades in the city centers, with militias fighting off each other with kalashnikovs. In Belarus, we're talking about state police and intelligence services physically torturing activists to force confessions (whether true or not, who knows?). Once again, i'm not saying such things don't exist in the global north or are perfect around here... Far from it. The power structures are very similar, but the level of repression is considerably higher. The dangers we face here are no match for what happens in BUR (Belarus-Ukraine-Russia). See also: https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en for information about anti-anarchist repression in Belarus, or https://pramen.io/en/ https://pramen.io/en/ for wider political analysis
- kozak 5y ago
  What happened in Ukraine in mid-2014 was not a civil war at all. One side poorly pretended to be a militia, while the other side were regular military forces of Ukraine. It's not a civil war when one country attacks another country.