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Activist employees are toxic to company culture. We created a rule that politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work. A couple of people quit in
by koheripbal 4y ago
Activist employees are toxic to company culture.
We created a rule that politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work. A couple of people quit in response, and morale improved dramatically.
- stn_za 4y agoLove this!
- lprd 4y agoThis should be standard practice. Politics these days are toxic as it is, why would you want to drag that into the workplace? Even if it wasn't toxic, it just seems highly inappropriate. If one wants to be a political activist, perhaps go find a job that's better suited for that type of behavior.
- Spartan22 4y agoWh
- bufferoverflow 4y agoDefine slavery and then demonstrate how these workers fall under that definition.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scollet 4y agoIf you have to work to live then you are a slave.
- bufferoverflow 4y agoDon't dodge the question. Define slavery.
- boeingUH60 4y agoHonestly, this is the way to go. Discussing politics or religion opens a can of worms because people can never agree on these things. I don't care about the political or religious beliefs (if any) of people I work with, and they shouldn't care about mine. If I really cared, then we could have off-work discussions...which I've done a few times (and they were respectful and productive). I also think it's important to say that I'm not in the US of A, where political discussions seem to penetrate every aspect of life.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoBelieve me, as an American citizen, a huuuge contingent of us wish they didn't penetrate every aspect of life. However, I'd argue most times it's the corporate executives themselves who are pushing politics at work (read: wokeism) and not employees. It seems like nearly everyone's in on it.
- middleclick 4y agoPlease define wokeism. Is for example, arguing for equality wokeism? Or forming a union?
- concordDance 4y agoRocking the boat basically. Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? (E.g. pronouns in email signatures or having the company take a public stance on some contempory issue like BLM) And is what you're advocating for considered "lefty"? And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Then it's woke.
- middleclick 4y ago> Are you advocating for change in your workplace that isn't strongly linked to workplace peformance? Who is doing that? Please cite something. > And wasn't even on the public radar 20 years ago? Where does 20 years ago time frame come from? That's pretty arbitrary and seems more to be based on your feelings than fact.
- cr__ 4y agoIs “the boss is acting like a huge turd” something you’re allowed to discuss at your workplace?
- ralfd 4y agoIs it at yours?
- CBarkleyU 4y agoYep
- concordDance 4y agoOne thing that might make a difference here is how subjective "the boss is acting like a huge turd" can be. If almost everyone would agree on the turdishness given a couple of facts on the case (none of this "heard from a friend of a friend" bullshit) then discussing and raising might be possible (though I'd probably still just leave). But if people's assessment of the truth of that statement will depend hugely on that network of beliefs and values called "worldview" as well as exposure to different facts on the subject... then it's going to be hard.
- nerdawson 4y agoIt'd be a foolish thing to discuss openly.
- transcoderx 4y agoIt is allowed, but your boss is also allowed to fire you. Ianal
- maweki 4y ago> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. Like leading an effort to unionize? I know that's socialism talking, but democracy in the workplace is as important as it is outside of it. And the free sharing of ideas (up to a point) is paramount for that process. A company could well benefit from active and engaged employees that make a company and its goals their own. Of course, if your company has a top-down leadership culture fostering exchangeable employees (and let them feel that), then maybe employees that do have an opinion about the company and its leadership are indeed "toxic".
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI think the idea here is that all companies are top-down by nature. We can argue about whether they ideally should be, but none of us alive today set up these realities.
- aaomidi 4y agoNot all. Cooperative companies exist.
- Spartan112 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pbasista 4y ago> Activist employees This is a broad term that different people might understand differently. Please define it first, then use it. > politics and religion This is off-topic. The mentioned discussions and disagreements at SpaceX were unrelated to these matters. In general, it is in my opinion dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company. This is how cults and autocracies operate. It amplifies the opinion of the leader and unjustly silences everything else. Respectful discussions about the topics of disagreement are in my opinion essential for a company to preserve its defined ethical standards and not deteriorate into a community ruled by herd mentality and groupthink influenced predominantly by a single person.
- zpeti 4y agoYour boss gets accused of something by someone’s friend who told them in confidence, never said anything for years, and then suddenly when your boss does something one side of the political spectrum hates, the other loves, this person goes to the press. Not with proof, just hearsay. This is political.
- concordDance 4y agoAgitating fellow employees to push for condemning the company's owner and CEO's public statements in another forum is not in the same category as pushing for a different material to be used for landing struts. I think SpaceX will be fine.
- ekianjo 4y ago> dangerous to say that an opinion different than the one of the boss is unwelcome at a company That's not what seemed to have happened here. Basically a bunch of employees said they were embarrassed by Musk's behavior. It's like saying the CEO is a clown. If you expect to still have a job after expressing publicly such opinions, well that's very naive.
- scollet 4y agoEmployees should be able to remove their leadership, no questions asked.
- middleclick 4y ago> We created a rule that politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work. A couple of people quit in response, and morale improved dramatically. Yeah sounds totally believable.
- dubswithus 4y agoHaven’t polls been done that show a majority of people don’t want to talk about politics at work? Seems very believable to me.
- middleclick 4y ago
- zthrowaway 4y agoIt used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. But the past 10 years everyone wants to be an activist now. I'd like to see more rules around this in every company. It kills productivity and really distracts from the company goals.
- guerrilla 4y ago> It used to be social decorum to not talk about politics and religion at work. And who benefited from that? Not talking about it is politics. You cannot avoid that. It's literally impossible.
- whatevenisthat 4y agoIt is not politics to avoid talking about politics and religion. Stop imposing your personal view onto others and leave people alone. Work is work. Most of us work for the check and try to work on cool projects and keep the politics and religion for private discourse with people at home or at the pub.
- guerrilla 4y ago
- whatevenisthat 4y agoNope. Keep your religion to yourself please and thank you. Define it however you want, but most people see through the bs strong arm tactic to try to force people to engage in this shit, and don’t want it.
- guerrilla 4y ago
- whatevenisthat 4y ago
- vkou 4y agoSo, firing James Damore was the correct thing to do, after all? Him and his manifesto, and his subsequent behaviour were pretty distracting, political, toxic, critical of his employer, and wasted workplace resources...
- FeepingCreature 4y agoSounds like a deal might be possible! Maybe Google doesn't fire Damore and Mozilla doesn't fire Eich and Elon doesn't fire ... whoever these people are! We can call this agreement "liberalism"! Or "free speech"! And yet, all I've heard from the left over the past decade is that corporate employees have no free speech because oh it's not covered by the first amendment, as if that gave you the right rather than acknowledging it, and how oh actually it's not a free speech issue, it's a safety issue, or whatever excuse of the week, and anyway the company can do what it wants regardless. (In this one instance only, of course.) So! Fine, normally I'd be against this sort of thing of people being fired for voicing opinions, but in this case there is a big heaping of schadenfreude involved. Leopard fence was good for something after all, was it!
- vkou 4y agoThere never was a leopard fence, though. Capricious firings being the norm have been par for the course in this country for as long as it's been one. The solution is, of course, employment protections and unionization, but 'free-speech liberals' aren't actually very liberal, and dogmatically hate both of those things.
- FeepingCreature 4y agoI think the first solution is we agree that a leopard fence would be a good thing. Then we can agree or disagree about how to actually build it. I'm much more in favor of unionization than you'd think, but I don't think unions are a reliable defense from these kinds of leopards.
- deanCommie 4y agoI think I would respect someone that said Damore, Eich, and these activists shouldn't have been fired. And I would respect someone that said each of them should have been. Most on progressive twitter though were pro Damore being shot into the moon, but are defending these SpaceX activists (by CORRECTLY pointing out that Musk is a hypocrite with his interpretation of 'free speech') And most on HackerNews were defending Damore, yet today think it's absolutely correct to expect to be fired from a private company for the smallest sign of dissent. I don't have proof it's the same people, but the upvotes tell a narrative. Me, personally, I'm in the first group. If you work for Musk you have to understand he's a petulant child who will take every slight way too seriously than what would be expected from The Richest Man In The World. And I'm not even mad that he's a hypocrite. I know he is. Everyone with a braincell knows he is. But it is wild to see how deep Musk's cult goes that he can inverse Eurasia and Eastasia and people just fall in line.
- jackson1442 4y ago> politics and religion were not appropriate topics at work if executives were bringing these topics into the company through their outside interactions on twitter, would it be a violation of the policy? > Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I would argue that musk's personal "activism" (or whatever you want to call his twitter account) is far more harmful than this letter is to company culture
- electriclove 4y agoGood thing it is his company
- scollet 4y agoIt is not. Nice try.
- Casteil 4y ago> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. Does that include Musk himself, with the way he's been acting on Twitter lately?
- systemvoltage 4y ago> Activist employees are toxic to company culture. I think ESG is the overarching umbrella that has compelled corporations to normalize activism.
- scollet 4y agoHow can you see out of that bedsheet?