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Most workers want their employer to share their values
- robotburrito 4y agoBringing democracy into the work place would be a nice start. For some reason we defend it with our lives in every context but where we spend the majority of our time and energy.
- Supermancho 4y agoI will still interview with companies I am not seriously considering, for the experience. This is true if the company looks financially unstable, or any other myriad of reasons.
- mikece 4y agoThis reminds me of an idea I've had: a type of programming user group where the point is to conduct interviews of candidates not so much for a particular job opening but to give candidates more experience with interviewing and to highlight areas on which they need to improve both in the interviewing process and in their programming skill set. The idea came to me after reading the book "Topgun Days" and the "Murder Board" process that prospective Topgun instructors have to pass before they qualify to become an official instructor. In short: they present the session they have been assigned but to all of the other Topgun instructors who diligently note every single thing they screw up. Prospective instructors get three tries to pass this process; nobody passes on the first try. The reviews are brutal but honest... exactly what I would want from an interview with my peers before going into "real" job interviews.
- throwaway6734 4y agothere are services that you can pay for that do this. leetcode.com has interviews you can pay for
- treyfitty 4y agoStellarPeers is a service that tries to do this. I subscribed in the past, but found my peers to be noobs who didn’t know what to criticize and were in the same boat as I. I also found it to heavily skew towards Indian peers. So maybe this is a service for Indians looking for jobs in India, idk.
- mikece 4y agoMost companies exist to make money, which is also my goal in working for them. Though I did work for a company once where the better we did for our clients the more it would end up costing the taxpayers. I joked that it would be in the public interest if the company did a poor job or closed down... I was fired shortly after that (though not in a way where cause and effect could be proven).
- fortran77 4y agoIt's certainly much better if they don't even consider working there, as opposed to taking a job there and then complaining about everything, like Janneke Parrish (formerly) of Apple, etc.
- bell-cot 4y agoReminds me of a recent article (probably linked here on HN), about how corporate "social activism" is ~99% performative activism, with >50% of that aimed at current & potential employees. Flip-side: I'll bet that a lot of employees of older & larger corporations, governments, etc. are quietly practicing some combination of willful blindness and cognitive dissonance - because "leave because of my values" is really not a workable option for them.
- nharada 4y agoWhat's performative activism? Like they don't actually contribute to causes or they don't actually care?
- drewcoo 4y ago"Performative" as in "it's only a performance." The implication is that they only care in so far as they are perceived to care.
- nharada 4y agoBut if they're contributing to the thing you care about does it really matter? I guess for some people it does, but if my company is donating $$$ per year to $MY_CAUSE isn't that still effective activism? They can curse and swear all they want as they write the check.
- lambertsimnel 4y agoI think bell-cot's comment is alluding to a recent HN discussion of Amazon restricting LGBT-related searches in the UAE. naniwaduni summed it up there: "The trick is that they're not promoting an ideology/cultural value domestically; they're bowing to local influence everywhere, including domestically. i.e. we should not take corporate Pride as sincere support, but as an indicator of the zeitgeist." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31932146 If I understand "performative activism" correctly, it might include spending money on conspicuously proclaiming support for some cause, while undermining that cause (or at least omitting to benefit it). After all, money spent on public relations needn't be paid to the causes corporations want to associate themselves with.
- hunglee2 4y agoeh....when push to comes to shove, compensation remains the number driver for job change, followed by career development, with working mode (remote / WFH) rapidly coming up behind those two. The values response is a high status answer to a questionnaire, not a priority factor in job change.
- neallindsay 4y agoAnother way to word the title: "44% of employees can't afford to turn down a job at a company they consider evil."
- cdot2 4y agoSomeone can have different values than me and not be evil
- wccrawford 4y agoIt doesn't matter what you consider evil. The statement only referenced what each employee thinks of as evil.
- cdot2 4y agoYes most people don't believe that people who hold different values are evil
- fuckcensorship 4y agoWhat percentage do you think just wants to work and doesn’t really care about corporate social/political justice?
- giantg2 4y agoOnly the ones not directly affected by the prospective laws, or company policies.
- sn0w_crash 4y agoI believe Most people, including the groups being pandered to by the corporation, would choose a productive and happy environment that doesn’t do performative virtue signaling - over a toxic and hostile company that pretends to “care” about social justice.
- Tycho 4y agoWhat’s an example of a company that could be so widely considered as evil?
- inglor_cz 4y agoThe tacit assumption that a corporation actually has any earnestly held values, is what disturbs me a bit. I might be a too cynical GenXer, but the bigger the corporation, the more psychopathic behavior can be observed: anything for a positive PR and reduction of lawsuit risks, without any substance behind the kabuki show for public consumption. Half of the companies that regularly put rainbow flags on their social networks in June wouldn't probably bother helping their own employees if they got arrested for having gay sex in Dubai.
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the real key, corporations don't give a shit about any of this except insofar as it helps promote themselves. Whichever option is less painful is the one they'll take. I'm not sure how many companies are left that would basically invade a country for their employees like Perot did.
- standardly 4y agoMy man only has 1 value and over half of him is not considering a workplace that doesn't share it.
- suprfsat 4y agoThat's not your man, that's a data register
- JasonFruit 4y agoWaist up, plus left foot = 56%
- TaupeRanger 4y agoMissing a very important "say they" between "employee" and "won't".
- oconnore 4y agoThe title has been editorialized to emphasize workplaces that don't actively share some values, but the specific survey result from Qualtrics (midway through the article) is actually: > 54% — said they would be willing to take a pay cut to work at a company that shares their values. > And 56% said they wouldn’t even consider a job at a company that has values they disagree with So, for a company that doesn't go around taking sides, there may be less willingness to take a pay cut for a good cause, but presumably the full talent market is open for them.
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- nicoburns 4y agoCompanies have values regardless of "taking sides". You can see that in how they act. What products the produce. How willing they are to sell their souls (use unethical methods) to increase profits.
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- droopyEyelids 4y agoThis will get interesting when workplaces start discriminating based on gun ownership. That's not a protected class! Right now they'd have to do it based on voluntary disclosure, but states could make lists of firearm owners or concealed carry permit holders public.
- cronix 4y agoIn most states, and federally, political views aren't protected either. Keep that in mind with your McCarthyism-like lists. And businesses can already discriminate against gun owners without a list or specifically knowing who owns a firearm. They just have to hang a visible sign on the door that firearms are not allowed and you're legally trespassing if you go in, employee or not.
- ejb999 4y agonot allowing employees to bring a gun to work is an entirely different thing than discriminating against gun owners.
- bombcar 4y agoI think the OP is talking about literally firing people if they're found to have bought or own a gun. It would apparently be legal though it might be a fun court case. And California already "accidentally" doxed all of their permit holders.
- high_5 4y agoWe used to say "it's just a job". The more "a job" becomes the center of life and meaning, the more all other aspects of "life" seep into it. Leisure, family, values, religion, all of it. Maybe "changing" or "revolutionizing" the world through "a job" isn't such a good idea in the end.
- boeingUH60 4y agoPersonally, a job is simply a transaction where I render my service in exchange for money. Any "revolutionizing" or "changing the world" is nothing but a farce.
- floren 4y agoHey, I'm making the world a better place through Paxos algorithms for consensus protocols!
- sys_64738 4y agoYoung people, they asked. When you have a mortgage to pay and family to feed/clothe/school then you have different priorities and your number one priority is a salary to pay the bills.
- sha256sum 4y ago>When you have a mortgage to pay and family to feed/clothe/school then you have different priorities and your number one priority is a salary to pay the bills. You can still have these things while keeping your integrity/values, unlike the boomer generation. I do, and my family lives within our means.
- floren 4y ago> A survey of first-time hires by ZipRecruiter found that a diverse and inclusive workplace outranked paid sick time, vacation and health insurance. Good news for cynical employers looking to save a buck?
- bombcar 4y agoOr perhaps all first-time hires are looking at jobs that don't provide ANY of the last three, so they pick the first to not feel dumb.
- dahart 4y agoThe hard part of this narrative is that all of us work for companies that do some things we wouldn’t consider our “values”. Take simply advertising, for example, we all hate ‘em, we all use ad blockers, and our employers all advertise. Of course by ‘all’ I mean ‘most’ or ‘a lot’, take your pick, I’m not making claims about literally every last one, I know there’s a wide variation of experience, but chances are high that your employer routinely has to do things you wouldn’t want to do, right? This is true even when your employer is you. :) I feel like it gets even worse when you start a business and become a walking self-contradiction. That’s when I started doing things, like advertising, and adding analytics, stuff I normally don’t like as a user. (The problem, of course: advertising and analytics work.) Maybe these things are below the threshold of values we’d quit over, and maybe some companies can be pretty extreme, but I think there’s a fuzzy gray line between the small values we overlook and the values we care enough to decline employment over, or at least I can see that in myself.
- bombcar 4y agoI think there's a reasonable way to be "both sides" on the advertising thing. If you look at the normal website that "runs ads" they're almost all universally low-value, low-quality crap ads for crap companies. I'm talking about the ads you find on places like https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki for example; they're basically noise and useless. The ads in YouTube videos I don't even really mind as much, at least someone took some time to make professional ones.
- foobiekr 4y agoBetter, more effective ads are still mostly about selling people garbage they don't need. Youtube runs a lot of crypto ads, dubious political ads, and so on.
- hamburglar 4y agoOddly enough I’ve seen a lot of YouTube ads but can’t remember ever seeing any for crypto. I get an absolute shit-ton that are obviously aimed at people with school-age kids (example: the guy who wants to show me how flerbly can polish up his rough draft of his book report every five minutes). I think the statement “YouTube runs a lot of _____ ads” is more a statement about what YouTube thinks about you (or maybe your IP address) than it is a statement about YouTube.
- tmp_anon_22 4y ago56% SAY they won't consider a workplace that doesn't share their value. I believe most will continue to cash checks once the workplace they thought shared their value publicly declares that they don't.
- ejb999 4y agocorrect - its cheap and easy to virtue signal on an anonymous survey.
- mywittyname 4y agoThis makes sense. I think people have realized the political power a company has over an individual. Political donations matter, and companies make big ones to each side. That gives them significant influence. Also, this cuts both ways. I've worked for companies that were outspoken in the political affiliation and were not shy about telling employees which political candidates were scratching the company's back. Ironically, the deregulation they pushed so hard ended up being irrelevant years later.
- jollybean 4y agoFew companies have 'political power' over staff. Most, even the big one's have surprisingly little influence over governance, even when big cheques are written. And almost exclusively, that money goes into getting 'good legislation for them to make money' - not some kind of moral/social issue. Yes, a few companies are known to direct funds for 'socially contestable things' but it's not entirely common.
- bombcar 4y ago"Political donations matter" is one of the biggest lies sold to the American people by politicians and those who make their money from political donations. There's a certain bar to be reached, but once you hit that, I don't think you move the needle much. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c... Much, much, MUCH more powerful than donations are just talking with the politicians and letting them know which way the wind lies, and letting you 'adjust' things for your benefit. And this can and will happen without any money changing hands at all.
- giantg2 4y agoThe tricky part is finding one that shares your values if you have a minority view point, especially depending on the specific location.
- darth_avocado 4y agoHere is a thought experiment: what if ALL companies took the same controversial side of a value? Say every company sided with abortion bans or every company sided with free abortions (doesn’t matter which side). Do these people quit then? I don’t think so. Anecdotally, some of the biggest SJWs I know cash their employment checks from companies that have a terrible reputation when it comes to values these people keep talking about so loudly, mostly because the checks are fat as f.
- bombcar 4y agoIt's a survey, people talk much harder than they walk. Every time there's a big flareup of some social media-enhanced frenzy, people talk big and don't actually do anything (if everyone who ever threatened to move to Canada actual DID so, they'd have 250% of the US population by now). People can't even successfully boycott companies that are entirely interchangeable, they're going to have an even harder time boycotting their paycheck. Where you may see some effects in the margin are where people will apply to work, as applying takes some effort, but it takes no effort to not apply at Facebook, for example.
- jollybean 4y agoIt's understandable a Stanford Comp. Sci. grad might not want to work in a garage where they talk about how great Trump is (in pedantic terms) and tell 'p*ssy' jokes, have porn on the wall ... ... but I think most of corporate America would be regarded as roughly 'neutral' - in that basic professionalism should accommodate 85% of our 'values'. And then maybe a bit of a 'tilt' towards your own kind of culture. I'd be skeptical of anyone wanting/expecting anything beyond that.
- alberth 4y agoSaid differently … “44% of people don’t give two sh*ts about their employers views”.
- notacoward 4y agoI'm truly ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I was brought up to believe that a workplace is only for work and that politics has no place, and part of me still believes that. On the other hand, I recognize how the "apolitical" workplace serves to perpetuate existing sociopolitical structures that are grossly inequitable and sometimes even harmful to society or the planet. It's not really apolitical at all. In that context, the larger part of me thinks it's great when people vote with their feet and their wallets and their working hands, economically avoiding companies that do more harm than good (however that is calculated). Shun them, starve them, force them to dissolve and re-form into something better. That's a far better kind of disruption than the kind usually talked about here, and perfectly allowable in any market that is truly free.
- leeroyjenkins11 4y agoFor me,if the company is apolitical and doesn't do something if find wrong on a moral level, I'm fine with them. If they push garbage on me in DIE training or celebrates causes I don't agree with, I'm willing to take a paycut to not work there. It's because of the all of these places getting involved in politics that it becomes an issue for me.
- mikkergp 4y agoHow often is something like this really put to the test? As someone else pointed out, large companies are a conglomeration of good and bad values and all deal with the government in unpleasant ways. But, would I work for PETA? The DNC/RNC? Chic-Fil-A? A pantent troll? Monsanto? Cambridge Analytica? A Defense Contractor? Most of these aren't companies with large software engineering staff or just aren't knocking down my door, but I wonder how often the lines of the 44% are truly tested. Also, how different is this at different income levels?
- sn0w_crash 4y agoWhen faced with the decision I believe that Most people, including the groups being pandered to by the corporation, would choose a productive and happy environment that doesn’t do performative virtue signaling - over a toxic and hostile company that pretends to “care” about social justice.