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At FB I unabashedly made a bunch of obnoxious (to partisans at least, maybe to everyone) criticisms of the fucking stupid Red Team/Blue Team thing. I took grief

At FB I unabashedly made a bunch of obnoxious (to partisans at least, maybe to everyone) criticisms of the fucking stupid Red Team/Blue Team thing. I took grief from colleagues/peers directly (which is clearly in bounds) but if anyone retaliated in terms of my career I never saw a shred of evidence about it. FB had the stated mission of "Making the World More Open and Connected": I posted a bunch of pretty-fucking-non-mainstream shit on my personal account and FB's leadership was always scrupulous about leaving my "personal" Internet presence completely out of it in a way I found very consistent with that mission statement. In fairness I was a pretty equal-opportunity partisan politics attack dog, maybe it just canceled out. For a counter-point, Apple seems to have been willing to set their ads business back by years to whack someone over a critically-acclaimed book that had been published for years before the auto da fe was held: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-hiring-antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-facebook https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h..., so maybe there's some dice involved.

fareesh 4y ago
It's good to hear that they allow the team to have their own personal views publicly expressed without impacting their work. I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling. If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I'd very much like to be able to give you a more definite answer, but the problem is that I saw a lot of people self-censor around a lot of topics, only some of them political. It's possible that people were afraid of peer-censure, it's possible that they were afraid of official retaliation (though I never saw such a thing), and it's possible that they just didn't want to create trouble for themselves in some vague sense. Few people want to pick a fight with all their colleagues after all. I worked for big tech in SFBA and NYC: the median of rank-and-file people like me were at a place on the political/social/cultural spectrum that would be called "extreme" in my region of origin (Southern California). And there clearly isn't a bright line between "contributor" and "leadership". And there clearly isn't a bright line between "find this person distasteful" and "pass them over for opportunity". I can absolutely picture that right-leaning folks would have felt outnumbered and/or disinclined to speak freely, I absolutely cannot picture leadership sanctioning career damage over it. I supported/managed a high-impact group in a critical niche of about 35 people at my maximum seniority. If anyone had gotten held back for a promotion or something because of supporting a liberal or conservative candidate politically I would have come down like the wrath of God on that, and I believe my superiors would have backed that all the way. I appreciate that's a lot of "believe" and "think" and "imagine", but it's just impossible for me to prove a negative, so I've tried to answer with some nuance and at some length to convey a useful intuition.

fareesh 4y ago

It's good to hear that they allow the team to have their own personal views publicly expressed without impacting their work. I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling. If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.

benreesman 4y ago
I'd very much like to be able to give you a more definite answer, but the problem is that I saw a lot of people self-censor around a lot of topics, only some of them political. It's possible that people were afraid of peer-censure, it's possible that they were afraid of official retaliation (though I never saw such a thing), and it's possible that they just didn't want to create trouble for themselves in some vague sense. Few people want to pick a fight with all their colleagues after all. I worked for big tech in SFBA and NYC: the median of rank-and-file people like me were at a place on the political/social/cultural spectrum that would be called "extreme" in my region of origin (Southern California). And there clearly isn't a bright line between "contributor" and "leadership". And there clearly isn't a bright line between "find this person distasteful" and "pass them over for opportunity". I can absolutely picture that right-leaning folks would have felt outnumbered and/or disinclined to speak freely, I absolutely cannot picture leadership sanctioning career damage over it. I supported/managed a high-impact group in a critical niche of about 35 people at my maximum seniority. If anyone had gotten held back for a promotion or something because of supporting a liberal or conservative candidate politically I would have come down like the wrath of God on that, and I believe my superiors would have backed that all the way. I appreciate that's a lot of "believe" and "think" and "imagine", but it's just impossible for me to prove a negative, so I've tried to answer with some nuance and at some length to convey a useful intuition.