Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#301

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

ntnxw wrote: post #279

tdb7893 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things shouldn't be okay to say. That intolerance actually hurts people, if someone says "the Nazis were right" that really doesn't end up being a victimless crime, America is an example right now where the rhetoric is leading to actual violence towards certain groups. While I think the government regulating it too much is not good I don't see the issue of doing it collectively as individuals. Edit: just as a fi…

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You're arguing that right-wing points of view are the only ones that can harm people or cause violence?

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#302

Post by jonas21 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

adambyrtek wrote: post #222

jonas21 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most professional settings would not have permitted these company chat boards in the first place.

Are you really trying to argue that companies which for example use Slack (or a similar service) are "not professional"?

No, I'm arguing that most large, "professional" companies would not have allowed employees to create create chat groups whose sole purpose was to discuss politics or any other non-work-related topic (whether on mailing lists, Slack, or whatever). In doing so, Google was treating its employees more like adults, which is the opposite of what a previous comment in the thread was suggesting.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#303

Post by SolaceQuantum » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #274

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does action include hateful speech? Not being facetious just genuinely wanting to know. I've always found it difficult to dissociate views vs actions when it comes to espoousing a hateful view.

Someone, at some point, probably regardes some of your views as hateful. With that in mind, how much would you like to be subject to prior restraint based on someone else's internal emotional understanding of your views? Generally it's worth dividing hateful words from hateful actions. Saying something racist in hateful, and might have political or social consequences, but wise societies are aware that getting into t…

I'm genuinely struggling to understand here, because on one hand you talk about tolerance being a difficult thing where we should tolerate the viewpoints of others. On the other hand you're expressing that saying somethign hateful might have political and social consequences. But I was under the impression that, in your view, saying hateful things and recieving a social consequence as a result of your hate is a sign of an intolerant society.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#304

Post by r0ze-at-hn » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #213

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example given by the person you're replying to seems, to be understated about it, to be in a bit more complicated of an area than "just don't talk about it and things will be fine." If Bob and Alice have significant disagreements about health care policy and taxation, they can probably still get along by just not talking about it. If Bob believes Alice should be put to death because she's a transwoman, that could…

> If Bob believes Alice should be put to death because she's a transwoman That’s clearly a straw man. Nobody is having that discussion at work. And death threats are not politics, they are matters which should be reported to the police.

Nobody should be having that discussion at work, but sadly that discussion does occur. It mostly occurs behind the back of "Alice" so if you ever hear that type of talk it is your job to report it to HR who can investigate. No one should have to fear for their safety when they come to work.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#305

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #64

>I think they just overestimated the ability of their employees to respect each other when they hold differing world views. I think this can be quite difficult to do just because of the political views involved. For example, how should a gay man respect a colleague who honestly thinks that homosexuality should be punished with death. In such a case, I would say that even asking the first individual to tolerate, much…

The problem with this approach, is the belief that punishing the expression of a belief, extinguishes the belief itself.

Looking at world politics right now, I don't think that approach is being very successful. It just fosters a narrative of oppression and persecution of those who want to rebel against the prevailing norms of discourse.

> It is also not too far off from many views that I have personally seen, especially when you begin to imagine the legal changes involved to implement those views.

I think it's also important to be careful to avoid hyperbole.

It's easy to from "I don't support government run healthcare" to "WHY ARE YOU MURDERING ALL THE PEOPLE WHO CAN'T AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE?" with no nuance.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#306

Post by weberc2 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #71

zarkov99 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because political discussions are incredibly polarizing, specially these days, and once they are allowed they pulverize the company into factions that cannot work together until the more strident or powerful of these factions takes over and pushes everybody else out or into silence. And when this happens, you have an homogeneous political body as the gatekeeper to the worlds information. What could go wrong?

So the key to a diverse organization is not talking about politics? Seems unlikely.

This is counterintuitive. If you emphasize politics, you end up selecting for the dominant viewpoint, thereby reducing diversity. If you don't emphasize politics, you end up selecting for the people who can do the job, which is almost certainly more diverse (to the extent the pipeline doesn't suffer the aforementioned political biases).

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#307

Post by SignalsFromBob » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #169

baby wrote: post #29

I'm not at Google but my guess is that the number of Chinese employees and the current protests in HongKong might create some internal political fights.

I haven't been at Google in 5 years but I worked with a lot of Chinese coworkers from all three of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong when I was there (as well as ABCs of those descents). Honestly, I never saw a Chinese employee get into a political argument. Mostly they were just happy to be in the U.S. and draw a Google-level salary. ABCs (including myself) would, but usually about American politics, not Chinese…

ABCs? I don't understand. What does that mean?

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#308

Post by t0astbread » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

Judging from the comments there are basically two stereotypes of people in this discussion:

1) The people who "just want to do their work". While they might care about the ramifications of what they're doing they don't think about it actively while working on it

2) The people who care A LOT about their ethics and try to respect them in whatever they do

I guess both sides are important and the way Google phrased these new rules doesn't seem to exclude either side but "banning politics at work" surely isn't good for type #2 and, by extension, the company at large.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#309

Post by TheGRS » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #129

dev_dull wrote: post #36

I expect them to loosely categorize politics, while still encouraging open corporate discussion of LGBTQ, racial, and other such issues. People may have different opinions about that.

"I expect them to block most things, but still allow things I care about but which the "other side" doesn't regard as serious issues." Fixed that for you. No one is the sole arbiter of what is "important", so I've usually found just not discussing to be the best solution at work.

Telling people to stop talking about politics because one don't feel like the discussion is important or productive can be viewed as its own form of covert political discourse. "The status quo is fine, I'm doing fine, discussion to the contrary hurts my worldview".

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#310

Post by Kalium » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #295

Kalium wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with refusing to tolerate intolerance tends to be the difficulty in defining intolerance. There are strong incentives to define intolerance as today's political foes, and weak incentives to resist this urge. For my own part, I exist in a political context where I know that lots of people want to deny my whole existence. And so long as society is willing to keep them to nothing worse than the occasional unki…

I know that this didn’t work out in the past and the result were not hurt feelings, the result were millions of murdered people. I know that tolerating intolerance is not solely to blame for that, it probably didn’t even play a major role, but it did play a role. And that‘s why I want to avoid making that deadly mistake in the future. Yeah, deciding when it is ok is then a hard problem but I’m willing to accept that.

It might be worth recalling that historically, trying to supporess interolant viewpoints often helps make them more popular. Which is to say that intending to avoid repeating a historical mistake may wind up encouraging the exact opposite. Cautious consideration of the possible effects of deliberately adopting intolerance may be worthwhile.

It may also be worth inquiring about what a person means when they refer to their own lives before going on to describe genocide. There's potentially some awkward outcomes there.