GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#11

Post by SolaceQuantum » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

ratsmack wrote: post #2

It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3

"It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times?"

I mean, in the past times, we had loom-smashing, scab-beating, and private armies to force people to work.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#12

Post by bluehazed » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

ratsmack wrote: post #2

It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3

[flagged]

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#13

Post by ratsmack » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

tj-teej wrote: post #4

I think that a lot of people see a rise and mainstreaming of White Nationalism and want to push back.

If you are pro-American and are Latino, African, Asian... etc, does that make you a White Nationalist?

If not, then why can we just call it Nationalism?

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#14

Post by geofft » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

> With the issue refusing to go away, GitHub executives have changed their internal messaging, including a memo to employees saying barring ICE from “access to GitHub could actually hurt the very people we all want to help,” in the words of Chief Operating Officer Erica Brescia.

> “We have learned from a number of nonprofits and refugee advocates that one of the greatest challenges facing immigrants is a lack of technology at ICE and related agencies, resulting in lost case files, court date notifications not being delivered, or the wrong people being charged or deported,” read a companywide posting sent Oct. 22, signed by Brescia and the leadership team.

[...]

> The Times reviewed screenshots of an internal Slack channel after the contract was renewed on Sept. 4 that appear to show sales employees celebrating a $56,000 upgrade of the contract with ICE. The message, which congratulated four employees for the sale and was accompanied by emojis of a siren, bald eagle and American flag, read “stay out of their way. $56k upgrade at DHS ICE.” Five people responded with an American flag emoji.

This makes one thing clear: this isn't just a matter of, if you're buying and it's not illegal for us to sell to you, we're selling. This is GitHub specifically believing in supporting ICE's mission. This is the sales department of GitHub getting involved in politics. This is GitHub leadership believing they are helping the country by letting ICE use GitHub - which is why they decided to give ICE their product for free.

At that point the question isn't "Should we have political opinions on who we sell to," it's "Can you retain employees when your organization is so partisan."

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#15

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

ratsmack wrote: post #2

It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3

It's because circumstances in the United States regarding how the government interfaces to the world are getting dangerously fascist, and people in the tech sector are sensitive to the risk of repeating the history of IBM and the Nazi party (i.e. enabling a government's ability to commit atrocities at scale).

It's an open question how much responsibility one has regarding how one's technology is used and what services one is providing to whom. There isn't universal agreement on the topic, but there are plenty of software engineers who believe "more than zero," and quite a few who believe they have more responsibility than that.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#16

Post by joshypants » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

I don't know if companies realize that contracts with ICE are going to hurt their talent recruitment too, but they do. I recently decided against applying to a role I saw posted for Wayfair because they ignored employee demands to end their ICE contract, and I know I'm not alone.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#17

Post by xeromal » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

nrook wrote: post #9

There is a well-known strategy by which employees can exert influence over their employer and change the decisions it makes. It is called a union. Unionization has been slow for various reasons in the tech sector; when it comes to rich, well-known companies, people don't want to go through the effort to unionize and get more money when they already are being paid a lot. But if workers want to influence decisions like…

People complain when they're unhappy and most tech people are happy enough to not complain. That's how revolutions work on a micro and macro scale.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#18

Post by qaq » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #8

rpmisms wrote: post #3

Whoop-de-do. If you don't like the company, leave.

If all the employees with morals leave, GitHub will be left with no employees with morals. That is probably a worse situation.

Aren't those who stay by definition are not moral people ? (provided they see the behavior of Github as immoral)?

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#19

Post by duxup » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

I'd like to get a feel about what volume of employees have an issue with these things.

From issue to issue I hear about various forms of employees making themselves heard but it is REALLY hard to jive with what that means.

We've seen Google employees post about some ideas that seemed to be genuinely popular (measure that how you will...) but later ideas or advocacy were reportedly far less supported by the general employees, but news reports seem to reports that don't know / specify make it sound like issue to issue "employee anger" is somehow uniform / equally supported each time.

I've worked enough places to see a popular topic / concern taken by the same employee advocates into new topics that very much were not popular.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#20

Post by mfer » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Topics like this, I think, give us an opportunity to go deeper on the issues and concepts surrounding what's going on.

I realize that the common quick answer these days is to harshly reject people and organizations we deeply disagree with.

But, there may be some things worth pondering, like...

Is there a way technology companies can influence these organizations and the situations of the people they touch for the better? For example, ICE is going to do what's it's going to do whether or not GitHub has a contract with them. Is there a way that technologies from companies can help ICE and organizations like it treat the people they deal with better? Does that make a difference?

I'm not suggesting an opinion on this particular case. Just offering this up as an opportunity to go deeper than we tend to these days.