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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

latimes.com

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

#41

Post by thereare5lights »

whalesalad wrote: post #31

A lot of these companies need to start sticking to their guns and simply letting people go for conflicts like this. If you’re not gonna be a team player there are a billion other tech companies you can go be a part of. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the core issue here – but at some point the message needs to be sent that you don’t deserve a job and aren’t owed anything. You work in exchange for cash, plain and…

Nah, turn tail and leave when you could fight to change the company? Not gonna happen.

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

#42

Post by pm90 »

creaghpatr wrote: post #24
geofft wrote: post #14

> 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 tech…

ICE is not a partisan organization, it's a government agency. If you pay taxes, you support ICE, and are their customer, period.

> ICE is not a partisan organization,

Only if you have your head deliberately under the sand in the face of all the reporting that has been done so far about wanton cruelty inflicted on human beings by this agency, including but not limited to:

* separation of toddlers from their parents * horrific conditions in detention facilities * detaining immigrants for as long as they possibly can * arresting and trying to deport brown people in suspicion of being illegal immigrants

If none of these policies affect you, yeah you can say "By the laws of the US, ICE is a non partisan branch of the Government". But the actions of the agency and its leadership have shown that its decidedly not so.

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

#43

Post by blt »

mc32 wrote: post #22
geofft wrote: post #14

> 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 tech…

It’s the opposite of politics. They’re leaving politics out of it and saying, if it’s legit business we won’t deny you business.

Right, and IBM was also leaving out politics when they built custom tabulating machines to help Nazi Germany's logistics.

Obvious hyperbole but you get the idea.

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

#44

Post by mc32 »

Miner49er wrote: post #32
mc32 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the opposite of politics. They’re leaving politics out of it and saying, if it’s legit business we won’t deny you business.

That is very much a political decision.

No it’s a neutral position not taking a stance for or against a particular business because of politics. So while it may look to someone like it’s “for” something, they’d also take business from an “ICE-alert” system, so from some PoV that would look like it’s “against”, but it’s not. It’s staying neutral.

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

#46

Post by zozbot234 »

joshypants wrote: post #29
geofft wrote: post #14

> 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 tech…

It's not simply partisan-ness. It's specifically pro-authoritarian, anti-immigrant. It's saying it's okay to inflict child abuse on non-citizens as a deterrent against lawbreaking. And a whole bunch of other things.

If separating children from their parents (who have committed a crime) is "child abuse", then our government is responsible for a whole lot of abuse. It's not clear what this has to do with ICE specifically.

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

#47

Post by CydeWeys »

im3w1l wrote: post #33
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.

I think it's not restricted to White Nationalism. We see a lot of pushback against Hong Kong nationalism and Catalonian nationalism and Uyghur nationalism and Kurdish nationalism recently. It's as if the forces of good suddenly decided that any nationalism is unacceptable in 2019.

What exactly does Hong Kong nationalism (which is pro-democracy) have to do with White nationalism in the US (which is pro-racism)?

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

#48

Post by J5892 »

whalesalad wrote: post #31

A lot of these companies need to start sticking to their guns and simply letting people go for conflicts like this. If you’re not gonna be a team player there are a billion other tech companies you can go be a part of. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the core issue here – but at some point the message needs to be sent that you don’t deserve a job and aren’t owed anything. You work in exchange for cash, plain and…

The other clear option being to attempt to affect what you believe would be a positive change in the organization.

If that doesn't work, then you should leave.

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

#49

Post by unethical_ban »

whalesalad wrote: post #31

A lot of these companies need to start sticking to their guns and simply letting people go for conflicts like this. If you’re not gonna be a team player there are a billion other tech companies you can go be a part of. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the core issue here – but at some point the message needs to be sent that you don’t deserve a job and aren’t owed anything. You work in exchange for cash, plain and…

Why? Why shouldn't employees have principles at work? Why shouldn't employees of a company work to affect positive outcomes at a place to which they have invested a lot of social and time capital?

Labor is not nearly as transactional in reality as you make it sound. "Just quit" is like "just leave the country" in politics.

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