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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

#51

Post by annoyingnoob »

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.

That is surely in the mix. To me, its about human decency. I support immigration, but even if you do not support immigration you should support human decency. Making people sleep in cages on concrete, limiting supplies, limiting legal assistance, separating families - those are horrible ways to treat other humans, other humans simply seeking a better life.

We are largely a nation of immigrants. We've lost sight of our roots. Its proper to stand up against this inhumane and unnecessary behavior. The government is experiencing social consequences of its own making.

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

#52

Post by blt »

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…

Or, recognize that the company is worthless without its laborers, and that the laborers can use collective bargaining to change the company mission.

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

#53

Post by fiter »

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…

I cannot find in your quotes or the article where it says they are giving them the product for free. One of your quotes mentions a $56k payment.

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

#54

Post by shadowgovt »

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…

I think that's exactly what we're seeing. Software engineers at the big-name companies are exceptionally well off; even low-tier hires are generally above national median of income. In that environment, the most significant thing keeping a lot of people at the job is pretty high up the Maslow Hierarchy, closer to self-actualization.

And if an employee can't shake the feeling that they're helping to repeat IBM's mistakes in the '30s and '40s, they'll walk. Company doesn't even need to fire them.

(This suggests one could possibly use "employee churn at major software companies" as a secondary indicator to societal upheaval).

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

#55

Post by CydeWeys »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #23
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…

Unions have historically tended to reward seniority over merit. Tech workers should work to solve that if they organize. I think a lot of problems caused by unions trace back to that. Unions should come back to help recreate the middle class.

It's not clear to me why tech unions would do this. People keep bringing this up, but there's no reason tech unions would ever have to be structured in this particular manner. Given that, I don't find it a compelling argument against unionization in our sector. Most importantly, of all the people who are working on organizing the tech sector, to my knowledge none of them are trying to implement tenure-based seniority or pay scales.

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

#56

Post by geofft »

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.

Whether government agencies do their work effectively is absolutely a partisan matter. Remember the founding of CFPB? Remember Rick Perry campaigning on getting rid of the Department of Energy? Remember the per-party vote on the act that created DHS? http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll367.xml

I mean, yes, ICE is a government agency, but it's political parties that decide which government agencies exist and what they do.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #42
creaghpatr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dep…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by xvector »

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…

What a defeatist attitude.

In the end, companies are made of people. If you want to affect positive change in the world, leaving does almost nothing to help your cause.

Companies are made of people, you are one of those people, and thus you have ability to affect change. You could either choose to give up, pick up your bags, and flee for greener pastures, or you could try to actually make an effort to improve society by affecting change from within. And, at worst, you could do nothing, and be complacent with whatever the company is doing.

Tech workers affecting change from within is nothing new, either. Your comment seems out-of-touch - employee protests can and have worked in this industry.

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

#59

Post by chadlavi »

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 reverse is also true: companies that work in bad faith don't deserve employees. They exist to employ people so that they can sell product. If the company's not going to be a team player, then there are billions of other tech companies its employees might choose to go work for.

See Deadspin for an example of the inverse of what you're calling for: people sticking to their guns and letting a company go for conflicts like this.

TLDR: it's really unwise for a company to fire people for disagreeing with its controversial choices. It's a great way to accidentally damage your brand and lose a lot of staff to competitors.

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

#60

Post by pm90 »

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…

> You work in exchange for cash, plain and simple. If you aren’t on board with the company mission, go find a different one.

Only if you take the most simplistic view of how a company should work.

Almost every company is successful due to the people that work there. Without the people, the organization (whether its a for profit corporation or otherwise) are completely useless.

Human beings deserve to have a voice in the governance of institutions that they spend their time and labor to make successful.

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