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

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

#611

Post by CapricornNoble » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #584

CapricornNoble wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>No, they are people fleeing violence in Central America through Mexico, in large part. If you are passing through one country because you desire to get to a specific destination, you are basically asylum shopping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_shopping

Or, you know, the country you are passing through presents (for overlapping, though not identical reasons) reasons the same dangers that you are escaping from, so it's not any kind of escape.

My very cursory understanding of the international legal agreements on this subject don't seem to take that into account. In other words: that problem does not create a legal obligation on the US's part to accommodate them, nor does it put a legal obligation on Mexico or any other intermediate state to facilitate their transfer.

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

#612

Post by manigandham » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #193

umeshunni wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if a significant portion of GitHub's employees are non-US citizens, it's highly unlikely they're illegals.

So? Smart people can figure out that they can be made "illegal" by the stroke of a pen, even if they've complied with every rule they've encountered so far.

That's absolutely not how it works. People either have valid immigration status and/or citizenship, or they don't. There's no trick to suddenly make people "illegal".

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

#613

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #605

slykat wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the…

I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of le…

[deleted]

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

#614

Post by CapricornNoble » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #548

The upside here, is that maybe this will mean growth of in-house government IT departments? There are already large IT departments, but there is a growing trend to outsource work. Perhaps the gov will start hiring good people and let them use modern tooling, now they realise that tech companies wield too much power. I'd love to get a job for a big gov department and be in charge of integrating GitLab into their workf…

At the Federal level? Highly unlikely IMO. The GS payscale is sub-par by my understanding of SFBA compensation. There are some lean/start-up influenced offices that are trying to change the culture and modernize things but I expect progress to be BRUTALLY slow, unless another tech bubble bursts and for some reason rock star coders are on USAJobs.gov trying to get positions that pay ~$50k-$60k (plus a substantial housing subsidy).

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

#615

Post by manigandham » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

istjohn wrote: post #514

manigandham wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.

That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.

Ask what "evil" means in different parts of the world and you will come to vastly different definitions.

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

#616

Post by ganitarashid » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:47 AM UTC

the_pwner224 wrote: post #392

ganitarashid wrote: post #359

It's not an employee's role to determine with whom the employer does business. The employee is always free to switch to a different employer if they can't support the work.

Having 'leave if you don't like it' be the only choice never ends well (except for those who do leave). It's a great way to make extremist toxic echo chambers.

It’ll be their only choice

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

#617

Post by slykat » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:52 AM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #605

slykat wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the…

I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of le…

I actually don't think this is a short term action. I think of this as a non-action. If Github pulls the ICE contract they will just use a competitor (Gitlab has already gone on record saying they will not restrict customers based on moral viewpoints). And regardless of which cloud code collaboration tool ICE uses, they will still be locking kids in detention camps and trampling human rights. No behavior change will happen at all at ICE if they have to change their git cloud provider.

This is a non action move in my opinion. I see it as slacktivism, if Github pulls the contract, people will pat themselves on the back, and count it as a win. You could argue the exposure might have some effect, but given that ICE human rights abuses have been very well documented by the leading publications, I'm unsure if additional exposure will bring change. I do strongly believe that funding lobbyists is the a great short term thing we can do. From an exposure viewpoint, I think the best thing we can do is raise exposure and support in the blue areas of the country. However, these protests are not doing that.

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

#618

Post by fatbird » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:52 AM UTC

allday wrote: post #596

I love that I can count on the Top Minds of Hacker News to tie themselves into knots debating whether or not it is morally and ethically justifiable to try to stop the We-Kidnap-Children-And-Put-Them-In-Cages Agency from doing their job.

Indeed. In another comment, someone suggests that it might be immoral, as someone in a position to exert some small influence on the situation, to impose their judgement on the rest of us who are not in a position to do anything at all.

That's... that's just some incredible mental yoga there.

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

#619

Post by burfog » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:59 AM UTC

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #335

smsm42 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has negative connotations because it describes the act that is against the law. That's literally what "illegal" means. If you think it's OK to violate the law, then the connotations would be positive, if you do not, then the negative connotations are appropriate. You can't have it both ways.

It's not due to the definition, it's because of how the word has been used. There are terms which refer to undocumented immigrants which still represent their status, but are not dehumanizing.

These supposed "undocumented immigrants" are not generally undocumented. Nearly all of them have documents. Of course, those documents might use your social security number.

This being the case, the situation is generally one of fraud. Some states consider all cases of identity theft to be felonies, while other states can charge the crime either way.

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

#620

Post by mattigames » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

slykat wrote: post #617

mattigames wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of le…

I actually don't think this is a short term action. I think of this as a non-action. If Github pulls the ICE contract they will just use a competitor (Gitlab has already gone on record saying they will not restrict customers based on moral viewpoints). And regardless of which cloud code collaboration tool ICE uses, they will still be locking kids in detention camps and trampling human rights. No behavior change will…

If I have learn anything about politics is that very well documented facts don't always have more importance in the public eyes than the noise made about a subject, the full political campaign of Trump had practically 0% of any truth whatsoever, just rambling insults and other easily-repeated slogans void of any truth but emotional appeals to a big chunk of the voting population; and he won with millions of votes. So no, I think stuff like this does a bit more than "some effect".