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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

#651

Post by blaser-waffle »

mattlondon wrote: post #250
duxup wrote: post #19

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 em…

I deeply suspect that large swathes of the employees at a lot of these large companies don't really care either way. As with any large community of people, there are some who are more vocal than others. Call them what you want (protestors/agitators/woke/etc), but I get the feeling that they're getting a disproportionately large amount of focus from the media and I guess management. Certainly in my experience at an un…

> Call them what you want (protestors/agitators/woke/etc), but I get the feeling that they're getting a disproportionately large amount of focus from the media and I guess management.

Explicitly so. Loud voices make headlines, headlines get clicks, clicks get ad revenue. The entire industry is geared to produce maximum clicks and, ergo, maximum loud voice. This has been the theme for a while now.

The issue, though, is that Management can ignore a couple of angry cranks -- or just fire them -- but they can't avoid news articles.

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

#652

Post by sascha_sl »

dang wrote: post #621
sascha_sl wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To draw a parallel between an organization that runs concentration camps (in a similar state to early nazi camps before they were extermination camps, nuance please) and one that refuses to provide services based on an anarchic justification for bigotry is either truly vile or exceedingly cynic.

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Such discussions are repetitive and predictable and deteriorate as they go along. That makes them off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang, this is clearly on-topic. ICE is in the title of the post.

Not every response to a political post that is apathy incarnate is an "ideological flamewar".

Some things have to be named as what they are, this is not hyperbole. This is happening right now. And I'm sorry anything but your typical "but what about refusing services to the gays" makes you uncomfortable.

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

#653

Post by dfalfndfk »

KyeRussell wrote: post #371
supernova87a wrote: post #348

I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also t…

All these people are saying is "I don't want people using things I make for (what I perceive to be) evil". Aside from the compensation, anything you have implied beyond this is just augmentation derived from capitalism and acceptance of the status quo. Saying "I don't like what you are doing with the thing I am producing for you, so I may stop offering you services" is just...basic human communication. I really can't…

Well put argument. A lot of posturing in comments in threads like these which try to mislead the reader into thinking that they are looking at the conflict from a higher, more rational, position.

I like the way you have framed the argument.

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

#654

Post by Frondo »

opnitro wrote: post #577
Frondo wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We carve out those special exceptions for reasons of striving to create a fairer world for everyone: people in this country have historically been (and contemporarily are) discriminated against for race, gender, sexual orientation. The discrimination, both from people personally and encoded into laws and large-scale businesses processes, makes society unfair for those groups, e.g. redlining put people of color at a s…

I think you misunderstand me. I don't think those carve outs are a bad thing.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say that in opposition to you -- it was more of a preemptive explanation of why those came to exist, since on HN there seems to be a lot of opposition to freedom-restraining laws (like compelling business owners to serve members of a historically disadvantaged class), even when there's a (to me) clear social benefit and historical reasoning behind those laws.

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

#655

Post by malvosenior »

shadowgovt wrote: post #572
malvosenior wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how language works. People can't just redefine things to suit their political needs (even if something terrible has happened to them in the past). It's 100% expected that people who break the law will be imprisoned if caught. A prison is not a "concentration camp", a detention center for illegal aliens is not a "concentration camp". People end up in those places because they broke the law, not because peop…

What law have the people in the camps in the southern border broken? Think carefully on this, and ask yourself when they had their day in court. We have due process, and that applies to everyone beholden to our laws, whether or not they are citizens.

This law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

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

#656

Post by dragonwriter »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #611
dragonwriter wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> My very cursory understanding of the international legal agreements on this subject don't seem to take that into account.

Even nativist politicians making incorrect claims about the law here tend to claim it requires efforts to seek asylum in the first safe country, which even if true would, in fact, fully take into account the problem of an intervening country that shared the same problem being fled from in the country of nationality or habitual residence. See, e.g., referring to this claim:

https://fullfact.org/immigration/refugees-first-safe-country...

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

#657

Post by drewbug01 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #67
blt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah yes, nothing says collective bargaining by labor like "Worker leaves company where most value is generated by automation."

As a current GitHub employee, I can assure you that the value we produce is not through automation. ;)

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

#658

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

pjc50 wrote: post #641
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This touches on my greatest frustration with the national debate about prosecution/tolerance of illegal immigration: One of my main reasons for opposing illegal immigration is that it's contrary to the rule of law. It subverts the democratic process, and makes suckers of anybody who does try to follow these laws. I'm actually a big fan of legal immigration. But I rarely (never?) hear this distinction made in public s…

For many of these people, the legal route isn't available, or in the case of people fleeing Syria, Guatemala or Honduras, they are seeking asylum, which is legally a different route.

Yeah, that certainly tempers my views. I'm sympathetic to breaking U.S. immigration law because it's the only option for keeping one's family safe from a war zone.

I'm much less sympathetic to people breaking U.S. immigration law because they want greater economic opportunity for themselves or their children.

That said, I can't argue back to first principles why my preferred balance of virtue maximization / vice minimization is objectively better than anyone else's. So if we're being completely honest, I can't advocate even my own position in good conscience.

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

#659

Post by shadowgovt »

malvosenior wrote: post #655
shadowgovt wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law have the people in the camps in the southern border broken? Think carefully on this, and ask yourself when they had their day in court. We have due process, and that applies to everyone beholden to our laws, whether or not they are citizens.

This law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

And what judicial ruling from the day in court of the people you claim are breaking that law justifies their internment in mass camps in conditions substandard to people who have been found guilty of breaking a law? You're forgetting that law enforcement officers aren't judge and jury; they may arrest, but a person has presumption of innocence until their day in court (even if border patrol physically observed them clambering through a hole in a fence).

You may also note that the penalties for breaking the law you've cited include limits on the term of incarceration. So while we hold these people on suspicion of breaking these laws, are we letting them out after 6 months or 2 years? The answer is no.

They have not had their day in court; the US is holding people indefinitely under suspicion of having committed crimes, on purpose, in probable violation of habeas corpus, to maximize people's fear of crossing the US border. It's industrial-scale terror and the US can and should do better.

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

#660

Post by malvosenior »

shadowgovt wrote: post #659
malvosenior wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

And what judicial ruling from the day in court of the people you claim are breaking that law justifies their internment in mass camps in conditions substandard to people who have been found guilty of breaking a law? You're forgetting that law enforcement officers aren't judge and jury; they may arrest, but a person has presumption of innocence until their day in court (even if border patrol physically observed them c…

People are regularly detained until their day in court. That's how it's always worked.

You realize there's not a country on the planet that won't detain you if you sneak across their border right?

The fact is we don't allow unfettered open immigration for many reasons.

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