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Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

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Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#341

Post by jakobegger »

anilakar wrote: post #287
jakobegger wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> totally excluding China from any and all international trade I don't have an opinion whether this is the right thing to do or not. But regardless of my opinion, how does not hiring chinese citizens help with that? This just sounds like harassing chinese people because of their government. If you really wanted to change something, hiring chinese people and showing them what the western world is like would be the bes…

If you are a citizen of a state that is known to coerce its people to work for it, you are not an individual, you're a state-level actor. If you are known to directly or indirectly provide assets to a government and said assets are a critical part of the infrastructure, you're responsible for the safety of the government in your dealings. An American company refusing to recruit people from China is just the US govern…

> If you are a citizen of a state that is known to coerce its people to work for it, you are not an individual, you're a state-level actor.

You are putting collective blame on a billion people for the actions of their dictatorial government. This is not a reasonable position to hold in a supposedly enlightened society, it is rather just a thinly veiled excuse for run-of-the-mill xenophobia.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#342

Post by _iyig »

cyberferret wrote: post #34

While I acknowledge the pragmatic approach taken by the company to protect their user's data, I am curious as to how this will play out over time. Factors such as longer term travel or working vacations to these countries by their employees? Or, What about if one of their employees is married (or wants to get married) to a legal resident of one of these countries? How far removed does the employee have to be from thi…

>Or, What about if one of their employees is married (or wants to get married) to a legal resident of one of these countries? How far removed does the employee have to be from this risk?

Security clearance background checks will cover this sort of thing. For sensitive government contract work, clearances are generally required for the relevant contractor employees.

For non-government customers who still have these concerns, I’m not sure there’s a good answer. I guess you could define your own clearance process and run similar background checks - many of the government’s own background checks are done by private investigators already.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#343

Post by apta »

thekevan wrote: post #204
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #19

I'm shocked (in a positive way) about the amount of transparency Gitlab provides. Even as a reader, it almost feels as if someone misconfigured the ACLs or I'm reading leaked internal documents, not an intentional decision to make this open. Some of the discussions seem highly sensitive, and yet it seems to work for them. Thank you, Gitlab, for being so open! I've learned a lot about compliance from just reading this…

Wait, am I to understand that this law says I cannot boycott doing business with businesses located in Israel? I am in the US, so can not say, "I disagree with how the Israeli government is treating Palestine and thus don't want to do business with any entity located there."?

They'll simply accuse you of being an anti-Semite ;-)

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#344

Post by phyzome »

> Eric Johnson @edjdev · 5 days ago > Owner

> @cciresi I appreciate your position. Please be aware there is an active, time-sensitive contract negotiation linked to this matter. And you need to advocate to the DRI that the company walk away from that contract in order to enact your proposal.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555#not...

Well now, that's interesting.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#345

Post by tomp »

490d0aff0ee8 wrote: post #286
droidno9 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't make decisions based on morality. This is a question of liability. Gitlab's liability, based on whatever internal metrics being measured, would be significantly higher than the potential economic rewards of having employees in sensitive positions in these two countries--at the moment. Also, on a side note, morality != legality. They're two different things. What is moral isn't necessarily illegal, and…

> "Companies don't make decisions based on morality." So let's just label every employee with a Foreign/Chinese/Russian background as a spy, because a client says so?

Why not? And Australians, they're explicitly (by law) required to be spies.

And your comment suggests as much - why would opsec about consumer / sensitive data be important unless you expect your employees to act in less-than-fair manner (be that for personal gain, a competitor's gain, a national gain, ...)?

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#346

Post by munmaek »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #315
mieseratte wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not xenopohobia, it’s a hard problem. China actively exploits American tolerance for their own gain, and we have no good way to stem corporate espionage other than a blanket ban. Even then, good old corruption of non-Chinese is still possible.

I'm sorry, targeting Chinese people on Green Cards is xenophobia. I'm not interested in whatever rationalizations are given for this sort of discriminatory behavior. The US is sadly headed down a path towards socially acceptable racial discrimination, justified by the new bogeyman - China.

The same argument would apply if the person was white and had many relatives in China. Or real estate, or other leverage that can be used against them.

You can’t ignore the fact that the PRC uses those things as leverage against people abroad in order to get information. Until that stops, what are companies and governments supposed to do? Roll over and allow espionage because we’re so tolerant?

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#347

Post by gdy »

rimliu wrote: post #295
antocv wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gitlabs actions affect Russians(people) and not Russia(gov). Their motivation, should they apply it to UK, US, Spain and France, should lead them to forbid having employees from those countries as well. As a Swede, I would not like my gitlab sensitive data to be in the hands of US gov. If you really believe national security agencies do not apply pressure to any tech employees just because they are X citizens of thei…

Maybe Russian people should do something about their government then. Alas, it enjoys massive support.

Be careful.

This way you may end up justifying terrorist attacks against American citizens coming as a retribution for the foreign policy and military adventures of the democratically elected American government.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#348

Post by type0 »

The discussion on Gitlab is completely out of control now. Gitlab should never have opened that can of worms. Geopolitics and all, first started talking about limiting nationals of China and Russia to do certain jobs and now so many have conflated this to ethnicity, political views, hacking and anything in between.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#349

Post by yorwba »

mschuster91 wrote: post #203
jakobegger wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I on the other hand think that splitting countries into allies and enemies is stupid. China is a huge country, and excluding a billion people from your company just because their government does questionable things sounds like a pretty bad idea. If you are really concerned about the confidentiality of your data, don't store it unencrypted in some SaaS where every customer service rep has full access to all your data.…

[flagged]

> The third way (trade brings democracy) has been disproven over the last decades.

This is often claimed, but I fail to see the disproof. The standard of living in China has improved considerably as a result of trade. That new prosperity means that now more people can afford to support journalists, lawyers and activists working to expose and curtail abuses of power.

This is not limited to underground organizations or something; the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims is run by the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, probably funded by government grants. http://www.clapv.org/about/index.asp

It's also not limited to action in China; as Chinese companies get involved in large-scale construction abroad, so do Chinese NGOs who have experience mediating between those companies and the people negatively affected by them. https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/2019/10/28/interview-can-chi...

You may think that internet censorship is a sign that things are regressing, but there used to be no internet at all. Nowadays anyone with a grievance can publish an article or a video to raise awareness; by the time the censors notice the outrage, it's already too late for the government to pretend that nothing happened.

30 years ago, the Tiananmen Square protests lasted barely over a month before they were crushed by the military; the protests in Hong Kong have been going on for half a year and the military hasn't been involved so far.

China hasn't turned into a democracy overnight, but neither did South Korea or Taiwan. So far, the trend seems to be positive.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#350

Post by gdy »

rimliu wrote: post #300
EugeneOZ wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should read more about "protectionism", "nationalism" and "discrimination" - not just definitions, but how they affect economic.

Does that reading include Russia's plan to create their own internet free of influence from the rotten West?

There is no such plan, you are misinformed.
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