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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

#401

Post by 490d0aff0ee8 »

tomp wrote: post #345
490d0aff0ee8 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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, ...)?

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

How come we don't see Gitlab re-considering hiring Australians then?

> "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, ...)?"

The defense industry will put you through background checks, demand a security clearance, and won't hire you unless you're a citizen - whilst simultaneously employing some of the strictest security measures available today. Security will stay there long after you've stopped hiring Chinese and Russian individuals.

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

#402

Post by Diggsey »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #388
anoncake wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discriminating someone because of their Chinese ethnicity would be hard to justify but what about Chinese citizenship (especially if it's the only one) or ties to China like family living there? Those would make someone vulnerable to pressure by the Chinese government.

No. As long as someone has a green card or citizenship, who cares where their family lives? The only exception would be for national security clearances, and those affect Americans as well.

The argument made in the thread is that someone could be pressured by the foreign government into leaking sensitive information.

Where an employee's family lives seems like the single most important point to consider...

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

#403

Post by Dolores12 »

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.

What made you think the Russians are not OK with their government?

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

#404

Post by yourbandsucks »

munmaek wrote: post #383
yourbandsucks wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awfully cherrypicked if you're going to limit things to specifically political prisoners. We have LOTS more prisoners, btw, 4x as many per capita, with a nasty racial bias. And that's before you get into all the dead Arabs and Latinos who dared to have a government that wasn't freedomy enough for us. What's your exchange rate between those? Do you value the tiny number of people speaking out against the state'…

So because the US government isn’t perfect, US based companies and US citizens are not allowed to espouse opinions on policy? I can’t change what my government has done, and I can’t really change what it’s doing besides voting, but I can have my own opinion.

You can have an opinion, of course.

A mob opinion that our chief rival must be kneecapped in the name of freedom and justice is super suspect, is what I'm saying.

Americans want American hegemony, and that's fine, but please don't preach about values while you're doing it.

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

#405

Post by nscalf »

peterkelly wrote: post #376

I wrote another comment arguing that this proposal was both racist and discriminatory, which got flagged and deleted without explanation, presumably because I worded it in such a way as to give an example that might resonate more with Americans by using examples of specific groups of people that have experienced oppression in the US. In the interests of quality discussion on HN, I'm going to make another attempt but…

The fact that you’re in one of these countries makes you easy to access by enemies on the global scale. Assuming the individuals are good, that doesn’t mean they’re not a security risk. The reality is, countries like Russia and China do not respect intellectual property, and are know to perform cyber espionage and attacks. This seems very reasonable to me.

Furthermore, the whole point of anti-discrimination laws are to prevent judgement based off traits that cannot be changed. Where you live is not the same thing as your skin color. Imagine if someone refused to change their password and only used 6 characters for it. It’s a security protocol to force a change there. I’m viewing thing more similar to that than similar to racial discrimination, given that gitlab is not saying they won’t hire Russians widely.

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

#407

Post by throwawaypolicy »

peterkelly wrote: post #376

I wrote another comment arguing that this proposal was both racist and discriminatory, which got flagged and deleted without explanation, presumably because I worded it in such a way as to give an example that might resonate more with Americans by using examples of specific groups of people that have experienced oppression in the US. In the interests of quality discussion on HN, I'm going to make another attempt but…

> The fact that someone lives in China or Russia does not, by itself, make them an untrustworthy person, any more than someone living in the United States, Germany, Japan, or the UK.

It has nothing to do with "untrustworthy" and everything to do with "will be coerced without anyone even breaking the law".

I don't know if that will change your mind, but it's an important difference, it's not a judgement of the people but of the state they are living in.

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

#409

Post by dtwest »

coldtea wrote: post #294
mschuster91 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The first one is flattening China with nuclear weapons (conventional war is impossible to win) which is obviously inacceptable, the second one is totally excluding China from any and all international trade. The world had had more invasions, interventions, toppling of legitimate governments, etc, from the US than from China. And while the US keeps democracy internally (unlike China) they have supported all kinds of…

China has a long history of war. The US doesn't even have a long history. Your historical view is zoomed in too far.

All large nation states are guilty of aggression, that's how you become a large nation state.

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