Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

ethicalsystems.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 734 posts

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#21

Post by temp8964 »

laurencerowe wrote: post #15
foolfoolz wrote: post #7

> Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any political content on their social channels in the previous year > When it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. “A powerful and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their id…

Should companies cater to racists?

Why this is not automatically killed by bot? But the other reasonable comment by "notsureaboutpg" was? The bot is stupid.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#22

Post by disposekinetics »

laurencerowe wrote: post #15
foolfoolz wrote: post #7

> Only nine percent of the British adults we surveyed described politics as “very important” to their sense of identity, and only 22 percent had shared any political content on their social channels in the previous year > When it comes to speaking their minds at work, one of these tribes—home of the “Progressive Activist”—is not like the others. “A powerful and vocal group for whom politics is at the core of their id…

Should companies cater to racists?

If it's profitable, yes.

Edit: If it's profitable we would expect to see it, not should in the moral rightness sense.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#23

Post by anonytrary »

ajkjk wrote: post #3

I don't trust this article. The phrase "Losing viewpoint diversity" is of course crafted to make it sound like a chilling trend. Pretty clear what they want you to think about it. But if you drill into what that's referring to, whether you think it's a bad thing is entirely up to what you think of how the viewpoints are changing. "Fewer racists than ever" also maps to "less viewpoint diversity" but is totally a good…

I don't really care about the article, but I've noticed a very real trend of "unconditionally believe in the product, don't second-guess or ask why we're building what we're building". To me, that's what viewpoint diversity should be about. Businesses always suffer from "but we're already profitable" bias.

I'm sure there's a Wikipedia article for this phenomenon -- where you are making profit and therefore lose the desire to question the product or improve it significantly because you want to continue on your current trajectory.

It's possible to simultaneously be profitable and be doing bad work. The problem is that it is very hard to convince people that they're doing bad work when they are profitable, especially considering that most people are slaves to their equity and salary.

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales said this very elegantly[0] "it's very hard to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it". This to me, is the enemy of viewpoint diversity. Success is a double-edged sword and makes people dumber than they actually are.

[0] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jimmy-wales/

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#24

Post by nanagojo »

prince781 wrote: post #16

The author conflates "viewpoint diversity" as it pertains to a workplace setting with political diversity. There are many benefits in a workplace to a diversity of views on how to approach the work and this kind of diversity improves the quality of the product the organization produces. But is this true for political diversity? Maybe, but the author doesn't explain why, and it's not clear what studies exist that supp…

The author links to https://hbr.org/2019/07/are-politically-diverse-teams-more-e...

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#25

Post by Covzire »

Clewza313 wrote: post #19
laurencerowe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should companies cater to racists?

This is a pitch perfect example of polarization: the previous poster said "there’s too much virtue signaling at work", and now you're strongly implying that anybody who feels this way is a "racist".

It's all the news shows anymore. They could cover many other things, maybe throw in a few positive stories, but cable news and largely the whole industry is just one growing dark cloud.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#26

Post by haram_masala »

wpietri wrote: post #14
nanagojo wrote: post #2

This is a pretty bleak look at the future tbh. Guess the bullies won in the end, except this time the bullies believe they are in the right.

If you are concerned about bullying, you might also look at the long past history of oppression that we've been undoing in recent decades.

[flagged]

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#27

Post by dbrueck »

laurencerowe wrote: post #11

This article suffers from the assumption that all viewpoints are symmetrical. Supporting discrimination in the workplace and opposing it are not equally acceptable political perspectives. Equating the two from a management perspective as equally problematic is simply absurd. Excluding racists from the workplace is not the same as excluding people based on their race. The first excludes a section of the workforce and…

A big part of the problem is that terms like 'racist' are often used as synonyms for 'people who don't share my viewpoint'. As long as that level of hyperbole is present, you can't have meaningful conversations on this stuff.

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#29

Post by kiawe_fire »

anonytrary wrote: post #6

This happens in American workplaces, too. In my experience, most people at tech startups think the same, especially non-product people (anyone who isn't in engineering, design or product). If you want to unconditionally love the mission of your company, chances are you have to set aside your own personal opinions. It is statistically very unlikely that your personal viewpoints are exactly parallel to the company's. N…

This is the paradoxical struggle I've had, from day one, at the startup for which I work.

I was praised for being "fresh eyes" and having "creative ideas", only to be reminded "how we do things here" after producing something that I thought would be a progressive way of addressing the company's challenges.

I continue to try new directions, and every once in a while something sticks, but often times I just have to be "another pair of hands" and do things the established way, flaws and all, because often that's what they really want me to do but don't want to admit.

It's especially frustrating when I can see the consequences of this a mile away and know that I'll be the one to have to deal with it, but what can I do?

Re: New evidence that British workplaces are losing viewpoint diversity

#30

Post by jim-jim-jim »

I'm neither old nor experienced enough to back this with even anecdotal evidence, but I can't imagine this is a new development; surely most workplaces have always been hostile to viewpoints at odds with contemporary business norms. It's just the norms themselves that have changed during the shift to a globalized economy that favors knowledge work.

Despite the "progressive activist" moniker applied in the article and allusions to radical-left-cancel-this-woke-that blah blah blah from even more sensational sources, the prevailing ideology of the professional class runs in lockstep with global neoliberalism. Having anti-immigrant/Euroskeptic views is a surefire way to draw ire from your colleagues/manager/HR, because you're gumming up the gears of the way business is conducted in this day and age. But you know what else is equally unacceptable in the eyes of most companies? Genuinely progressive stances on labor organization, public ownership, and anti-imperialism. For the same reasons.

Most "activism", especially from within a company, is just cheerleading for the status quo.

Post reply on HN