141–150 of 161 posts
It's amazing that Apple even hired him in the first place. Maybe he was helping to hit a POC target.
The upshot is people are being held to account for public speech, and you have to be an idiot to not differentiate along the spectrum of private thoughts, private speech, and public speech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bit late for that now. The next step is deplatforming anyone open about their politics. Maybe that'll be good after all.
The tax rate is politics. Foreign policy is politics. Government spending is politics. Denigrating women is not politics.
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I’m getting the impression you’ve never run a company before since you seem to think you’re making logical arguments so I’ll answer you earnestly regardless of the ad hominem attacks you’re making. That concept became controversial 57 years ago with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the controversial nature of it has been strengthened over the decades since through a multitude of hostile workplace laws…
I really hope this comment gets higher on the page, because I think it explains the situation really well. I was going to make a comment mentioning how the asymmetry in what is allowed in big companies frustrates me greatly. People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right while people who vocally express support for older social structures g…
Have you seen _any_ major tech company with close to 50% women or 40% non-hispanic white employees? In engineering roles? That's just aiming for parity with U.S. demographics, but when you consider how much of the world travels to the U.S. to work in tech, that 40% number should be much higher!
So if women and minorities are not being "hired left and right", and not all women and minorities ascribe to the viewpoint you describe, then that viewpoint cannot be being "hired left and right".
The "old social structures" may be on their way out, but their vestiges are clearly alive and well despite the moderate legal "risk" that has been added in the past few decades. The law may be an asymmetric tool, but as it stands, a tool that isn't up to the task it was designed for.
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To reframe things, some questions:
How would you define "the old social structures".
Do you think they are good/bad/benign.
Do you they are still present/fast fading/already gone?
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If anyone thinks this is a case of "cancel culture wokerati you can't say anything these days", I can only assume you've never heard of the guy. Read the many, lengthy direct quotes from his writing in https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h... . This is a guy who has made a writing/speaking career of knowingly saying crassly offensive and, at best, childishly naughty things about entire classes…
"The key to comedy is to put a delicate idea indelicately or an indelicate idea delicately" – Cicero. Worth bearing in mind Chaos Monkeys came out 8 years ago – an age in cultural years. That same year Warren Buffett was quoted as saying this: “Credit worthiness is like virginity. It can be preserved but not restored very easily so it is crazy to play around with it.” I'm not sure if he'd would say that now, but I'm…
As a manager, as someone responsible for others' livelihoods and careers, he has to be held to a much higher bar. Even if it were purely in jest, is it fair to have his direct reports try to figure out the line between what he publicly writes and privately believes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turning businesses into the thought police is one of the more evil ramifications of civil rights legislation.
Did you just call civil rights legislation evil? Because forcing companies to not allow discriminatory practices or hostile work environments for protected classes is kind of the entire point (of the business oriented portions of those laws). I’m having difficulty interpreting a more charitable reading of your post. Edit: just noticed "one of". I’m morbidly curious, what are the other evil ramifications of civil righ…
No, I said it had an evil ramification. Laws can have both evil and good ramifications.
> what are the other evil ramifications of civil rights laws
I would say that the current legal environment of allowing companies to be sued successfully for "hostile environment" actions of their employees that they had nothing to do with and no foreknowledge of is another.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hope this comment gets higher on the page, because I think it explains the situation really well. I was going to make a comment mentioning how the asymmetry in what is allowed in big companies frustrates me greatly. People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right while people who vocally express support for older social structures g…
> People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right Have you seen _any_ major tech company with close to 50% women or 40% non-hispanic white employees? In engineering roles? That's just aiming for parity with U.S. demographics, but when you consider how much of the world travels to the U.S. to work in tech, that 40% number should be much highe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was covered in the tech and mainstream press, yes. Did any of that coverage indicate that it was so shockingly offensive nobody should ever hire him, as these employees claim to find obvious?
No, admittedly Apple needed to a little more background research to know in advance that if he joined them then they would be successfully sued by the first female report he had a problem with. Examples of the background research they could have done: 1. talk to any of the employees who organized the petition 2. read his book! It's widely available! This is a guy whose hiring was literally a positive news story yeste…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hope this comment gets higher on the page, because I think it explains the situation really well. I was going to make a comment mentioning how the asymmetry in what is allowed in big companies frustrates me greatly. People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right while people who vocally express support for older social structures g…
> People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right Have you seen _any_ major tech company with close to 50% women or 40% non-hispanic white employees? In engineering roles? That's just aiming for parity with U.S. demographics, but when you consider how much of the world travels to the U.S. to work in tech, that 40% number should be much highe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you cancel someone who is already dead?
> How do you cancel someone who is already dead? There’s thousands of years of “cancel culture” history of doing that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae
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I really hope this comment gets higher on the page, because I think it explains the situation really well. I was going to make a comment mentioning how the asymmetry in what is allowed in big companies frustrates me greatly. People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right while people who vocally express support for older social structures g…
> People who express disdain towards the current social structure and disparage groups like white men get hired left and right Have you seen _any_ major tech company with close to 50% women or 40% non-hispanic white employees? In engineering roles? That's just aiming for parity with U.S. demographics, but when you consider how much of the world travels to the U.S. to work in tech, that 40% number should be much highe…
They're social and cultural beliefs that used to be accepted by corporations and the media but are now not. For example, unequal outcomes doesn't imply discrimination. Some cultures are better than others. There are widespread physical and psychological differences between men and women. These are common beliefs that are still common, but people are afraid to voice them.
> Do you think they are good/bad/benign.
Any extreme ideology is bad. Requiring strict gender roles or saying whites are superior is extremely harmful. But so is flagrant discrimination against whites or other similar things. What is bad is allowing one extreme while suppressing the other.
> Do you they are still present/fast fading/already gone?
I read some studies somewhere that stated that conservatism and liberalism are inate character traits that never really go away in a population. This means that changes in the visibility of such traits is largely a function of how much power one side or the other can gain. This means that in the 50's, liberalism was just as popular as now but they didn't have the power.
Now its swapped. Liberalism has the power, the corporate support, the narrative. But that doesn't mean that conservatism is any rarer than before. This power asymmetry increases the chances of conflict. See the affect of the Culture Wars on our political system.
I want to emphasize that my personal opinions don't matter much at all here. But if corporations continue asymmetric political pressure, there will be pushback. What will the repercussions of such pushback be?