Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing • Hacker News Board

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#141

Post by gnud » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:32 AM UTC

geodel wrote: post #119

duped wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The office exists within society. Some things exist everywhere you go in society. You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business. Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society. The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect…

> You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business. Calling this rabid politics as 'ethics' and 'morals' is a neat trick. It is like calling "freedom to not air one's views', 'freedom to get fired for non PC views', 'freedom to be deplatformed' as actual freedom.

Well.

You obviously have the freedom to not air your views.

You have at-will employment in a lot of the US, so employers can fire you for any reason (except for some exceptions), or without a reason . I don't think this is a good thing, but there you are. This is a freedom for the employer.

If you have a right to a platform (i.e to not be deplatformed), that obviously limits the freedom of the ones supplying the platform.

So all of those points are actually freedoms, just not for the one being fired or deplatformed (the first point, freedom to be quiet, is obviously a freedom for the one keeping quiet. Maybe you meant something else?).

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#142

Post by shock-value » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

stephc_int13 wrote: post #58

foota wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true, political opinions aren't a protected class in the US.

Wow.

It literally isn’t. The phrase “protected class” has a specific legal definition in the United States. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_State...

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#143

Post by dukeyukey » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

eric4smith wrote: post #7

People are human. But work is work. The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs. The personal aims of the workers are fulfilled best outside of work. Just stop to think about it logically for a minute... is the workplace the best place to circulate a petition condemning something that has nothing to do with work? The workplace necessarily is going to bring together…

> The canonical point of a workplace is to come together to fulfill the aims of the entrepreneurs.

No? For me, it's to give me somewhere to earn money while practicing/improving my valuable skills. I couldn't give a monkeys about the dreams and aspirations of my millionaire CEO.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#144

Post by madrox » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

I'm not sure where we go from here, but not being able to escape anxiety-inducing situations in a workplace is the definition of a toxic work environment. I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work," but at the FAANG I worked at, politics was impossible to avoid. Even the desire to be apolitical is itself criticized at worst and not respected at best. Work doesn't afford the use of the "block user" button. I hope we figure out a better way that respects some people have a hard time immersing in it the way others do.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#145

Post by tjs8rj » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #117

ixacto wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advocating for what things exactly? It might be a strawman, but I’m going to guess and it would be something like an end to perceived workplace raceism/sexism/*isms. If you let in political advocacy movements from the left do you really want political movements from the right? Or is it just ok if the left is advocating for it? I kinda think the left is trying to have their equity cake and eat it too… To some people (…

> To some people (I am not one of them at all, but I understand the argument) any abortion is literally murder, and it as a sincerely held belief as the recent movements like BLM and #metoo were. This as well as other parts of your comment seem to imply that you believe the sincerity or intensity with which one holds a particular belief is one of the most important factors in the merits of that belief. I personally d…

I think sincerity is a short hand to cut through partisanship. You believe what you believe sincerely, likely because you find it backed in truth / agreeing with your morals and best intentions. If we assume all humans generally back their sincere beliefs because they find them truthful / backed by their values, the conclusion is that you either have different information or different morals.

You can either assume everyone who disagrees with you is evil or stupid, or you can probably more accurately recognize that someone who disagrees with you, especially if they also live in America, has access to just as much info as you, has access to similar resources, probably isn’t evil: so the conclusion is that they are acting in good faith but with different morals.

Sincerity is a short hand for the fact that most humans are intelligent like you, and most humans in your proximity have access like you, and arent evil, so the result is that they are much more similar than you than you think but with different experiences.

It means you can cut through to the root questions instead of using far worse shorthand’s than sincerity - like “they voted the other way so they much be evil and hellbent on destroying my way of life”.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#146

Post by barbacoa » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #83

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #3

> last week Alphabet, Google’s parent, had to deal with another internal petition circulating among employees, this one calling on the firm’s leadership to make a statement “recognising the violence in Palestine and Israel”. It's a special kind of hubris to believe that despite over a thousand years of conflict in the region, the right people to comprehensively understand and solve the problem are some people who mak…

Nobody is fighting over theological differences, they are fighting over land. Specifically, land that was conquered by the British who promised it to both parties, failed to manage a compromise, tossed the problem to the UN who drew up horrible borders, then allowed Israel to settle beyond those borders without consequence. The entire history of this issue is roughly 100 years old and almost entirely due to imperiali…

Majority of the Jewish immigrants after the creation of Israel were ethnic Arab Jews that were expelled from their Islamic Arab countries. This conflict go back much more than 100 years.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#147

Post by runarberg » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:36 AM UTC

archsurface wrote: post #2

I have no tolerance for politics at work. As far as woke at work goes, not too long ago someone in my office commented on slack "I don't approve of unnecessarily gendered emoji" - I can't even begin to imagine what sort of mind produces such thoughts. First world problems? No idea.

But your workplace is full of politics. Are you not allowed to use GPL dependencies? Do you get bonuses paid in stock options? Is there a senior developer that takes no input from new hires as a general rule? Does your boss get paid a lot more then you? Are parents allowed flexible work hours? Are more and more positions being filled in low paying areas? Does your company sell software to the American Military? to ICE? Does it have manufacturing in the occupied Palestinian territories?

Leaving politics outside of the office is simply not possible.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#148

Post by bhupy » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #103

throwaway1959 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on what do you mean as being blind to race? Do you want them to see your race, treat different races differently? Aren't we supposed to be a color-blind society? Maybe I am just not understanding what you mean.

"Blind to race" claims often go along with smugly ignoring systemic racism in society and acting like it's a solved problem because a black man was elected President.

I think it’s possible to hold the following two views at the same time:

- “systemic racism” is real and not 100% solved

- of all the possible strategies to solve systemic racism, racializing all facets of everyday life, including emojis, may not be the most productive

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#149

Post by Opt_Out_Fed_IRS » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:38 AM UTC

nefitty wrote: post #127

Opt_Out_Fed_IRS wrote: post #56

This sort of stuff happens when society reaches a level of prosperity so high that it starts worrying about nonsense None of this happens in Mexico The US needs to import fresh blood and fresh brains if it wants to survive. Less people studying social trends and more studying consumer trends.

The UN considers Mexico one of the most violent countries in the world for women. Is that cause outside of workplace-appropriate conversation? You may have chosen a country at random, but it’s disingenuous to say that worrying about femicide is “nonsense”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_women_in_Mexi...

The attitude towards women in Mexican tech companies, telecoms and IT companies is the same there was in American companies a mere 10 years ago or so...

Where were the UN blue helmets back then? Were they storming Verizon back in 2010?

Let's be real, please!

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#150

Post by GeneralMayhem » Sat, May 22, 2021, 12:39 AM UTC

ixacto wrote: post #50

duped wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The office exists within society. Some things exist everywhere you go in society. You don't give up ethics and morals because you cross the threshold of your place of business. Ignoring social problems in the workplace because it is a workplace is how we avoid solving those problems as a society. The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect…

Advocating for what things exactly? It might be a strawman, but I’m going to guess and it would be something like an end to perceived workplace raceism/sexism/*isms. If you let in political advocacy movements from the left do you really want political movements from the right? Or is it just ok if the left is advocating for it? I kinda think the left is trying to have their equity cake and eat it too… To some people (…

This is a really disingenuous false equivalency.

First, you're implying that all opinions are equally valid. That is... I'll be polite and simply call it nonsense. "Gay people should have rights" and "gay people shouldn't have rights" are not opinions of equal value, and it's not "eating your cake and having it too" to say that the latter opinion is unwelcome.

Second, there's a very clear relationship between the "left" topics you mentioned and the workplace; not so for the "right" topics. You can make an argument that abortion/contraceptives are work-related because of employer-sponsored healthcare (I think it's clear that employees should keep their noses out of each other's private medical matters, but... okay), but the rest are totally ancillary. If you want a "no politics at work" rule, then you wouldn't have conversations about guns (unless it's to advocate that your employer allow guns at work), you wouldn't have conversations about immigration policy (unless it's to advocate that your employer stop sponsoring visas), and you wouldn't have conversations about furries (unless it's to advocate that your employer ban furry sex in the workplace... which I don't think is a problem that anyone has). You know what you would still have? Conversations about discrimination in the workplace. Conversations about whether your employer's political dollars are funding violence. Conversations about whether your recruitment policies are unconsciously biased.