The weird thing is how it’s all seems so co-ordinated. As if the HR departments of every firm get their marching orders from some central advocacy group.
Management is all fads and cargo cults, and HR is basically pure distilled management.
Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
151–160 of 1001 posts
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#152Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees.
It's as though there is a bargain where in exchange for boards tolerating staff radicalization, these employee groups cheerfully overlook the dystopian, totalitarian surveillance infrastructure, environmental devastation, and political corruption machines they seem to have zero problem building and managing on their behalf, and decieving users into depending on them. One doesn't even need to take a side to recognize the bitterness and contempt in tech toward red state denizens. I've sat through numerous meetings where all the shibboleths were trotted out to make sure we were all on the same political page before senior executives engaged in what would be considered hate speech against working class people in any other context. If calling people "trash" isn't hate speech, I really don't know what is.
There still exists a group (perhaps even a majority) in society who are good and charitable people with an immense amount of tolerance for this stuff because they believe tolerance is the price of principles, and they're only principles when they are hard to keep.
Radicalized platform company employees do not have a single moral leg to stand on in this regard. Bringing your whole self to work to build defacto social credit systems and partisan social engineering and surveillance tools is just moral licensing. Maybe that's how they sleep at night. While they found a new way to take a few more minutes of peoples time to show them outrage and advertisements, at least they mouthed the right party lines in favor of distant oppressed people they don't know personally?
I know a number of people in tech who sincerely believe they do not need to be good men or women by any standard because they are self justified by being engaged not in discourse, but ideological warfare. I used to think they were misguided idealists and I thought their passion could be used for good, but I've come to realize they are just dispicable.
All I can recommend is, don't let yourself be bullied.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#153Earlier 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 (…
I've had a coworker complain about my casual use of blasphemy and management agreed that I should tone it down. It's not necessarily left vs right; it's aiming to reduce toxic behaviors that make a workplace unsafe for others.
Not every "political opinion" belongs in the workplace, but I've heard about everything on your list but furries in the workplace and gone on to have productive working relationships with those coworkers, occasionally with a brief "agree to disagree" demarking a topic as unwelcome over lunch.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t help but wonder if the tech industry did this to itself. Tech companies offer so many amenities at the office from free food, to laundry, to massages that the line between office and home has blurred. Maybe the solution is making offices feel like offices and normalizing forty hour work weeks?
You think it was the benefits, rather than the we're-a-family, always on-call, live your work culture employers have been pushing?
I think it started with college campus activism 10-20 years ago. If you feel empowered to shut down the dean’s office to oust a professor, you’ll probably think the same techniques can be applied to your workplace. It certainly doesn’t help that your workplace strives to walk and quack like some kind of college campus.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#155People 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 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. What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs (like literally my most basic needs, think food and shelter).
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Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. But if everybody is woke (and that is the case given that we are talking about tech and California) then the company has no choice but to accept wokeness because the money becomes a non factor if it can't be offered to somebody who is not woke . The supply of non woke workers ju…
The supply of non woke workers just isn't there The responses to the Basecamp and Coinbase announcements were equally mixed between people who wanted to avoid them, and people who want to seek them out. There are plenty of people who want work to be about working together on work. I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not…
> I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work.
Sure, if you’re a white, middle-aged, straight, cis male (speaking as one myself).
But for other people, it’s not as easy to “leave your politics at home”, especially if you’re politics are “can I please be paid fairly in comparison to other workers” or “sorry, I’m late for work, the police unnecessarily stopped me because of my race” or even “I can’t get a job at this company because of my sexuality”.
The fact is, the world is changing and companies have to change with it. It’s happened before (women in the workplace for example) and it’s going to keep happening.
Everything is political. Even saying you don’t have a position is tacit endorsement of the status quo.
Obviously, there are reasonable limits and expected standards of behaviour. It’s not ok to harass your coworkers about a political cause and it shouldn’t impact your ability to do your job.
But we are all going to have to deal with it.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although my immediate reaction to the Pyramid of Hate [1] was a similar jump to, “is this saying jokes will lead to genocide?!”, ultimately I don’t think that was the intent. People seemed to have interpreted it in different ways, specifically “You’re telling me I support genocide if I think someone’s name is funny?” I think the people who brought the pyramid into the equation were pointing out how individual behavio…
How is that pyramid not classic slippery slope fallacy? You could make a pyramid where you have violent movies and playing violent video games leads to a person becoming a serial killer arguing that violent movies and video games desensitize you to murder.
It's only a slippery slope fallacy if the progression is hypothetical and unjustified - otherwise, it's an actual slippery slope. The progression from normalization of racial animosity to genocide - on a societal level, not the strawman that any individual will make an off-color joke today and build the gas chambers tomorrow - is something that has demonstrably happened multiple times in the past couple of centuries, unlike the link between violent media and actual violence.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money. But if everybody is woke (and that is the case given that we are talking about tech and California) then the company has no choice but to accept wokeness because the money becomes a non factor if it can't be offered to somebody who is not woke . The supply of non woke workers ju…
The supply of non woke workers just isn't there The responses to the Basecamp and Coinbase announcements were equally mixed between people who wanted to avoid them, and people who want to seek them out. There are plenty of people who want work to be about working together on work. I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not…
I avoid woke workplaces. I’m much, much happier. I don’t give a shit about politics or activism and it just gets under my skin.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The 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. What? I can’t be the only one who works directly in order to fulfill my needs (like literally my most basic needs, think food and shelter).
I was about to say, this is the most chilling HN sentence I’ve ever read. The totality of our existence from 8-5 is not owed to someone who profits from our labor and skills because they got lucky with some seed money or an inheritance a decade ago. That’s just the divine right of kings with extra steps.
no you get this magical thing called a salary for your work. your compensation isnt woke virtue signaling. they arent "profiting off your labor because they got lucky on some seed money".
youre profiting off their ingenuity and idea. If many other entrepreneurs didnt do this, you wouldnt have a job because they wouldnt be available. and most people dont have the risk appetite to do something like that.
so no youre not being exploited by them. youre leeching off their idea and should realize who depends on whom.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#160People 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…
Yes, you're naive. Maybe if your a worker on a factory line and only being paid to turn a wrench, then sure. But at tech firms, you're being paid to think.