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

economist.com

161–170 of 1001 posts

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

#161
post #30

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.

Management without having to dirty themselves with the actual running of the business.

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

#162
They're reaping what they've sowed, so I don't exactly feel bad about big tech firms trying to flee "wokeness" (read: performative activism that hurts its causes more than it helps them) and finding out they won't be able to do so that easily, as it's exactly the kind of environment they've cultivated and the sort of people they've catered to for the past decade. Everything you do can be construed as a political statement in one way or another, and if you make an ideological battleground out of a workplace you'll be asking for trouble down the road.

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

#163
post #8

Earlier 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.

It is not "divine right of king" by any stretch of the imagination. It is a contract for exchange of service between to parties. Because you agreed to exchange their money for your labor. During that time you are obligated to do what you are agreed to be paid to do under the conditions agreed to at time of hire.

And yes they are owed your skills because they are paying you for them, that is how any exchange of services work. If you don't provide them you are not giving them what they are paying you for.

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

#164
post #62
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a PoC, I’ve also fielded those comments from white co-workers and it honestly feels like a contemporary version of being blind to race.

To me it seemed less racist when we all had yellow hands. Then again I think poc is a silly term - non Europeans have completely different experiences and cultures from each other even within the US.

Indeed. Yellow was race-neutral - nobody's skin color. Then the race-ist emojis started... and discrimination sky-rocketed (e.g. there's still no ginger emojis!).

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

#166
post #14

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…

It’s well worth reading up on the details of the Basecamp disaster. At every point in the process, it was about work. How people behaved at work, how clients were treated, how people reacted to feedback, how information was communicated. It may have been “politics” but it was in no way separable from Basecamp‘s core business.

Yep. The story of Basecamp is a story of how the extreme-right is able to successfully tar any progress - or, frankly, any lack of regress - as "politics", and therefore something that belongs in a box somewhere else, to be addressed at some other time. When what you want is the status quo, you can always look like the great reconciler by saying "this isn't the time for this conversation", because you win by default.

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

#167
post #21

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 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…

> The office is exactly where we should be advocating for things, because it is where we spend the most time and can affect the most change.

Just like we can't say "I should vote on other people's behalf because I know better", we also can't say "I should have more access to societal change because I am employed in an affluent organization". Otherwise it would be elitism 101.

Office as a means of societal change doesn't provide equitable access to everyone in a democratic society. There is no such thing as democratic participation through back-channels.

Playing politics in or around a megacorp is only popular because petite-bourgeois, frustrated with not actually being an elite and having any real control, try to co-opt hot button societal issues in the hopes that their political gesturing will be a status enhancer and grant them access to some power.

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

#168

> 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…

Sorry, I’m not buying that you can just ignore religion. There’s a reason that there are essentially no Jews left in any of the other Arab states in that area.

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

#169
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 am very familiar with anti abortionist activists views due to my family. My mom marched with Operation Rescue during the infamous summer in Wichita that resulted in first a bombing, then eventually a murder done by shooting a doctor in the middle of a church service.

There is a deep dishonesty in everything they say. They trot out the abortion is murder phrase constantly, but their behavior reveals that their actual priority is asserting their sexual mores. They want to punish those who disagree with them.

It's part of a deeper hypocrisy that forms the spine of the modern evangelical movement in the US. I remember vividly my parents describing to me God's grace as a loophole: "You need to try to do good, but so long as you accept God into your heart once you're now saved no matter what you do." This is why you see evangelicals regularly act against their own professed morals, so long as it fits the performance of being a good evangelical christian.

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

#170
post #8

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 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 think it's fair to say the reason the business employed you is to fulfill the aims of the owners of the business. This does not negate you have your own aims and needs, but for the employment relationship to continue those aims need to be in alignment.
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