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

economist.com

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

#191

Post by smegger001 »

antihero wrote: post #172
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 workplace is 8+ hours of most people's day. You cannot divorce it from the very real problems that exist in the world.

honestly i think the problem here is the standard 40 work week monopolizing societies time. in the last 50 years worker productivity has shot up but the hours worked have stayed the same. we have multiple studies showing greater productivity with shorter work days or shorter work weeks but we insist on keeping 40 hour 5 day weeks.

If people had more time outside of work they could do this outside of work.

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

#192

Post by volkl48 »

weasel_words wrote: post #37

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how skewed a poll taken by "a diversity consultancy" would conclude that: "... two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work."

I imagine it depends on how the question is framed.

No one wants to be fired for merely mentioning the top news story of the day in office conversation. And sometimes it's a "racial justice" topic.

On the other hand, I also don't think most people want to be forced to detail their exact racial-justice views in the office or feel pressured to openly support something.

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

#193

Post by jlawson »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #150
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 (…

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 "le…

When you say, "all opinions are equally valid", what does the word "valid" mean?

It seems to be this word is doing a lot of work and if you explore this your position will quickly collapse.

Opinions are generally about moral issues - what we should do, what goals we should pursue. They are not about positive facts like "how many people live in America".

In the arena of goal-setting there are indeed no objective facts. It is equally valid to want to pursue a global caliphate where all women are slaves to the men who own them and all gay people and apostates are executed, as it is to want to pursue a global social justice utopia (however you could even describe such a thing). There is no objective standard to reject either goal. There are simply preferences.

What's more prefereable? Killing an unborn fetus at 3 months development, or obligating a mother to carry it to term? Why? How can you possibly say that your preference is objectively true? It obviously isn't.

If you think your preferences are objectively more right than others, you need to explain what part of the nature of the universe makes it so. (Incidentally religious people have this explanation - it's because the creator of the universe declared that these are the best preferences.)

If you want more reading, you can look up the difference between positive and normative beliefs.

Your goal here is just to set up a system where the people with power, who happen to agree with your preferences, get permission to punish people who disagree with their preferences. This is 100% a belief conditioned on the fact that you know that people like you have the power. If the people with power disagreed with you you'd be a free speech advocate (as people of your opinion were a few decades ago).

There is in fact no way to objectively set up a policy of "Allow the right opinions, and punish the wrong ones" and it's childish to say you can.

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

#194

Post by mr_toad »

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…

> The entire history of this issue is roughly 100 years old and almost entirely due to imperialism and mismanagement

There were four empires who controlled the region over a period of thousands of years. There is a long long history of ethnic violence in the region, going so far back it’s literally prehistoric.

You’re just cherry picking facts to support one side of the story.

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

#195

Post by whoisthemachine »

kokanator wrote: post #23

> Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics—and failing Really? Don't be surprised when you manipulate the political sphere outside your walls in ways never seen in the history of the world and that politic creeps inside and devours you from within.

I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but companies (unreasonably large ones especially) have certainly manipulated the political sphere "outside their walls" in such ways for a long time. See East India Company, Standard Oil, etc. See also the Gilded Age for a time that is very reminiscent of the times we live in today [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age#National_politics

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

#196

Post by ALittleLight »

cgrealy wrote: post #156
nitrogen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't resent people raising political or social arguments. Actually, I quite enjoy them and actively partake outside of hackernews. What I do resent is being told what the right answers are and forbidden from disagreeing on threat of termination and ostracisation. My own preference order is appropriate discussion of social issues, no discussion, told what the answers are without discussion.

Let me give an example. At my most recent job there is a monthly lunch for women at my level with our VP. Who is also a woman. The explicit topic of this lunch is career advancement for women. I learned about the lunch from my two female coworkers.

In order to get promoted you need to have feedback and buy off from upper management. Same for raises and bonuses. Now, I don't know, but I assume having a monthly meeting to talk about my career advancement with the VP of our group would be a benefit for the pursuit of getting promoted and getting more money.

My perception is that if I said something like "Hey, isn't it a bit unfair we give this perk to women and not men?" Is that I would be quickly shamed. If I stuck to it, I'd expect to get fired. I don't think I could even question the logic of it, and I do have some questions, without being fired.

Ironically, it strikes me as an extremely privileged perspective to have the same political beliefs as the company and also to insist on talking about them at the company. "We just want to say what the owners think and punish people who disagree. Who could object to that?"

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

#198

Post by zdragnar »

astrognomy wrote: post #130
eric4smith wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders. When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??

> noble Telling that you'd use that term. Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.

There are multiple meanings to the word noble, and you have chosen one that makes little sense in the context of the rest of the comment. It is hard to read this as anything other than a bad faith argument.

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

#199

Post by etrabroline »

motohagiography wrote: post #152

Boards 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…

> Boards should have more apprehension about their companies being exploited as political platforms by employees.

The ownership of these companies are the ones pushing these politics. Their employees are just pointing out their hypocrisy.

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

#200

Post by klyrs »

anon7725 wrote: post #154
dukeyukey wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_activism

A quick skim indicates that student activism has been recorded in some places dating to the early 1800s. How far do you think we should roll back civil rights?

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