Don't talk politics. Don't talk about how much you make. Just do as you are told!
Terrifying to see sincere replies to this obviously sarcastic comment.
Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#262People 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…
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Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#263Politics is what it is precisely because it is vacuous - you signal allegiance and that is all. You as an individual cannot influence anything any more than discussing an incoming storm would influence its trajectory. But unlike the storm we know that the results of what society produces are determined by the society. And people don't realize or care that they as an individual are not society and have no influence ov…
Game theory, finally someone gets it.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Political opinions are not protected in the same way, nor should they be, as the protected classes you cite (gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc).
Religion is a protected class. Why not politics? We either need to add more protected classes or do away with the whole concept and return to free association.
implying politics isn't a religion in America.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
When will we stop fetishizing and lionizing "job creation"? The ideal business would employ zero people, have zero expenses, and make a 100% profit margin. From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect…
The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well. The failure of collective markets stems from nobody has figured out how to get people to stop acting selfishly.
> The beauty of the free market is that by pursuing selfish interests, people wind up benefiting others as well
The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized.
A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 belief that without Western / British "imperialism and mismanagement", Jews, Muslims (Shia and Suni) (and Christians) would just peacefully co-exist in Jerusalem is ... wishful thinking at best.
Well, the violence in the Levant was certainly lower when the Ottomans were in charge.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#267> Technological shifts have tended to be framed in political terms, as was the case with open-source software, which initially had an anti-capitalist impetus.
This is not true at all. The idea behind free software was always that if you bought it or it was given to you, you should own it entirely. This is very free market. It was anti predatory in nature, and overall political motivations to support it ranged, but the bent was very libertarian. It was opposition to abuse of customers or users and opposition to monopoly and cartel formation, and where it was focused on community building it has always been based on the principle of free association, a foundational libertarian value.
Beyond that gripe, I think the reason for the push against politics at work is because people are tired of being immersed in politics 24/7 whether they like it or not, being and just inundated with every conceivable political anything all the time. Party politics, ideological politics, a constant demand to pick a (very particular) side or face professional repercussions, it is exhausting. More specifically, there's a certain political ideology that has a mantra "everything is political" and I think people are sick of appeasing them and playing their game because they vehemently scream at the top of their lungs every chance they get that they're the super good guys and call everyone that disagrees with them evil.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
the one that gets me is adding race to emoji. they all used to be 'Simpsons yellow', a skin tone not found in any ethnic or racial group, and as such not representing or excluding any group but now we have black white and other various skin tones for our happy-faces. WHY? Does black happy face mean something different than white happy face isn't happiness universal? why bring race into something that was simply meant…
Fully agree. It seems so stupid. Why do people care about what color the emoji is? Don't they have real problems?
The reason is because "woke" is racism in reverse.
As long as there's racism (in any direction), color matters. You can't treat or think of people differently on the basis of race without knowing who is in what race.
The last thing "woke" people want is for discrimination on the basis of race to disappear, or for the color of people's skin to no longer factor in to how they are judged or treated.
Edit: agreed with a below commenter, and thanks for the correction. There isn't any such thing as "racism in reverse", just racism.
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#269People 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…
Just try and jam that genie back in the bottle as hard as you possibly can...
Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds like a problem found in fancy valley tier-1 unicorns then. I keep hearing stories of people bombarded with political discussions on a daily basis and can hardly believe them. I'm not doubting anyone's sincerity but jeez... I feel like this perhaps localized to certain segments of the industry. I've worked in this industry for over a decade and really haven't had any major political discussions with cowork…
This is happening because these large tech companies- not just tier-1 unicorns but FAANGs themselves, have been presenting themselves as paternalistic employers for the past decade. You provide employees with all the free food, on-campus gyms, and massages by appointment as they want, then present them with supposedly open cultures of free inquiry, your employees are going to use it. You satiate someone's lower level…
This is probably the best explanation I’ve seen.