Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 1001 posts

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

#321

Post by duped »

refurb wrote: post #185
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…

I agree 100%! Constitutional rights are a great example, those don’t stop when you enter the workplace and need to be protected 24/7. So no doubt you’ll be happy to sign my petition to further protect our 2nd amendment right to carry a concealed weapon at work! Yeah, right there, just sign. Oh you don’t support the constitution? When you said we should bring these fights to work you meant just the ones you support. O…

I'll be honest, I wouldn't care. The left as it seems you envision is not a monolith.

But this is a good example! Gun policy (and the constitution itself) are legitimate political discussions that people can have without turning into a "fight." You can even educate or advocate either side in a civil way.

You could even engage in advocacy for gun owners that get murdered by police, like Philando Castile.

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

#322

Post by CincinnatiMan »

mplanchard wrote: post #279
jimmyswimmy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. There isn't room to just go to work... to work? I want to go to the office and interact with people who are the best at what they do, I want my company to hire those people, and I expect them to hold me to equal standards. When the office was explicitly segregated, men vs women, black vs white, whatever,sure,they're could have been room for politics to change that in the workplace. It doesn't seem the same now.…

That would be nice for sure. I think that some people don’t get that privilege still by virtue of who they are. As a recent example that came up in my social circle, say you’re a woman in tech. It turns out that literally every single woman I know in tech has had to deal with at best unwanted propositions but more frequently outright harassment by their male coworkers. In situations like that, you can’t get away from…

The connection to politics in your scenario isn’t clear to me. Are people having charged discussions on Slack about whether men should be allowed to harass women?

I would think the scenario would be an open and shut case of going to associate relations to complain about the harassment. No real political discussion to be had.

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

#323

Post by eloff »

casefields wrote: post #286
TimTheTinker wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's Christopher Hitchens in his 2001 book, Letters to a Young Contrarian: >Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political". It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my b…

I miss Christopher Hitchens' way with words. He truly had a talent for expressing himself richly and convincingly. The ultimate irony is he deconverted me from the religion of my childhood posthumously because I saw the news of his death and then googled him. Which lead to a fascinating summer of YouTube videos of debates and conversations.

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

#324

Post by modriano »

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…

I sleep about 6 hours a day, I work about 9 hours a day, and the rest is for life sustaining activities, housework, personal projects, and leisure.

Work is where I spend most of my time. Being a positive force in the world is important to me, so I only work on important problems, and to defend against falling into a motivated reasoning culture, I only work places where people can freely discuss ethical issues. I don't want to trick myself into thinking I'm connecting the world, but then discover I'm actually building tools that facilitate genocides in Myanmar or ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs or something.

So no, at least for me, attempting to compartmentalize my life like that seems like a really bad life strategy. I just don't want to regret how I spend a major part of my life.

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

#325

Post by PeterisP »

frankbreetz wrote: post #76
stephc_int13 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, really? I am not from the US, so I am a bit ignorant about the laws there. In France it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because of his political views. It is not allowed to ask.

What if they have extreme political views? Are you allowed to wear KKK robes to work?

From the employer's perspective, the definition of "extreme political views" would be the labor rights / pro-union parties (wherever there's not a two-party first-past-the-post system like USA, those often are explicit separate parties) and the communist party, but the working class would very much want that employers don't get to make that decision.

The criteria for too extreme should not be specific to employment. If some organization is considered too bad to exist (e.g. the Nazi party in post-WW2 germany), then it should be dismantled as such, but if the country considers a political movement legitimate enough to participate in elections and gain seats in government, then obviously supporting that organization or membership in it shouldn't be an obstacle for employment as well. I have no idea on what the legal status (if any) of KKK is today in USA, but whatever it is, IMHO it should be the same both for politics and employment.

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

#326

Post by triceratops »

WalterBright wrote: post #247
triceratops wrote: post #220

Earlier 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.

I agree 100% and I wasn't trying to contrast free markets and collective markets. I just dislike the virtue signaling around "job creation". It's not virtuous at all.

We fail to acknowledge that "job creation" benefits the business, because it helps them earn revenue or reduce costs. Ain't nothing noble about hiring someone to do a job. It's a business, not a charity.

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

#327

Post by tolbish »

smegger001 wrote: post #191
antihero wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think we're encouraged to reflexively refuse that notion. But if we consider its feasibility, everything kind of makes sense. But that initial reflexive urge to reject the reality you painted is interesting. There is a bit of a chilling effect going on, for sure.

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

#328

Post by triceratops »

ipaddr wrote: post #291
triceratops wrote: post #220

Earlier 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…

Not true at all. Some employees can create profit if you could hire more of these employees you jump. Sales people are easy to measure, if you could hire 100 or 1000 people who make double what they cost you do. If you want some other area of your company strong you invest in that area. An lawyer during a period where the public is sueing you pays for itself. Hiring a developer to fix a login issue saves refunds. A l…

> Some employees can create profit if you could hire more of these employees you jump

And that's my point. Every hire a business makes is to increase revenue or reduce costs. Employment benefits the worker, but it also benefits the business. If a business could get the work of that employee done without hiring that employee, it would happily do so.

If two parties partake in a trade that has mutual benefit, why is either of them "noble"? Why aren't we calling the worker "noble" for providing the business with their skills and time?

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

#329

Post by [deleted] »

prepend wrote: post #123
darkhorse22 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surely a firable offense, but part of me is so tempted to give a dark-skin-tone thumbs up in Slack as a white guy.

I’ve wondered about this but I’ve never seen anyone use an emoji thumbs up in anything but yellow. I can’t imagine ever setting it to match my skin color, but it would be neat to learn about people who want emojis that look more like them. If anything, I’d be more likely to choose a color far away from my skin.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN