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

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

#851

Post by Moodles » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

w0de0 wrote: post #843

Moodles wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, get new friends. They sound horrible. So many stories. My skip level manager had me in a 1-on-1 once and said something along the lines: “you probably got the green card because Trump likes your demographic”. (I have an EB-1 extraordinary ability green card, and I assume they were talking about me being straight and white). What the fuck am I supposed to say there? Was absolutely speechless. Moments like that a…

[flagged]

>! You must know that Joe Rogan is a polarizing figure and posting him in any but a right-wing community is going to be a troll for reactions

My PhD work was on Signal. I work in security. I literally just wanted to talk about Signal, man. It was actually pretty disappointing to me people talked about how problematic Joe Rogan is instead.

> you should reflect upon your reaction if a podcast from a thinker you despised was posted.

I just said I have a gazillion stories about how it’s better to keep silent in San Francisco than voice your opinion. Trust me, I wouldn’t react the same way.

I definitely don’t want to #csncel e.g. John Oliver just because he said some shit I disagreed with once. I hate that culture. In fact, I’d probably share him if he happened to be saying something I thought was interesting at the time. I think I have before when he was talking about Apple privacy or blockchains actually. So no, I wouldn’t react the same way.

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

#852

Post by Mikho » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

Companies provide too much freedom and they are too afraid to punish employees for not doing actual work they are paid to do. Not to mention not punishing those who create toxic unproductive work environment for others by pushing political agendas at work. This leads to workplace radicalization when arrogant self-proclaimed judges of other people morals and executioners of other people careers behave as uncontrolled passive-aggressive troublemakers.

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

#853

Post by w0de0 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #213

I wonder why companies don't take advantage of such rivalries. Separate the wokes from the unwokes and make them compete who will deliver first

Smarter people - the type that make good engineers who’d deliver early - think critically about everything, not just their job. What you think of as “woke” is often composed of the compassionate, deeply reasoned ideology that such a smart person creates. It acts, practically, as a theodicy, something any coherent non-nihilistic worldview requires.

Similarly, many smart engineers arrive at opposing world views with less emphasis on the problem of evil and more on a pure rational understanding of the nature and history of society.

These two clever camps, admixed with America’s ideological chaos, rarely see one another clearly. The rationalists think the “woke” people are idiots for engaging with irrational intangibles of identity, and the woke people think the rationalists are cruel for refusing to admit any place for subjective experience in their expectations and understanding of the world around them.

I do think the rationalists miss rather more of reality; we are not in a Greg Egan novel. But the wokeists are ignorant of the spectre of ethnic conflict in human history, of the evil foreshadowed in glorifying identity and subjective experience.

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

#854

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

throwkeep wrote: post #849

Moodles wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, get new friends. They sound horrible. So many stories. My skip level manager had me in a 1-on-1 once and said something along the lines: “you probably got the green card because Trump likes your demographic”. (I have an EB-1 extraordinary ability green card, and I assume they were talking about me being straight and white). What the fuck am I supposed to say there? Was absolutely speechless. Moments like that a…

This also sounds like Scientology or at the very least a high pressure religion. "Joe is an evil person who will introduce you to evil things! We do not speak of him here." "Are you a true believer or not?" "We can tell you're not a devoted Scientologist." "Fall in line, or we'll bully and ostracize you."

[deleted]

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

#855

Post by HKH2 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #426

smegger001 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere farther down another commenter asked if I would consider it race neutral if it was dark magenta. My response was yeah sure. If it is not a real skin tone it is neutral and i would feel just as attached to it and feel it is raceless equally as bright yellow. I don't feel anymore or less represented either. *edited for spelling

Dark magenta would probably have the same problem that floating features have, which is it distracts from the content (and would probably be hard to read compared to actual skin tones). The situation was, people chose yellow as the default, and that excluded some people. So, if we cared about being polite and fixing it for those people, and if our options were to either change to some hideous magenta that couldn’t be…

Usually a generic happy face is yellow. I don't think it has anything at all to do with race.

It makes sense that that's why they made the other emoticons yellow.

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

#856

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #814

kortilla wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a choice. You have a (metaphorical) pistol to your head to engage with the system as it is, die, or be killed. This is ridiculous. In the US people constantly quit to start small businesses, work for other businesses, or just not work at all. There is zero threat of violence if you choose not to work. Additionally, there is no concept of debt slavery at all outside of the military (which is probably the mo…

I don't think you understood what I meant, I probably wasn't clear. There is no threat of violence if you choose not to work. The violence is if you try to subsist to your means without engaging with the economic system. So you are forced to engage in the economic system as it is. As for debt slavery, I'm simply saying that the arguments used to justified exploitative labour relations are exactly the same as were use…

All you're saying here is that a person can't survive completely on their own. That's always been true, and is just part of The Human Condition, not a plot by evil capitalists.

Division of labor is the foundation of civilization, and how we have become so incredibly wealthy.

In a division of labor system, everyone needs to contribute as much as they benefit, on average, and the system of mostly voluntary trade is how we keep track of that. You trade your labor for money, that you in turn trade with others for the result of their labor.

Demanding to share the fruits of that system - which come from the work of countless other people - without being willing to contribute to it with your own work is both selfish and antisocial.

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

#857

Post by w0de0 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #851

w0de0 wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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>! You must know that Joe Rogan is a polarizing figure and posting him in any but a right-wing community is going to be a troll for reactions My PhD work was on Signal. I work in security. I literally just wanted to talk about Signal, man. It was actually pretty disappointing to me people talked about how problematic Joe Rogan is instead. > you should reflect upon your reaction if a podcast from a thinker you despise…

The platonic ideal of a space safe for all ideologies doesn't exist, so let me rephrase: imagine someone posted a podcast of an ideologue, in a place where you feel safe expressing your opinion, as the detractors of your Joe Rogan piece felt safe where you posted him.

Certainly with a PhD you can't actually have been surprised by the reaction to your post. What's the point of your performative surprise? Do you think people shouldn't have disagreed with Joe Rogan, or been angry with him? Is it that you don't feel safe expressing your opinion in certain places, because so many people disagree with it, and that's wrong, you should be afforded the same ideological safety as the woke crowd when among them? I don't understand, I guess. It all still seems very lacking in theory of mind. You can't change the world for the better by trolling.

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

#858

Post by Tycho » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #740

sjaak wrote: post #678

I just listened to a conversation where Sam Harris paints a bleak picture after having spoken with leaders in tech. Sam Harris (SH): I was recently at a meeting of very connected people in tech and media. I won't name anyone but they are people who are or were running some of the biggest companies. These are people with massive influence and are on the same page with everything we've said here. But when told that the…

That’s funny, if you deliberately say the actual N-word instead of using ‘N-word’, even in the described context, I actually can see why you would fire somebody. Because I can’t see a valid reason why you would actually say that very laden word out loud in almost any context.

That’s how it works with literally any other word.

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

#859

Post by throwkeep » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

w0de0 wrote: post #843

Moodles wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, get new friends. They sound horrible. So many stories. My skip level manager had me in a 1-on-1 once and said something along the lines: “you probably got the green card because Trump likes your demographic”. (I have an EB-1 extraordinary ability green card, and I assume they were talking about me being straight and white). What the fuck am I supposed to say there? Was absolutely speechless. Moments like that a…

[flagged]

> posting him in any but a right-wing community is going to be a troll for reactions

This is an extreme shifting of the overton window and cult behavior that excommunicates liberals from the left. Joe Rogan himself is on the left, he has mostly liberal views, he wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders. But because he's heterodox and talks to the "other", he's a sinner who must be cast out.

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

#860

Post by bingbong70 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #222

efitz wrote: post #165

> according to a new Harris poll commissioned by Paradigm, a diversity consultancy, more than two-thirds of adults in America want to be able to discuss racial-justice issues at work I just plain do not believe this poll.

This was never a problem pre-pandemic. People would discuss these issues at lunch or at the watercooler. If you were bothered by politics interrupting your little heads-down work bubble? Just take lunch at your desk or pack your own water bottle. But in the WFH age, there's no getting away from it. These discussions happen in company general chat, where often important business also happens.

>This was never a problem pre-pandemic

I think this was less of a problem pre-Trump more specifically.

At some point the idea that foreigners and minorities should be treated like human beings seemed to become controversial in some circles. Same circles that thought an alternate invented history was preferable to reality and spent a lot of time/money mainstreaming that idea.

The resulting push back was expected and necessary. There is a cycle of civil rights wins followed by backlash in the US, I don't think that cycle ever ends.