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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

latimes.com

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Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#101

Post by thereare5lights »

shadowgovt wrote: post #70
thereare5lights wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, turn tail and leave when you could fight to change the company? Not gonna happen.

It depends. At a small company? Sure. But no individual employee, or even small collective of employees that aren't VP or key contributor in an irreplaceable knowledge-base, have the clout to turn a Microsoft or a Google. At a major company? The only thing you can do as an individual is take the wind out of their sales or refrain from working for them. Which these companies do notice; Google hiring keeps tabs on cand…

> It depends. At a small company? Sure. But no individual employee, or even small collective of employees that aren't VP or key contributor in an irreplaceable knowledge-base, have the clout to turn a Microsoft or a Google.

I see this claim thrown around a lot with no evidence for it.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#102

Post by geofft »

olah_1 wrote: post #75
blt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and IBM was also leaving out politics when they built custom tabulating machines to help Nazi Germany's logistics. Obvious hyperbole but you get the idea.

> IBM was also leaving out politics when they built custom tabulating machines to help Nazi Germany's logistics. Yes. If IBM built something that helped the government during the Obama administration, would you consider it "political" too?

For my part - yes. I think it's fine for companies to be political. I am totally supportive of this, and I don't think it's possible for a large company to be apolitical in a meaningful sense. (Many of the largest internet companies are founded on the belief that uncensored sharing of information is a good thing, which is definitely a political stance.)

I think we should admit that, and then say, it's okay for GitHub employees to say "My employer's politics don't agree with mine, so I'm not going to work for them anymore," and for GitHub users to say analogous things. My point is that it's deliberately deceptive for GitHub to hide behind the claim of being apolitical.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#103

Post by JohnFen »

mc32 wrote: post #44
Miner49er wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very much a political decision.

No it’s a neutral position not taking a stance for or against a particular business because of politics. So while it may look to someone like it’s “for” something, they’d also take business from an “ICE-alert” system, so from some PoV that would look like it’s “against”, but it’s not. It’s staying neutral.

If you are helping someone by providing products or services to them, you are by definition actively helping them do whatever they do. That's not neutral. Being neutral is neither helping nor hindering them.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#104

Post by catalogia »

zozbot234 wrote: post #81
CydeWeys wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly does Hong Kong nationalism (which is pro-democracy) have to do with White nationalism in the US (which is pro-racism)?

Hong Kong nationalism is not pro-democracy. The Chinese Government supports holding elections for local government officials, including in Hong Kong. Given that, the anti-Chinese attitudes we're seeing there are quite unproductive.

Democracy as supported and implemented by the PRC is a sick joke.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#105

Post by shadowgovt »

kick wrote: post #89
btgeekboy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agency will live on past the current administration. The main function of ICE is needed. The policies imposed upon them from above are the root of the problem and need to be removed. But they will be gone in time, hopefully sooner rather than later.

ICE didn't exist until 2003, and isn't necessarily needed.

Sort of. The organization ICE didn't exist. The functions of ICE were executed by other organizations in the government and (correct me if I'm wrong) no additional responsibilities were really added to ICE whole-cloth; it's more of a post-9/11 consolidation of resources.

Abolishing ICE without considering the need for those responsibilities and what org, if any, should take them on is certainly risky. But technically, yes, we could abolish ICE and route things ICE does (immigration management, customs enforcement, non-military border security) to other executive departments (not necessarily back to their originating department, since instituting ICE also abolished some of its predecessor departments).

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#106

Post by hollerith »

kick wrote: post #89
btgeekboy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agency will live on past the current administration. The main function of ICE is needed. The policies imposed upon them from above are the root of the problem and need to be removed. But they will be gone in time, hopefully sooner rather than later.

ICE didn't exist until 2003, and isn't necessarily needed.

The US has had Border Patrol agents for 100 years. From 1920-1940 they were organized under the Department of Labor; from 1949 to 2003, the Department of Justice; since 2003, Homeland Security.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#107

Post by shadowgovt »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #100
ilikehurdles wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t pick and choose where my taxes go any more than I can pick and choose which constitutional amendments I want to see enforced. I can’t stop a war but I can choose not to work for military contractors.

Yes you can. You may give up your citizenship in exchange for another.

Without rabbit-holing too far on this, I'd note that the people in concentration camps at the border were trying to do that. May not be as simple as you seem to be asserting.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#108

Post by maximente »

whalesalad wrote: post #31

A lot of these companies need to start sticking to their guns and simply letting people go for conflicts like this. If you’re not gonna be a team player there are a billion other tech companies you can go be a part of. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the core issue here – but at some point the message needs to be sent that you don’t deserve a job and aren’t owed anything. You work in exchange for cash, plain and…

> You work in exchange for cash, plain and simple.

well, no, we know this isn't true because people take various forms of non-financial compensation (such as working from home, choosing your own technologies).

compensation is a vector that has a variety of inputs; it's not unreasonable to think that "association with company mission" is one of them that's subject to change over time, and as a result, can be protested, similar to e.g. working from home no longer allowed

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#109

Post by JohnFen »

ratsmack wrote: post #2

It seems that these kinds of demands are becoming more common. Is it because conflict resolution is becoming a dying art, is it because people don't rise to the level of maturity of past times? I just find it to be confusing. Non PW link: https://archive.ph/IkYQ3

My hypothesis is that this is because so much governmental business is done by private corporations. The problem this brings is that there are very few ways you can influence the behavior of corporations.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#110

Post by tomohawk »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #66
nrook wrote: post #9

There is a well-known strategy by which employees can exert influence over their employer and change the decisions it makes. It is called a union. Unionization has been slow for various reasons in the tech sector; when it comes to rich, well-known companies, people don't want to go through the effort to unionize and get more money when they already are being paid a lot. But if workers want to influence decisions like…

Unions are majority rule democratic. When I worked at a plant for one of the big 3, the candidates the union submitted for trades promotions were universally white men. The union didn’t look out for women or minorities particularly well because the majority rules. People assume a tech union will lead to things being somehow more just, but be careful for what you wish for. James Damore might just have the votes.

Did they do secret ballots, or did they do public votes like voice or card check?
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