One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

Look, functionally you're defining an "apolitical" office as unquestioning obedience. Which is fine, just own it instead of trying to dress it up.

It was "OK" when activism was directed at the competition or randos on social media or GitHub or "conservatives", and they encouraged it, not realizing these activists were extremists or had ties to ideologues.

But one can be certain "Google 2020" will look more like "IBM 2010" than "Google 2010".

This will be US election year soon, it's going to get nasty on all fronts.

You mean, the power of the ruling class has created the rules that ruled class doesn't mix challenging their masters in with their service that is required for their survival.

Because politics and business are deeply mixed when you look at the ruling (capitalist) class, your “evolution” rule doesn't apply there. And politics that involve bootlicking for their particular masters is also rewarded in the working class, your “evolution” rule.dorsnt apply there, either. It's only politics that challenges one’s capitalist masters (usually embodied in a corporate employer) that is discouraged.

But also your firm engages in practices that could be viewed as morally dubious that HR activily screens out people that might have any kind of social media presence. Which sounds like a fear of whistleblowers more than anything.

"They can’t always be trusted to simply do what you tell them."

Such a telling phrase.

And thus, an office in which this "set of activities" is not permitted is an apolitical office.

> An office can never be an apolitical entity, given that it involves the organisation of people and decision making about their activities, AND that office necessarily interacts with wider society which is unavoidably a political area.

I think you're failing to distinguish between an apolitical office, and the company being an "apolitical entity". A company of any significant size is going to end up interacting with politicians. But this does not mean that its offices cannot be apolitical spaces. I do not know why you seem to insist that this is the case. All that is necessary for an office to be an apolitical space is to make political activity off limits in the office.

> When you think about it, it's really quite baffling that people can think they can spend almost 30% of their waking life within some system that is devoid of political relevance. Life is political. Society is political. What you do in your work and career is one of the most politically impactful parts of a persons life.

Life and society are indeed political. Sure, some people may want to bring politics into the 30% of their lives that they spend in the office. But plenty of other people are happier when a company has employees use the 70% that is spent outside of the office.

> To be generous, treating the workplace as devoid of politics is just support of the status-quo.

For the fourth time, absence of a political view is not the support of any view. This is a toxic "you're with us or you're against us" mentality and it's exactly this kind of thing that people are sick of hearing from their co-workers.

> Given that many people are socialists and want to live in a society where say, Education, is a public good and managed by public institutions, then simply maintaining private educational institutions is intervening in the "political process" of others.

And in an apolitical office they are free to organize activism to push politicians towards achieving those ends - during the 70% of the time they spend outside of work.

Maintaining an apolitical office is not an endorsement of the status quo or any other viewpoint. It prevents people who want to change the status quo from bringing their politics into the office, but also prevents those people who want to defend the status quo. The only thing is does is it makes people carry out their political activity in a space other than the office.