171–180 of 853 posts
Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp? People are going to say "obviously st…
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You should take a moment to read your own comment and consider how much raw ideology is packed into it - it's just pure authoritarianism. As an illustration of this, consider this similar comment: "Why should peasants have any voting power? It is not their country. If they want a say in how it is run they can leave or figure out how to buy into the country as a feudal lord. Peasants are literally in place to do one t…
You are comparing a government to a company. Peasants don't optionally sign contracts to belong to their nation. For the record I think the peasants should and have every moral (althouth probably not legal)right to revolt. Revolting from your company is called quitting. So go ahead and revolt if you want. If believing that both companies and workers should have the freedom to set their own terms for how they want to…
Indeed. Both can be run either a democratic or authoritarian fashion. "Ownership should mean absolute power" is a common belief (everywhere but particularly in the US where labor rights have never been strong), but is only one option, and more democratic forms are possible.
> Peasants don't optionally sign contracts to belong to their nation.
Thinking that employers "belong" to the companies they work for is quite strange language. But more to the point, employees don't "optionally" sign employment contracts - most people are forced to work to pay the bills - in other words, they are coerced into signing the contract. Most people hate their jobs and would rather not do them.
Can there ever be a non-work related conversation between employees that is not a "societal and political discussion"? In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about high housing costs (bunch of us are testing the market right now), property taxes, EV rebates, weed legalization, homeless/drug use problem on the streets. All of this is apparently a fireable offense at Basecamp? People are going to say "obviously st…
In the past week I have spoken to coworkers about custom keyboards, sail racing, gym routines and upside of hiring a personal trainer, travel, 3D-printing, I can go on forever. I believe it is fundamentally possible to have an interesting and relaxing conversation with coworkers and not to touch political topics.
As you can see, it's a ridiculous policy that can only be enforced arbitrarily.
Also, sidenote: what happened to all the "free speech is bigger than the first amendment! It's an ideological hill worth dying on!" people? One mention of changing "master" to "main" and they're everywhere on hackernews, yet oddly quiet in this comment section.
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Sure it's your legal right to form a union, go for it if you want. More power to you if you win. Fortunately workers in tech are almost unanimously smart enough to understand this isn't in their interest and reject unions. Also understand you are playing power politics so if you are going to play make sure you can win. These people at instacart didn't: https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/21/22242676/instacart-firing...
> Fortunately workers in tech are almost unanimously smart enough to understand this isn't in their interest and reject unions https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/954710407/at-google-hundreds-... ("Google Workers Speak Out About Why They Formed A Union: 'To Protect Ourselves'") https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed... ("How Kickstarter Employees Formed a Union") https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/fol…
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That’s usually a nice side-effect. This is a bigger trend developing in tech, I think ... the exact contours of why various C-levels are pushing this now is yet to be seen (not every company policy change to this effect was announced on a blog post, it’s happening elsewhere too).
I honestly think people are reading too much into this. They straight out say that discussions were turning toxic. That presumably impacted the ability of teams to be productive in the jobs they were paid to do. That's the why.
> No more paternalistic benefits. Cutting benefits and calling it a feature. Amazing. A lot of "work will set you free" vibes from this.
cutting benefits and paying out the cash value of them so you can decide what to do with it . i understand the objections to the other points in the post, but why do you present half the story on this one?
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Is anyone able to actually articulate an example of a political or societal topic that is supposedly obviously of the type that shouldn’t be discussed at work?
Sure - the USA Government wants to sign a deal to buy your software. But a group of people start a divisive email thread on how the USA Gov is a racist, white supremacist, sexist, imperialist government and the company should boycott them. Or that Israel wants to sign a deal but a thread is started that we should boycott and divest from the the Zionist murderers of Palestine. Or the Republican Party wants to sign a d…
If your reason is the former, I’m curious how far you would take that. Is there any conceivable case where the company should not do business with some organization or government because of political issues? And if your reason is the latter, then shouldn’t the company try to be upfront (at least internally among employees) where it stands on these issues?
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What you described is talking about personal interests and activities, and I agree that is the kind of stuff that is easy and fun to talk (and hear) about with others. I’m starting to think many people don’t have personal activities and interests and don’t know what to fill in small talk with other than what they saw on social media or the news.
What about people whose personal interests and activities directly involve politics? Like people interested in political analysis or reporting, or people interested in competitive policy debate, or even people who actively do advocacy work in their free time? Is small talk about the advocacy work you did over the weekend worse than my small talk about building drones over the weekend?
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I'll assume this question was asked sincerely and in good faith. By cancelling in this context I mean trying to ostrasize those they disagree with. Talking negatively about them, excluding them as much as possible from social and professional activities. Ignoring their advice and opinion at work. Being rude or negative when they do have to engage with them etc. In short, acting without the respect and courtesy we wou…
That's soft cancellation. Hard cancellation is when you get others to gang up on them and go to HR to try to get them fired. Afterwards, you publicise whatever got them fired offline in the hopes that they become 'radioactive' to employers and so that they and their family fall on hard times. I'm a little confused as to why people don't understand what "cancel" means in this context. Isn't it quite a popular topic no…
This is a tricky one. On one hand, there's the obvious issues: almost everything you can talk about is societal or political. Talking about your lawn growing is societal because it means you can have a lawn and that gets into the housing crisis sooner or later. If people can't speak about politics, marginalized group will have difficulty bringing up tough issues that impact them in their day to day job. On the other…
> And god forbid you're NOT part of that channel, because then you're the "one person who doesn't care" or some such is this a serious thing actually happening to anyone?