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Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#181

Post by repolfx »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #113
dvt wrote: post #21

GitLab are being hypocritical[1][2]. Let's not pretend the "women in tech" and LGBT movements aren't political. Frankly, I think more women in tech and LGBT representation are probably good things, but GitLab is being profoundly disingenuous with their guidelines. To clarify my point: if you open the gates to the marketplace of ideas, make sure it's an actual marketplace . [1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/10/08…

I think it's fair to call women in tech initiatives nonpolitical. There's no significant political opposition to them; things like the INSPIRE Women Act (the women in tech initiative for NASA) regularly get passed with no real debate.

Political opposition? Well, no, not visibly, but that's because "people should only get jobs if they're qualified" is already the default mainstream position. Women In Tech style initiatives claim to be about encouragement but invariably devolve into discrimination against men (in my experience at least) and that's illegal. One political faction turning a blind eye to violations of the law doesn't change the fact that it's still the default position.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#182

Post by vowelless »

Nullabillity wrote: post #107
vowelless wrote: post #18

I am glad Dang changed the title as the original one was unnecessarily inflammatory. I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do anything to disturb that? > Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some circumstances. Whi…

> I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do anything to disturb that? The health of the democracy is far more important than your company's profit margin. And besides, enforcing silence is still a political move that strongly favours th…

How is it a useful democratic exercise to inundate non political employees, or employees who don’t share the majority’s moral political views?

The types of moral politics I am thinking about is discussing the tweet-du-jour, basically celebrity gossip about politicians, etc. Worse still would be people taking strong, loud and uninformed positions on foreign policy, like Syria. I actually happen to find that triggering, given my background. I would rather that people keep their opinions outside of my cubicle so that I can focus on producing the best work I can - instead of constantly being reminded of the shithole I left behind.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#183

Post by Karunamon »

ergothus wrote: post #115

I have a pet theory that we (that is, the culture I'm familiar with, so I don't really know how widespread it is, but at least the white U.S.) have spent too long saying "don't discuss politics, sex, religion, and politics". We literally have no practice handling differences regarding the very items people are passionate about. The answer isn't to get into massive drama-filled flame wars, nor to drive people with min…

>We literally have no practice handling differences regarding the very items people are passionate about.

Looking at it from the employer side, that passion is precisely why these policies are being enacted.

Were I employing someone, I'm required to not have a hostile work environment, which includes certain jokes (because people may be offended), and now includes politics (because people may be offended), and people being offended means I can get sued.

The safest thing I can do, that any company can do, is say "check your politics at the door" and then fire anyone who does it anyways.

It's a garbage solution for the reasons you bring up, but unless we change how those regulations are set up, it's the option that many will take.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#184

Post by shadowgovt »

umvi wrote: post #70
secretdark wrote: post #38

What I find most amazing is less the politics aspect and more the moral/ethical issue. For a company to have an explicit stated policy of _actively_ never taking into account the moral/ethical impact of their work is just... astounding. It is difficult to imagine a more inhuman and bloodless statement.

I think that's a bad faith interpretation. It's more like a pressure cooker company saying "We build kitchen tools. We don't care who buys them. We will not spend any resources vetting customers to make sure they won't blow up a marathon with our product. Yes, even neo nazis are allowed to buy our product even though we executives disagree with them politically/morally/etc." That's an entirely reasonable stance.

And it's one other people and companies will factor in while doing business with them. To their good fortune and their bad.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#185

Post by notadoc »

alexanderlabrie wrote: post #95

Banning staff from talking politics at work shouldn't be allowed under the First Amendment.

That same logic would suggest that no company should be able to ban any topics, content, speech, or people from their platform, no? What is free speech and expression, and what is censorship?

I think society and corporations are wrestling with these concepts right now, and I'm not sure anyone has it right yet.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#186

Post by pdonis »

Smithalicious wrote: post #85
aaomidi wrote: post #44

FYI: If you say you don't care about politics and you ban political speech in your workspace - that on its own is a political statement that you're fine with the status quo.

Is it? You can not be fine with the status quo but still have a multitude of reasons to ban political speech in your workspace: - you think political speech isn't useful for changing the status quo - you think the political speech that will probably take place will lead to a world worse than the status quo, in the opposite direction of which you want it to go (this doesn't just mean "I think my coworkers are of the w…

> You can not be fine with the status quo but still have a multitude of reasons to ban political speech in your workspace

You left out a reason: that the workplace is for getting work done, not for arguing about politics.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#187

Post by randyrand »

kemenaran wrote: post #99

Technical professions are generally held responsible for what they enable. Biology: researchers can't do anything they want on plants, animals or humans. Medicine: doctors are expected to follow strict guidelines with their patients. Even engineering: implementing a cheating system for diesel tests will (rightfully) get engineers into trouble. But software engineering seem to have a pass on how the things we build is…

Your examples aren’t very convincing for biology and medicine. The counter examples seem way more numerous.

Biologists enabled chemical warfare. Same harm has been done with mathematics. Physics.

I think we largely let researches do research, and don’t hold researchers accountable for harm enabled with that research.

In other words, self policing of customers seems like a newer and uncommon phenomenon.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#188

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

onion2k wrote: post #73
malvosenior wrote: post #10

I'm sure everyone who has to earn a living to support their family will appreciate this move. Nothing is worse than politics at work, where you may lose your paycheck if you don't align with the correct factions.

While everyone does have to earn a living and it's fair to think that's very important, if you believe your employer is doing something wrong and yet don't either speak up or look for a new job you're effectively condoning your employers actions. That isn't particularly admirable and your peers would be right to tell you as much.

Whoever is not with me is against me?

I may disagree passionately with what my employer is doing, but I also understand I may be wrong and they may be right. Or they may be wrong in some things, but still better than 90% of other employers. Or I may disagree with what they say, but wholeheartedly agree with what they do. And so on so forth.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#190

Post by eldavido »

Meta, what actually upsets me is how we seem to be avoiding the need to use human judgment.

By definition, every time some process or code is adopted, it takes the human element out a little bit. You have to look case-by-case whether that's a good thing. In some cases, where speed, consistency, precision, or efficiency are valuable, that's a good idea. Leaving humans in the loop is probably better in situations involving most kinds of moral judgment, situations that vary a lot, or things involving a heavy emotional/social component.

Sidenote, I work in self-driving, so this is actually a big question that comes up in my work: what's best to automate vs. what will humans do long-term? It's an interesting question.

It's germane here because, I don't think anyone is really going to suggest, oh, let's sell tools to people who are committing genocide, or pedophilia, or rape, or a variety of other things considered harmful in most cultures. But that's a very hard thing to put into a "code", or a statement of what you will and won't do, precisely because (a) it involves moral judgment, and (b) situations vary a lot.

So we get statements of policy that are black-and-white, perhaps enforceable, but totally absurd. There is no way any reasonable person can take "don't discuss politics at work", at face value. As a straight man, am I supposed to not mention that I'm married? Is that "political"? Of course it is. But I can make the human judgment that that's not likely to offend someone if I mention that I'm married.

There are good and bad effects to a lot of this. Codifying things probably does reduce bias, such as in hiring, or university admissions. But I think we also need to be cognizant of the cost: forcing unnecessarily rigid decision-making into things that are better left a bit fluid.

The best outcomes are probably in the middle, but I don't think we should be as scared as we are of human judgment, whether in university admissions, work promotions, who companies do business with, etc. And yes, there is a thing called "bad judgment" - not all judgments are the right ones, or good, but not all are bad, either.

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