Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#221

Post by alkonaut »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work. If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being downvoted to oblivion. Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the marginalized groups: — lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality becau…

Absolutely right. Saying “don’t talk politics at work” seems to assume that politics is something that goes on on the outside. A stream of news on divisive topics.

In reality, politics happens everywhere and you can’t really avoid talking about it.

“Don’t talk about politics not relevant for the workplace” could be reasonable (most poltics is after all not related).

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#222

Post by cbuchanan »

For those who are a little confused about the no politics at work thing...

If you read the policy we link to about politics, we mention people talking politics during coffee chats, 1-on-1s, etc, but as a general rule we don't lead with those topics.

We focus on inclusion, and we have been very successful at that by respecting others and making work a collaborative, judgment free place. As someone who sometimes has the minority opinion I have absolutely loved this policy, and I feel closer and more accepted by my colleagues as a result.

I'm very proud to work at GitLab.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#223

Post by the8472 »

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.

There is only a very limited number of hills that most people are willing to die on. So saying that they're condoning something doesn't actually tell us all that much, it means that they're tolerating something that they might find disagreeable, even deeply disagreeable. One can also say North Korean citizens are condoning their government, do we think badly of them for it?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#224

Post by manigandham »

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…

Democracy is fine. So is your freedom to choose a different job where you can discuss and do what you want.

The fact that other companies exist without this policy means there is no "power structure" other than a private company deciding what's best for its own culture.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#225

Post by repolfx »

sytse wrote: post #143

Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy that I merged https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

That merge appears to change the policy in ways that render this discussion largely irrelevant (given the current subject line).

It used to say:

We do not currently exclude anyone from being a customer based on moral/value grounds.

followed by a list of reasons why not. It now says:

In some circumstances, we may opt to not work with particular organizations, but we assess those on a case-by-case basis. Some reasons we may choose not to work with certain entities include, but are not limited to ... Making derogatory statements ... Encouraging violence or discrimination against protected groups.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#227

Post by scarface74 »

keithnz wrote: post #194
corndoge wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to hear your political opinions at work. I want to work and make money for myself. Just because I have to be at work to make money for myself shouldn't mean I now have to listen to your views on politics. That is my view on it.

no ones talking about forcing you to talk about it, question is, if you wanted to talk about the ethics / poltical impact of what you are doing with coworkers, shouldn't you be allowed to?

I come to work for one reason -- to get a paycheck. If you want to talk about politics to your friends/coworkers, do it after work. If you don't like your company's ethics-- change companies.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#229

Post by pfranz »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #5
jswizzy wrote: post #3

When was it ever okay to discuss politics at work?

Maybe it's a SV thing? I saw some of the documents from a recent lawsuit against Google and was pretty astounded by the sorts of things that people were willing to not only say but actually put into writing where anyone on their intranet could see (things along the lines of "I won't let anyone on my team if they have political belief X or voted for Y")

I do think it's more of a tech thing. I believe it stems from valuing "culture fit" more than other industries do. I appreciate the idea of culture fit, but feel uneasy about it because it's also discriminatory and leads to problems like this.

I wonder if it's party because of the generalness and youngness of the industry. I imagine fields like oil rigging, therapy services for children, auto repair, or military service have more self-selecting cultures than building generic CRUD apps or web design for random clients.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#230

Post by kova12 »

jlawson wrote: post #204
Nullabillity wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The health of democracy requires that individuals be able to speak their mind and advocate their beliefs. This doesn't work if their livelihood is controlled by a group of hyper-intolerant political totalitarians. What GitHub is doing is giving individuals rooms to breathe, think, and live. It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority, the forced homogenization of thought and suppression of dissent. We banned…

At my place of work, when I brought up my opinions on diversity/inclusion/gender neutral speech, I was verbally bullied, and resent this still, after 3 years of working there. Talking politics at work is not democracy, because people with dissenting opinions get silenced by belligerent activists. I applaud gitlab for refusing to be arbiter of morals
Post reply on HN