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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

#321

Post by kodt »

sorenn111 wrote: post #294
anm89 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify I don't dislike Rogan. I don't always like him either. I think he occasionally makes great points and sometimes says profoundly dumb stuff. The point is he's divisive and I don't wan't this to become a Joe Rogan debate.

I find it interesting that an admittedly not-that-smart (calls himself a moron regularly) fighter/comedian who just talks with all sorts of people is sufficiently divisive enough to merit such asterisks. Strange times.

It is mostly because he has hosted some controversial guests such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan Peterson, and Sargon of Akkad. And by hosting them he is accused of giving the alt-right a platform while also not sufficiently attacking their views.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#322

Post by padraic7a »

neonate wrote: post #280
anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

Being a publisher might get you off in the States, but in a lot of countries publishers are held to be legally culpable for material they publish. So publishing nazis, online abuse, illegal content etc is a legal issue.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#323

Post by weberc2 »

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…

These are the _only_ kinds of politics that are acceptable in many workplaces. We have diversity departments and minority groups and women's groups and consultancies and recruiting agencies advertise their ability to find minority candidates. People are afraid to publicly question these policies.

> Education: Too political to discuss the fact that schools are trying to balance their admissions in the face of very uneven opportunities amongst their applicants. Never mind the fact that school admissions were never fair to begin with.

Women outnumber men in universities and pretty much throughout the pipeline (EDIT: to clarify, I mean the broader education pipeline, not the tech subset thereof). This whole post is so disconnected from my experience and any experience I've heard about that it feels like it's from inverse universe.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#326

Post by TulliusCicero »

neonate wrote: post #280
anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

The phone company analogy doesn't really work, because phone calls are by default private, between exactly two parties, usually just two people. If you look at the tech company equivalent of that, like FB messenger, or Hangouts, or other messaging systems, they behave more similarly to the phone company. It'd be difficult to get in trouble for something you said in a private message.

If you want the analogy to make sense, you'd have to use something that's more of a broadcasting platform, like TV or radio, or a magazine.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#327

Post by opportune »

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…

I absolutely agree that politics is everywhere and picking and choosing which type of political discussion is allowed is itself political, (I’ve also never been convinced that URMs in tech isn’t primarily a pipeline problem but ofc wouldn’t want to shut off debate on that)

I guess the difference in what is allowed is between “positive” vs “negative” politics. By that I don’t mean positive politics is absolutely the best whereas negative is stuff I disagree with, but saying “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se. But negative politics might be something like “we are going to ban X because we find it abhorrent” whether X is racist stuff, antivaxx stuff, or LGBTQ stuff you are directly prohibiting beliefs.

Note that I don’t necessarily agree that positive vs negative (or, un-disagreeable vs actively disagreeing) is exactly where you should draw the line where politics is allowed, but I’m just trying to rationalize and say maybe it’s not inherently hypocritical.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#328

Post by snovv_crash »

dijit wrote: post #25
jswizzy wrote: post #3

When was it ever okay to discuss politics at work?

I say this as a very left-leaning person (by British standards at the very least), but in my company strong left leaning values are part of the culture and it's expected that you promote LGBTQ+ issues, promote Women in the workplace and promote immigration. It's not a bad thing in my mind, it's heavy handed at times, I can see how it would rub some traditionalists the wrong way in an extreme way. If you held some for…

What if you support these policies, but don't actively promote them because you're there to do work, not discuss politics?

What if you have reservations about specific things that have been lumped in with "left" politics, which you believe are inherently not "left" and do not benefit humanity?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#329

Post by iamasoftwaredev »

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/...

So you'll still do business with say, nazis, you just aren't gonna brag quite as loud about it.

You're a coward.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#330

Post by scarface74 »

Nullabillity wrote: post #305
vowelless wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you do matters . The people on the ground turning Syria into the shithole you consider it to be were probably also "just focusing on producing the best work they could". Apparently they did a pretty good job.

Will someone talking about Syria at Gitlab have any meaningful affect?
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