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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

#411

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nradov wrote: post #184
kemenaran wrote: post #90

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…

Software development is not actually a profession , it's just an occupation. That's not necessarily a bad thing but let's not pretend that it's something that it isn't. In order to be a profession on the level of law, civil engineering, medicine, arms, accounting, etc it would need — among other things — a clear code of ethics. Years ago the IEEE made some tentative steps toward turning software development into a pr…

I think you're confusing "being a profession" with "having the trappings of a profession".

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#412

Post by hyperdunc »

jedberg wrote: post #180
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #142

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…

As a wealthy white male, I couldn't agree more. For people like me, politics is a choice. But as my female friends of color often remind me, politics is not a choice for them.

My neighbor is a wealthy white male and I'm willing to bet he's less like you than your female friends of color are.

The problem with this kind of identity framing is that politics is central to it. One wrong step and your enemies of color (for instance) may play their victimhood against your prosperity and it'll become brutally obvious how political you are by merely existing within a demographic.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#413

Post by ProAm »

anm89 wrote: post #110

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…

While I largely agree, history has shown this wont fair well for humanity either. Look at IBM and the Holocaust [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#414

Post by kissgyorgy »

anm89 wrote: post #110

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…

You are the kind of guy who would see a murder, would says "Not my problem." Not great. Everyone should be the moral compass of everyone else. The society nowadays seems fucking terrible.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#416

Post by scarejunba »

kemenaran wrote: post #90

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…

This fetishization of these "professional careers" has got to stop. Particularly this fictional glamourization of the philosopher professional who is held responsible for all outcomes of his work. To this day, Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg roams free despite mistaken forensic DNA tests putting so many innocent people in jail. That is one, but I could produce hundreds. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to name a single inventor (who, for sake of this argument, we may choose to be also a 'professional') who is innocent by this metric.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#417

Post by snowwrestler »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #371
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #142

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…

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive. Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without complete agreement. Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage w…

When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc.

Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work.

If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds) from equal participation in this industry.

One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#418

Post by philwelch »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #272
neonate wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now. Once you start basing your…

I don't think it's been convincingly argued that ranking or recommendation algorithms necessarily represent any sort of editorial bias. The purpose of these algorithms is to rank content based either on a prediction of what the individual user would want to see based on their existing history or on which content is more broadly engaging in general. In other words, if YouTube decides I really like to watch Ben Shapiro owning the libs with FACTS and LOGIC, that doesn't mean YouTube is making an editorial decision to promote that content, it just means YouTube has profiled me as some sort of conservative. If YouTube profiled me differently, they would be equally happy to recommend TYT videos or whatever.

There may be some editorial bias introduced if the userbase of a given social media site is themselves skewed in a particular direction. For instance, there seems to be some skew in the content that shows up on my Tumblr dashboard that seems fairly irrespective of anything I've subscribed to. But even that isn't necessarily damning for Tumblr, because they're not necessarily making an editorial decision to promote that content.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#419

Post by zamalek »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #142

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'll openly admit that I don't have an answer for the deeper issue here (Gitlab selling software to evil customers), in terms of specifically politics:

I don't think politics should be discussed at workplaces that do not participate in political systems in an official capacity (lobbying, PACs etc.). If your employer engages in politics, then that should be an allowed topic and/or other accommodations should be made for employees who regard their employer as morally reprehensible.

> LGBTQ+, women in tech, underrepresented minorities in tech, education

I don't consider these political in any way. Employees should be able to talk about how the company can improve its own diversity policies, irrespective of what the government decides what to do. The line of thinking here is similar to "separating church and state," and also that it's easier to change company policy: changing company policy provides quick and "easy" improvements to social progress, while the longer and more difficult fights at the political level occur.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#420

Post by friendlybus »

jka wrote: post #369
anm89 wrote: post #110

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…

The trouble with libertarianism is, ultimately, that libertarians only care about themselves. The kind of policy that GitLab is proposing here is fine - or even aspirational, under a certain lens - until one day you wake up and find that the same software is being used to destroy your community and compatriots. How could that happen? Isn't this free speech to max utility? Isn't that flawless? No, it's free utility to…

You say that like the rest of the gov does not exist. The mere knowledge that a dangerous program exists can be reported to the FBI with all relevant information without Github having to run a gestapo firewall on all content it hosts.
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