Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

> it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

The reason they are so divisive is because the loud people fall into two categories: 1) people who loudly and constantly complain about these issues and for whom no amount of improvement is enough, and 2) people who think all these problems are greatly exaggerated, part of the liberal culture wars, and find it extremely annoying that anyone would bring it up.

The "silent majority" in these issues are people who say "yeah, sure, it seems fair to allow gay marriage, why not" and "let's see what we can do to improve female and minority representation but let's not jump to the conclusion that anyone in particular is to blame".

The hallmarks of being in this silent majority are:

- being generally well-intentioned

- supportive of incremental, common-sense solutions that are not zero-sum

- dislikes intense conflict and blame games

- does not take a view of the issue that makes one group of people the "heroes/victims" and another the "villains"

So, if you hear the proposal "let's allow politics at work", who do you think is actually going to speak up? That's right, the loud and annoying people that you can hear anytime by turning on the news. Ideologues for whom compromise and assuming good faith in your opponents is anathema. No thanks.

Interestingly, the rates of women in tech were higher 50 years ago than they are today. Reduction in inequality between men and women has an inverse relationship with rates of women in engineering. The countries with large inequality between men and women like Indonesia and India have some of the highest rates of women on tech. Egalitarian countries like those in Scandinavia have the lowest rates. The idea that low rates of women in tech is a product of inequality and discrimination is hard to justify in practice.

My response to bluntfang, HN is rate limiting my office IP:

> Who's to say there's a reduction?

Anyone who studied gender relations over the last half century will say so, unambiguously, Trump notwithstanding. Women didn't have the right to abortion 50 years ago. They earned college degrees at half the rate of men (today, 3 women earn a degree for every 2 men). Workforce participation was much lower. Many states did not allow women to initiate divorces except under specific circumstances. Explicit denial of employment on the basis of sex was socially acceptable.

I'm willing to claim that women are better off today than they were in 1969 is a fact. I suppose "equality" is fundamentally subjective, and there might be people who genuinely believe that women getting the right to abortion, divorce, protection from discrimination, etc. somehow harmed them. But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most women see such changes as beneficial.

Sounds like a nice place to work.

Believing that the teaching you how to be a good ally is racist and sexist (against white men, I assume) is probably why you didn't fit in great there. I read that whole slideset and there's nothing racist in there - unless you're counting the scenarios of "what not to do."

However, if your organization has any lobbyists under their pay, your organization is inherently political.

I can accept that ideological divisions within a team sows disorder and that businesses want to avoid that.

I would also suggest that in an age where we are again facing the threat of totalitarianism, the threat of treasonous acts, human rights violations that evoke memories of the holocaust, we, the adults, citizens, and guardians of civil society have to cast aside our professionality for moral duty.

It would be preferable of course if we were able to take our moral convictions and take to the streets instead of arriving at work each day, but many of us do not have the luxury to take time off.

Politics is often the practical pursuit of our moral convictions. It's kind of surreal to me that our pattern of livelihood forces us to stop considering and dismiss the moral consequences of our daily actions.

The frank truth is that work is 1/2 of our waking lives. Acting without prior moral deliberation for half our lives seems immoral.

I do not want to be calculating the moral value of everything I do, but having become aware of the impact of my decisions in so many different areas, the individual contribution I make to what is acceptable in our society, I cannot help but be motivated to be more morally conscious - even if I fall short all the time. At least, I am aware of it and disgust myself at times.

It was mentioned more as long-term baggage because of the association. I honestly have no idea if relationships, like IBM's, were frowned upon at the time. I believe most of those close relationships were clandestine at the time and only publicized later. The others, being German companies, even if they weren't founded by Nazis probably would no longer exist if they hadn't cooperated.