Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work • Hacker News Board

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#571

Post by manfredo » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

unscrupulous_sw wrote: post #560

legostormtroopr wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Just to chime in, I also unknowingly got myself labeled sexist when the topic came up during a random lunch with "friends" (company provided lunch so it had random people from HR and recruiting). Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50/50 will "lower the bar". So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipel…

This parallels my experience. I have repeatedly feigned support for denying employment to white and Asian men to increase our proportional representation of demographics categorized as diverse. The company has set an outcome based goal to have 33% women in tech roles. When the industry is only 20-25% female, such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination. But no one who wants to succeed dares bring that up.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#572

Post by cameronbrown » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

hnuser54 wrote: post #517

johnzhou wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great way to lose advertisers. Case in point: Youtube's demonetization policy.

Any particular advertiser needs Youtube more than Youtube needs the advertiser. Youtube has a critical hold on the young adult market in particular. If Youtube just said, "if you don't like it, Pepsi, someone else can enjoy this ad space instead", what recourse would they have? In conclusion Youtube demonetizes because they want to and need an excuse.

If you look at the data, the "adpocalypse" cost alphabet over 70 billion dollars on their market cap.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#573

Post by galaxyLogic » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

awinder wrote: post #475

galaxyLogic wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this (news not your comment) sounds like a very slippery slope. What happened to freedom of speech? And who is to decide what is "political" what is not? As long as speech is not offensive, I think it should be protected.

The text of the 1st amendment discusses the Congress not passing laws that abridge the freedom of speech. It’s origin is for a people’s right to protest the government without retribution from the government. It has nothing to do with private actors having rules about what happens in their private property, and for good reason — that would unduly restrict a persons freedom to enjoy their property.

So prohibiting discussion of politics in the work place is legal I get it. But "freedom of speech" is more than a law. It is an ideal. Just because it is legal to prohibit speech does not mean it is a good idea.

I would say that an employer that prohibits free exchange of ideas is not "open minded". I would not want to work for such an employer, without getting paid extra for having to work under such dire circumstances.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#574

Post by friendlybus » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #495

earthscienceman wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which actually really boils down to what the word "white male privilege" really means. If you think politics is annoying, then it's because you're privileged enough for it to not matter. ^^^ privileged white male

I've worked at a company that heavily encouraged discussion of politics at work, and it was a nightmare. The things management sponsored (at the request of employees) included: - A women-only Slack channel. - Women-only events, such as a free screening of Wonder Woman. The men at the company were expected to work during that time. - An "ally skills workshop"[1], which attempted to indoctrinate us with an explicitly r…

Wow. Did that company implode? What's the point of so openly dividing your employees along political lines? How are you supposed to work as a team? It's bad enough with normal workplace troubles like pay differences and whatever else.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#575

Post by tomp » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334

neonate wrote: post #280

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…

No, if they instead worked to develop better user moderation tools, it would work just as well as it does now, just without their (appearance of) liability. Things like word filters, subscribable block lists, etc.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#576

Post by iikoolpp » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

HN: In favour of free speech except for when it comes to politics that they might disagree then they really like banning it

And inb4 "free speech doesnt apply to private companies" I imagine the users that are for this change and the users that believe being banned for saying racial slurs should be illegal have a very very large overlap

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#577

Post by cameronbrown » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

madrox wrote: post #385

anarchodev wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." Keep in mind that anyone is free to use othe…

> Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." This sounds really good until someone refuses to bake a wedding cake for a couple because they're gay. The supreme court ruled in favor of the baker. You're advocating for a world where that's ok. Is that the world you want to live in?

We also agreed not to discriminate service based on race. It's a similar matter but nobody thinks that was a good idea [to discriminate]. Freedom of association has limits.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#578

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

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.…

They did this for many years - when I moved to Silicon Valley in 2009 tech's attitude was "We just provide the mechanism, we let our users determine policy". My first couple years at Google (09-10), management was very insistent that "We don't take sides - we show the user the best result for their query regardless of how much we dislike it." There were examples like literal searches for Nazis where the top result was a hate group and rather than censor it, Google took out a house ad (basically paid themselves, using the mechanisms available to the general public) saying "Don't like these results? We don't either, but we believe strongly in freedom of speech, and so we're using this space to explain our views without depriving others of theirs."

The thing is, sometime around 2012-2014 this became unacceptable. Public discourse shifted into "silence is complicitness - if you allow this speech on your platform, that means that you endorse it." So it became a forced-choice issue. And the thing is that if it's a forced choice, very few people are going to stand up and defend Nazis. Most of these tech execs personally hold fairly liberal, progressive views. When the general public said "You're a Nazi sympathizer because you show Nazi websites in the search results", a.) it wasn't true and b.) it was personally insulting, because that was essentially the opposite of what actually was true.

And then once that started happening, you run into the age-old problem with restricting freedom of speech, which is that the people who hold the power to restrict it might not agree with you on what's worth restricting. Be careful what you wish for.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#579

Post by iikoolpp » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

unscrupulous_sw wrote: post #560

legostormtroopr wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Just to chime in, I also unknowingly got myself labeled sexist when the topic came up during a random lunch with "friends" (company provided lunch so it had random people from HR and recruiting). Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50/50 will "lower the bar". So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipel…

Calculating empirically that women are stupid

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#580

Post by adamsea » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

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…

To quote someone quoted in the article, "As a commenter identified as "casiotone" observed, "If your values aren't used to inform who you're doing business with, why do you bother pretending to have values at all? This [merge request] demonstrates that you don't have any values except 'we want to make money, and it doesn't matter who gets hurt.'""