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

Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 584 posts

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#81

Post by 3pt14159 »

zwayhowder wrote: post #6
bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

It does block them from moving to that country. So if a current employee was planning to move to either country soon they'd be prevented from doing that. I've danced this dance at a previous company when we had an employee working from a country of interest for an extended period of time. They were air-gapped from our systems and it worked because they submitted everything by pull requests (the original way, sending…

I've done some travelling to risky places before (Kiev and other places) and even though the networks were hostile there, I still don't understand the point of pretending that Russia et al can't get into Gitlab whenever they want to. They can. Air-gapping isn't going to slow them down.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#82

Post by dragonwriter »

needle0 wrote: post #78
angry_octet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since National Security Letters exist, blocking all employees from the US would also be logical. Same for running anything on third-party hardware. There needs to be a more effective response than Hari Kiri.

That's Hara kiri. If you're going to appropriate an antiquated foreign word out of context I wish you'd at least spell it properly.

(1) it's a non-antiquated English word, etymologically linked to the antiquated foreign word (it entered English a long time ago.)

(2) In English, both hari kari and hara kiri are accepted spellings (the word came into English before modern, maybe even standardized, transliteration, and the source language doesn't natively use the Latin alphabet.)

(3) But, in any case, you are right that it is misspelled.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

vorpalhex wrote: post #73
angry_octet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since National Security Letters exist, blocking all employees from the US would also be logical. Same for running anything on third-party hardware. There needs to be a more effective response than Hari Kiri.

NSLs apply to companies, not employees. The NSL would have to go to your companies legal office.

NSLs can be issued to any person, natural or juridical.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#84

Post by Iv »

efuquen wrote: post #77
Iv wrote: post #58

Ok, that discussion made it clearer for me, and I am kind of behind @cciresi at that point: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555#not... They have a customer that required the personal data they'll give to Gitlab not be handled by people living in Russia and China. Could be a group doing humanitarian or journalistic work. That's actually an interesting conundrum: you want to hire a company, need to…

Honestly I don't understand @cciresi's position. As far as a I know anti-boycott regulations have primarily (only?) been used to prevent US companies from not doing business with Isreal. China & Russia are geopolitical rivals to the US and I don't see any sort of risk of anti-boycott regulations being applied in restricting business with residents of those countries. I guess you could say there is a risk that could c…

Anti-boycott regulations are highly hypocritical because indeed, they are designed for Israel but pretend to apply to all countries.

Thing is, even if it is just country of residence, it is still a discrimination on hiring and could very well be illegal unless there are strong legal reasons. E.g. "we have to do things that are illegal under the laws in country X, so we can't hire people there".

I think the main point of her position is that one should have an objective criterion to add countries into a blacklist and that none can realistically been done over privacy issues that would include China and Russia but not USA.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#85

Post by Iv »

mr_tristan wrote: post #54
Iv wrote: post #47

I don't understand what I am reading, I feel I am missing some context... Is it about being afraid the Chinese and Russian state will spy on user data if some employees are located in those countries? Or were there updates to their laws that made it mandatory to open databases to the state if an employee is located in these countries?

It's actually in the discussion: > There is an unacceptably high risk that these nations may apply pressure to individuals living within their borders with sensitive data access (based their role at GitLab). It is our concern. And it is the stated concerns of several customers. The discussion is actually pretty significant, as they sort out how they might manage the _customer demand_ that is creating these hiring blo…

After activating JS I could see the discussion, sorry.

Going a bit deeper, it seems to be a specific demand by a potential client. Can make sense for activists, journalists, humanitarians. Makes sense for gitlab to push back too though.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#86

Post by Supermancho »

zwayhowder wrote: post #6
bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

It does block them from moving to that country. So if a current employee was planning to move to either country soon they'd be prevented from doing that. I've danced this dance at a previous company when we had an employee working from a country of interest for an extended period of time. They were air-gapped from our systems and it worked because they submitted everything by pull requests (the original way, sending…

> they'd be prevented from doing that.

Their employment being dependent on them residing within specific locales is not the same as "prevention". It's an incentive scheme, afaik.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#87

Post by dang »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #3

The title seems misleading, the article specifically states this does not effect any current employees, presumably as they have none in China and Russia. > As such we feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time--especially because it affects zero current employees

Ok, I've temporarily changed from the submitted title ("Gitlab blocks current employees and stops future hires in China and Russia") to the page title—which I assume is accurate but is uninformative—until we get clarity about what an accurate, neutral title would be. Does anybody want to suggest one?

Edit: I've provisionally gone with "Gitlab blocks hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia". If that's wrong, or if anyone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#88

Post by austhrow743 »

type0 wrote: post #37
angry_octet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have legal authority to prevent you from resigning. Also, the proposed anti-boycott rules have been widely criticized as unconstitutional, unworkable and ludicrously against the conservatives free speech pronouncements. Unlikely they would get support from Senate cross bench.

They could compel your employer not to accept the resignation before the correct procedures are done and you have completed the task.

As far as I know, employment in Australia isn't typically under the terms of indentured servitude. We haven't been a penal colony for a while now.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#89

Post by thatfrenchguy »

pnako wrote: post #49
angry_octet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since National Security Letters exist, blocking all employees from the US would also be logical. Same for running anything on third-party hardware. There needs to be a more effective response than Hari Kiri.

It's the same in France, and many other western countries. I think it's just the usual "Australians not realizing they live in a bubble", and kindly warning the rest of the world about laws or practices that have already been in place in our countries for twenty years.

AFAIK there is no law in France where the government can force you to do something you don’t want to do related to your employment. They can however seize your devices.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#90

Post by big_chungus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74
burfog wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on taking a step in the right direction, even if it is a very small step. Nobody else seems to take the threat seriously, somewhat excepting defense contractors of course. I can understand being reluctant to deal with the full extent of the problem. Somebody from China, with a family in China and subject to Chinese law, does not cease to be a security threat by moving to the USA and getting a green ca…

In china, not from China. The former is easy to justify, and would affect even Americans of non Chinese descent. The latter would be incredibly difficult to justify, and could easily be seen as unwarranted discrimination.

Well, technically it is discrimination, but not racism. I.e. you can still hire a Japanese developer, and with a Chinese regime change you might be able to hire Chinese developers. However, federal law prohibits discrimination based on national origin. This is a touchy subject, but maybe this no longer makes sense? As burfrog pointed out, a Chinese employee living in America isn't free from Chinese control; the gov't will do bad things to his family if he gets a request for, say, information or access and doesn't comply. I'm hesitant to endorse allowing discrimination by national origin, but on the other hand, it doesn't make sense to allow the Chinese access to any kind of important data.
Post reply on HN