Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing • Hacker News Board

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#881

Post by betwixthewires » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #458

betwixthewires wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what people are getting at with this (and trying to be cordial about it as best they can) is that the only people that want to have a separate image for every color person on the planet are racists.

How are they racist? What races are they discriminating against? What racial stereotypes are they expressing?

I've been told the last several years that you don't have to discriminate to be racist.

I think the idea that you feel somehow wrong using images to express yourself that are the color of a different race is just a little racist.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#882

Post by betwixthewires » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

lanstin wrote: post #525

betwixthewires wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my problem. That's arrogant of you to assume that I don't care about people and injustice. But the fact is, we are talking about absurdity in the workplace right now. We aren't talking about equal pay for black people or women. We aren't talking about equal consideration of homosexual people for jobs. When we talk of it hypothetically that's how it is framed so as to paint everyone tired of it as an evil bigot,…

No the issues are more like if you send a resume in with an African American name or photo it is way less likely to be called for an interview than the same resume with a whiter name. Same for male/female etc. Even house appraisals and “call the cops or offer to help” as subject to the same, present day, biases.

Alright then how about this: the only politics allowed at work are racial, sex or sexuality discrimination at your workplace. Is that a good compromise? Or are you doing what a lot of people do, using these narrow issues as a wedge to do exactly what I'm talking about and people are tired of?

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#883

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

Cancel culture ruins free speech and free thought. Just keep politics out at work. Severely punish sexist and racist behavior. it's pretty simple. People will avoid wearing their politics on their sleeve. I think there should be a company wide dictate that you don't have to listen to anyone who tries to drag you into it and that you can take it to HR when someone tries to force your hand. Work is for work. I don't want to go there and become a social warrior. I donate to liberal political groups all the time but I don't think that has anything to do with my coding or working with others. Honestly I don't care about you or your politics at work, please leave me out of it.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#884

Post by shagie » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #252

spamizbad wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a problem found in fancy valley tier-1 unicorns then. I keep hearing stories of people bombarded with political discussions on a daily basis and can hardly believe them. I'm not doubting anyone's sincerity but jeez... I feel like this perhaps localized to certain segments of the industry. I've worked in this industry for over a decade and really haven't had any major political discussions with cowork…

This is happening because these large tech companies- not just tier-1 unicorns but FAANGs themselves, have been presenting themselves as paternalistic employers for the past decade. You provide employees with all the free food, on-campus gyms, and massages by appointment as they want, then present them with supposedly open cultures of free inquiry, your employees are going to use it. You satiate someone's lower level…

I wrote about this earlier at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010707

The free food, gyms, massages and other things are companies trying to encroach on the area of the Third Place ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ) in order to keep people in the office longer.

In trying to take on the activities of the third place, they've also inadvertently taken on the rules of the third place - but those things that need to be part of the third place are counter to being at work (the second place... the first place is home).

If you're talking about politics and have a person who you report to (or reports to you) as part of that conversation, the discussion gets to one where you're walking on eggshells.

I believe that the third place and the workplace are inherently different environments and the more the workplace tries to be that third place, the more these sorts of conflicts of what the different places mean and how they operate will come to light.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#885

Post by beckingz » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

ne0flex wrote: post #877

Moodles wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, get new friends. They sound horrible. So many stories. My skip level manager had me in a 1-on-1 once and said something along the lines: “you probably got the green card because Trump likes your demographic”. (I have an EB-1 extraordinary ability green card, and I assume they were talking about me being straight and white). What the fuck am I supposed to say there? Was absolutely speechless. Moments like that a…

Your skip level manager experience reminds me of an interaction with a diversity officer at my previous employer. The company had hired a diversity officer and she began an initiative that requierd all company employees take an optional cultural course that was essentially something about power dynamics between culture/race. Since it wasn't really relevant to my role, I decided not to take the course as it was option…

Is this the type of harassment based on (perceived race) that you could sue over?

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#886

Post by bingbong70 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

bingbong70 wrote: post #860

phendrenad2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was never a problem pre-pandemic. People would discuss these issues at lunch or at the watercooler. If you were bothered by politics interrupting your little heads-down work bubble? Just take lunch at your desk or pack your own water bottle. But in the WFH age, there's no getting away from it. These discussions happen in company general chat, where often important business also happens.

>This was never a problem pre-pandemic I think this was less of a problem pre-Trump more specifically. At some point the idea that foreigners and minorities should be treated like human beings seemed to become controversial in some circles. Same circles that thought an alternate invented history was preferable to reality and spent a lot of time/money mainstreaming that idea. The resulting push back was expected and n…

Downvoters angry that ~90%+ of the planet doesn't believe white America's manufactured origin myth or is it something else?

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#887

Post by mattnewton » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

paisawalla wrote: post #721

mattnewton wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some characters (like Apu) are not yellow. You have to pick some skin tone for the default; just floating features would be off putting. Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might…

I say this as a non-white person who ostensibly should feel better represented by these emojis: a person who feels anxiety or exclusion when they see a yellow "thumbs up" is someone who has a low grade mental illness in need of address. Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anythin…

> Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins.

We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something?

I agree it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it also isn’t a large change to offer skin tones as an option for people who want them. You can simply not use them if you don’t want to.

> What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair?

Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines

https://www.her.ie/entertainment/simpsons-writers-reveals-fa...

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Category:African-American_C...

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#888

Post by antifa » Sat, May 22, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #757

fighterpilot wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not being able to escape anxiety-inducing situations" This sounds like an emotionally abusive environment unless you happen to agree with the political agenda being pushed. To feel socially pressured to go along or else be ostracized from your work is fairly awful. I'm fortunate that I've worked in a rather politically balanced industry which naturally turns out to be apolitical as a consequence of mere demographics…

That's exactly what it's like. I've not seen it put like this before, but anxiety inducing is just right, and yes, it is abusive. Take the letter people, for example. They will ridicule people for not understanding the difference between G and Q, for example. Phrases like "if you don't know what X means, you must live under a rock" are common. Then you have the pronoun people who tell us anyone can choose any set of…

> They tell it's easy to relearn your native language

It's absolutely the opposite of "relearning" in relative complexity/difficulty.

> remember a set of pronouns for each and every person you interact with, from a basically infinite set of combinations.

I've literally never met a person of alternative pronouns in real life (both the "unintuitive" variety and the "made up" variety), surely you are exaggerating with unreasonable hyperbole.

> Phrases like "if you don't know what X means, you must live under a rock" are common.

I've gotten this constantly my entire life, no matter how obscure or unimportant the information, more often sports and non political things than politics.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#889

Post by j_wtf_all_taken » Sat, May 22, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

bingbong70 wrote: post #860

phendrenad2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was never a problem pre-pandemic. People would discuss these issues at lunch or at the watercooler. If you were bothered by politics interrupting your little heads-down work bubble? Just take lunch at your desk or pack your own water bottle. But in the WFH age, there's no getting away from it. These discussions happen in company general chat, where often important business also happens.

>This was never a problem pre-pandemic I think this was less of a problem pre-Trump more specifically. At some point the idea that foreigners and minorities should be treated like human beings seemed to become controversial in some circles. Same circles that thought an alternate invented history was preferable to reality and spent a lot of time/money mainstreaming that idea. The resulting push back was expected and n…

Republicans started lying in the 90s to stay in power. Trump was a consequence of that. But yeah, pre-Trump they did "only" bend the rules to stay in power, with Trump that changed to openly trying to overthrow democracy. That you can only do by constantly lying.

Kinda sucks if you only have to parties, and one becomes a fascist cult. Makes discussing politics impossible, probably. There's just a difference between untruths, over-reactions, "cancel culture" and all those things on the one side vs. plain fascism on the other side.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#890

Post by maerF0x0 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #793

maerF0x0 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is such a thing as a "politics free" job listing site?

`unwoke.hr` was one attempt, but I think it was even more poorly-engineered than Parler and was immediately trolled into oblivion.

Yeah, naturally it will need to be more positively marketed rather than defining itself as basically "anti-" something. For example maybe they should highlight the "focus" angle ie both DHH/Coinbase indicated that a big part of the reasoning was to remove distractions. Who knows the fact of the matter, but it seems like a reasonable razor (spending finite resources in one area means they're not available for another area)