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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

#891

Post by pcnix »

cgiles wrote: post #857
mike00632 wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The "silent majority" in these issues are people who say "yeah, sure, it seems fair to allow gay marriage, why not"... For a very long time this was NOT the majority opinion despite some brave tech companies imposing policies that prevented LGBT discrimination. Keep in mind too that many states in which tech companies do business still (with the support of the majority) legalize discrimination of LGBT in hiring, hou…

Of course. Every old idea was new once, and that is the role of the activist and ideologue: to introduce new ideas for public assessment. But these people would do well to remember that the bulk of the public they are trying to convince are not ideologues as well. The well mannered majority may not know best but it is what is ultimately making the decisions.

And that is the problem, isn't it? If the majority had been left to make decisions, things wouldn't have changed. Things only changed because the minorities spoke up and convinced the majority that change was needed. This is why discussion, debate and dissent are necessary, because opinions should percolate and attitudes should be exposed to contrary influences.

I think a large majority of the arguments here are folks looking at this through an engineering lens, trying to optimize the workplace at the cost of minorities or discriminated groups, but shouldn't this be the other way around? Workplaces should instead be optimized for everyone to be able to work there, and inclusion is an important part of that goal.

The ideologue does what the ideologue does, and campaigns for change. That's as you said, their role is to believe that change is possible, and that their efforts will contribute to bringing it about. And the whole point of theirs is to reach out to the non ideologues. The fact that there's some bad actors out there that either die to incompetence or maliciousness make a mess of it doesn't mean that the ideology is flawed.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#892

Post by egoisticalgoat »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

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…

These kinds of policy always scare me because people don't realize how prevalent politics are in our daily lives, even as devs. Dark patterns? Ad tracking? Hell, even something as simple as a dropdown for sex/gender is political. With these kinds of policies, you're forced not to think, just execute.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#893

Post by pcnix »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #409
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.

> As long as speech is not offensive, I think it should be protected. Speech that isn’t offensive usually doesn’t need protection.

This is akin to the idea that you don't need privacy unless you have something to hide. Freedom of speech is important, but at the same time, so is the responsibility of a person to his team and community to maintain a minimum level of politeness and empathy. That entails understanding that some people are affected by some political issues significantly more than others, and that it might be intimately tied to their working situation.

A person's privilege to speak out about issues facing them in the course of their work is to be protected, irrespective of it being offensive.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#894

Post by ezoe »

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.…

The problem is, the current law isn't match the pipe analogy. If it's a private communication, they can be a pipe. But they are publicly present the information as soon as it gets to the pipe.

There are many expressions you can't publicly present by law. For example, copyright infringement, privacy infringement, pornography, national/personal/organization secret, fraud, malware and all. You may argue some of them are ridiculous, but there are some expression you agree to be supressed. Like the fake news of you committing the crime.

Yes, In an ideal rule of the law world, you should take the court order to censor that expression. But it takes time. The current law is, if you knowingly publish the material that is obviously illegal and ignore the censorship demand, you are responsible for that.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#895

Post by cies »

hannasanarion wrote: post #134
vowelless wrote: post #18

I am glad Dang changed the title as the original one was unnecessarily inflammatory. I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do anything to disturb that? > Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some circumstances. Whi…

>America has sanctions. If the public wants corporations to not interact with certain countries, they can ask their legislators to fascilitate passing of sanctions (like we have today against Syria, making it illegal to provide services to them). This is a very confusing position to me. It is a bad thing to pick and choose your customers based on moral agreement, unless that morality is defined by the government in w…

> If the public wants corporations to not interact with certain countries

I dont believe most democracies really represent the public. They do on paper, in theory, but in practice there are lobbies that lobby for big biz and their main owners. They have much more influence in political decisions. Hence I dont believe the "public" wants sanctions on Iran/Syria/Cuba/etc, but that it is merely convenient for big biz to have those sanctions.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#896

Post by throw_xyzyz »

repolfx wrote: post #147
vowelless wrote: post #18

I am glad Dang changed the title as the original one was unnecessarily inflammatory. I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do anything to disturb that? > Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some circumstances. Whi…

I don't think even Google actually encouraged people to discuss politics at work. They never did when I was there. It was more a side-effect of decentralising the power to create forums. Anyone could create discussion lists there without asking permission, this was highly useful for coordination, making it easy to spin up new projects and avoiding siloing of information into people's private mail accounts. The flip s…

Jives with my experience that any place that talks about diversity pays 20-50% less. I call it the virtue tax.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#897

Post by mytailorisrich »

tomnipotent wrote: post #806
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." The civil rights movement and suffrage prove this is patently untrue. The biggest difference is that gender, religion and ethnicity are easy things to point out, while ideologic belief systems are tricky. Where do you draw the line on what grounds a business can refuse service? Should I b…

In some countries (e.g. France) it is illegal to refuse to sell to an individual bona fide customer. That's in addition to the anti-discrimination (race, gender, etc) laws we have in Europe.

So if you sell cakes for €10 and I show up and hand you €10 you are not legally allowed to refuse to sell me that cake. (heads have rolled for less...)

This is pretty effective at preventing discrimination that may otherwise be difficult to prove.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#898

Post by fake-name »

dcolkitt wrote: post #847
wpietri wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't discuss politics at work," is a political statement. It rules particular views in bounds and rules others out. Similarly any business ends up making moral choices. It's unavoidable. To act in the world is to have impact. To consciously act is to intend particular impact. Commerce is inherently social; you choose to serve certain people in certain ways, with particular outcomes intended. These choices are inher…

You're stretching the definition of "political" to such a degree that it renders the word meaningless. You're basically claiming that any act that has any impact on anyone is political. That it's basically impossible for an organization to be non-political or even less political than any other organization. And that simply flies in the face of common sense. Only the most hardcore post-modernist would deny that the NR…

> to strive to be non-political.

To strive to be "non-political" is an intensely political position. It's basically a complete support of the status quo.

To not take a stand on a position is as much of a position as taking a stand. We live in this world. It's literally impossible to disengage.

Not saying anything, or not disagreeing is as much a statement as saying something, or disagreeing. Neutrality is a political position. Deal with it.

----

The IETF is absolutely a political organization, but it's focus is in areas where there is much less discord and a general interest in actual practical problem solving, with hard, measurable outcomes, so there's much less room for gaming of facts. Go look at the discussion of any contentious RFC if you don't agree. Just because it's not advocating a extreme viewpoint that's completely divorced from reality (as the NRA is) doesn't make it "less political", it just makes it less contentious.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#899

Post by z3phyr »

zamalek wrote: post #681
z3phyr wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every voter (and non voter) is participating in a political system by choosing to vote (and not vote!). Those who got democracy also got all the responsibility with it. Those in a democratic system who do not engage in politics are bad citizens.

Which portion of my comments suggests nonparticipation in government by citizens? It suggests exactly the opposite.

Voting is a continuous event. Participating in it requires extensive and continuous discussion among peers who would make up their mind.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#900

Post by luckylion »

chr1 wrote: post #889
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They could make the algorithm customizable and let the user to control it. That would be much better than the current blackbox where you get uninteresting stories promoted because of misclicking once, and have no way to tell the algorithm about its mistakes.

> They could make the algorithm customizable and let the user to control it.

It often gets it wrong, but that's the general idea, isn't it? You don't customize it by checking some boxes or adding some keywords, you customize it by giving attention to some results more than to others.

Obviously, there's the added layer that they aren't optimizing for your satisfaction but for your business value to them.

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