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

economist.com

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

#891

Post by kortilla »

gnopgnip wrote: post #720
mk81 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work" Why not?

Because "no politics at work" isn't neutral, it means supporting the status quo by way of defining what counts as "politics". Is calling someone by their preferred pronouns, or wearing a mask during the pandemic politics?

Why aren’t you spending every waking minute talking about the atrocities in China, the Middle East, central Africa, etc. You must support the status quo there right?

And, “there’s nothing we can do” isn’t true for the United States citizens who can vote the most powerful economy/military in the world.

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

#892

Post by [deleted] »

devdas wrote: post #824
throwaway1959 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on what do you mean as being blind to race? Do you want them to see your race, treat different races differently? Aren't we supposed to be a color-blind society? Maybe I am just not understanding what you mean.

There's a context implied, but not explicitly stated here. Being "blind to race" means that the context in which the other person exists is being ignored. Seeing things like race and gender mean that you are keeping context in mind when interacting with people. Systemic racism isn't necessarily about your personal intent, but it is about the results of your actions. Being blind to race effectively results in supporti…

[deleted]

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

#893

Post by lliamander »

nailer wrote: post #601
lliamander wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beliefs aren't chosen, or at least they are very "sticky". What you chose is how you let those beliefs inform your actions

Yes they are. Race and sex and sexual attraction are innate qualities. People can and do change their beliefs - I’m not sure why anyone would say otherwise as they can easily confirm this for themselves.

Please change your belief about the innateness of race and sex, so that I can see the voluntary nature of beliefs in action.

Again, you can choose how you act in light of your beliefs. And beliefs do change, but at most you can choose to be open those experiences that might lead to a change in belief. Changing them is not a direct act of will.

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

#894

Post by jessedhillon »

mattnewton wrote: post #887
paisawalla wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 add…

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

This is a matter of representation and inclusion, which are worthwhile goals that should matter to people in positions to make decisions.

Also, this is trivial and doesn't matter.

>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

No, you miss the point. It's a creatively liberal work, and viewing it through a racial lens is

1. a choice of the viewer

2. provides a flawed and inconsistent mapping back to human race

3. pathological

The fact that you engage the question and believe there is a sincere answer is the evidence of pathology, IMO. It shows a commitment to read race into everything, instead of acknowledging that blue-haired people don't exist, and so it's quite likely that the project of mapping a phylogeny back to homo sapiens is dubious.

What you're doing is exactly analogous to a hypothetical person claiming that the Simpsons was a pioneer in pro-ablism art and culture, because all characters have four fingers. It's pareidolia.

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

#895

Post by catgary »

caspper69 wrote: post #735
catgary wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, once I was watching the Ottoman Lieutenant with my wife and parents - I turned it off because the film seemed to be denying the Armenian genocide.

You must be fun at parties. In my day, we had to constantly pick and choose our battles so we didn't come across as assholes. I guess going the opposite direction and airing every single tiny grievance to any person who will listen eliminates that minor inconvenience; everyone gets offended. But on the plus side you don't get offended anymore, and that's all that matters nowadays anyway.

I’m sorry I’m aware of Armenian genocide, and the genocide denial aspect of the film is well detailed in the movie’s Wikipedia page so it took all of ten minutes to confirm what was happening.

To be fair, I think it helped that it is a pretty easy movie to leave halfway through. Nobody seemed to mind.

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

#896

Post by cutemonster »

chitowneats wrote: post #790
madrox wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the genie is out the bottle. For better or worse, many tech companies have worked hard to make your workplace your social hub in an effort to retain employees and get them to work longer hours. That's already happened, so now we have to deal with the good and bad that came from that. Going backward to how things were is as realistic as uninventing Twitter.

That dynamic has not existed since March 2020.

I.e. since covid-19 (just in case someone finds this discussion 20 years later and wonders what was special about that March month)

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

#897

Post by cutemonster »

Moodles wrote: post #825
chitowneats wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Please, people, do NOT be honest about your conservative or non-woke political positions in this industry. You will absolutely be punished for them by your peers. It is not in any situation ever worth it. Clock in, clock out, take the check, and always always always keep interviewing constantly because they will have no issues firing you arbitrarily. Work at a large enough company and t…

I agree with you, though it is still a little soul crushing. Obviously making big bucks and providing for your family is more important than debating some cancel culture social justice warrior at work who’ll never be convinced anyway, but listening to some eye rolling inducing faff every day and feeling like if you just told the truth you’d be fired makes you feel weak after a long time. Especially if you vehemently…

Moodles and chitowneats I wonder what are some examples of things you'd like to say / opinions you have, but that might make the coworkers angry?

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

#898

Post by globular-toast »

antifa wrote: post #888
globular-toast wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

> 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.

I have. But it's not just the ones with alternative pronouns. Some of them have standard pronouns but still sign their email with them at the end. The implication is I shouldn't assume their pronouns and they can change them at any time.

> 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.

At work? Has your career ever been affected by your lack of knowledge about snooker?

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

#899

Post by chitowneats »

cutemonster wrote: post #897
Moodles wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, though it is still a little soul crushing. Obviously making big bucks and providing for your family is more important than debating some cancel culture social justice warrior at work who’ll never be convinced anyway, but listening to some eye rolling inducing faff every day and feeling like if you just told the truth you’d be fired makes you feel weak after a long time. Especially if you vehemently…

Moodles and chitowneats I wonder what are some examples of things you'd like to say / opinions you have, but that might make the coworkers angry?

I'll copy my example from below:

"There are still many of us out there who believe that hiring candidates based on their race is not healthy for society, the company, or any individual candidate. That opinion is largely being stamped out, by design, in management at the orgs I'm talking about.

This has nothing to do with not wanting to step up and manage."

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

#900

Post by foota »

gnicholas wrote: post #734
foota wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I didn't know that! I wonder whether restricting the expression of only political topics at work infringes on this.

My understanding is that it would not infringe, so long as it is a party-agnostic policy.

That seems weird to me, since shouldn't political activity include at work?
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