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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

#981

Post by hellllllllooo »

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…

> it's basically impossible for an organization to be non-political

This is exactly the point. It's impossible for an org to be non-political. Any choice made has wider socitial context and effects for the workers at that company. Politics is basically the effect of decisions on people. Not all political decisions are as extreme and sensational as NRA etc. most are mundane but still important.

Your definition of this political spectrum seems to be focused on politics that generate controversy rather than their importance or number of people they effect. Mundane politics are also politics, you just don't necessarily notice them

GitLab has to define what are acceptable politics to discuss and draw that line. This is a decision that has to be made and will be based on their political views and what they think is normal or extreme which won't be the same for everyone who works there. The whole thing just seems very naive.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#982

Post by remram »

sytse wrote: post #143

Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy that I merged https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

This reads like a complete 180 on the previous policy. It's very far from a "change of wording".

Don't get me wrong, I welcome it, and if the most we can get I feel like it is acceptable. However calling it a "change of wording" is a bit dishonest, really you reverted it completely in response to the negative feedback.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#983

Post by philwelch »

dwild wrote: post #964
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…

> 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 means. What if it's legal where's it's happening? Let's say that China use Gitlab to host their repo for their software that track US citizens. Would you be happy with that? > The tech unicorns screwed themselves over BIG TIME, the second they stopped claiming they were just infrast…

Assuming Gitlab is based in the United States, I wouldn’t expect them to unilaterally deny service to the Chinese communist regime. That’s a situation where I would advocate for Congress to impose economic sanctions.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#984

Post by themacguffinman »

xurias wrote: post #928

I think it's concerning that everybody seems to think it's okay for companies to clamp down on political discourse. Where do people think we're supposed to talk about this shit? Who's supposed to champion these causes if not companies? Who has actual power in this world other than companies? Companies dominate the media, the way we consume media and everything that we see. All this means is nothing changes, nothing i…

> Where do people think we're supposed to talk about this shit?

With your personal friends and family? With NGO or activist groups and forums? Town halls and local political events? Literally anywhere outside work?

> Who's supposed to champion these causes if not companies?

Democratically elected representatives? NGOs, activist organizations, and citizen groups? Since when were for-profit fiduciaries the primary battleground for politics?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#985

Post by prepend »

RavingGoat wrote: post #949
prepend wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why I like posts like this from GitLab. They are clear what their priorities are so you can choose what to build with your hands. Lots of people don’t care or don’t have time to evaluate the thousands or millions of customers using software. The evaluation never ends so even if you shut off the really bad one, there will be another. Picking a legal limit let’s me focus on other things.

Gitlab is a common whore. They'll do whatever you want as long as you are paying.

Isn’t that why whores are awesome? Who is going to frequent whores who won’t do stuff?

Also, what’s so bad about common whores? Whores are people too, I try not to judge people based on their chosen profession.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#986

Post by DATACOMMANDER »

peterwwillis wrote: post #965
DATACOMMANDER wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the world do you live in, where there’s a real risk of a white supremacist politician receiving even 1% of 1% of the popular vote?

The USA. We've had white supremacist politicians for hundreds of years, and in many parts of the us they carry more than 10% of the vote. As recently as 2016, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan received 3% of election day votes (58,000 people) for a United States Senate seat for the state of Louisiana. Here's an article from 2018, "All The White Supremacists Running For Office": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-…

I should have been more specific: I was referring to elections for head of state. Regardless, your post is high on rhetoric and low on content. You provide no citation for your strongest claim (that in many part of the US white supremacists carry more than 10% of the vote for some office or another). The white supremacist whom you claim is running for Congress “unopposed” will certainly be opposed by a Democrat, and will certainly lose. If only 12 white supremacists ran for office in 2018, that runs counter to the notion that white supremacists are a significant force in American politics. Almost anyone can run for office, and I highly doubt that any of them won anyway. Given the number of elected officials in the US, I think it’s fair to say that any group that doesn’t hold at least one office is not a significant political force. Can you name an elected official who is a white supremacist?

(Before you accuse me of shifting the goalposts: I wasn’t clear in my original post. If you can find a presidential election that occurred in the last 20 years in which a white supremacist received more than 0.01% of the popular vote, I’ll stand corrected. You’ll have to go back farther than 2016: I googled every candidate [1] who received more than 0.01% of the popular vote in 2016 and none of them is a white supremacist.)

1. https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2016/2016presgeresults.p...

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#987

Post by lazyasciiart »

arkh wrote: post #920
snowwrestler wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc. Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work. If ver…

> Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler. Maybe because it was considered mostly a secretarial job and they did not have a lot of other opportunities. Once given the choice to get into more fulfilling careers they took it. It's only because there's money in what is thought as "easy white collar job" that some women try t…

> It's only because there's money in what is thought as "easy white collar job" that some women try to do it. And it is only because coders cost a lot that there is a push to get more women doing it as a way to lower wages. Even if they don't want to.

This is the kind of unsupported claim that makes these discussions unwelcome on hn.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#988

Post by williamchia »

repolfx wrote: post #926
cbuchanan wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're a team that moves quickly and is receptive to ideas and opinions. I'm very proud of that.

It looks from the outside like the opposite - you changed the policy explicitly so you can refuse to deal with organisations whose ideas and opinions you're not receptive to. Worse, it looks like you just reversed direction because the Register made fun of you. You went from being willing to work with all organisations to reserving the right to drop any organisation on a whim. I wonder, what does Gitlab believe exact…

GitLabber here, one of our core values is iteration and our mission statement is "Everyone can contribute" https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration

Honestly, you could submit and merege request to our handbook to change global sales policy and tag our CEO to review and merge if he agrees :) Admittedly, this is a unique way to run a company. Other companies are limited by only getting ideas from a small group of people that are directors and executives. At GitLab we understand that good ideas can come from anywhere and we embrace that.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#989

Post by microtherion »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #265
microtherion wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product Do you think the Gitlab CEO's policy declaration helped or hurt team cohesion?

Depends on how it was received by actual employees. We don't know how many received this positively vs. negatively. Evaporative cooling of group beliefs does actually work to increase cohesion. If, given a controversial decision like this, people who disagree with it pack up and leave, the variance of opinion within the company will actually decrease, improving cohesion.

I see. Your scope of "cohesion" is at whatever remains of the team AFTER the divisive action by the CEO. My scope was the ORIGINAL team.

I agree that decreeing a divisive policy and prohibiting dissent tends to leave one with a more "cohesive" team. I very much doubt that it's a commercially optimal strategy. You end up with (a) true believers, who build up group think and (b) yes-people and the spineless, neither of which strike me as high value contributors. You've optimized for agreement, rather than excellence, as a hiring criterium.

I would much rather see "cohesion" in the form of a team that, DESPITE widely diverging views, manages to agree on a common vision.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#990

Post by bluntfang »

codezero wrote: post #738
bluntfang wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what marketing firm do you work for? Oh you're literally the content marketer for gitlab lol (as per your comment history). you're literally getting paid to say this.

That doesn’t make it untrue or any less valuable.

I believe the context of his employment and role completely strips the value from the statements.
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