Ask HN: Using sentiment analysis on new hires to discover political affiliation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Using sentiment analysis on new hires to discover political affiliation?

6 pointsemblem219 comments

I'd personally never do it, but I hear reports of HR departments trying to clamp down on political arguments in offices to "curate culture"... and I just figured the next natural extension in the mad dash to save culture at all costs is hiring people based on "political culture fit".

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Wouldn't a better culture fit be picking people who don't like to dogmatically promote their personal political beliefs, whichever side of the fence they're on? I've worked in groups where many members loved argueing and it was a positive thing. But also in groups where they hated it and it led to hostility. In neither case was political affiliation itself the problem.

1. Why would someone's political affiliation be relevant to whether they'd be good at performing their job?

2. While political party membership is not a protected class under U.S. anti-discrimination law[1], it may be strongly correlated with protected characteristics like religion or age. So, hypothetically, if by discriminating against Republicans you're also systematically discriminating against Christians or people over 40 (due to some correlation between these groups), this may be a basis for legal action against you.

Even if you never get sued, if word gets out that you're delving into employees personal lives in such intrusive ways, your reputation might (justifiably) suffer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

>While political party membership is not a protected class under U.S. anti-discrimination law

Fortunately, political affiliations is protected in California, New York state, and Seattle (sadly not Washington state). These three places cover a good chunk of the tech workers in the US.

A better recipe is to enforce a culture of actual politeness (not fake tolerance) and not talk about politics or religion at the office.

I don't think that would go over very well. You'd see a firestorm from whichever party was the one biased against. That said, in the bay area any Republicans are mostly underground and progressives are pretty open, as well as libertarians.

That seems dangerous for the company to specifically so that.

But I think there is a desire to have employees that are not liabilities. For example, if they were harassing people online that could come back and damage their reputation: Imagine a headline: "Crazy person who works at Company X does something crazy"

It's unavoidable that we'll be 'Googled' when applying for jobs. But also what's unavoidable is people creating tools for typing in a name and getting all information about them, it's big money.

I'd never speak about politics in the work place -- I've seen people do it, and to me they like fools.

I think there is a lot to be said for the old rule of never discussing politics or religion at work.

Why? Do you think it's an indicator of performance?

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