Supporting civic engagement with paid time off | Hacker News Reader

Supporting civic engagement with paid time off

fauna.com

54 pointsjchrisa39 comments

I was going to make this its own "Ask HN:" post earlier, but thought I'd post it here instead:

Is there a good central resource or listserv or something for developers who would like to volunteer their time on political projects?

I'm thinking of a jobs board that says "This organization is looking for a few hours of help on their website," or a combined Git Issues board, or something.

Reasoning: I am a developer who would like to volunteer my skill set for 3-4 hours a week to causes I support, but I have no idea which organizations could use 3-4 hours a week.

I imagine that there are many others like me, who may vary in the number of hours they are willing to donate.

https://www.debugpolitics.com/

I want to do the same. I'd be more than happy to help organize. I think for something like this to work well, a good amount of effort would go into project management, than the actual work itself. Communication, translating vague requirements into actionable tasks, keeping track of people etc etc...

http://codealliance.org/

Will this policy cover those who want to support Trump, oppose immigration, or support right-wing religious positions that most people find unpalatable?

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out...

Joining the chorus to say, why on earth not? And what in the announcement made you think that there was some litmus test?

This might earn me down votes, but it is an honest question. I understand that a segment of the population, accustomed to their status as "default human", feel like they're losing that, and I can empathize. (In fact, I am a member of that cohort wrt most checklist identity-traits people think of.) I also understand that folks with minority viewpoints are used to never seeing their preferred policy implemented. (Again, this describes me; many of my policy preferences are anathema to the majority, just along different dimensions than Trump voters I know.) And I understand this election was a lot more acrimonious than, I think, any in living memory.

That said, the question is about the (to me) bizarre defensiveness of Trump voters. Your team won, and has a freer hand than most presidents ever get. Why are you pretending you're oppressed?

I'm not in any way a Trump supporter or on the right more generally, but I can see why people on the right might be skeptical. The tech community did, after all, run Brendan Eich out on a rail when they discovered that he donated $1000 in favor of Prop. 8. I think they know that, while they may be in the majority nation-wide, in the tech community they are a small, reviled minority. And if they work for political campaigns they support, there will be social, and potentially business, repercussions.

It seems a little to me like get-out-the-vote campaigns. They're dressed up as some totally non-partisan, civic-duty enterprise. But if you're targeting your efforts towards demographics that you know are generally going to vote a certain way, can you really claim with a straight face that you're not helping a particular political party? Here you know a priori that you'll be encouraging people to get involved in politics with a certain bent. I'll point out that none of this is bad, per se, but I think it's why you can expect conservatives to react defensively.

> "That said, the question is about the (to me) bizarre defensiveness of Trump voters. Your team won, and has a freer hand than most presidents ever get. Why are you pretending you're oppressed?"

Is this addressed to me?

While I'm not one of the people you mention, I certainly hope it does! Difference in opinion, that encourages involvement and conversation, is one good way to find the best path(s) forward in just about anything.

I'm currently in a 9-month long Civic-based leadership class in my city, run by the local Chamber of Commerce. It's been a great experience with exposure to everyone that make the local government (and related organizaions) run, as well as growing community trusteeship.

As technology/business people, I'd encourage everyone to find something similar, that is local, and do it.

I'm founder of one of the signatories on this, and yes. It will cover engagement that does not line up with my personal politics. This is intended to support engagement, not direct how people engage.

As with all our policies, we're forever evaluating how they "pan out". If it pans out badly we'll adjust.

It should be like boosting voter registration- it doesn't matter who you vote for, you should vote regardless.

62 million Americans will be perfectly fine with getting one day every four years.

This was exactly the point I was going to being up.

We're small but we're talking to some very big companies about getting on board as well. Please encourage your leadership to join us!

The policy is for everyone; regardless of viewpoint or affiliation. Civic engagement benefits us all.

In what sense? Politics usually brings out the worst in people, contrary to what the early proponents of democracy believed. Most people believe that their opponents are mean, greedy, and stupid, or at least fools who have been taken by clever propaganda.[1]

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11324722-the-righteous-mi...

In a random facebook post, yes absolutely. Still possible but not as bad in person, over coffee or beer. Even less likely when it's a person you have to work with for weeks or months to come to an agreement.

People believe things for reasons. Eventually everybody understands everybody else's reasons. They may not agree, but by understanding the nature of disagreement, you can usually find a way.

The belief that political opponents are mean, greedy, stupid, and/or foolish is the first thing we need to debug. No one is going to make much progress in such a hostile environment. Conservatives need to work to understand liberals well enough that they no longer feel a desire to belittle them and vice versa. Understanding each other better is a fight we can win IMHO.

Without disagreeing with you that politics brings out the worst in people; how do you propose our government should operate without civic engagement? Which feedback mechanisms would government have to determine what its people are looking for?

The government generally knows what its people are looking for. When it acts against their interests, it is not because it doesn't know any better.

Be aware that there may be legal ramifications for paying your employees to work on political campaigns.

I was surprised it permitted politics and didn't mention fundraising.

I worked at a megacorporation utility that provided 20 hrs a year, the way it worked in practice as opposed to in theory was every use required management pre-approval and most hours got used paying people to attend fundraisers, essentially you'd get paid to go bowling with your coworkers theoretically to fund some charity. (edited to add I forgot to mention toward the end of the controversial policy there was hell to pay about drinking "on the job" at the bowling alley while being paid by the company, I forgot about that little incident.)

There were bad feelings when employees were ordered by execs to attend media attracting events while wearing company tee shirts for PR purposes. Essentially the problem software devs suffer thru with hackathons except this tortured all low level employees not just devs. Show up for 12 hours on Saturday at Habitat for Humanity in your company issued tee shirt or find a new job. I believe that kind of abuse led to the termination of that particular "benefit". You might think low level employees have no defense but you'd be surprised what abuses of the workmans comp system exist. (Edited to add, I'm remembering more and more fun stuff, one union employee escalated into mediation process something about demanding to get paid to attend a NORML rally and get paid to drive a company car there, I don't remember what happened in the end.)

If it's a form of paid vacation, I don't see why it would matter. There aren't any legal ramifications (afaik) for companies whose employees volunteer to do political work during their paid vacations.

So long as they aren't asking for proof that you really did do political work, I see this as more of a trust-based statement that you did something "civic" during your paid vacation.

If a "form of paid vacation" is available only for campaign work, or granted preferentially for campaign work, then it is substantially different than people taking vacation that the company grants neutrally and choosing to work on a campaign during that vacation.

I work at Fauna, and the first thing that came to mind at my house is volunteering in my kids' school. I'm in the habit of doing my political organizing on evenings and weekends, but that doesn't work for all civic engagement.

That's an interesting legal point.

I wonder if they could avoid trouble by proving that two or more employees were campaigning on exact opposite sides of an issue - e.g. employee A participates in a rally for more gun control and employee B participates in a counter rally calling for legal Open Carry in San Francisco.

More virtue-signaling from the Silicon Valley groupthink...

Babble babble babble.

Can babby be more constructive?

Not that I think this is a bad idea but by the current nature of tech it's somewhat biased. Give more educated white males more time to participate in politics.

I would rather see the money spent on time off go to compensating part-time working minorities to participate in politics.

I'm an educated(M.S.), full time working, CIS, male, hetero, minority. Doesn't my voice contribute to diversity too?

Like or or not, a policy like this unfairly amplifies the voice of the majority and weakens your voice as a minority due to the nature of tech companies.

A fund that dispersed compensation to people in a way that properly reflects the diversity of this country would be more fair. Tech companies and their workers do not represent the diversity of this country. That's all I'm saying.

Specify part-time working minorities was probably a little too specific, but these people represent a large portion of the population and I don't know how one is supposed to participate in politics when one is having trouble making rent.

Somebody's trying to help? Better find an unhelpful way to complain about it.

One of the huge underlying issues here as a country is lack of understanding and communication across groups. If I was trying to help, but I was actually doing something that hurts out of ignorance, then I hope someone would point it out to me.

Again, I think the intentions are good but the execution has unconsidered side effects.

I think the answer to this is to do more to educate the individuals who will take advantage of this policy so that the actions they take help give a voice to or amplify the voice of part-time working minorities or other marginalized groups.

In other words, I believe we should laud all attempts to build a culture of civic engagement, no matter what your political beliefs are or your personal background. The next step is to help find ways for that civic engagement to be generally helpful rather than harmful.

full disclosure: i work at one of the companies named on this proposal

I don't believe there is any perfect system.

Don't people who work part time already have time to do civic engagement?

Paying for them to do so would have the effect of amplifying their voice at the expense of others.

The nature of tech work means employees generally have more flexibility with their time, and can afford such involvement without jeopardizing their productivity or job. It is thus hard to quantify how much money it costs for such engagement.

I'm not disagreeing with your concern, but the mechanisms are a little different. As a result my opinion is that giving money to improve civic engagement among minorities, the poor, and under-privileged population is better discussed as a separate initiative.

That said, anybody can focus on projects that improve political engagement (making voting easier, help people find information about local politics) without bringing their political opinion/preference to the table.

Interesting. From my standpoint (CEO of a company that co-signed here) this isn't money spent. We already have a flexible vacation policy, and this just makes it explicit that civic engagement can be counted against that. Agree that it does amplify the voice of tech as a demographic, which is, sadly, not reflective of the general U.S. population.

The flip side is that a fund dedicated to compensating part-time working minorities to participate in politics would likely be painted as "protest checks". Would love to tease this out more though.

I love the idea of encouraging civic engagement. And there are probably things that can be done on a political level to make the playing field more even. We have the responsibility of making those things happen and supporting civil engagement via vacation policy is a good way to enable it.

It's just easy to forgot sometimes that many of us do come from a place of privilege so it's good to remind ourselves of it sometimes.

It's odd to me the government doesn't incentive participation in politics more and yet we have things like compulsory jury duty.

Oregon has a tax credit for political donations. http://oregontaxcredit.com

Walmartlabs offers 3 days of paid VTO (volunteer time off). I'm not sure if political work would actually count, I believe it has to be a 501c3 charity in one of 5 pretty broad categories (hunger, poverty, women's rights, etc).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com