Comment by Tehchops | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tehchops | Hacker News Reader

While I will absolutely concede that being born a middle-class white Caucasian male in the US is an objectively advantageous and generally privileged situation to be born in to...

You're going to lose me at the notion that I'm somehow exercising "white privilege" by consuming/offering alcohol at/around/near work functions or venues.

If the author is already making the reader concede an implicit agreement that there is an "inclusion/diversity" problem, then I'd argue the problem exists at a deeper, more fundamental level.

This reeks of selection bias and circular reasoning when you say that things that occur in a non-diverse environment are immediately perfect examples of non-diversity because "look at this non-diverse group of people partaking in $thing".

I'm even fine with saying it's non-inclusive, except that has to cut across all demographics, including white males. There are plenty of white males employed in tech who find the idea of socializing/drinking with co-workers absolutely contrary to what they feel is fun or engaging.

As a thought experiment: let's say all tech companies, from startup to FAANG, as of today, went completely "dry" for any and all work-hosted functions, as well the same policy for all corporate offices/locations.

Would diversity get any better? And if not, how can you say it was making it worse?

> You're going to lose me at the notion that I'm somehow exercising "white privilege" by consuming/offering alcohol at/around/near work functions or venues.

That wasn't the point of my statement re: privilege. It was more of an allegory to the fact that I didn't get thrown in jail for some of the really stupid shit I did in the past.

Let's also consider the social advantage of those who do imbibe with those who don't in regards to building relationships with superiors at your job.

> Let's also consider the social advantage of those who do imbibe with those who don't in regards to building relationships with superiors at your job.

why not consider the social advantage of having other hobbies/interests in common with superiors? at one internship I had, one of the senior VPs would routinely come into our room to talk to my mentor about good places to go hiking over the weekend. as far as I could tell, they otherwise had no real reason to interact at work. does this unfairly exclude people like me who aren't outdoorsy types? do we need to do something about it?

> Let's also consider the social advantage of those who do imbibe with those who don't in regards to building relationships with superiors at your job.

Ok, but that "advantage", or lack thereof, is not exclusionary only to non-white, non-males, which was a fundamental premise of the article.

You're shifting gears between:

"alcohol is evidence of, and further exacerbates, a diversity/inclusion issue stemming from a heavy bias towards white males"

to:

"alcohol is bad for the workplace, regardless of context, because it is exclusionary and leads to problems and implicit/explicit social and health consequences"

This post carries a similar theme to many before it: tech worker(who maybe or maybe not drank in a work-context in the past) gets "woke" about it and decrees that it's bad.

The line I quoted from your recent comment alludes to what I think is what most of these articles are truly railing against:

the implicit, unstated social hierarchies that are created in a given workplace, and the advantages they offer to their members in terms of choice project assignment, progression, recognition, and overall career satisfaction.

Guess what? Remove drinking from the workplace, and the exact same thing will happen anyways. It may not form around drinking. Or, in all likelihood, it still will, just unofficially after-hours, which is likely to be even more exclusionary, because there will be no impetuous for forced inclusion.

We as a species have been building complex social hierarchies for most of our history. That will always select for individuals who are more "social" versus ones who are not.

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