I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser.
So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.
And what were/are the different opinions of (some) employees at Coninbase that triggered this whole thing in the first place?
> pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from
This is too abstract for me. Would it be weird if I asked for concrete examples? (of how society is getting pushed in a bad direction)
1. Blind worship of "equality"
2. Control and censure of language, communication and media
3. Demonization of money, successful people and corporations
4. Politicization of workplace and professional activities
5. Politicization of schools and academia
6. Polarization between "right" thinking and "evil/unacceptable/deplorable" people
7. Politically connected minorities overwriting democracy
8. Ceding more and more power and responsibility to governments from individuals and NGOs
9. Governmental intrusion in more and more aspects of our lives
10. More and more rules and regulations in our everyday lives in the name of stopping evil/wrong elements
11. Fall of meritocracy
12. Wishful thinking ignoring evidence of reality
13. Using guilt for historical misdeeds done by forefathers to silence contemporary groups
I could go on, but I think this is a sufficient sample.
The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance.
An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."
I disagree strongly & think you're dead wrong here. Apolitical in the workplace is saying "we come to work to align on & collaborate in working towards shared goals and those goals are what we should be focused on at work. People who share this goal (coinbase, make money, promote crypto whatever) may vote R, D, or not vote at all. We can all still work together on our shared goal."
It means people with different views can work together on stuff they do agree on rather than "I can't work with anyone who doesn't vote the same as me" which is what social-justice-in-the-workplace seems to lead to, for better or worse.
It is NOT an endorsement of the status quo, it's a recognition that you and I might both oppose the status quo for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with work.
Politics is a very broad and encompassing concept. It isn’t synonymous with some nation’s representative political system.
When I go to work I focus on things to the exclusion of other things. That's fine, but we shouldn't think that on entering the office of my employer corporation I am somehow exiting the political realm. That would be engaging in a blindness to the politics of my employer's business practices, and the politics of my office workplace.
I'm not sure what politicization of the workplace is intended to lead to. At some point people have to put their differences aside to work on a shared goal. If you disagree with the shared goal then why join in the first place?
Statements like this make me think we're not on the same page here. The workplace is always political. It can not be politicized in the sense of changing from apolitical to political.
"Politicized" has to mean then that political conflict has escalated or the political dimension of the workplace has become more visible.
In this sense what politicization of the workplace is intended to lead to is political change, that is, a change associated with the decision making in groups, or change in other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
> If you disagree with the shared goal then why join in the first place?
Political conflict in the workplace is in the vast majority of cases not like this. When thinking "politics in the workplace", the typical issues are around worker safety, worker compensation and benefits, the status of lgbt employees, or sexism.
A little while ago Github employees protested the involvement of their company with the ICE department of the USA government. In that case, could you simply say to the protesting employees, "Well, you must just disagree with the shared goal of the company and so you should quit". I think it's obvious that would be a ridiculous response given the complaints of the employees.
What I generally understand as "politicization of the workplace" is more around employees talking about issues they care about unrelated to what the company is doing and creating an hostile environment for dissenting views to theirs. If you think an issue unrelated to what you're doing is more important than having a good working environment to work on that shared project, then I still think you should just quit since you're not fulfilling your obligations as an employee.
As for the other kind:
>A little while ago Github employees protested the involvement of their company with the ICE department of the USA government. In that case, could you simply say to the protesting employees, "Well, you must just disagree with the shared goal of the company and so you should quit".
I believe you should tell them exactly that if they voiced their concern to management but they still decided to go forward with the deal. What else are you going to do? Sow a negative/divisive work environment because your political views are more important than the product everyone is working on?
Politics are quite diverse, if every employee were to bring in negativity over every deal they disagree on, you wouldn't have collaboration and your product would not exist.
You can still be very politically active on your own time.
You cannot escape politics in work, because every workplace is making decisions about benefits, wages, their use of energy, who they hire, who they donate to, how accessible their products are, etc. All of which have a political component.
An aluminum smelter, for instance, uses lots of electricity. How they choose to source that electricity is absolutely a politically linked decision.
If I don’t know someone’s political stance, my default isn’t to assume that they think “things are fine”, my default is to assume that they have some set of beliefs that are irrelevant to that particular interaction with them.
Work is inherently political. There's no escaping that your workplace is making decisions about wages, benefits, access to their products, how they spend their donation dollars, if they support candidates, who they employ, etc. etc. etc. All of these are political decisions that (I believe) are inescapable and also that workers should have input into.
A web design shop could be a co-op or it could be a standard llc with a founder on top. It might make price services to be accessible to everyone or exclusively focus on enterprise software. They might donate to a local politician. Or rent in a particular area of town. Or purchase carbon offsets for their energy use. Etc. etc.
All of these are inherently political decisions. There's no such thing as an Apolitical workplace.
Should Coinbase have a political opinion on native rights in South Australia? What about the status and social standing of Burakumin in Japan? What about the Indigenous goups in Taiwan: the Ami, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Tao (Yami), Thao, Kavalan, Taroko (also Truku), and Sakizaya?
I think Coinbase should have said "we are a deeply political company concentrated on a single issue to the exclusion of all else. If you want to work where there is more than a single political focus, we are not a good fit".
You can't optimise in all directions, and being clear about what is in scope and out of scope is vital, not just in tech but in life.
You think every single company that isn't writing amicus briefs or blog posts about climate change is taking a political stance against fighting climate change?
You have life outside of work where you can be political.
I believe it's the job of companies to be 'good citizens' and only to be active politically if it's either really part of the mission statement - or - unavoidable, perhaps in the case of NFL, they had a huge communications issue.
Beyond that, protest at your hearts content, just not at the office.
Finally - you can make a political choice in your work if you want merely by choosing disciplines/companies. If you really want to 'push green' then getting into that industry might be a good personal choice.
I, likewise, am not interested in discussing presidential candidates with my coworkers. But every employer makes decisions about wages, benefits, donations, access to their products and services, energy consumption, their local communities, support of political candidates, etc.
No workplace is an island, and if a workplace is going to engage in those things, I want to be able to discuss how my particular workplace interacts with them. (E.g. if I worked in a factory, maybe I'd want to talk about how the factory sourced energy.)
Or is it just an attempt to be decent and get people to do the thing they were hired to do, which is to make their investors more fucking money? As a shareholder in several tech companies, I don't like the idea of people having discussions like these on my dime. How many bugs that were never fixed with Youtube Music, for example, could have been fixed if there weren't shit heads sitting around having flame wars on my fucking dime?
(Please forgive any flawed logic below - I assure you it's an oversight. I'm posting this in good faith.)
I'd say yes, but basically in the same way Coinbase's band on political speech in the office is a stance.
Consider religious people whose theology holds that they should attempt to convert everybody in their circles, even their professional circles.
It seems to me that banning that is tantamount to saying either (a) their theology is wrong, or (b) it's not wrong but the employer is resisting it regardless, or (c) the business has no place for employees holding those beliefs.
There's a difference between saying "we don't think it's appropriate for us to take an official stance on X, but feel free to discuss X on your lunch breaks like you would any other topic" and "thou shalt not mention X in any context while an employee of this company"
According to my coworkers, who discovered this because they saw her bumper sticker when she picked me up one day, this is because she is "ignorant and doesn't know the facts" and "if she knew the facts she wouldn't think that way" and that I "need to talk to her and explain them."
They think that, due to their profession, they are intelligent, and therefore anyone who disagrees with them about a complex topic is either less intelligent or uninformed. It's the epitome of youthful arrogance. Naturally, none of them have kids and really don't see the nuance of the issue. It's insufferable, and at one point I was getting ready to clobber a guy who I am 100% positive has never been hit in his life.
Politics should be left out of work. And yes, by convincing a broad spectrum of the American public that Trump won the election because of a few facebook ads bought by Russian assets, instead of simply saying that they had a shitty candidate, the Democratic party has essentially pressured tech companies to have political filtering on their staff. If Facebook had Republicans working at senior levels in their company, they would have been subjected to even more harassment from Dem leaders who scapegoated them for their loss in 2016. Facebook has former Democratic party operatives at high levels in their company. They don't and can't have anyone from the Republican party. They get unending amounts of shit for Thiel being on their board.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives
However, if I worked at an oil company, and had tons of very conservative co-workers, would you think it was ok for them to do the same thing to me if my wife pulled up and had rainbow/equality stickers on her car, or pro-choice stickers? I'm curious if you have a double standard on this topic due to prejudice against my wife's viewpoint (which my coworkers clearly have).
If you wife for example got a manager that thought the females had no place in the workplace and should be a stay at home wife and was open about this, would that be ok?
If you are gay, and your manager loudly say that being gay is a sin, would that be ok?
I get that it can feel like the other way too, it probably feels hostile to be conservative in a fairly liberal company. But being open and supportive of all your employees seems like good and understandable business decision. That of course includes being welcoming to conservative people. If you think your coworkers are a disgrace, no matter the reason, I think it would be smart to not make this known.
If the first manager fires her because of her gender, we can take him to court for unlawful dismissal.
There are many mean individuals out there. That’s because we all have capacity for discrimination and ultimately violence. The call to stop discussing politics at work might result in fewer such frictions and keep us focused on the job at hand. A more productive and socially cohesive outcome in my opinion.
it's not apolitical, it's just giving yourself a formal policy note to point to for any future need to tell people to "shut the fuck up and get to work"
Not in tech. If you're not actively competing to be more woke than the next guy, then you're a literal nazi and your silence is violence.
The problem is that “political activism” also encompasses the ongoing american culture war, which indeed does not belong at work in any capacity. Reasonable people don’t want to engage with the culture war at work, and, increasingly, ever.
They want you to think the latter when they mean the former, and support them. The problem is that the “activism” they’re complaining about isn’t the culture war, it’s the fact that there was a widespread social movement to protest racist police abuse, and Coinbase management didn’t feel it important enough for them to participate. Many of their staff took an issue with that, which has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of “who are you voting for?” thing that springs to mind when you think of “political activism at work”.
Don’t get me wrong, advocating for human rights is indeed political activism, which is why their technique is so effective.
It’s intentionally designed to deceive you.