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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Companies can't straddle the line. They're either going to have to go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics, or they're going to have to clamp down hard like Brian Armstrong.

Google needs to decide what it wants to be. Given its choices, I think it's clear what they want. They just need to say it.

It'll help employees and potential employees know if they want to work there.

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Most companies want to appear to have a diversity of people who look different but have the same opinions and viewpoints as the rest of the group.

What they should strive for is a diversity of backgrounds, viewpoints, experiences and have that process account for the differences in how those people arrived at where they currently are.

Do you have an example of a company that does the second well?

As far as I understand, all companies need to have a pretty solid overlap of "common opinions" or else you are going to have political deadlock.

If you have examples to the contrary I'm really curious to learn about how they worked.

Most companies don't care about diversity of any kind for any reason besides PR. Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians.

Diversity in terms of measurable metrics, such as women/minorities/LGBT++ being adequately represented, is simply a benchmark that can be paraded around for appeasement purposes.

> Every hiring manager knows that the most productive engineering teams are made up of 100% Asian cis-male Libertarians.

What the hell. How can you say that with a straight face?

Of the two best engineers I know, one is is black and the other is trans. They're both 10x engineers.

> How can you say that with a straight face?

I didn't.

> They're both 10x engineers.

https://medium.com/@yuval.idan5/the-10x-engineer-myth-is-wro...

https://sparktoro.com/blog/belief-in-the-mythical-10x-hire-h...

I thought it was sarcasm.

Poe's law likely applies here.

If my company decides to "go all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics", could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics"?

When they try to illegally hire/not-hire people based on protected class, which if I read correctly is something she was pushing for. Forgive me if this is mischaracterized.

I don't want to work anywhere that pushes any ideology so far that they break the law. That goes for if it's in pushing their bottom line as well, so regulatory gray-area companies like Uber & AirBnB are also a no-go for me.

It is hard to find a reputable tech firm or startup that has not been publicly or internally accused of breaking a rule, regulation or law. It's engrained in the ideology of innovation.

No. Innovation does not require law breaking. This is an opinion espoused by people who lack ethics.

Tech firms and startups are just businesses. Breaking laws/regulations is not a requirement to operate a new business.

I think we are saying the same thing. Though I’ll add that are a lot of people in positions of power openly running with that opinion at their tech firms, and that does influence ideals around tech innovation.

Also running an ethical business goes far beyond adhering to rules and regulations, as many of them don’t currently penalize unethical practices.

> could there ever be any legitimate reason to fire an employee who's also "all-in on diversity, inclusion, and politics"

yes, plenty of reasons, you're part of a team, you got to work with the team or you're just using them

That's the entire reason behind it, if they fire a "diversity and inclusion" individual, the latter will just claim (racism, homophobia, transphobia, latest fad of the day)

Companies will continue to straddle the line. It's why they'll have a rainbow twitter avatar then crush a union and lobby against higher wages.

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