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Comment by snicker7 | Hacker News Reader

At this point, companies might as well just have an explicit policy of not hiring anyone registered as a Republican. Party affiliation is not a protected class, after all.

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> Party affiliation is not a protected class, after all.

In California, it actually is.

https://reason.com/volokh/2020/07/26/laws-protecting-private...

At least in California, you cannot be fired for your political view.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Tell that to James Damore.

James Damore’s views (regardless if they are right or wrong) don’t seem to be covered by California laws:

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

> California Labor Code section 1101 prohibits employers from implementing any rule, regulation, or policy "forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office" or "controlling or directing or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees."

> California Labor Code section 1102 provides "[n]o employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity." To this end, employers cannot enact policies limiting employees' political activities or affiliations or in essence force employees to follow the employer's political leanings.

... or Brendan Eich

Neither was race not so long ago.

This feels a bit snarky.

There seems to me, looking at all of this US hyperpartisan nonsense as an outsider, to be quite a bit of difference between the frothy Gab/Parler/etc contingent and an average median republican (who I don't really imagine spends a ton of time on niche social media).

They're quick to tell on themselves. When Biden condemned white supremacy, a lot of conservative leaders were outraged at the attack against them: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/why-are-conservative....

It's because conservatives see rhetoric about "white supremacy" as a weak man argument used against them. They don't believe themselves to be white supremacists. It's kind of like centrist Democrats being annoyed when conservatives call them socialists and communists. To see this as telling on themselves in this context is a bit like McCarthy saying only a communist would deny being a communist.

She wasn't fired for what she'd posted on those sites, though. She was fired for simply having an account.

What percentage of Republicans are the stereotype Parler user?

If you were a rabid QAnon nut, why should I hire you? Saying republican is this context is just driving the wedge in too far.

The better question is what percentage of Parler users fit the stereotype?

Based on what I've seen and people I know who were active on Gab and Parler I would venture to say it's not nearly as high as people think. The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated.

> The amount of people with truly fringe beliefs is pretty small, even when concentrated.

And I'd personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL.

Pushing them further and further into a corner with ever expanding censorship and expecting them to become good tolerant citizens has always seemed like a fools game to me.

> And I'd personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL

IRL they're limited physically to whoever they can reach; online they can make their hate travel the world ( point in case, there were QAnon related actions in Germany! If the Q people had been purely IRL that would have never happened)

That was the right frame of thinking before "onto the internet" came to mean "with the capability to reach, engage and influence millions of normal people".

Also, receiving thousands of threats and being doxed "onto the internet" has very serious consequences IRL.

That distinction collapsed a long time ago, before the Internet stormed the Capitol.

> And I’d personally much rather have this small group of people outletting their anger onto the internet instead of IRL.

Venting anger on the internet and it producing no real change isn’t an “outlet”, its just a pressure cooker.

> Pushing them further and further into a corner with ever expanding censorship and expecting them to become good tolerant citizens has always seemed like a fools game to me.

Containing the various white supremacist / conspiracy cults isn’t about reforming them, its about reducing their ability to recruit and radicalize. While reforming those already in the cults would be nice, its mostly a lost cause. They aren’t, for the most part, going to become “good, tolerant citizens”.

I can't speak to Parler as I never checked it (and can't now), but I just checked the Gab homepage and I encountered anti-vaxx, anti-Catholicism, QAnon, and election fraud nonsense. This is just the frontpage: no cherry-picking. There is nothing outright illegal on the homepage, but it's also not a good look to be honest.

Aside: Gab is horrible technically speaking; Firefox uses my full CPU :-/

You shouldn’t know and especially shouldn’t care if your prospective employee is “a rabid QAnon nut” or a crazy Bukharin-loving anarchist.

In other words, stereotypes are obviously fun if it is me, an enlightened person, doing them...

I had a Parler login since July. Mostly out of curiosity and just to read/lurk. There was a very vocal loony subset, but that is the Internet for you.

Kicking people out of work for visiting a hacking forum is about same. After all, for the general public, hacking sounds like crime and sometimes actually is. People who deliberately choose to associate themselve with hackers are not to be trusted, or?

> There was a very vocal loony subset, but that is the Internet for you.

No. This attitude has to stop. Having nazis and far-right extremists being vocal on your site is not "the internet for you".

It is a deliberate choice by whoever runs the site to be a welcoming home for the vilest voices.

For me, this is the Internet. It is an unwelcome, but arguably useful X-ray of the society.

I believe that erasing such people from a worldwide forum veers dangerously close to covering an alarm signal on your car's dashboard with black tape because it is annoying and life feels better without worrying about what might be happening under the hood.

I prefer living my life without illusions about the rest of humanity, doubly so in politics.

No. Letting hate like this fester is more like not treating a disease even when you see the symptoms, and arguing that it is better to know the disease is there. It makes no sense.

This kind of hate SPREADS. Letting it be normalises it, and lets it spread. The antidote to this kind of thing is for the rest of society to loudly and clearly reject it, and make it very obvious it is not acceptable.

Letting people keep spreading their hate does the exact opposite.

Hate is a mania, a meme that infects the host. It isn't just for us that we seek to stop it, but for the infected as well.

Yes, this is also a very valid way to look at it.

Judging by Dr. King's philosophy, it would seem that covering up, censoring, and cancelling hateful people is the same as covering up a boil and letting it fester.

"We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

You are missing the "and dealt with". It needs to be dealt with.

Exposing it does not deal with it. It just gives it more air to spread. You actually need the dealing with part.

>You are missing the "and dealt with".

What makes you think that?

It's literally in the quote.

Covering up hatred is not dealing with it, it's a facile attempt at ignoring it.

Yes, it is in his quote.

It is nowhere to be seen in today's world, though. You're here talking about letting the nazis spread their hatred as much as they want, but I am not seeing you having any plan for how to dealing with them, other than just letting them do whatever they want.

Once you let them out, what are you planning to do to deal with them?

>It is nowhere to be seen in today's world, though.

Hatred is very difficult to confront effectively. It requires inner strength and a great capacity for love. So many people lack that and just default to mirroring that hatred back at the hater, or just try to cover it up and ignore it.

It's hard to see things when you don't want to see them.

>Once you let them out, what are you planning to do to deal with them?

If you want a "plan" then simply study the philosophy and history of Dr. King.

Here's a great place to start:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...

No, I want to hear what YOUR plan is.

I choose to follow Dr. King's plan, because I believe he was the greatest sociopolitical and moral leader America has ever seen, and had far more wisdom and experience than me.

You have no standing to deny me that.

Especially since you have pledged your allegiance to the plans of Big Tech overlords like Mark Zuckerberg who profit greatly from the engagement metrics of hate.

>There was a very vocal loony subset, but that is the Internet for you.

Yeah, no. I am actually amazed the platform lived as long as it did because there was no opposition to members voicing death threats against politicians/activists/what have you. No moderation to keep those in check.

Outside some Neonazi sites, I've never seen anything like it, some Islamist sites probably are similar.

From what I have seen and remember, Gab was much, much worse. Especially the level of antisemitism was off the charts. On Parler, you could meet Jewish intellectuals. I do not remember seeing one on Gab during the few hours I spent there.

Parler also had multiple communities depending on language. The Czech community of early 2021 was nowhere as wild as the American one at the same time. We are not close to any election now, though; this might have had a cooling effct.

As pointed out below, there are some states where politics are protected. I looked it up because I do plan to use that information in hiring decisions going forward.

I wouldn't surprised if I get downvoted for this, but I intend to ask anyone I interview in the future (not currently in a role that involves hiring) if they voted for Trump in 2020. And a yes will be a disqualifying answer on the basis of poor judgement. (It's also a question I will be asking any potential employer I interview with, going forward, for the same reason.)

Yes, I will lose some diversity of thought as a result. Yes it means I can't hire employees in California. Yes, there will be potential bad PR. No, I won't feel guilty about it at all. And yes, I will also run it by appropriate lawyers before actually implementing it.

For what it's worth, as an engineering candidate being asked that question would disqualify the asking company from consideration. I do not want to work at a company that is so politically active that the question is allowed. I would also tell my point of contact exactly why I was withdrawing my candidacy and who was responsible.

That’s totally reasonable. And there are companies that have publicly taken positions that align with this.

It wasn’t clear in my comment, but I’m not presenting this from a middle management perspective. I wouldn’t arbitrarily be adding new requirements to some employer’s hiring. This is me speaking about how I’ll act for any company I start next (having been a founder and CEO before).

Something to ponder given the topic of this thread... your comment says very clearly that you're willing to make decisions which impact a company negatively, provided they benefit you emotionally. That's disqualifying for most positions involving hiring or any other management responsibility, and it's connected to your real identity.

It may not have been clear from my comment, but it’s not an emotional benefit for me. And I don’t agree that it’s necessarily a net negative for the company. There are a lot of factors that impact a company’s overall performance.

If it’s not an emotional benefit, what are your rational grounds for this? You propose to exclude tens of millions of people because you believe their vote proves they have poor judgement. Yet you are displaying poor judgment by making this proposal.

"Impact a company negatively" is your opinion as much as the reversal seems to be the opinion of the parent commentor.

It’s not an opinion, it’s basic logic and arithmetic. Shrinking the hiring pool by eliminating both Trump voters and also the non-Trump voters who don’t like the implications of the question. That’s a very large negative and is based on math, not opinion.

I'm not sure that I share the assumptions here about the distribution of talent throughout the American voting population, in particular given that the venn diagram of the tech hiring pool and the American voting population is not a circle.

Make a list of the distinct demographic categories in your hiring pool, ordered by size. You may be surprised. Depending on location and role, “Trump Voter and offended non-Trump Voter” could easily be second only to “Male non-Trump voter”, i.e. ahead of “Female non-Trump voter”. In many places it would certainly be the largest distinct demographic. That should give you pause.

Unless you define “tech hiring pool” as “recent college grads living in the Bay Area”. But even there the numbers are material.

> It's also a question I will be asking any potential employer I interview with, going forward, for the same reason.

This would be a very strange question to be asked of an interviewer.

> Yes it means I can't hire employees in California

Per the article I linked to up-thread, it's not just CA:

California, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, West Virginia, Seattle, Ann Arbor, and Madison.

Maybe you don't care about some of those locations, but CA, CO, and Seattle seem like pretty important ones in the tech world.

It would be a strange question, depending on the scenario. You can imagine I probably don’t anticipate being in interviews where I’m asking that of somebody who isn’t the primary executive. (In other words, I wouldn’t want to work under someone whose judgement I don’t trust, and this would be a dealbreaker on judgement.)

You’re correct that it rules out some important locations in tech, and I do think geography will continue to matter to a degree.

I think there’s also some appeal to a company that has strong, publicly stated principles that can benefit recruiting, but it remains to be seen. But when I consider potential future ventures, these are things I’ve considered and intend to apply.

IMO it would show exceedingly bad judgment to ask someone how they voted in an interview. I wouldn’t categorically refuse to hire such a person, but it would be a strike against.

I understand that perspective, but it doesn't affect my position. I'm free to choose who I work for, and I wouldn't choose to work for someone who found the question disqualifying. I get to define my own utility function.

Sure, you're free to choose your employer however you wish, and there are plenty of tech companies whose executives didn't vote for Trump.

But you may find that many executives — including those who did not vote for Trump — are not interested in hiring people who believe they are entitled to know how their colleagues/bosses voted.

Sure, I won't argue that. But it's another useful filter for me.

You should probably put that on your job-listing ads!

Also, how do you plan on phrasing the question? And if you're not fully within the power to "disqualify" the candidate, what other steps are you planning on taking to prevent them from being hired by your employer? Have you discussed it yet with your employer's HR department yet?

Ha, yes, the intent is that it would be an open and stated part of the hiring process. There's no reason to surprise people with the question. I'd rather let candidates self-select them out, as much for this question as for any other mis-alignments.

I did a poor job in my first comment of explaining my role relative to hiring. I'm speaking from a position of having been a founder and CEO, and likely being one again. The question about how this would play it with HR is understood, but isn't applicable to me personally. I believe (as I suspect you do) that in most organizations, this would be a hard thing to instill retroactively or individually and would meet lots of resistance, unless it were a very philosophically aligned company.

Would you consider listing this preference on your linked-in profile then? It's the same deal as a job ad.

If I were looking for work, I would consider it.

I'd genuinely recommend just letting such things be a permanent fixture of your profile. It would save you a lot of headaches and wasted time dealing with people who'd ultimately not want to interact with you, and likewise with whom you'd not want to interact.

The reason the secret ballot is even a thing is exactly because of people like you. Thank goodness you aren't in a role that involves hiring given such politicisation of the hiring process. I sincerely hope you never get such a position again.

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