Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tycho | Hacker News Reader

Lot of advice floating about the workplace these days along the lines of be candid, join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc. The people giving this advice seem to have no conception that not everyone actively engaged in these topics is acting in 100% good faith. Being too open could so easily backfire. Encouraging this is borderline negligent. Indeed there’s entire branches of activism that rest on bad-faith ideologies. Good advice would be to avoid controversial and political discussions and to keep a strong separation between your private life and your work life. Instead, we have employers, especially universities, asking staff to promote their organisations through their personal social media accounts.

View on HN

> join the conversation, bring your whole self to work, etc.

This is a classic honeypot. They want to weed out people who have views that do not align with current PC status quo. One of the reasons is that no company wants to be associates with an employee who has views that could damage company image and lose money. They want your whole self, so they can discard you if they think you are a liability.

There is no social setting besides close friends and family(and therapy I suppose) where you should ever "be yourself." I never caught on to the trend that started with social media of blurting or tweeting out whatever you're thinking and for good reason. Now people are going back years scrubbing candid thoughts they had when they were teenagers while the naturally reticent have nothing to worry about.

> and therapy I suppose

In many countries therapists have a duty to break confidentiality for example if they think you have a intent to break the law. I knew people with drug problem who didn't go for a therapy out of fear the therapist will report them to the police.

Even seemingly non-controversial posts can become radioactive a few short years later.

> Now people are going back years scrubbing candid thoughts they had when they were teenagers while the naturally reticent have nothing to worry about.

Not only that, but do you know for certain which of the views you have today that are benign and unoffensive, will be considered taboo and hateful in 20 years? I don't know which ones, nobody does! But in 20 years someone is going to trawl through the archives and measure your views today with tomorrow's moral measuring stick.

"Being too open could so easily backfire."

I'm in the market for a new leadership role and I have a very well established leadership model that I've honed over the years to build high performing organizations. I was considering publishing my leadership writings (that I share with my employees when I coach them) on my LinkedIn so prospective employers could see whether I'm a good fit for transforming their organizations.

One of my former employees cautioned me that my since my leadership model doesn't virtue signal that I might find it hurts me more than it helps my prospects. I'm not sure what to make of this.

Recently had a Zoom call with a prospective enterprise software vendor, a small but very successful business. They trotted out quite a few senior people to make their pitch. In our internal chat room one of my colleagues noted the lack of diversity in their line-up as a red flag (those on the call were all white male boomers). Ironically, the company has a female founder/CEO. I’m not saying this comment led to anything one way or the other, but what you present to the outside industry will definitely be scrutinised along these lines by some.

One of the purposes of meetings (in person or remote) is to get a sense of the other group's values, and how they will treat the least of your staff. As a vendor, it's critically important to listen carefully and not interrupt. Conversely, I've rejected vendors when they've talked over one of my colleagues. I don't care how good the product is... if they are not going to be good collaborators.

Edit: This is related to the above comment -- a colleague may be summarizing an uncomfortable experience not in terms of behavior (a rude vendor that talked over them) but in terms of identity (white male).

How does this relate to the comment that you're replying to?

Perhaps you could collect candid feedback on your writings? Don't ask friends or close colleagues, instead search for those in your field whose opinions you respect (but may not agree with)? More broadly, perhaps find/form a community of individuals with similar interests (organizational leadership and change) and join them? In particular, seek out people with different backgrounds than yourself. I've found book authors on these subjects to be especially open to dialogue, if your opening letter connects your question to their work.

>bring your whole self to work

What this really means: make your whole self about work, then bring that self to work.

My take on these management aphorisms is that they are rarely actually meant literally. They're usually a form of signalling about how much you're supposed to love the Company/job. Worse, they are often adopted because management copy them from other firms they see as "successful" or "leaders" in a particular area.

If I were being more cynical, I'd say that managers or leaders love to talk about "Company culture" or "Company values" points like this because it allows them to mark their own work when they define success (although this may be unconscious). "We changed our company culture" isn't a statement that's easy to check or measure (it won't show up in eg engagement surveys), unlike "we grew earnings by x%", yet it also sounds much more "difficult".

A lot of the time it's effectively all an elaborate social game.

I never got what people mean with "bad faith" stuff. Like its some inherently bad kind of behaviors and ideas? Can you explain it to me like im 5?

The worst that i can think of is that people are hiding their true interests and thus lying to you.

The idea is that people are engaging with no interest in making society better. An example might be a person who advocates for policies that are almost certainly harmful to the communities he purports to care about because his rhetoric draws favor (i.e., social capital) from others of his well-to-do segment of the political spectrum. The chief idea is that someone is plainly not interested in addressing the problem they purport to care about, but that they want the benefits of virtue signaling or else the “politics as tribal sport” element or a fondness for malice and divisiveness.

To be really clear, I’m not making a veiled political statement—I can think of a dozen ways this could fit a bad faith person on either side of the spectrum.

When their actions/interests are less noble than what their words imply. For instance, using statistics and evidence to make a judgment seem objective, but knowingly leaving out other evidence that contradicts their position, especially when political association can be used to attack anyone who does bring up that evidence. Or asking that people “simply be aware” of their own prejudices, but in practice they are only interested in deconstructing the prejudices of one particular group, and would react furiously if another group was targeted. Pretending that everything is just a level playing field of debate, when they know that it isn’t, and they like it that way.

In general bad faith means that someone is lying to you, either implicitly or explicitly, when engaging you.

An example of this might be to act interested in a point, request sources to back it up, but with the intention to never look at the sources. Instead, the intent is to attack them for not providing sources making them look like their opinion is unsourced if they don't provide any, attack the sources if they provide anything that might be considered controversial, or to ignore them entirely and move onto the next person if they do provide good sources. The goal is to at worst waste their time and at best make them look like their position is unfounded.

Other examples might be asking questions when discussing a slightly controversial topic to get even more controversial replies that you will then quote mine to attack the poster, even if the quotes weren't controversial in context.

A less agreed upon example might be someone who is purposefully being misleading because they don't want to expose their true goal, but whose true goal is to educate the person. Asking leading questions to get someone to reach a conclusion when you would not be able to argue directly for that conclusion. This last example might even pass as an acceptable form of bad faith dialog because it is done with the intention of having a good faith conversation on a topic where good faith conversations aren't possible.

To me bad faith is also just lying. You lie about your motives and intentions. You lie about the other's sides motives and intentions. Bad faith actors also prop up a lot of straw men in order to tear them down, but disengage or put words in the mouth of direct opponents. They make concrete statements, then back away and act like they never said if called out for it, or can't back up their assumption with evidence.

Bad faith arguments are more about scoring points or making that person feel better. It's never about the actual policy. So it allows the bad faith actor freedom to say whatever they want, as long as they come out ahead.

It can come from cognitive dissonance and ignorance, refusing to concede a point that has been logically refuted. Maintaining a position and then launching a personal attack if the position is threatened.

Just as an example, there are many ways to speak in bad faith: They say something they know is wrong so you correct them, then they take offense. They then leverage this perceived (by everyone else) offense and use it to gain some sort of advantage (over you, or systemically).

In contrast, talking in good faith is saying something they believe is true. Maybe you correct them or maybe you don't, but in the end they're just trying to talk to other people.

They want ammo on everyone so they can try and get them fired to replace them with friends and family.

Actual intent differs from presented intent. As in "not negotiating in good faith"—carrying on negotiations only to extract information, with no intention of making a deal, might be an example of this.

"bring your whole self to work"

Trendy, yet completely stupid advice.

When I hear "bring your whole self to work", I think of gay people who couldn't mention their loved ones because that would out them. When you say there should be a "strong separation between your private life", I don't think you're expecting to never mention your family. Maybe your partner is sick and you're feeling stressed. In a supportive environment, shouldn't that be mentioned?

Even though the personal is political (such as the status of being gay), It sounds to me like you're thinking about political topics irrelevant to the organization when you advise people to "avoid controversial and political discussions". Whether the topic is relevant to your work depends on the topic, and it's up to you to make a cost-benefit analysis of whether it's worth discussing. I think that people should be able to discuss their family life and workplace policies, but I agree that broader political discussion may not be worth it.

I guess I'd like to end by saying that it depends. What don't you think should be discussed at work? Why shouldn't you discuss this with your colleagues? Personally, I think discussing a gay spouse should be fine and expected, and supporting genocide shouldn't be, but there's a lot of room in between those two extremes.

> Why shouldn't you discuss this with your colleagues?

If you believe that women might be less represented in tech because they opt for other careers when they have the chance, you might get fired. You better leave that part of your whole self at home.

I don’t disagree with the idea that people shouldn’t have to hide certain things. I’m just commenting on the apparent naivety of the people recommending greater openness, like they don’t acknowledge the pitfalls, the potential ambushes.

> Indeed there’s entire branches of activism that rest on bad-faith ideologies

Elaborate plz

Reply on news.ycombinator.com