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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this is a weird dichotomy

I don't want actual politics at work. I don't want to be debating politically contentious events at work. E.g. (to pick a contentious topic that was in the news recently) a long winded debate on the palestine/israel conflict is not something i want to have at work. That doesn't mean i don't have opinions on the subject or that in a different context i wouldn't want to debate it, work is just not the time to get into it.

However that doesn't mean i think racism/bigotry/etc is acceptable at work.

I don't see these two things in conflict.

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The immediate response will be: "bawolff, through their silence, is promoting not-my-agenda (obviously!) therefore I feel unsafe and want bawolff fired!"

It really is as simple as that.

I'm sure places like that exist, but i think the internet overstates their prevelence. I've never worked anywhere like that.

You haven’t heard the term “silence is violence”? It’s not ironic. Anytime you see on a list of “demands” (which is a term that people feel very comfortable using) that includes “forcefully condemn X,” they are basically rejecting your choice to remain silent on the issue.

You may have never seen this in the workplace but it is increasingly common in some of the most coveted (or formerly so) employers like Google, Basecamp, Medium, etc.

As usual, there's context to everything and these discussions often skip over it. In some extreme cases, silence is violence is correct, for many people that threshold will be in different places. In other context people may be abusing "silence is violence" as "you should support my pet issue I care about". There will be cases where people will have strong opinions about, like providing services to ICE - literally helping a violent organisation to be more efficient.

Ideas are not the same thing to people - some ignore it, some don't, some abuse it, some change it for different purposes.

>There will be cases where people will have strong opinions about, like providing services to ICE - literally helping a violent organisation to be more efficient.

This is just "support my pet cause" with some added rationalization. The line of what constitutes as "being complicit" always conveniently ends where the majority of activists lie. You're bad if .1% of your company's revenue comes from a contract with a government organization, part of which enforces illegal immigration. However, if you sign this petition, your sins will be forgiven.

I think you're generalising a bit and end up building an imaginary persona you believe in. Maybe some people think like that. But for example, in my case: I agree with it and I'm not an activist. "You're bad..." is wrong way to look at it. I'm against helping them rather than against taking their money. There are no sins to forgive but if there were, signing a petition is not a way to achieve it.

You presented your idea of the supporter of the quoted opinion and it turns out to be almost the opposite of the supporter you responded to.

My characterization was intentionally facetious for my own amusement, but the core argument remains sound. If working for a company with an ICE contract counts as helping a violent organization, then you should also apply the "silence is violence" doctrine to activists who sign a petition but refuse to quit, yet nobody ever does.

Some people believe they can push for change from inside. I'm not sure what do you mean by "nobody ever does" - we're commenting on an article about people quitting - and they will if they can't achieve the change they want. Others may not join in the first place due to political reasons. (I've refused 2 jobs at companies doing things I don't agree with)

In this case, they are being paid to leave, so it's a commercial transaction rather than an act of holding themselves to a moral standard. Not taking a job or resigning from a job for political reasons would be such an act, but I don't see how that would be relevant to "silence is violence" if you aren't pressuring others to do the same.

You say “literally helping a violent organisation to be more efficient.” Someone else might say “Helping our nation protect its borders.” Neither person would be axiomatically correct because you’re arguing over opinions, not facts.

Grass does not speak. Therefore, in some circumstances, it is violent. What a ridiculous assertion.

This is neither a new idea, nor particularly controversial, nor does it apply to grass.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_of_omission

I've worked at some places that i think would consider themselves woke. I have never been asked to personally condemn anything. I'm doubtful that places like google are really like that, i suspect this is mostly a strawman that doesn't really exist.

Sure, if i went around saying that hitler was just misunderstood, i would probably get in trouble. And i'm totally ok with that.

> I have never been asked to personally condemn anything

Wear a Trump hat to work and see how long that lasts. Just tell people you voted for him, see if “you’ll be asked to condemn anything”.

“I’ve never had any problems with the people I work with“… probably just means you are aligned with them.

What is the X? Can you give a real life example?

X is, these days, usually “white supremacy.”

Let's try: bombing civilians.

And offshoring manufacturing to dictatorships that also "reeducate" and forcibly manage the reproductive rights of religious minorities in the country and threaten neighboring countries with invasions and harvest organs when the like.

Oh, wait... that's right these activists don't care too much about THAT violence.

I'm pretty sure the group of "these activists" is diverse (heh) enough to make such generalizations wrong.

Remind me which political ideology in the US is the one trying to forcibly manage reproductive rights?

The one which by proxy is totally nonplussed by what human rights violations go on in China as long as the cash register keeps dinging its bell but on the other hand gets utterly flustered at the lesser problems at home so it ends up looking hypocritical?

Isn't that pretty much what these stories are about? Big tech company implements policy that says no more political activism at work (big tech company already has policy to fire anyone who expresses racist/sexist or other taboo views). People mass quit in protest because they equate neutrality with supporting the status quo, which is to them evil.

It exists at every one of the small sized tech businesses I am familiar with. Some of these situations blow up at the larger well known tech business, but the small ones don't want the fight, agree to the DEI committee, put up the occasional BLM/trans/etc social media support messages, and generally avoid the conflict. The employees of these companies pushing the changes feel their employers are bigoted for not pushing harder for change, but the minimum attempts to placate them are enough to keep the peace. However, these people talk to eachother, occasionally make the scary slack general chat message about doing better, and make a really eggshell feeling work environment.

When I worked at a defense contractor (years ago, before any of this stuff was even on the horizon) I'm pretty sure HR would have been had a "I am living the movie idiocracy" moment if that happened.

Silence is violence rings pretty hollow when your company deals in the loud explody kind of violence.

Sounds a bit like going back in time to the 1700s when misprision of felony was still on the books.

And bawolff would be summarily fired.

I wonder how this works in, say, the Marines, or the Navy, which I believe are much more diverse than tech. Are people discussing politics endlessly at work? Is there a code of ethics/conduct that explicitly bars such behaviors?

Tech is extremely un-diverse, but it somehow seems to attract much more vocal and activist types compared to the above. For example, I have never read about such incidents in the Navy or the Marines... Is it simply my ignorance, or does the military have an established way of dealing with such things?

FWIW, I'm sick of the politicization and invasion by SJWs of the discourse in our little bubble in the Bay Area. I'd heartily appreciate the day when I can spend a whole day at work with absolutely no discussion of politics and religion at work. Even private home life is not impervious to this nonsense (even talk at the dinner table often comes down to this, much to my dismay). Do others share a similar sentiment? Just like there are 'no-cellphone' train compartments, perhaps we can have 'politics/religion-free' zones at home and the office!

The difference is tech has a lot more people who went to expensive fancy colleges and private high schools, and have comfortable middle class backgrounds, the military that is the extreme minority. People can talk about diversity, but its not truly diversity they are looking for, as they do not look for political or class diversity. The marines, has a lot of working class background people, and black, white, hispanic, working class people seem to get along just fine with different races without long diatribes about politics.

Tech has these "intelligentsia" activists that want to show they have the right ideas and opinions. Go to a welding shop or mechanic or marines or whatever, and everyone can have different opinions about something and nothing bad happens. People might laugh it off and call someone an idiot, that's about it.

> Go to a welding shop or mechanic or marines or whatever, and everyone can have different opinions about something and nothing bad happens

That depends on the "something". Everyone has views they consider unacceptable. Try telling a marine about how 9/11 was actually justified. I highly doubt he would just laugh it off.

I would rather have a work environment with crazy conspiracy nuts than orthodox SJW purists.

I mentioned above how shared challenges is a way to remove biases among diverse people. In my comment I used small companies trying to the keep the lights on.

While there are exceptions, the military is one giant shared challenge. When people go through hell together and their lives depend on each other, they figure it out.

I think it also is related to the idea of "illegibility" there probably are a lot more roles/jobs in tech that can be easily illegible. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/07/31/on-being-an-illegible-... .

In the Marines you have to prove your mettle. So people actually earn the respect of their peers. And I think that their process is quite competent in weeding out the really toxic people that are the majority of activists. Today those types are SJW, 20 years ago they would have been fundamental Christians wanting to help Jack Thompson ban violent games.

And of course Marines are the one that invented the term fragging.

The problem with activism in the west is lack of feedback for being obnoxious. So they can get away with it.

A very popular meme is how in june all corporations turn their profile pictures rainbow in all social media accounts except in the legit homophobic and conservative countries.

So it is activism entangled with safetysm. We protest where we know people will pay the dane geld.

Many people would call your refusal to hear their opinion on Israel/Palestine or any other issue “problematic,” or contributing to an “unsafe” environment. You can say you’re against racism at work but do you think you can push back against the next BLM workshop with “this isn’t appropriate for work?” Doubtful.

Surely everyone arranges for a customer to call with a critical production issue just as the $ISSUE workshop starts?

It doesn't address the issue. It's just ducking your head down to not participate one way or the other. It's fine for keeping your head down, it doesn't address workplace culture.

I have a coworker who does almost no work, but is on four different organizational diversity committees so is basically bulletproof. They've caused major rifts in the team. My only solution is to find a new job, which is what I'm working on now.

When your workplace empowers those sorts of behaviours in the name of progressive benevolence, just ducking your head down only works for so long.

If you think about it, this kind of culture actually hurts minorities because an employer will think twice about hiring them in the first place.

Why hire a black, hispanic, or LGBT person, if you have no ability to fire them without being labeled, canceled, or sued. Safer to just hire the white straight guy.

Lol time to leave before that wokester destroys the company.

Cancelling a workshop for a live site would be an act of aggression and violence. Let the customers wait.

That’s not the purpose of a corporation

an unincorporated sole proprietorship is better for having no customers and hosting workshops on trending topics

Can you clarify if this is sarcasm or not.

I mean, I think it’s stupid, the corporation’s purpose is to deliver product to customers. But I think you’d be in a lot of hot water if you actually suggested cancelling a race workshop for a live site.

You can laugh either way!

Is it just me, or is the sarcasm problem worsening? Sometimes I earnestly can't even tell if I am being sarcastic.

> BLM workshop

I live in Eastern-European, one ocean away from the States, I'm curious about these workshops, do they really happen as often as people say they happen? (let's say once a month or so, which I would consider "often" for this type of meetings).

I'm asking because they do look to me like pretty much resembling the communist party indoctrinations work-place meetings my dad had to attend in the 1980s (my dad's workplace was in the business of building stuff inside a steel mill factory, so nothing intrinsically political about it), those communist party meetings seemed to be taken seriously by absolutely no-one and were seen just as a huge loss of one's time.

They're happening in the UK too, however at least for my employer, it's a one-off multi-hour 'training session'. Amusingy, our trainers were 3 white people, led by a male.

The book 'White Fragility' was used as a reference. You just sit through it and at the end say you found it enlighening or whatever. Box ticked.

> Box ticked

Sorry, job quit.

I would NEVER allow myself to be forced into a room to listen to some racist “anti racist” nonsense and then consent to agreement on any of it even implicitly.

I’d consider that only a small step above willingly kneeling before my executioner.

I'm from the UK, in my experience it's only once per person per workplace and takes a few hours.

They're often called Marxists.

I've not grown up in eastern Europe, but yeah probably right. Everyone thinks it's bullshit waste of time, but will anyone speak up? No, you sit through because it's easier than dealing with the consequences of denouncing the indoctrination.

They call themselves Marxists, but Marx didn't care about diversity, or think white people are evil, or that there's toxic masculinity, and would deride these ideas. They are not marxists.

they pretty much are

if the yardstick is Marx and his manifesto + Das Kapital series, then practically nobody was a Marxist - not even Marx himself later in life and certainly not Lenin, Stalin or Mao

since Gramsci the mainstream of Marxism replaces material determinism with a hybrid of cultural hegemony and social gatekeeping, with things like religion, race, feminism being much more central than they were for Marx - and this has been the mainstream of Marxism for 100+ years, so hardly a new development in this particular respect

Not really. HN skews pretty right wing on things like this. It isn't nearly as commonplace or ridiculous as it would have you believe. I say this as a member of a "woke MegaCorp."

> HN skews pretty right wing on things like this.

Homie, that’s just an indication of how far left you are.

HN doesn’t “skew pretty right” on anything. That’s just perspective for you.

> Many people would call your refusal to hear their opinion on Israel/Palestine or any other issue “problematic,” or contributing to an “unsafe” environment.

Citation needed.

"refusal to hear" isn't the "unsafe" problem so much as "refusal to agree".

To be clear, the new generation of political activist is the one creating the dichotomy. The kind of workplace you’re describing in the first paragraph would be, according to Kendi, racist.

Plenty of people who are deeply concerned about racism find Kendi's arguments risible.

Hi we’re the “old generation” now.

There are antiracist activists who find Kendi risible.

Turns out human beings are complicated. Individual differences are greater than the statistical differences between groups. It's odd that many of the loudest voices that vilify discrimination will often wield it to great effect, counterproductively against a project of shared humanity

"Antiracists" coined the term BIPOC which literally excludes certain minority groups because they were too successful.

Yes, and “Boomer” is a state of mind

> However that doesn't mean i think racism/bigotry/etc is acceptable at work.

A big issue is different people have different definitions of these terms.

For example, say a very religous conservative doesn't want to use a trans persons preferred pronouns as they consider said pronouns to be untrue and sinful. They are otherwise polite and nondiscriminatory (e.g. they will listen to and implement ideas from the trans person and don't bring up their opinions of trans issues). Is this bigotry?

Or say some people in the company want to run a BLM donation drive and a conversation then ensues where someone states that they don't think racism has anything to do with USA police killings of blacks and it's actualy down to problems in the main african american culture. Is this racism?

> Is this bigotry?

Prioritizing made-up, vague and abstract ideas of "sins" and refusing to respect the identity of a fellow human? Yes, that is bigotry.

> Is this racism?

Yes, because there's plenty of research that's been done that says racism within police departments is responsible for the killing of black people in the USA. Not to mention countless videos of innocent black people being shot down by cops.

Believing something stupid doesn't excuse your bigotry or racism.

"For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed

For every 10,000 white people arrested for violent crime, 4 are killed"

https://twitter.com/LeonydusJohnson/status/12674663458447400...

Consider also that there are towns such as Jackson, Mississippi which have police departments that are >90% black [1] but still have all the same problems as police forces in America generally:

https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/policeshootings/

Not posting this to change your mind, I don't think that's possible through a single comment, but if you seriously think that there can be no other good-faith, legitimate opinion than your own, then consider that you might not be thinking about this rationally.

"“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." John Stuart Mill

[1] https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-dep...

The recent high profile police shootings were not during arrests for violent crimes, and in many of them the victims had committed no crime at all. You aren't going to change very many people's minds by citing statistics unrelated to their concerns, and some may even take offense at seemingly trying to steer the conversation from talking about killing clearly innocent people to violent fugitives.

You do realize that these very statistics show that the “high profile” cases you mention do not reflect the racial reality of police killings? The media decides what becomes “high profile” and cases like Daniel Shaver and Tony Timpa do not get the coverage of Eric Garner or George Floyd.

  "racism within police departments is responsible for the killing of black people in the USA"

Firstly, if they are mistaken about facts, that doesn't necessarily make them racist. That just makes them mistaken, and possibly racist depending on the reasons they are mistaken.

Secondly, what is the evidence for this? I've read evidence of racism in US police departments against Blacks, but not specifically in the context of police killings.

> Yes, because there's plenty of research that's been done that says racism

Woah, so disagreeing with particular research is racist now? I've heard it all.

> Believing something stupid doesn't excuse your bigotry or racism.

It is apparent to me that you are the stupid in this thread.

> I feel like this is a weird dichotomy

> I don't want actual politics at work. I don't want to be debating politically contentious events at work.

Frank and Kate is sitting at the lunch table. They are discussing "Israel's ongoing massacre in Gaza" and how awful it is. Your opinion is contrary to theirs. Do you feel that you have the right to make them not talk about this topic because you don't want "actual politics" at work? I'm curious to know where you think the line should be drawn. Suppose you are an atheist and you just got a warning from your manager because a Christian employee overheard you saying to a colleague that "all religions are such bunk." Should you not have been allowed to express that "controversial" opinion?

To me, "no politics at work" means "the company does not get involved in political activities or discussions". Individuals are free to discuss what they want, with who they want.

This means: water cooler discussion about Middle East conflict? Perfectly fine. "Bomb Israel Activism Day (with free cake in staff room)" organised by the company? Not okay.

I am sick of receiving corporate emails inviting me to "x pride/awareness/celebration" activities that have nothing to do with work, and that are not neutral topics. I am happy for people to have different opinions with me, and talk about them, and even debate with me about them, but I don't want "mandatory fun" events where the "fun" is eating a cake with icing colored in whatever way symbolizes the current woke topic, and being forced to stand around and pretend I care.

> To me, "no politics at work" means "the company does not get involved in political activities or discussions". Individuals are free to discuss what they want, with who they want.

Wouldn't that mean that certain tech companies' bans on politics is a form of involvement in political activities and discussions?

> I am sick of receiving corporate emails inviting me to "x pride/awareness/celebration" activities that have nothing to do with work, and that are not neutral topics.

Interesting, can you give some examples of any such activities that you have been invited to?

Note that the agent compelling you to attend these events is the company you work for - not the "woke crowd". Since if pays you for your time it most certainly has the right to order you to attend to these mildly political events (gay pride, that you have as an example, isn't very controversial).

No it wouldn't been involvement. The company is remaining neutral and allowing employees to do as they wish.

The company pays me to perform the duties in my contract and job description. It includes nothing about attending any events unrelated to those duties.

>I don't want actual politics at work. I don't want to be debating politically contentious events at work

to take the example from the article:

"In July 2019, for example, Medium chose to publish a series that included a profile of Trump supporter Joy Villa with the headline “I have never been as prosecuted for being Black or Latina as I have been for supporting Trump.”"

When you're in the business of news publishing, on an incendiary and relevant political event at that, and your decisions have a real chance to influence public discourse, even engineering decisions, how is it realistic to think you're not involved in politics, or even can get away from it?

Tech, in particular media and communication platforms directly sit at the intersection of politics, news and technology. Those copmanies build the platforms where moderation and editorial decisions are made that have huge impact.

what happens when your "work" does business with politicians then? Why shouldn't you be allowed? Directly or indirectly all "works" do business with the politicians and they favour politicians for their interests, not YOUR interest.

Sounds some kind of perverted game. The big ones are allowed to do whatever they want, the small ones should obey the rules of the big ones.

So should perverted games be allowed to the workplace? Another interesting question.

I dont see the connection really.

Some common sense applies. Selling services to a mainstream politician isn't really political in any major sense.

Selling services to terrorists/neo-nazis/etc is something different.

Yes, you can make grey examples that are unclear, but in practise i dont think its usually that ambigius of an issue most of the time.

Most of politics is arguments about what is common sense.

I’m against discrimination- so companies should do business with everyone (that is legal).

Empirically, companies do not make equally sized political donations to all candidates and most certainly do not spend equal amounts lobbying for and against each bill. Post citizen's united, the political desires of corporations have a big impact on the direction of government.

Politicians are not another business. and doing business with them is not legal in all Constitutions.

But this is the attitude of business to be the next king or emperor without any legal binding. Chaos and anarchy, oppression and boasting. The evolution clock goes back 10^{5} years.

Your statement "I'm against discrimination" hits me as ambiguous.

Do you discriminate between bananas and durian?

Do you discriminate between the man who beat you up and your spouse/partner?

That's the nature of statecraft and politics since time immemorial, I don't see the problem.

It’s not a dichotomy; it’s being framed as such but that’s just sophomoric rhetoric.

The line is when you are fired for saying you are pro trump on twitter.

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