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Comment by flippinburgers | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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