Support for team members who are mistreated in their country
gitlab.com
gitlab.com
For instance, in Belarus right now a lot of engineers seek to get out the country due to dictatorship regime. Poland and neighbourhood countries offer emergency visa plans for people in trouble (business harbour visa).
I think what happened is that GitLab started receiving a lot of emergency requests to be relocated immediately that did not comply the existing policy. Hence the update.
Would this apply to a typical Belarusian engineer in Belarus, though? They'd be White, European, and (correct me if I'm wrong) violence there seems mainly directed at protesters and protest leaders. It seems to me like this tailored for the kinds of racial and sexual minorities the US likes to obsess about.
> Tenure of less than 1 year at GitLab may be possibly waived as a requirement if:
> - You are a member of a(n [underrepresented](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...)) group that is unsafe or in any way mistreated in your country.
> - Violence in your country does not provide a safe environment.
In my experience tech workers in Eastern Europe are not significantly more progressive than other residents, but if Gitlab's company culture is at least somewhat progressive, it's likely that it attracts people in those countries who tend towards the progressive end of their respective countries' political spectrum. Given that Belarus has a very low bar for what the government considers a "political activist", it's reasonable to assume that some of these people might find themselves in trouble without having to go as far as donning black masks and tossing rocks at police officers.
It's also worth keeping in mind that software development is one of the professions easiest to get into as a marginalized person because you can teach yourself enough to get started and especially when freelancing it's possible to work without ever meeting the other person face-to-face. You'd be surprised how many programmers are queer, disabled or neurodivergent.
EDIT: QED?
The racial classification found in this document seems surreal for me (I'm from SW Europe). Seen from here, the US racial categories often seem absurd.
Under Sarkozy's very authoritarian and racist presidency (though in retrospect Hollande and Macron have pushed those same tendencies even further), there were public debates on national television about removing racial equality from human rights declaration (or was it constitution?) because "race does not exist so mentioning it is reinforcing racism".
Putting problems under the carpet does not make them go away. It's important that race does not become the central factor in explaining things (because there's many other factors) because that would be an essentialist reduction that reinforces racism... there needs to be place for class, gender, ability and other components in social studies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
EDIT: It's common here in France to hear someone say "How can you talk about racism when there's no such thing as human races! It's scientifically proven, so your claims of racism are ridiculous!"
This is interesting. Shouldn't it be as easy as "this guy here thinks races exist and that some are somehow better/worse"?
This only covers conscious and deliberate racial discrimination, but does not cover cultural racism and other aspects of racism which are broadly studied in social sciences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Aspects
TLDR: works against white supremacists and nazis, doesn't work against everyday racism we've all been forcefed (through media and schools) since childhood.
I think it's still possible to fight racism without resorting to putting people into these tight cubbyholes.
Especially given that people with parents from different backgrounds defy such classification.
Then again my country doesn't have much of a colonial past - we weren't even an independent state back then, so perhaps there are details that are specific to former empires, which elude me.
I know a lot of feminist/anti-racist/queer activists. None of them are trying to put people into tight cubbyholes. They are actually all pushing for greater awareness of how people don't fit into these cubbyholes. The whole idea of intersectionality* (which is foundational in modern "woke" politics) is based on this.
The tight cubbyholes aspect is often either a strawman presented by people who are against making changes (at the softest end, or actively hateful at the hardest).
Or is something that the powers that be (managers, politicians, whatever) insist on when they implement any changes. Often these are either against what activists are calling for or a begrudged concession to bureaucracy and data collection.
The data analysis aspect is unfortunately important. In an ideal world it wouldn't be, but thats not where we are. It doesn't just highlight outright bigotry, but inadvertant discrimination (eg only holding interviews at times which inadvertantly don't work for people (often women) with child care responsibilities), or even problems beyond an organisation (eg the pipeline issue).
*Intersectionality is about recognising all the different aspects of a person's identity and the different ways that they priviledge/disadvantage them in different circumstances. It was explicitly developed by black women who were being let down by both black support systems which all targeted at black men, and women's support networks which targeted white women. They recognised that just adding a "black women" box only addressed the immediate issue so built a framework to analyse the Intersection of identities more generally.
For example, historical celebrations and references to the resistance movement often credit American intervention for the liberation of France, which for sure played a part, but downplays the millions of indigènes involved in the armed insurrection, as well as the Spanish antifascist bridages who have been erased from history despite liberating most of Paris 24h before the Americans even set foot in it.
On the other hand, colonial and racial oppression throughout the french colonized territories has not ceased after WWII. In some cases, it dramatically increased at least compared to the past decades, with the horrors of the "war" (read: genocide) in Algeria and Indochine for example. In fact, that France promised freedom and equality for all in the struggle against nazism while not holding such promise at all is precisely one of the major fire-starters for the anti-colonial independence movements of the 50-60s.
If you'd like a fictional take on what the French occupation in Algeria looked like, the Battle of Algiers is a good introduction. The movie was banned until the 90s in France because it revealed the horrors of colonization, while even today the government and national education insist that colonization was a disinterested act of kindness to help civilize lesser people... which is of course completely false as Africa and Asia had great civilizations long before Rome was born. The writings of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist from Martinique who worked in Algeria (and took part in the armed struggle against colonization), open a lot of perspective on practical details of everyday occupation and resistance.
I think this is probably one of those cases where there's a spectrum, and the extremes are both bad. It's bad to be race-blind at a policy level, since that prevents dealing with unjust race-based disparities. However, it is also bad to encourage people to be hyper-aware of race and racial categories; because that perpetuates those categories, gets in the way of forming natural connections between members of different races, and even can fuel a more explicit discriminatory racism in some people. IMHO US cultural trends are pushing for the latter bad situation (amongst other more positive reevaluations), and those trends are being exported.
It's probably not practical, but I've thought that the most effective way to ultimately solve racism would be to setup schools such that it would be difficult to impossible to have an opposite-sex romantic relationship with a classmate that was not in some respect interracial. In the short term the amount of contact that would force would blunt stereotypes, and in the medium/long term is it would hopefully lead to muddling the racial categories until they're meaningless in a contemporary context.
They are absurd. Hispanic is not a racial category, it's an ethnic category, like being German or German-American.
Like any company they are willing to help the good employees that they want to keep.
It’s funny cause I heard the same in 2014 in Ukraine. Why exactly is it funny? Because it seemed like a made-up problem. Engineers weren’t hunted down. Instead, they were driving new cars from their new homes to their new offices while drinking artisan coffee. But for some reason they wanted to be a victim. I guess goes in the same bucket as “I’ll leave the US if Trump gets elected!”
However, likening Trump's election with the civil war in Ukraine or dictatorship in Belarus is definitely disconnected from reality. Under Trump like before, and as in most pretend-democracies of the global north, cops have been a force of occupation of popular districts and have murdered a certain number of citizens. But in Ukraine, we're talking about an actual civil war with barricades in the city centers, with militias fighting off each other with kalashnikovs. In Belarus, we're talking about state police and intelligence services physically torturing activists to force confessions (whether true or not, who knows?).
Once again, i'm not saying such things don't exist in the global north or are perfect around here... Far from it. The power structures are very similar, but the level of repression is considerably higher. The dangers we face here are no match for what happens in BUR (Belarus-Ukraine-Russia).
See also: https://abc-belarus.org/?lang=en for information about anti-anarchist repression in Belarus, or https://pramen.io/en/ for wider political analysis
I agree there's a non-negligible dimension of foreign military invasion in the ukrainian conflict, but it's not exactly as clearcut as that. Now is a good time to mention i'm neither ukrainian nor an expert on the topic; this analysis is based on my readings and first-hand accounts from ukrainian refugees.
They have even explained in length how Ukraine's government has since the civil war incorporated Azov and other nazi militias into a kind of national guard / para-military organization which now greatly threatens social/political activities on the streets.
That sounds plausible to me, unless of course these acquaintances have lied to me about their actual experiences of a civil war, but i somehow trust them more than imperialist media whether from EU side or Russia side. Disclaimer: these acquaintances of mine were on the pro-Ukraine/EU side, some of them fought as part of civil militias before becoming refugees.
1. https://iz.ru/1119009/2021-02-01/ukraina-vozobnovila-import-...
Also worth pointing out, being at war with someone you are materially dependent on is the essence of most (all?) colonial wars. The colonizing powers depend on the colonies' resources, and further arrange to destroy local material autonomy so the colonies depend on colonial supplies (whether for electricity, operating fuel extraction sites, food, etc). This dependence on the colonizers, created by the colonizers themselves, is part of the reason why colonizing nations get away with neocolonial settings despite formal independence (see for example Françafrique or Franc CFA on wikipedia or your encyclopedia of choice).
The employee ends up doing pretty well.
The lower limit is generally whatever the company can get away with. This has legal factors (e.g. minimum wage laws) as well as regional (e.g. "market rate", unemployment rates) but ultimately the candidate has to make the call what they can (or have no other choice but to) accept.
Crucially, the surplus value only hinges on the value generated and the expenses of employing that person (mostly salary and benefits but cross-state and internationally there may be legal costs avoidable by hiring locally).
If you live in an area with a low cost of living and the company's upper limit is defined by the relative cost of living, they're going to extract a lot more surplus value from your labor than if you live in an area with a high cost of living but maintain the same personal cost of living because you manage to be extraordinarily frugal.
That you make a lot of money relative to your local peers does not mean the company isn't disproportionately extracting surplus value from you (or in other words: paying you in lower proportion to the value you generate than others). If everyone else in your neighborhood is paid a penny and you earn a dime that does not mean I'm not exploiting you when I pay the locals a dollar for the same generated value.
That GitLab only varies pay and not the cost of their software and services demonstrates that they understand this. The value their services provide depends entirely on the customer's market (which is btw why a lot of initial SaaS pricing is based on US startup culture where company expenses are measured as burn rates rather than profitability, even if it makes the services cost prohibitive in other markets).
Also of course geographically distributed employees will find it harder to unionize (even more so formally because of different jurisdictions and labor laws) or organize and are less likely to seriously develop solidarity in a way that could get in the way of making a profit.
There are arguments for the destructive impact of foreign companies paying above market rate but it's absurd to think companies that use geographical salary ranges do so out of concern for regional competitors.
Note that as I said, value can be much less straightforward to calculate. An employee may provide no direct value but have a positive effect on the other employees, increasing their value generation. Or an employee may provide excellent value but drive down everyone else's productivity (e.g. by making them unhappy or constantly demanding attention) thus reducing overall value. Or an employee may initially provide low value but have massive potential.
Additionally the problem with hiring is that the candidate has yet to generate any value at all for the company and even if they do have massive potential there is no guarantee that the company can tap into that potential fully. So we're not even talking value (as when considering a pay rise) but expected value.
The cost of labor is caused by paying employees wages/expenses/benefits and having administrative and legal overhead for doing that. The wages and benefits are to a degree subject to demand and, to an even lesser degree, supply.
What a candidate is willing to accept on the other hand depends on what they think they could get elsewhere, how much they want to work for the company in question in particular, what their personal expenses are and how badly they need money.
Companies generate profit by extracting surplus value by simply paying employees less than the value they generate (companies don't produce value, labor does, profit is surplus value left in the company by paying labor less than the value it generates, adjusted for the cost of doing business).
Geographical salaries work by placing the company in one location (usually with a relatively high cost of living) and hiring employees in various other locations (usually with a relatively lower cost of living).
If you can get people from poorer countries producing the same amount of value for your company as people from your richer country, and you can use geographical salaries to justify paying them less, you increase your profit margin on that labor simply by replacing a highly paid local position with a less highly paid remote position.
In the 90s we used to call this "outsourcing" except we did it with entire teams of people rather than individuals (to mixed success because it hinged on the team lead not only understanding you correctly but also propagating the information correctly and also usually reduced overall visibility outside the team). It was widely understood as the blatant cost-cutting measure it was.
Calling it "geographical salaries" and doing it at a finer resolution doesn't change its nature.
And yeah, you won't get a fairer share of your value just by asking for it individually. You'll just get fired and replaced by someone who's happy with what they're offered. This is what you need collective bargaining for -- except that's much harder to organize or even decide on when you're geographically distributed and mostly using company controlled channels for communication.
All women in America, for starters, per their definition. Not that qualified Americans have any problem moving to Europe. But maybe Arabs in Israel, Copts in Egypt, Russians in Ukraine, Zoroastrians in Iran, lots and lots of ethnicities in China, atheists in most countries…
Nice to know their training materials are free from bias though!
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...
> these countries do not conduct terrorist activities or war crimes in a foreign soil
Are you sure you comment on a good faith here?
South Sudan's civil war ended last year.
Venezuela is not at war but is being embargoed by the US while facing an economic crisis.
I have no idea what Honduras is supposed to be doing except that it's overrun with crime.
Belarus is facing civil unrests and political upheaval.
I'm not sure what you're referring to with your claim of "several" of them being in the middle of "actual wars". The US is in the middle of several actual wars and military actions outside war in foreign territories (mostly drone strikes). The comment you responded to clearly stated:
> No these countries do not conduct terrorist activities or war crimes on foreign soil like the US does.
The US does both of these things. As do several of its allies. We just tend to not to think of these things this way because we're "the good guys". Let's not forget Guantanamo (which despite Obama's promises still exists) and that US prisons routinely use "solitary confinement" which is considered torture by the UN.
And no, I disagree that other countries pale in comparison to US on human rights abuses. To me, for example, the very existence of the 2nd amendment (at least its current interpretation) is a human rights abuse.
Which human right is being abused by the 2nd amendment?
The US is the most privileged country on the planet, just look at the per capita CO2 emissions with their private AC and swimming pools, SUVs, etc.
...for some of its population. For others, no.
That's what happens when you work hard to build a world leading industry. I don't get why other countries whine instead of innovating themselves!
It's something that could crop up all over the show.
I also wonder what their precise definition of "underrepresented" is.
So basically they dictate policy based on population representation instead of what's actually coming through education. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I would’ve thought that population representation is the definition of underrepresented because it shows they are underrepresented in the population. But I am interested if there is another way to measure this.
What if less woman want to be engineers?
Does that mean less qualified woman get jobs that based on merit alone rightfully are deserved by men?
What about Asians? They're over represented in engineering roles, should we stop hiring them and hire more white males to "even it out"? Or is it because they're a minority it's ok to have over representation? Do you realise that makes white people under represented? Do you just not care because they have privilege and this evens it out?
Don't get me wrong, I love seeing woman in tech, I'm aware of the history of toxic behavior that prevents them from joining and pushed them out in the 70s and I do encourage initiatives to improve their representation but I draw the line at negative discrimination, that Marxist crap does nobody any good ever.
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#gitlabs-...
https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#definiti...
Women is [a] gender term based on self-identification.
On average women were paid $0.78 for every $1 a man makes.
[1] https://www.ilga-europe.org/sites/default/files/before_and_a...
You seem to assume trans women make more than cis women. Wage data is collected by gender.
>Underrepresented Group This can be defined as a group whose percentage of the population in a given group is lower than their percentage of the population of country, community, organization or otherwise.
I don't know what the "given group" is here. Is it Gitlab employees? Gitlab software engineers? Software engineers in the US? Software engineers in the Netherlands? Software engineers in the world?
I also don't know what larger population they're referring to. The cities with Gitlab employees? The US? The Netherlands? Countries with Gitlab employees? The world? Gitlab employees?
For some pairs of values atheist is likely underrepresented, but for most pairs I think atheist wouldn't be underrepresented.
But as others have pointed out, in real life NL would probably be happy to have up to 100% of their actual employees immigrate so it may be just well-intentioned virtue signaling.
Which is also a valid recruiting strategy!
Yes, US citizens get accepted into asylum processes. No, not all countries offer transparency into their asylum process or metrics.
Which countries are those? While the UK was an EU member, it required that asylum applicants not work, and I believe that's not an unusual restriction.
Somehow the idea that someone who flees to Germany because they lost their home and livelihood and then lives her for a decade may want to go on living here and that barring people from being productive members of society guarantees crime and illegal work. Germany learned nothing from the surprise of "guest workers" from Turkey and Italy moving to Germany to help us build cars suddenly having families and staying here forever back in the 70s.
Of course arguably the slowness and arduousness of the process is intended as a deterrence in itself, regardless of what that says about Germany's ideas about human rights and how they apply to foreigners.
Edit: I'm in Europe now, my former domestic worker would earn her monthly salary in 2-3 days here and she was paid well relative to others in Africa.
I wouldn't be too thrilled having my career advancement sacrificed in the pursuit of 50/50 men/woman representation.
I believe they would have grounds to sue for discrimination in such a case though.
Reverse discrimination is still discrimination.
Your comment assumes that Gitlab can't find as many qualified women as they can men.
You've decided (knowing nothing about the women except their gender) that they are only being hired for those roles because of their gender.
Here's a couple of examples from other areas:
* a university department in the EU announced that they will no longer hire males until they fulfil their quota.
* the German Green party has a rule that only women can occupy the top position at various levels.
Both of these are clear cases of sexual discrimination.
Uh, no.
The party is co-led by a man and a woman. The leaders of their parliamentary group is a man and a woman. The Green Party minister-president of Baden Württemberg is a man.
They do support quotas on executive boards, but that is a damn far cry from your claims of "only women can occupy the top position".
Internally in the party, they strive towards a 50/50 quota, but it's not a strict policy and the actual membership composition varies between elections.
> a university department in the EU announced that they will no longer hire males until they fulfil their quota.
Which university and which department? Also, a single department at a single university does not a widespread policy make.
Cite your sources.
This is confirmed for example by the situation in Saarland, where a man was chosen on the first spot. In the end there was so much pressure on that person from party colleagues (including one of the co-leads that you mentioned) that they had to step back, even if they had won fair and square.
The party-internal positions are mostly irrelevant, as the male co-lead of the Greens has found out when they had to make place for the chancellorship candidacy for his equal footed colleague with no government experience. And Kretchmann is probably one of the most successful Greens, it would be political suicide not to let him run loose :)
I don't remember which University, it was in a newspaper article. I have no idea if it's wide spread or not, the point was that the department(?) lead was comfortable not just mentioning, but advertising that practice in a newspaper, whereas the reverse would have gotten him in trouble immediately.
It could equally have been a fear that if more than 50% of women are qualified for the job some will have to be excluded.
It could not equally have been that.
Tech executives are vastly more male than female, and Gitlab specifically is trying to increase the ratio of women to men.
That means if Gitlab considers a group of similarly qualified men and women for an upcoming opening in "senior leadership" (whatever that means), a woman is guaranteed to get the job.
The only reason this would be unfair is if you pre-suppose that, more than 50% of the time, the "most qualified" person is a man.
The ratio is not based on ideology, it's based on the ratio of humans.
The "ideology" that makes them care about that ratio is the belief that someone's gender is not a determining factor in their qualification for senior leadership at GitLab.
If you also consider the number of adult men who are in prison or don't have an advanced education, you would actually expect to see more than 50% women to be representative of the general eligible population.
> shouldn’t the board have the same proportions as the population of people who want to work at GitLab?
No. "Want to work at GitLab" is also going to encode undesirable traits, such as "perceives GitLab to be a bad place for women to work".
If you know the company is mostly men at the top, you might assume women have a hard time getting promoted -- regardless of the reasons. That means you might not want to work at GitLab as much as an equally qualified man.
For the candidate: that's fine! No problem, there are lots of other places to work.
For GitLab: it's something they have decided is not desirable, and their quota system is how they are attempting to fix it.
What you're proposing would just be a vicious cycle that would reinforce what GitLab sees as a problem.
I don't agree. The tech industry is predominantly male and everybody knows it. Anybody who's ever been to a computer science class knows why- more men are interested.
If you assume that male and female employees have a similar distribution in merit, than you'd expect the top of the company to have a similar percentage to that of women interested in technology in general, which is to say it would mostly be men and you'd still assume that promotions are fair.
But promotions aren't fair or strictly meritocratic, and there's often good reasons for that. For instance, if you get more women in leadership the tail can wag the dog and you can get more women interested in tech.
It's also true that men are vastly more likely to be autistic, and the social challenges with autism can make someone a fantastic engineer, but not a fantastic manager.
That's not true of all autistic people, but there's certainly a correlation.
Again, GitLab is talking about senior leadership -- not people who are writing code or ever needed to have done it well. Most tech execs don't even have CS degrees, because most senior leadership positions are in organizational things (operations, management, HR, sales, etc.)
> I don't agree. The tech industry is predominantly male and everybody knows it. Anybody who's ever been to a computer science class knows why- more men are interested.
If this were true, and gender were the only variable, then we'd see stable ratios of men to women in computer science. We haven't seen that. There used to be far more women up until the 1980s.
> If you assume that male and female employees have a similar distribution in merit, than you'd expect the top of the company to have a similar percentage to that of women interested in technology in general
You're assuming many things here:
A. "interest in tech" is a stable personality trait and not influenced by opportunity
B. "senior leadership" at a tech company like GitLab is mostly technical roles
C. merit at tech companies is primarily a function of interest in technology
All of those are debatable at best, although I'd say they tend more toward the side of being obviously false once you actually write them out.
> The only reason this would be unfair is if you pre-suppose that, more than 50% of the time, the "most qualified" person is a man
I actually think discriminatory promotions is pretty unfair. Just because you think it's justified doesn't make it "fair". You can tell it is because of the term "discriminatory".
Meritocracy is not an objective, defined term, even in rote, technical jobs.
Further, people are very, very bad at hiring based on merit. There have been tons of studies showing that people tend to hire people who are like them (culturally, racially, gender, etc.)
Quotas are not harmful unless there are too few qualified people to meet the quota, resulting in a less-qualified person getting a job.
GitLab has hundreds of millions of people to choose from. They're not going to run out of qualified women.
Citation needed. I'm pretty sure discriminatory behavior is harmful. Just because you think it's justified doesn't mean it isn't harmful.
neither is race or gender, yet these initiatives still manage to exist.
> There have been tons of studies showing..
there are tons of studies that are non reproducible too, so which studied are the strongest evidence of this claim?
> Quotas are not harmful unless there are too few qualified people
if you reduce it to a binary definition of "qualified", maybe. But if the best person for a role, their qualification, is a continuum, then you can do harm simply by hiring qualified candidates over better qualified candidates.
> GitLab has hundreds of millions of people to choose from
by what criteria?
I just assume that in the situation where I was interviewing for a promoted role alongside an equally qualified female candidate also interviewing for that promoted role that I would have 0% chance of getting it.
Why would anyone ambitious want to put themselves in that position?
EDIT: To clarify, I'm being bullied, not oppressed by the govt. Swedes are known to not reach out and are truly the worst kind of friends that leave you on a whim if they don't relate to you.
I wish the best for you and nobody should be discriminated for their sexual preference as long as everybody is consenting, and if we want the situation to become better we must all work to improve it, so make you sure you don't do that sort of over generalization and simplification just like you wish people wouldn't do it towards you.
In terms of the limitations that applies to what I said, it is clear from context. And they are the majority; their voices will get heard anyway.
People think that Sweden is some kind of humanitarian utopia, while in reality there is more homophobia than people realize, and e.g. a relatively high-profile anti-Semitic case just recently...
Make of that what you will.
Anyway, not slinging mud. UK is just as bad (probably worse..).
It's a huge shock to society and will change the nation forever.
As usual, life is rarely that simple :)
This tweet from GitLab's CEO provides some additional context: https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1417617071353991169?s=19
Please hire me as QA.
Edit: Anyways I like this. Love the idea of companies taking over for helping out the underrepresented in their ranks. This is a natural progression from remote work.
see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#writing-sty... number 13:
If you have multiple points in a comment or email, please number them. Numbered lists are easier to reference during a discussion over bulleted lists.
>28. If an email needs a response, write the answer at the top of it.
Alternatively, it feels like it could read:
> If an email includes a response, place it at the top of it. If an e-mail requires a response, also make that clear at the very top.
Re-reading the statement, maybe they simply mean replies should be above the original e-mail rather than inline?
<ol><li><li><li></ol>
That 1. 1. 1. and 1. 2. 3. are both rendered the same is a statement to the loosens of the spec, not the incorrectness of 1. 1. 1.
It doesn't even make sense to see as a kind of hack.
I think it does matter whether you're a member of a group that is mistreated as a group vs. whether you are mistreated as a person; it's easier to be confident that you're understanding the situation correctly if there's a lot of data about an entire group vs. a claim that you individually are unsafe/mistreated (which could just be "I am mistreated because my community is ostracizing me for having committed a crime" or whatever). It is obviously possible to be mistreated as a group even if you are from a local-majority group (cf. apartheid in South Africa).
As to why they mentioned it even if it's in parentheses - there's a link to a page, and elsewhere on the page they mention that it's a cultural value to include more people from "underrepresented groups" in their definition (https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#gitlabs-...).
In what countries are over-represented groups mistreated by systems or institutions?
To me (and, I suspect, to Gitlab), "underrepresented" means "present in lower proportions than in the general population".
South Africa, to use one of your examples, has a majority Black African population (80%), but business management is overwhelmingly White[1] (67%).
That means Black African people are simultaneously the majority of the country and also underrepresented minorities that struggle with systemic, institutional racism.
> - Violence in your country does not provide a safe environment.
Why "violence" as opposed to political persecution? It doesn't quite fit the Hong Kong situation, yet it is clear that Hong Kong should be one of the top countries to relocate from. Nor does political opposition count as an "underrepresented group" by their definition.
As with all these things, there is a huge list of asterisks involved.
Discrimination is not a solution to anything and should never even be considered as an option.
Now I agree it's an unfortunate solution in some respects. There are moral issues both utilitarian (1000 Einsteins) and idealistic (all humans are equal). There are also work arounds. For most purposes if you naturalize and renounce your previous citizenship you will legally be treated as a national. ITAR only requires a green card.
Arguing against discrimination in a security context though, when nationality is indeed a reliable discriminant, is difficult.
This is what risk assesnments are for. The consequence of every piece of gitlab hosted code, much of it which runs on publically visible servers, falling into adveserial hands is catastrophic. A government may well make an offer too good to refuse.
On the otherhand, there are pleanty of other software jobs out there which pose minimal risk, and many companies demonstrably are more than willing to hire Russians or outsource to Russia.
It's a healthy discussion to have in regard to security in my opinion.
It probably won’t be heavily used, but still.
Team members who meet the requirements follow our relocation process which is managed by People Operations Specialists.
Team members who do not meet all of the requirements are asked to work with their managers first before bringing the request to the People team.
Expats even get tax breaks to incentivize them to come here. Which is fair IMO. However it sucks big time for the countries they leave behind (brain drain, net negative financial impact).
They should've thought about that earlier.
And in that case, they don't care that you are at risk of violence or abuse in your home country ..
<< You are not on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).>>
From an HR perspective I'm not sure there's any meaningful way to objectively separate an under-performer from someone whose manager has it out for them.
So, I'm kind of with them on this one. If you're going to get fired, then I doubt their sponsorship of your transfer would do you much good - you'd still be forced to return on departure would you not?
https://www.eubluecard.nl/dutch-program/recognised-sponsor
https://www.government.nl/topics/immigration-to-the-netherla...
If that interpretation is correct, then I think this is also "GitLab has the power/authority".
https://ind.nl/en/work/working_in_the_Netherlands/Pages/High...
peopleops@ gitlab.comWhat I don't understand is why this must be the responsibility of private companies. The United Nations specifically asks governments to care for people. But asylum seekers are imprisoned if they go to Australia, or stuck in limbo for 27 years of processing time if they come to New Zealand. So now capitalism is triumphing, and visas are issued to (rich, powerful) private companies and the people who work for them, instead of to people based on their skills.
I'm tremendously grateful for the (large, powerful) company who hired me just in time for my visa to be processed, after waiting in an immigration queue for 2.5 years. The case officer was treating me quite harshly until I had the new job offer. To any company managers wondering whether this affects employee loyalty: I literally owe my entire career and future to you. Thank you for taking a chance on me.
The climate crisis is rendering more and more places inhospitable which will only deepen the ongoing migration crisis. European nations seem indifferent to this fact and continue their hostile border policy even though a global emergency is imminent.
I indeed applaud any private efforts to offer any help they are able through this crisis, as much help is needed. But I do wish governments would take this humanitarian crisis more seriously. People are dying, there is an emergency, and we governments need to change their immigration policies to reflect that. We need to open our borders and stop this needless suffering of migrants.
But while governments are hellbent on keeping theirs borders this closed, hopefully we will see more companies take action like GitLab here and offer help where they can.
EDIT: I cited wrong numbers. Migrant deaths were at least 3,170 by mid December 2019 according to IOM (https://www.iom.int/news/global-migrant-deaths-decline-trage...) while terrorist deaths were around 2051 according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...).
Contrary to popular belief, migration is not caused by climate, it's caused by culture.
True normal migration lead by culture, love, opportunities, etc. is a lot bigger factor in migration then the climate crisis, but those are not the people suffering from hostile border policies (well not on the same scale as refugees) and don’t need the same help to bypass said policies. But it would be foolish to dismiss climate change and not expect the proportion of refugees to go up in the next years compared to other migrants.
So the west is responsible for people being killed outside of the west? Why don't you blame the countries where these people are getting killed in?
And how many of the people dying on migrant routes actually qualify as refugees according to the definition used by UNHCR?
How many countries do migrants to the west pass through on average, and if it one or more, why not blame those? Why is it not the countries these people are fleeing from that hold the ultimate responsibility? And if they are indeed refugees, why are they passing through more than one country?
I am an immigrant to the west, I would love to have my family here, but I can't because they would not qualify as refugees, why do people who break the laws get favorable treatment here? Why are they entitled to me having to pay for them while my family have to struggle with violence and poverty where they live?
The game is called 'blamethrowing' and it accomplishes nothing.
Not a problem for what?
> Your family struggle with violence and poverty, yet the West should have tighter border controls?
What does my family's living conditions have to do with the west's border control policy?
> Who's 'officially' a refugee and who isn't?
I do not define this and you can find the definition used by various authorities readily available on the internet.
The country where I reside uses UNHRC definitions and does not consider applications of people who are not already in the country. But as far as I know, struggling with violence and poverty is generally not enough to qualify for refugee status.
However, even with a right to seek asylum many refugees need to smuggle them self into their prospected host country. This is an extremely dangerous activity, and is often done through actual criminal groups and costs a fortune. This business would not exist if the border policies in European and North American countries weren’t so hostile. Over half of confirmed migrant deaths occur while crossing the Mediterranean in unsafe conditions. These crossings could be done using far safer transit if Europe had humane border policies. So yes, you can blame the west for these deaths.
On top of that European and North American countries often influence the border policies in the pass through counties such as Turkey and Mexico.
> why do [refugees] get favorable treatment here?
They most often don’t. But they should. The reason being is that their homes are not safe. They need to flee to a new country or risk a worse fate. In other words, they need help. A humane society would give everyone help that needs it.
Protected by who? Where does it come from? If you live in the real world you will know that "protected human rights" are lies westerners tell themselves while they buy cheap goods from china made by slaves.
> Crossing borders to seek asylum is not breaking the law.
If I bring my family here without following immigration procedures they will be deported and I will likely lose my residence permit or be rejected on renewal.
> Your question “why do people who break the laws get favorable treatment here?” is a loaded question based on false premise and should not be answered.
No false premise. Most people who come to Europe without following immigration procedures are not refugees. Just because they think they should have the right to live in Europe does not make them refugees, and circumventing immigration laws is the definition of breaking the law.
> However, even with a right to seek asylum many refugees need to smuggle them self into their prospected host country.
If they come from countries not bordering Europe, why do they have to come to Europe? Is Europe the only safe place in the world? And why is Europe responsible for their safety in the rest of the world?
> Over half of confirmed migrant deaths occur while crossing the Mediterranean in unsafe conditions.
How many of these migrants would qualify as refugees? And how is it Europe's fault if they get killed outside of Europe.
> why do [refugees] get favorable treatment here?
> They most often don’t. But they should. The reason being is that their homes are not safe. They need to flee to a new country or risk a worse fate. In other words, they need help. A humane society would give everyone help that needs it.
You conflate refugees and people who illegally enter Europe with no legal basis and do not qualify as refugees. And there are many more of the second category than the first.
Not having a safe home does is not even considered in the definition of a Refugee by UNHRC, and even if it was, generally UNHRC does not recognize the right of those with legitimate refugee status to just decide where they would like to go.
Everyone who needs money is not entitled to mine. I would much rather send it to my family than give it to people who break the laws and enter the country where I reside with no legal basis which places additional tax burdens on me.
What often happens in Europe is that you are illegally deported however. Often an asylum claim is illegally dismissed by authorities, a person has a right to a hearing but is deported before they have a chance, a person is sick and is not allowed to be deported under some conditions etc. A person may have entered using a fake ID, however this is still not a crime if they are fleeing, as official IDs are not something one can easily get when fleeing ones home, and the law most often reflects that (but is then broken by the authorities).
When you hear about what refugees have to go through in the real world you would be surprised by how little authorities abide by their own law and how easily they are willing to break their own laws to evade helping people that need it.
Are you talking about Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? This reads "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." Note the qualification, "asylum FROM PERSECUTION."
If you enter Europe, and you do not qualify as persecuted, how exactly does this right apply to you? And if this right does not apply, how exactly is it legal? What law gives you that right?
What limiting principle is there to this right you think exists? Can I travel to any country in the world and just say I'm seeking Asylum without any basis? Where do you get this notion?
I was under the impression that if you cannot ask for asylum outside of a country’s border, and there are no legal ways for you to enter it (e.g. you need a visa but there is no way for you to acquire one since there is no embassy that will grant you one; or you don’t have a passport since your country’s government won’t issue you one), then you are not exactly committing a crime if you enter “illegally”.
I think you might be assuming that many (most?) asylum seekers are actually doing so under a false premise, and they have no grounds for the asylum application. I’m sure there are some for which this applies, but I doubt it is a sizable number. At least I would need to see some credible source before I would belief so.
I would speculate that by far the majority asylum seekers that are rejected their application and deported, are rejected on technical grounds, not because they applied under a false premise. If that is the case, the majority of refugees, even those that enter illegally, and are eventually rejected and deported, commit no crime in the process.
The historical reason is that Canada is underpopulated for its size. As far as STEM, a large percentage move to the US, so foreign STEM workers are needed.
In addition, Canada is doing a lot of PC/SJW activism today, so there's that too.
2) The easiest US work visa is the TN-1 for a Canadian citizen to work in the US. Note that it's a non-immigrant visa, so if you want to stay long-term in the US, you would need to do further immigration paperwork.
- You remove the word 'three' in the first line but then again repeat it a few lines later. Interesting choice.
- You have 3 sections labelled 1.
This is how markdown works. It is handy.
That’s taking advantage of auto-renumbering in markdown, so if they insert an entry they won’t have to change any others.
No wonder why modern software is a hot mess.