We don't do that here (2017) | Hacker News Reader

We don't do that here (2017)

thagomizer.com

141 pointsThePadawan311 comments

My blood pressure increased just reading that and imagining myself on the receiving end. We don't post things like that here, pretty please.

> "we don't do that here"

As a newcomer to wherever, given this treatment I'd feel excluded and somewhat upset. Who is "we"? Am I dealing with a homogeneous group and this person is speaking for all of them? Why don't they do "that"? Am I the only one that's different?

> preferred way to say no: “that doesn’t work for me.”

That... doesn't work for me? If you want to say no, just say no. If you want to say more, I'd be very grateful if you could tell me why not.

I'm sure the magic phrases have made the author's professional career easier. Also I'm sure they made life worse for other people.

Author did specify that it's a last-resort option to be used when the energy or time for a deeper conversation wasn't available.

They said no such thing, the opening example given was to whip out the phrase the moment the visitor said "gay", which then lead to an in-the-moment defensive fight.

The later examples are the same, whipping out the phrase the moment the 'offender' does something the author doesn't like, and then doubling down on it when challenged.

Quote from the article:

> When I’m able I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity and inclusion issues and see if I can change how they see the world a bit. But I don’t always have the time and energy to do that. And sometimes, even if I did have the time, the person involved doesn’t want to be educated.

And yet they jump straight to "We don't do that here" every time in the article.

> They said no such thing,

> > In the world I want to live in, we don’t have to set negative rules like “don’t harass people.” Instead, we could get by with positive guidelines like “be welcoming” and “be kind” and use our giant human brains to figure out how to apply those values to novel situations. When I get the chance, I try to create those spaces. When I have the energy, I try to educate and inform instead of correct. But I still keep this simple phrase in my back pocket as a tool for ending and defusing situations when other approaches don’t work.

The author did put it at the end, but it's definitely there.

This only means that the author is a bit of a hypocrite. If you say that something is a last resort, and your primary exemplar of its use is something trivial and common (the word "gay"), then that belies the fact that you just said that it was a last resort.

Trivial and common? We run in very different social circles. The last time that's been common in my life was when I was in the military some 17 years ago. I would have the exact same reaction as the author if someone tried to reintroduce casual homophobia into my life.

In my social circles, the homosexual men prefer to be called "gay" rather than anything else. Also, some of the black people prefer to be called "black" - two are not African and hate the term "African-American."

I rather doubt that your homosexual friends support the use of “gay” as a pejorative, e.g. “that’s so gay.” Your argument is disingenuous; I hope it is not deliberate.

Oh, I thought the author was saying that "gay" was always a pejorative term. It wouldn't be the first time.

He was referring to someone who was using it as a pejorative, and explaining his method for dealing with it in a situation where an argument about it would have been unproductive and distracting.

I think that the author was a bit unclear in regards to the word "gay". It almost sounded like the author thinks that using the word "gay" in any context should be considered bad. After I went back to read that part again, I realized that they were referring to people saying "that's gay" to mean something along the lines of "that's bad" or "that's something I don't like". This was a common phrase among teens and 20-somethings 15-20 years ago, but it is rightly considered in poor taste today.

I'm a little unclear about how "*One day someone came to visit and used the word “gay” as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s" is unclear?

perjorative: (n) a word expressing contempt or disapproval.

Maybe I read it too fast, or maybe my brain was still focused on my work tasks, and that was taking priority over my casual skimming of HN. It doesn't really matter. All I know is that I suddenly had to go back and re-read that part because, for a moment, it seemed to me that the author might consider "gay" to always be a pejorative. And maybe others were incorrectly interpreting it the same way that I did at first.

I also considered that other commenters might not think using "gay" as a perjorative was a big deal, but HN rules encourage the assumption of good intent.

Do you consider it trivial and common to use the word "gay" as a pejorative? (If so, that may say something.) Not "gay" as in "Fred is gay."

From the article: "The college I attended was small and very LGBT friendly. One day someone came to visit and used the word “gay” as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s. A current student looked at the visitor and flatly said, “we don’t do that here.” The guest started getting defensive and explaining that they weren’t homophobic and didn’t mean anything by it. The student replied, “I’m sure that’s true, but all you need to know is we don’t do that here.” The interaction ended at that point, and everyone moved on to different topics. “We don’t do that here” was a polite but firm way to educate the newcomer about our culture."

I read that part too fast, and apparently I can't edit the comment you responded too. I thought the author of the article said that "gay" was a pejorative description of someone.

"Said 'gay' as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s."

In the HN guidelines, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"The college I attended was small and very LGBT friendly. One day someone came to visit and used the word “gay” as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s. A current student looked at the visitor and flatly said, “we don’t do that here.” The guest started getting defensive and explaining that they weren’t homophobic and didn’t mean anything by it. The student replied, “I’m sure that’s true, but all you need to know is we don’t do that here.” The interaction ended at that point, and everyone moved on to different topics. “We don’t do that here” was a polite but firm way to educate the newcomer about our culture."

> It clearly and concisely sets a boundary, and also makes it easy to disengage with any possible rebuttals.

This type of "because I told you so" style only works as a show of power, otherwise people would just continue do it somewhere else. I get the feeling this author spends more time talking down to people than up to them.

Agreed, the author sounds like a boss who hasn’t learned how to deal with conflicts gracefully and instead uses a pre-written script that gives them unquestionable authority over the employee.

I don't think you need to be a boss or have unquestionable authority to use this style of language.

It's like if a cop tells you to stop doing something at a traffic stop, because she tells you so. It's not that you think they're going to shoot you if you keep it up. But it's authority on the level of, I could make your immediate future very unpleasant if you don't do what I say.

I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote. You say that you don't need to have unquestionable authority to use this style of language and then proceed to give an example of an unquestionable authority using this style of language.

I think I understood the point, and I'll give another example: your coworker (let's say you both report to the same boss) doesn't like the way you're talking to them and tells you "Hey indiv0, we don't say X here... we just don't say X here".

If you choose to question the statement, you could cynically assume that the other person is going to use anything you say as evidence that you're not professional/are harassing them/make them feel uncomfortable against you. Better to just shut up rather than say something damming.

I've been in a situation like this, and being on the receiving end of the "we don't do that here" is received as "shut up, do what I say, and don't question me".

I updated it a bit. Maybe it was a bad example, but what I'm saying is having the option of arresting someone or giving them a fine isn't unquestionable authority -- if you're just mouthing off there's a limit to what the police can (legally) do to you.

Regardless, my point is in an average job there's a lot of people that don't have direct authority over you but have the power to make your life really unpleasant. A more senior coworker probably can't get you fired, but they may well be involved in important decisions around you.

It hardly needs to be someone who can "make your life really unpleasant". There's no implied threat.

If I were told "We don't do that here" at a new job, I would learn that I stepped across a line and likely a generally agreed-upon line, and that if I continue to do so, I will be causing problems for myself. And I mean "causing problems for myself" in the same way that any other behavioral quirk causes problems, from chewing with your mouth open to yelling at someone for not putting paper in the printer.

But then, I'm also not someone who feels the urge to debate what line was crossed, whether or not my intentions mattered when I crossed the line, the precise location of the line and any others that I might cross in the future, or whatever it is that them as cause this particular issue want out of the conversation.

How do we deal with conflicts gracefully?

Have you ever run across dang's moderation messages here? Do you also feel those "sound like a boss who hasn’t learned how to deal with conflicts gracefully and instead uses a pre-written script that gives them unquestionable authority"? They really are often a variant of "we don't do that here".

I haven’t, I guess I have yet to do something to get shut down.

> This type of "because I told you so" style only works as a show of power,

A show of power expressed through "low", indirect language. Might not be sending the intended message. "That doesn't work for me", in particular, reads as "parochial middle manager" to me.

"We don't do that here" is not a show of power. Cultural norms don't come from a boss or an authority figure, they come from a team.

This (and a lot of other related arguments in this thread) would probably be a lot clearer with less contentious examples, like "don't push a deploy after 4pm," than with hot-button political topics. If you go to push a deploy at quitting time and someone says "We don't do that here", you wouldn't think they're on a power trip, you'd think they don't fully trust their automation tests.

Would it read differently if instead of a manager, it was said by a more experienced co-worker?

Hard disagree. There is a vocal segment of the tech community that wants to understand and debate everything, and there's not enough time and energy to deal with them. It's like a 2 year old child who keeps asking "why?"

There are some topics where an issue is a learning opportunity and a discussion can be had. Technical disagreements are a classic case. There are others that are so played out and hurtful that it's not worth it.

I don't need to spend an hour giving a coworker an explanation of why their actions are hurtful. They just need to know that they are. If they're interested in getting better, they can go to their nearest search engine and read some history. If they're not, they can just know to keep their mouth shut next time.

Assertion with no explanation works great right up until you are wrong. If you changed the situation slightly the person saying "we don't do that here" would sound awful. Turning the clock back a couple decades for example,

"My pronouns are he/him."

The authority figure, thinking that trans issues de-legitimize feminism: "We don't do that here."

Or two decades before that:

"My boss is harassing me, I'd like to complain."

The authority figure, thinking that dealing with harassment claims is worse for team cohesion than taking them seriously: "We don't do that here."

Both of the examples you mentioned seem to me like the best possible outcomes:

The trans person or harassment victim immediately realize that the authority figure is untrustworthy and they have to escape or escalate.

If the authority figure went on to publicly agree, but privately misgender the trans person, or to publicly agree to investigate the harassment while privately hiding the evidence, this would be far more hurtful and dangerous to the victims.

A trans person in 2002 doesn't have the options of escape or escalation, because the culture was the same at every company, and up to the top of their current one. Everyone will either privately or explicitly treat them the same way. The only opportunity they'd have is if someone opened a tiny window of hope by dialoguing, instead of pushing their own preconceived notions on them like everybody else would do.

Hi, trans person here. I agree with you entirely. If anti-trans language is a team norm, I can easily check for support at the top, and then if I don't have it, I can leave. Is this ideal? No. Does it work perfectly fine given that I understand there is a baseline level of transphobia in my society? Yes.

Would a manager every say, "no, we don't support you?"

No, he would say something clever and unarguable, stated in terms of popular truths. In fact everybody on both sides of the discussion would do that.

>I don't need to spend an hour giving a coworker an explanation of why their actions are hurtful.

But the point is, saying "we don't do that here" doesn't inform the person that their actions are hurtful. It just tells them not to do something, but loses the value of saying why so they don't make the same mistake in a different context. I would argue that saying something to the effect of "It is hurtful when you do X, please don't do that again", is far more effective communication. This would avoid ostracizing the recipient and also clarify what exactly they did wrong.

Giving a justification is seen by these people are an excuse to debate.

For another example, trying to turn down something you don't want to do:

A: "Can you come over and fix my Wi-Fi?" B: "No, my car's in the shop" A: "Oh, that's OK, I can give you a ride" B: "No, I have to go get dinner" A: "Oh, that's OK, I can feed you"

The point is not to debate. The point is that "no" or "we don't do that" is an answer in and of itself.

>Giving a justification is seen by these people are an excuse to debate.

I know what you mean here, but I disagree that my suggestion opens up a debate. It is clear what about the action in question was, and it politely asks not to do it again. Debate cannot exist one sided, so if the person is intent on "debating" a simple, "we can take this offline later", or "its not up for discussion" usually clears things up. Just because someone wants to debate, does not mean that you need to engage them.

Regarding your scenario, if person B simply just said "No" it would eliminate all of the need for future questions. This isn't the same thing, as person A didn't violate any social agreed upon rules by asking their question.

> Debate cannot exist one sided, so if the person is intent on "debating" a simple, "we can take this offline later", or "its not up for discussion" usually clears things up.

Perhaps you could try the phrase "we don't do that here"

This was a follow up to the original transgression, you have to be clear of what you are shutting down, before you shut it down. Again the two statements I said are much clearer and don't single out the recipient.

"It is hurtful when you do X" doesn't single out the recipient?

It does not single them out in opposition to the group. Say "we don't do that here" puts the transgressor on one side and the "we" on the other side. Saying "when you do" is not putting the transgressor on a side, but rather placing the onus on them.

My statements don't put the transgressor in opposition to the group, is what I should have said. But I think that thats actually the intention of this author and I don't agree with it.

You're comparing two things that are actually quite different. In your example, the other person thinks that you are being honest, and is mistakenly trying to help you overcome your unlikely sequence of obstacles. In the example you're comparing it to, they are trying to confuse you out of your principles by showing off their verbal skills. Here is an example that I think gets at what you're going for:

"Quit making fun of me for my big nose."

"Hey, that's a legitimate form of humor dating back to the third century BC, when Prodigious wrote..."

"That doesn't have anything to do with my feelings, could you just stop?"

"Facts don't care about your feelings."

And so on...

> Giving a justification is seen by these people are an excuse to debate.

Yes. This is a bit tautological because 'justification' is a word that connotes normativity, perhaps unlike 'explain' or 'describe'... but justifying yourself to someone else effectively invites them to negotiate your decision because it's a tacit admission that it matters (to you, or perhaps according to a shared social norm) that your decision is one they'd approve of in some sense.

However:

> For another example, trying to turn down something you don't want to do:

> A: "Can you come over and fix my Wi-Fi?" B: "No, my car's in the shop" A: "Oh, that's OK, I can give you a ride" B: "No, I have to go get dinner" A: "Oh, that's OK, I can feed you"

Trying to address someone's express concerns is not debating them. Don't tell somebody a fake story about what you want or why and then get upset when they honor your words!

""It is hurtful when you do X, please don't do that again.""

"I didn't mean to be hurtful. Why would someone be hurt by that? I was just trying to be funny. Some people are too sensitive. Besides, it's true. ..." And so on, and so on.

From the article:

"But I don’t always have the time and energy to do that. And sometimes, even if I did have the time, the person involved doesn’t want to be educated. This is when I pull out “we don’t do that here.” It is a conversation ender. If you are the newcomer and someone who has been around a long time says “we don’t do that here”, it is hard to argue. This sentence doesn’t push my morality on anyone. If they want to do whatever it is elsewhere, I’m not telling them not to. I’m just cluing them into the local culture and values. If I deliver this sentence well it carries no more emotional weight than saying, “in Japan, people drive on the left.” “We don’t do that here” should be a statement of fact and nothing more. It clearly and concisely sets a boundary, and also makes it easy to disengage with any possible rebuttals."

In situations like that, there is no need to engage. The transgressor is being defensive of their actions and I could easily see the same response to saying "we don't do that here"

"Don't do what? Why wouldn't we make jokes and have fun? I was just trying to be funny. Some people are too sensitive. Besides, it's true. ..."

At this point in the conversation, the best course, (in my opinion), is just to move on. It's hard to argue when someone clearly communicates what you did wrong, but people still do it all the time.

Way more effective to let them figure it out slowly with the time they need after the gentle boundary /standard is set.

> There is a vocal segment of the tech community that wants to understand and debate everything

This is healthier than demanding compliance. It's how tech was built in the first place. A "vocal segment" (debatable) that advocates conversation is better than a group that demands compliance.

> It's like a 2 year old child who keeps asking "why?"

now, now, now. comparing colleagues to children for curiosity could be seen as "hurtful". Would you like to be told to "keep [your] mouth shut" for that?

That sounds pretty good until you've had the same discussion 37 times. Having the same discussion for the 38th time does not feel like a conversation; it feels a denial of service attack.

"We don't do that here" actually seems like a great way to express this. Discussion is not verboten in general; this is just not the place for it.

"We don't do that here" usually doesn't mean "not now" or "not in this setting." It usually means "not ever while you are employed at this company."

Even if it’s not a hassle to have the conversation 37 times, that 38th one could be huge drama!

For most people, a short debate is sufficient. But you will spend almost all of your time with that tiny percent of people who rules-lawyer their way through life: Pointing out the lack of written clarity, complaining about 'hidden rules', writing a letter to object, appealing to your boss, appealing to boss's boss, lodging a formal complaint with leadership, getting actual lawyers involved, and on and on and on.

I am suddenly reminded of the sealion Wondermark (http://wondermark.com/1k62/).

Anyway, "tech" was absolutely not built with group conversations, discussions, and debates. Debates are just ways to show off how smart you are. Tech was mostly built by people who went and did things, and if you didn't like what they were doing, you could either comply or leave. Which they discovered was a great way to get things done.

So then they expanded that to every other possible realm which is why you have to "fit the culture" to work in tech. And why we're having this discussion.

but these innovators were rejecting the broader norms of the time. On the whole, renegades were rewarded by the market.

there was definitely a lot of back and forth innovation.

I see your point though and perhaps debate is the wrong term, more like freedom to blaze your own path and challenge strongly help positions.

> Hard disagree.

What exactly do you disagree with? I mostly just shared how I'd feel if these techniques were used on me...

But every community has their rules. Just because they're cultural rules doesn't make them anymore debatable.

You: Break user space. Linus Torvalds: We don't do that here. You: I feel excluded.

Good? If you want to do that shit, do it elsewhere. Don't come back. That's all the statement means: This is my standard as a leader and I don't have time to educate you. If you disagree, do it elsewhere.

In a professional space, I find that getting that treatment is usually preferable to starting an argument on ethics. I'm just trying to get some work done, not really looking to illuminate my coworker's mind with my personal illusions of the world.

We don't make these kinds of comments here

I got upvoted so apparently we do!

I got upvoted too, so that doesn't work for me

> That... doesn't work for me? If you want to say no, just say no. If you want to say more, I'd be very grateful if you could tell me why not. I'm sure the magic phrases have made the author's professional career easier. Also I'm sure they made life worse for other people.

Ugh. You know, a lot of people on the Autism spectrum get professional coaching so they can successfully navigate a workplace environment. Some people can't say no politely, or at all. Please don't make them collateral damage to your anger.

I think that it's a good way to uphold the unwritten rules of a community without making a big deal out of it. You don't need to be told why off-colour jokes are wrong, only that this is not the place for them.

I completely agree. This answer should be the last resort in situations just like mentioned in the article.

But when the situation is completely different, if a new comer is a new grad joining the company and "that" behavior is just a mild disagreement, this wording should 100% be avoided and only should be used if you would like to cut ties with the person.

"We don't do that here" is a jewel of passive-aggressiveness.

I clicked on the link hoping to find something related to "Not invented there", but ended up with a new way to issue heavy threats with small words.

It's only a jewel because it's valuable.

If you don't like the OP, then simply downvote and move on. Lot's of people in this thread find it valuable and are actually willing to say as much. They are even so gracious as to outline their argument for it's utility, in detail. Maybe you should read what they have to say and engage with that.

It's not that valuable since it can be easily rebutted with "you do now."

Now that was indeed a jewel. What it lacks in brevity it more than makes up for in depth. My hat off to you sir.

> If you don't like the OP, then simply downvote and move on

I never downvote because I "don't like", and so should you.

> Lots of people in this thread find it valuable and are actually willing to say as much

Being in a majority doesn't make you more right. Ironically, this is a part of the mindset some minorities had to fight against.

> Maybe you should read what they have to say and engage with that

I did, and other people have made some replies with which I agreed. Therefore, no point for me to repeat the same things.

How do you consider it threatening?

As ineptech wrote, "This (and a lot of other related arguments in this thread) would probably be a lot clearer with less contentious examples, like "don't push a deploy after 4pm," than with hot-button political topics. If you go to push a deploy at quitting time and someone says "We don't do that here", you wouldn't think they're on a power trip, you'd think they don't fully trust their automation tests."

The trouble with no is people will say why and try to guilt you into saying yes.

> My blood pressure increased just reading that and imagining myself on the receiving end.

Sure. That's a normal response when you feel challenged.

Technology has exposed people on a personal level to an unprecedented number of social groups.

In the past, people talked to their neighbors and their kinfolk, because that was who was around. They didn't have to worry about what was happening in China or Russia or Wyoming or whatever.

Now you are expected to have an opinion, and to have the righteous opinion of the group. I have to assume that we will learn how to deal with this impulse at some point in the future, but right now, we don't.

You don't know how many times a topic has come up and been tabled in that group before you joined.

Until we get past our self-righteousness phase on social media "we don't do that here" is perfect shorthand to shut down a destructive conversation.

---

A note: please try not to over-interpret my comment. You don't know me.

I do think it's important to actually hear the personal experience of others and defer judgement. That is not currently the norm on social media or with remote groups.

> [...] "we don't do that here" is perfect shorthand to shut down a destructive conversation

Yes, it is also a perfect shorthand to shut down any other conversation. Its only purpose is to shut down the conversation. If you don't care about the other participants, and just want the conversation shut down, saying "we don't do that here" is great for you.

> A note: please try not to over-interpret my comment. You don't know me.

I attempted to see how your comment could be over-interpretted and haven't succeeded :)

> Yes, it is also a perfect shorthand to shut down any other conversation. Its only purpose is to shut down the conversation. If you don't care about the other participants, and just want the conversation shut down, saying "we don't do that here" is great for you.

Yes. It is a judgement call when to use it. The linked article talks about how to make that judgement.

Usually it's better to criticize in private and offer space for questions, but sometimes you need to shut down a behavior fast, eg. when someone is using offensive language around other employees. Saying "we don't do that here" is a great way to do that.

> Why don't they do "that"?

If the phrase is used well, I think the person on the receiving end would just get it. If they defend themselves with « but I’m not [intolerant] », they know what’s up. Otherwise they’ll just ask « do what? »

"Semantic stop signs" are what are being used here. They indicate that the conversation is over.

The problem is that it cuts both ways:

"I think I might not be straight"

"Oh, we don't do that here, we believe in the lord."

If you're like me and believe in maximizing individual agency, you teach people to resist semantic stop signs and not use them. We question the stop signs. We actively interrogate the rules we are told to not question.

Your comment made me remember another handy rule:

"if stuff doesn't cut both ways, find out why it doesn't"

If you're like me, and probably also like you and the author, you pick your battles. "We don't write tests here" is probably a more worthy use of your time than "we don't talk about the receptionist's boobs here."

This is just like "racist" and "groomer" in online discourse. I would hate being told "we don't do that here." Tell me why you don't do it. This is another way to ossify discourse and prevent people from questioning anything.

The problem with that is that a lot of things, like for example racism or the value of eugenics, were publicly litigated decades ago and we overall decided we'd be overall better without them.

Not everyone agrees with that! And by continually pushing back against the "we don't do that" consensus, and arguing about the details, they keep these ideas floating around longer than they really should. Choosing to engage with them when they've already been "settled" gives them apparent legitimacy and now you're setting explicit written policies about which words can and can't be used in what contexts and shit, rather than enforcing a social norm via a social mechanism.

Some things need to be ossified! You can't be an athlete without a skeleton, you can't keep every idea in a pliable cartilage form forever if you want to do useful work on or around it. When things are more or less settled they should be solidified as well.

"Eugenics was a failure because it fundamentally misunderstands human development and behavior. We now have strong evidence that nurture and social expectations play a bigger role in behavior and outcomes than your genetics" is a much, much, much stronger answer than "we don't talk about eugenics".

The semantic stop sign betrays weakness, like eugenics might maybe have some secret kernal of truth. The thrashing of it is both scientifically correct and demystifies it.

And now you're having a nature vs nurture debate at work, how is this a better outcome?

That approach assumes that 1) every venue is an appropriate venue for a debate, 2) that everyone who supports a value or norm is educated enough on it to explain its technical merits to a skeptical audience and 3) everyone is capable of defending that idea against a hostile debate opponent in public.

To me "we decided, it's not like that here" is firm and clear, communicates that this is a social norm that is not up for debate at this time in this venue, without necessarily declaring it's absolutely final or that there is no appropriate venue. There are not really any perfect solutions here but this is a quite good one.

If you don't want to have the debate, then why say "we don't do that here"? That is a pretty confrontational thing to say. Why not let the comment you don't like go?

Also, who is "we"? If you have a 5-person company and you hire 10 more people, should the social rules decided by the first 5 be dictated to the other 10? Or should they be changed to make everyone maximally comfortable?

These aren't questions that you should necessarily answer on the spot, but these are questions that have to be answered.

Why not let the comment you don't like go?

because sometimes it needs to be made clear that such comments are not acceptable here. you could say it in different words, like for example: "in this company such comments are considered inappropriate" or "we don't make such jokes here"

If you have a 5-person company and you hire 10 more people, should the social rules decided by the first 5 be dictated to the other 10?

initially yes. later when everyone knows each other better, there is time and room to reconsider and maybe debate the finer points of some specific rules.

I think the point is, the specific wording "we don't do that here" is patronizing and othering. If you want to tell someone "don't say that," just say it. "Don't say that, I prefer to be called 'homosexual'" is even better (using the "gay" example).

Also, the idea of "reconsidering the finer points of the rules" is really interesting - it suggests that the comfort of the first 5 matters more than the comfort of everyone else. What if the first 5 people were hyper-religious conservatives who hired 10 progressives and want to keep hiring progressives? Should it still only be the finer points of the rules that get discussed? Or should it be understood that their culture of prayers every day doesn't scale up, and that a lot of things need to be re-worked? This can also be true of hyper-progressive people. A culture of offense-taking at little things, language policing, and social justice book clubs is as non-inclusive as a culture of daily prayers.

"We don't do that here" is exclusionary language, and so are the other two comments you suggested. Both use "we" to fabricate consensus (has the company really decided as a group that this particular speech pattern is banned?) and shame the other party as an outsider. That is not the right way to create respect.

I think the point is, the specific wording "we don't do that here" is patronizing and othering.

ok, i kind of agree with that. i was not responding to that part of the comment.

the idea of "reconsidering the finer points of the rules" is really interesting - it suggests that the comfort of the first 5 matters more than the comfort of everyone else

no, it suggests that when 10 individuals join an existing team, they ought to learn more about the team culture first, before they try to make changes, unless the existing culture is clearly hostile to some people.

consider the difference between 10 new people joining all at once or one at a time, a few weeks apart. why should 10 new people get the right to dominate the culture that i am trying to build in my company? i am paying you, so you follow my culture. once we know each other better, then you may start pointing out problems that you discover. but if you come in and start being disruptive because you disagree with my company culture, then you better go look for another job. even if i am wrong, that's not the way to implement changes.

the critical point is, that such issues are not a question of majority, but one of inclusiveness. we want to reject a culture that excludes some people. so if the original 5 people have a problematic culture, then the newcomers are good to try to change that (but being disruptive is unlikely to work), but if it is the reverse, then it's the newcomers that need to adjust.

EDIT: added some clarifications.

> "Eugenics was a failure because it fundamentally misunderstands human development and behavior. We now have strong evidence that nurture and social expectations play a bigger role in behavior and outcomes than your genetics"

Wait - you think the problem with eugenics is that it was ineffective? I think we need to talk a lot more about eugenics.

If you go the "Eugenics was racist..." route you're going to be met with the "but what if we do non-racist eugenics.."

Or we can just nip the whole thing because failure and racist failure are both just failure.

how about eugenics is immoral because every human being deserves to live and reproduce.

We give genetic testing to every person for free at a few of their regular checkups with their primary care doctor.

If you test positive for some genetic markers, you get free IVF, paid for by the government. If you have some kind of anti-IVF bent, it's not mandatory, just a benefit you aren't using. The IVF process picks embryos that have the least undesirable traits - but you will definitely have a kid and it will be yours.

You have eugenics and no forced sterilization, no murdering people, nothing.

It still won't work, but you have ethical eugenics.

Eugenics works. We know it does. We use it all day every day. With livestock, with plants, with all sorts of organisms.

We breed for traits. That's eugenics.

The reason we don't practice eugenics with humans is that it removes our agency and tramples our rights. And that's morally abhorrent. We don't need to pretend that it doesn't work. We just need to acknowledge that directing the procreation of other humans is just flat out morally wrong.

Eugenics doesn't work. The goal of Eugenics is not to grow more corn or make people more fertile. If those were it's goals, it could work.

Eugenics specifically aims to change the social situation (poverty, crime, drug use, etc) by changing the gene pool. That will never work, crime is not a genetic condition.

What you describe is genetic modification, not eugenics.

Have you seen dogs?

You can breed for traits.

I'm fully capable of realizing that forced breeding/sterilization is inhumane and also be aware that it is capable of getting results.

We both agree bad things are bad, agreed.

But really, eugenics doesn't work. If you go to a really crime filled area, legally/ethically adopt a dozen babies and raise them in a low crime area.. they will look like the area they were raised in, not like the kids who grew up in a high crime area.

The inverse holds too. Go take a dozen babies from a low crime area, throw them in a dangerous high crime area, and they will be criminals.

With animals, you can breed for some general traits but not consistently. Some German shepherds don't take orders well. Some non-herding dogs will be great at herding. If you want to raise, eg a police k9, you need to start with a very young dog (or get lucky), you can't randomly pull from a breed (oh, this dog is a GS, they will be a great police k9).

If you engage in a really aggressive eugenics program you will.. basically not change anything.

The theory of gravity has been ossified by the fact that every freshman physics student tests it and determines that it is correct. That is the correct way to build consensus around an "ossified" idea: to show people that it is obviously true. Even if the truth is uncomfortable, like it was to the Catholic church in 1600. If you try to suppress discussion instead, you lend credence to the idea that you have something to hide. Eventually the truth will win. If you have the truth on your side, why try to suppress its discovery?

Similarly, we used to be interested in showing people that racism was bad. Anti-racism educators and consultants would talk about the economic benefits of widening your market or your employee pool. Now that we instead call people "racist" to shut down discussion, actual racists are gaining ideological footholds, and lots of people are suspicious of the people who call others "racist."

People are not stupid. If you want them to agree with you, you should not talk down to them.

If racist policies are economically effective, are they therefore justified? Moral? Even stepping into a debate on some subjects communicates that it potentially has some merits.

I think it's reasonable to resist that on the grounds that humans aren't gravity, no one is going to come up with newton's laws of how to treat each other. These things aren't facts of the universe that can be revealed to us, they are decisions we must make using our own resources. Debate is one of those resources, but not the only one, not even the most valuable one, not one that is appropriate at all times in all places for all ideas.

No, but explaining economics to a business owner is more likely to get through to them than talking about the social benefits. When you try to convince someone of something, you convince them of the benefits to them, not the high-minded benefits to society. We used to understand that.

Edit: By the way, if it's good for society, and not for you, there should be laws about it. That's why the eugenicists in the early 1900's (who believed that racism was a social good) enforced Jim Crow Laws: businesses often refused to discriminate unless the law forced them.

Yes, you should tailor your communication to the audience, and join a technical debate on a subject when it's valuable to do so.

I think the technique in the article is best used in situations where you specifically do not want to do so. When there's no value for you in the debate, or you will only be giving legitimacy to a discredited and harmful idea.

Saying "we don't do that here" is definitely a bit of a power play and you wouldn't use it if you truly needed to convince the other party to believe the thing. If you merely need them to act on it though, and you have the power to pull it, it's fine for that.

> The theory of gravity has been ossified

I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to make of this: whether or not GR (our current ToG) is correct, and, if not, what’s missing or how it might be wrong is a hugely important active field of research.

As is, of course, trying to integrate QM and GR.

They aren’t ossified, they are hard. Conceptually hard. Mathematically hard. And a few other hards.

Sorry, I misspoke. The theory of gravity is actually a really interesting physics problem, but the fact that gravity acts on objects is pretty much undisputed.

Hardly! If you put an object in empty space, without any other objects nearby, it will be completely unaffected by gravity. Unless the object is large enough that its own gravity can overcome its structural or material resistance to being crushed. Further, unless an object is actually in contact with another object, it is unaffected by gravity from its own reference frame. The apple falling out of the tree (neglecting air resistance) has no way of knowing that it is falling.

Well, unless that object was a single particle, it would still be affected by gravity. It would be slightly larger without the force of gravity attracting the atoms together.

Why would you hate it? It's just some words, part of a social interaction. You're and adult, you don't have to have every social rule explained to you in great detail every day, right? How often do you have to be told, "Don't pee in the corner of the meeting room because it makes the room smell bad and other people don't like it."

(Note: I carefully avoided saying "because it's unsanitary" to avoid the immediate response that urine is reasonably sterile and no worse than any other liquid that might wind up on the floor. I've learned my lessons.)

If you don’t ever use the stop signs, you will get trolled as a means of blunting your effectiveness.

Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.

“We don’t do that here” means there are more important things for us to discuss right now.

I knew a mother who allowed her kids to question everything all the time. It was cool to watch. Once. After a while I realized why she was also the most tired mom I had met. At some point the kids realize dessert before dinner is a question we are safe to ask, so we are gonna ask it four times a week. I’m not sure if she ever saw that she conditioned them into that via random reinforcement. They didn’t stop until the youngest was about 14. That’s a long time to be tired.

There is an online segment that uses semantic stopsogns so much they have lost their power.

"That's racist!" "You're a bigot!" "You can't use that word!"

The response is predictably, "Yes, Yes, I'm a terrible nazi bigot racist. Now as I was saying..."

There is a guide to responding, especially to the repeated questions, which often comes with discussions. Yes, you may need to repeat that discussion a bunch. So it goes.

You're just describing online interactions. This post was written for people who work in the real world with real people, not online freaks.

There are many other pressures at play that make this a totally appropriate tool to communicate shared values, none of which you've considered in your argument.

> Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.

Nice flamebait but I'll take it.

Funny you said that considering the american left (and therefore the western left, delayed a couple years) is postmodernism distilled.

The left is the kids in your story, and society is the mom. The right is just watching and reaping the rewards.

> I knew a mother who allowed her kids to question everything all the time.

One of the parenting rules my mother enforced in our family was that she would refuse perfectly valid requests seemingly at random. Her explanation? "You have to learn to take a "no" gracefully." These were also the scenarios where attempting to argue or seek a special exemption just this once only hardened her resolve not to give in. I greatly disliked this as a kid, but grew to see the value in it as an adult.

> just this once only hardened her resolve not to give in

You're setting expectations. This is pretty effective between adults, I am not sure it's as effective with children, and I say this as someone who has tried to apply it to children. The results are mixed.

There's a certain amount of value in being able to guess What Mom Would Say. Mom isn't always going to be there. On the other hand you have to be careful how broadly you apply that. What Mom Would Say about eating berries you haven't identified is pretty good, or going off the grid for 48 hours without telling anyone where you'll be and when to worry. What Mom Would Say about what your hobbies and interests and romantic life should look like might lead to estrangement and neuroses.

> You're setting expectations. This is pretty effective between adults, I am not sure it's as effective with children, and I say this as someone who has tried to apply it to children.

In hindsight as an adult, I could better appreciate the occasions where she turned down requests and possibly the reasons why, and there is some value in kids learning that there are limits to what they can get without being offered a detailed explanation in return.

> There's a certain amount of value in being able to guess What Mom Would Say. Mom isn't always going to be there. On the other hand you have to be careful how broadly you apply that. What Mom Would Say about eating berries you haven't identified is pretty good, or going off the grid for 48 hours without telling anyone where you'll be and when to worry.

This isn't really the context in which these things came up in my family. Her stated goal at each occasion was that it's very important that her kids learn that life doesn't always go the way we want. So while we could go to a friend's birthday party, we couldn't go to all of them, and she made the call (perhaps ~ 75% of requests that required a non-trivial expense would be turned down (~25% otherwise), but as a kid it was hard to see the distinction). We knew as kids that we had very little expendable income as a family, and did a decent amount of filtering out requests ourselves. I think our financial situation was a lot more dire than we could appreciate as kids, and this approach was one way my mother kept things sane.

> Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.

> “We don’t do that here” means there are more important things for us to discuss right now.

Why is it only the political left that gets to define what things are sufficiently not-to-be-discussed?

Many of the comments here follow the same pattern: an assumption that there's an authority that is universally correct (the mother, in your example) and someone lesser-than that simply needs to be corralled into not questioning it. What if we, instead, approached these issues as though both sides are intelligent adults capable of discussion?

We don't need to be condescended to because we asked if we should push to the "master" branch.

No, I'm saying they don't. They almost never do. So the other bobblehead says some crazy thing that winds them up and unless they are very very clever they end up wasting time on the distraction and never bring it back to the agenda they wanted to discuss.

Clearly the distraction was worth condescending to someone over. I guess just not enough to pretend the "bobblehead" is a valid person with their own views.

> If you don’t ever use the stop signs, you will get trolled as a means of blunting your effectiveness.

> Something I wish the Left would figure out because the Right uses it on them all the time.

Sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

> At some point the kids realize dessert before dinner is a question we are safe to ask, so we are gonna ask it four times a week.

Good opportunity to teach the kids about boundaries and respect for your fellow human being:

“I am never going to allow dessert before dinner, because it is unhealthy and your well-being is important to me. The next time you ask me that you won’t get dessert before or after dinner. New questions are interesting, old questions are annoying. I don‘t like being annoyed and will incentivise you to be better.”

Or:

“Sure. Here’s an apple. Fruit is dessert. No, you cannot have ice cream because it is unhealthy and…”

Or:

“Why do you keep asking the same question when you know the answer will be negative? Do you not realise that is annoying? What would you do if someone annoyed you everyday?”

The alt-right handbook: never play defense covers this well

https://youtu.be/wmVkJvieaOA

Hold on, since when is preserving "your effectiveness" in a debate something that anyone cares about in the real world? You should just say, "I find that word offensive" or "please call me X instead." A polite person won't keep pushing or debate you after that. It makes it clear that you are asking them to do something to make you feel comfortable.

Also, "we don't do that here" doesn't mean "not right now" it means "never, or we won't let you into the club." The phrasing of the sentence implicitly diffuses responsibility among the entire group, and marks the other person in the conversation as an outsider.

I'm not you, but I wouldn't want to say that to an employee. I want them to feel comfortable, too.

I can't wait for my kids to start questioning everything I say. So that I can let them figure out the why by themselves with me nudging them in the right direction. I won't have to do all the thinking and they actually learn to think critically. Win-Win.

From the essay:

> “We don’t do that here” should be a statement of fact and nothing more. It clearly and concisely sets a boundary, and also makes it easy to disengage with any possible rebuttals.

Of course it cuts both ways. Any method of setting a boundary can be used to enforce morally just or unjust rules. The authors point is that

> “We don’t do that here” was a polite but firm way to educate the newcomer about our culture.

Genuinely asking: Does your position of "maximizing individual agency" mean that we should not enforce boundaries? If am running an office and someone makes a homophobic joke (not acceptable), what (in your view) is my recourse?

"Hey, I find that to be really hurtful and would appreciate it if you didn't make jokes like that."

To in wit you might get the reply "Why do you find that joke hurtful?"

You can either throw out a semantic stop sign or engage in empathy. You can share meaningfully why you don't like those terms or jokes. You might say something like "My father told a lot of homophobic jokes to crush my self esteem once I came out as gay and I still find them hurtful."

Notice how we are enforcing a boundary not as an arbitrary line but as a conversation between two people? We use reasoning - not just cold rationality but the full spectrum of emotional reasoning too - to negotiate boundaries.

I think she's very clear that "We don't do that here." shouldn't be the first line of defense or used in every situation.

So in this case, I would agree with you. I think the author would as well. She is not making this suggestion as a one size fits all response to off-color remarks. It's useful when people really should know better and there's other work that should be done. Or, the person is unable to accept criticism.

The word "We" is of critical importance here.

It implies that the one asking the question is by definition an outsider, and they should know their place. It also implies : "You do not need to know the answer because you are too unimportant; OR this is a stupid question who's answer is obvious."

IMO, it is easier and less combative to tell the real reason you refuse to answer and take personal/individual ownership for it. "I spent X amount of time figuring out architecture. It will take a Y time to explain. Let's discuss this in another venue where time isn't a bottleneck"; OR; "The manager / higher-ups decided that certain personal topics are off the table to maintain cohesion between the team."

It is fine to impose culture onto new entrants to the group. But, that inherently implies a power imbalance which is important to acknowledge and communicate. If this is supposed to be an equal relationship with equal agency, then this sort of behavior veers on workplace bullying.

I agree with the above commenter, that such rigidity and opaqueness towards interrogating a team's culture cuts both ways. If you wish to use it, then do so at your own peril.

“Question authority.”

Why should I? Or

Who’s going to make me? Or

Or what?

Congratulations, you've reached the de minimis level of contrariness that that advice was meant to instill; provided you're not a hypocrit about it, you should do fine.

Thanks for the condescension.

It also doesn't work when you are prepared for it. If you tell me we don't do x here and I then say "then you haven't paid attention" or something like that, then all we do is set us up for conflict.

"teach people to resist semantic stop signs and not use them"

Why would you do that? What's wrong with them?

Question asking and rationality are how humans grow. We both need to be able to explain our reasoning and listen to the reasoning of others.

"We don't do that here" is way to shut down communication.

For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called ways-of-working.

Team values are big-idea statements of what teammates hold as important. Example: We value courage, collaboration, respect.

Ground rules then make the values explicit, by describing the team's expectations. Example: We reject slurs and pejoratives.

Some people who hear about this respond by saying it's too much overhead, or rigidity, or handholding. To me, these people sound much like the people who used to say "using version control is too much overhead, or rigidity, or handholding".

It turns out that in my direct professional experience with many teams, teams that create ways-of-working improve because of it, and work significantly better with many more stakeholders.

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working

I think the author clearly addresses this:

I don't think the author is suggesting that every cultural faux pas should be met with "We don't do that here." She's suggesting it for a certain use-case.

"For team leadership, it's much better to open up communication, and create team practices called ways-of-working. Team values are big-idea statements of what teammates hold as important. Example: We value courage, collaboration, respect. Ground rules then make the values explicit, by describing the team's expectations. Example: We reject slurs and pejoratives."

One question: Once you have done this, are your ground rules and team values always open for debate (including, say, on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up), or when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"?

P.S. As an extra question: Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them?

> are your ground rules and team values always open for debate

Yes including asynchronous e.g. on a chat channel, and synchronous e.g. during a retrospective.

> on Friday afternoon when all your services have gone belly up

Yes. For example some teams choose a way-of-working for emergencies that uses the abbreviation "ANC" for the priority order of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. If there is an emergency,then the team focuses first on keeping the system running, second on figuring out where to go and how to get there, and third on talking. Afterward, then the team does a causal analysis e.g. postmortem or after-incident report, including fielding any ways-of-working areas that came up in the channels because of the emergency.

> when someone new (a vendor say, or an intern) violates those ground rules and values do you shut them down with some variant of "we don't do that here" like "you have violated the ground rules"?

Yes. For example there are sometimes fast-moving high-urgency multi-team meetings that include many new people who don't know about ways-of-working. We open the meeting by saying e.g. "This meeting's moderator is Alice." then Alice quickly explains the ways-of-working: one person talks at a time; debate the issue not the person; focus on the agenda not side tasks; call a timeout if something important is amiss; etc."

> Are your ground rules explicitly enumerated somewhere and all team members familiar with them in enough specific detail to know whether or not something violates them?

Yes, such as using docs, or wikis, or README files, etc.

You can see many of the public ones in the repo at https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ways-of-working where there are a bunch of them collected across many teams.

If there's anything in the repo that you believe can be improved, or clarified, or grown, then I welcome constructive criticism. Likewise if you have opinions of different ways to handle team values, or skip them, I'm interested in knowing what you think.

It would be great to see this happen in the opposite direction.

The next time someone intentionally misinterprets something as offensive when that clearly wasn't the intended meaning, or goes searching for ever more obscure terms to deem problematic, or tries to silence and shame people who try to do anything other than fight for social justice, we all just reply with "We don't do that here".

Someone starts to lecture you about how referencing "winter" is non-inclusive to Southern Hemisphere readers? "We don't do that here". Someone says you need to rename your firewall "whitelist" of IP addresses? "We don't do that here".

It would be glorious. Everyone could treat each other courtesy, grace and assume positive-intent. Instead of walking around on eggshells and always worrying about what the most cynical, negative interpretation of a word or phrase could be, everyone could relax, treat one another as friends and allies and focus on solving real problems.

Or, we could continue down our current path of Orwellian new-speak, where a new group of religious extremists deem ever more language as blasphemous and everyone joins the witch-burners for fear of being labelled a witch themselves.

I think that's a good idea.

No politics, you come to work to work, as long as you treat your colleagues with respect.

Companies shouldn't be changing the political landscape anyway, that would be a scary world.

I'm C-Level, so I can hopefully instil this as culture.

> Companies shouldn't be changing the political landscape anyway, that would be a scary world.

I'm curious as to how you think lobbying works in the present day and the past four decades or so.

I'm not American, lobbying is corruption and that it's fully legal is one of the scariest things when looking towards America.

BTW: I'm a big fan of your work. :)

Where is lobbying illegal?

Well, campaign donations are fully illegal in the UK election process... not that our politics is better.

Sweden has not yet decided what to make illegal, but lobbyists are avoiding doing anything that violates rule 0: http://www.aalep.eu/lobbying-landscape-sweden

Rule 0 is "Don't act in a way that makes me create more rules", in most old online communities.

>> Rule 0 is "Don't act in a way that makes me create more rules"

I love that!

This is a little complicated to answer. "Lobbying" as a word without cultural context just refers to presenting issues to representatives, which is critically important in democracy. In the US it comes alongside "Buying time" via gifts and hosting and political donations which would be considered bribery and corruption anywhere else with a functional democracy.

Basically, where it is illegal, they don't call it lobbying.

> lobbying is corruption and that it's fully legal is one of the scariest things when looking towards America.

Wow, I guess I need to move to Sweden. That sounds extremely nice. And in that context, I _absolutely_ agree with your statement that corporations shouldn't try to shift the political conversation.

> BTW: I'm a big fan of your work. :)

Aww, thanks!

Is taking out an ad for an unrelated candidate legal? Can a person or a business do it simply because they like the candidate's policies?

It's much appreciated. I try the best that I can to do the same from an EVP level, but the layer above me is intent on imitating the big 4 in every respect.

Companies are entities with political interests like any other. The only way you can curtail their influence politically is through regulation. It is reasonable for entities to pursue their goals through any legal means.

Companies by definition are collections of people with disparate opinions, the only unifying political ideology that can exist in that circumstance is continuance of the company as an entity unto itself and maximise its own profits.

it's unethical, then, to allow them to make policy as they're considerably more powerful than the individual, much less empathetic and optimise for extremely self-serving behaviours.

Seems that a privately held company can hold a political ideology as it is owned by typically a limited number of owners, but a corporation is an organized charter within the society owned by an unknown and ever-shifting population that should discourage or ideally eliminate political ideologies within the scope of its charter, especially the type of issues “wokeness” elevates.

> No politics, you come to work to work, as long as you treat your colleagues with respect.

Does respect include calling them what they prefer to be called? No matter how you answer this question, a large portion of the population will say you're being political.

I don't think that calling someone what they prefer to be called is a political issue.

I personally don't know any right-wingers that wouldn't call you by the name/gender that you request them to. These people probably exist but it is a very small group.

Theres a difference between disagreeing with the concept at a societal level vs disrespecting someone on a personal level. Far fewer people do that.

> I personally don't know any right-wingers that wouldn't call you by the name/gender that you request them to

I've never been faced with this problem personally, but what I can say that is that if you've known someone for any length of time say "Bill" and then one day "Bill" wants to be called "Jill" there is an ask that extends far beyond what is ordinarily reasonable.

That's why I think "deadnaming" is totally stupid. That name isn't dead. You just don't like/prefer it. But it was there and people know that name. They know you—and you just changed your mind. That's not their problem—that's yours.

Imagine I read your comment and didn't think of a trans person, but a Ms. Jones who had married a Mr. Smith and was now Mrs. Smith.

Is your opinion the same?

Yes.

Marriage is a union where two people make a lifelong commitment to each other: their identity is now united. This is a normal and good thing.

While it's hard to shift, as long as you're making an effort it's fine. If you slip up from time to time, especially early on, that's understandable. But eventually you should learn it. You were willing to call them by what they asked to be called originally, rather than just calling them "big guy" or whatever, so I don't think it's unreasonable to respect their wishes on what they wish to be called in the future too.

There is a big difference giving someone a nickname vs. assenting to a reorientation of outward identity.

Someone wants a nick-name? Sure. No problem.

Someone who was a guy/gal and now claims to be something else? Especially if he/she is actively known in a space as something before and _then_ changes? That's a HUGE demand that honestly shouldn't be something anyone is comfortable asking others to do.

I do this too, but with people who change their phone number. No, that number still exists, and I associate it with them. They choose to change it? That's their problem.

Edit: Guess I should put a /s. Is there a tag for highly passive aggresive /s?

Perhaps it should be /sa should be for /[s]trawman [a]rgument.

I have met people multiple times who will call someone the opposite of whatever's on their pronoun pin (if they have one)

Even to cis people.

Could you please specify the country, so I don't accidentally move there?

Texas unfortunately.

Doesn't happen all the time or everywhere, but I've seen people brag about doing this.

Thank you!

I find it personally helpful to get points of data like this.

Living in Switzerland, the cultural standards are sometimes astonishingly different between countries (e.g. I still regularly see job application forms that require both a headshot of the candidate and a date of birth).

Well, yeah, but that's so you don't hire someone unattractive, or worse the wrong kind of person.

Sometimes, when I can tell during a hiring process that it's just not working out, I do ask companies why they ask for a photo and a date of birth.

The answers generally are:

- "We've always done it this way" - Well sorry to hear that, but that's not a reason

- "Everybody does it this way" - Well, I'm a candidate and I can tell you that no, only 10% of companies are doing it this way

- "We want to get a first impression of the person before we invest time to look at them closer" - The first step in your application process is a 15min call with an HR person. Do you really need a step before that to reject someone based on age or ethnicity or gender?

So far, no one has reacted with any kind of understanding.

As a counterpoint, I live in Texas and I have never seen this.

Thank you!

It's a big place.

While I'll readily admit I don't like a lot of the political environment here, there are also a _lot_ of amazing people and places.

> their pronoun pin

That's... a new one for me. Ah, they're all over Etsy—if anyone else was thrown by that, they're exactly what your first guess would be based on the name: a big round pin with your preferred pronouns printed on it. Interesting.

> the opposite of whatever's on their pronoun pin

Well, yes, obviously? They have a pronoun pin. That's not a matter of disrespecting that person (as you note, we do it to everyone); it's a matter of disrespecting pronoun pins on principle.

"Well how was I supposed to know your pronouns?"

"Well, pronoun pins are dumb"

Pick one.

"That's not a matter of disrespecting that person; it's a matter of disrespecting pronoun pins on principle."

Pardon me, but what? You expect the persons wearing the pin to not feel disrespected? Or that the pin will be emotionally damaged by the disrespect?

Whatever it says on your employee ID and internal directory is fine, or you have to ask to have it changed.

Whatever your employment contract says is what goes into the employee directory, and should be consistent with the tax office.

If you’re referring to pronouns then I don’t have a good answer honestly. I have a personal opinion that pronouns are not important. If you want to call me mister or miss or Mzzz then that’s not going to cause pain, unless you do it with malicious intent.

"I have a personal opinion that pronouns are not important."

The point of respect is that your personal opinions are not important; the opinions of the person on the other end of your communications are.

Not sure, status quo in the office has always been that people passing as male are he/him, people passing as female are she/her and everyone else is they/them (including groups of people homogeneous and heterogeneous alike)

That we’ve managed to conduct our society so far without using alternative pronouns such as “xi/xir” is a strong indication that it’s a neo-political construct and, while I might be sympathetic to the person who prefers to be called by those terms, I will not go out of my way to force everyone in the company to - they’re also usually referential (without the person present) and I will get them wrong myself too.

I think it is respectful to address someone by the name they go by. I have a friend who's named William and would get annoyed if someone kept calling him Willy, and goes by Bill. People also get married, and it's respectful and customary to address them by their new name.

At the end of the day, I wouldn't want someone making what is probably a tough situation more difficult and hassling me about a name change if I were in that position. I have a really long name, and I'd be annoyed after a while if someone kept addressing me by that name, rather than the shorter name I choose to go by as an adult.

None of this is political, it's just being a polite southerner. You treat folks how you want to be treated.

But someone has to decide which topics are political. That is a political decision. Which means there are still politics, regardless of what your policy says.

For example, I might say that calling me by my preferred pronouns isn't political, it's a matter of basic respect. Other people might think this is an act of political coercion, and report me to HR for violating the "no politics" policy. Resolving that dispute is a political act.

Moreover companies are political entities granted a charter by the state, and don't hesitate to have positions on political issues that directly affect their business.

So "no politics" doesn't mean "no politics" at all, it means (charitably) no discussion of politics beyond things the prevailing political consensus deems as apolitical, or (uncharitably) no discussion of anything that makes the dominant group uncomfortable.

You can always make the argument that everything is everything else, everything can be traced back to religion, or monetary gain or trying to improve social standing; that’s not interesting because it’s extremely easy to make everything relate to everything.

So, while I appreciate greatly the attempt to politicise the world and make this topic greyer than it needs to be: it’s a little at odds with reality unless you’ve entirely internalised the notion that everything is political always.

This is the same argument as “silence is violence” but even that movement acknowledges the reason they consider it violence is because it supports the status quo.

The status quo should not be considered political. In order to be apolitical one must live within the status quo; only excluding the inherently political things like protesting or denouncing/promoting politicians or parties.

Similar to how theism doesn’t preclude denouncing other faiths or supporting any: whatever the current climate is with regards to the dominant theism; is what is usually understood to be normal by atheists wherever they are based- with the obvious exclusion of inherently religious things like going to a place of worship or praying.

> So, while I appreciate greatly the attempt to politicise the world and make this topic greyer than it needs to be: but it’s a little at odds with reality unless you’ve entirely internalised the notion that everything is political always.

No, not everything is political, but many things are, especially when we're talking about how to govern corporations, which are political entities with a charter from the state and often have a great deal of power over their employees and the communities in which they operate.

> The status quo should not be considered political. In order to be apolitical one must live within the status quo; only excluding the inherently political things like protesting or denouncing/promoting politicians or parties.

And who defines what is "within the status quo"? Doing so is a political act.

I've noticed people often have bizarre notions about "politics".

Politics is simply the way people in groups come up with decisions. How you and your friends decide where to go for dinner? Politics, whether it's voting or someone's birthday preference, or because your one friend Ayn really has to be the one to decide or else she throws a fit.

The status quo? Well, yeah, it's not political, in roughly the same way that a paper mill is not political. But like you say yourself, it becomes political when someone wants to change something. If someone wants to build a paper mill in the middle of your neighborhood, you'd best get your political hat on and start doing the political boogie because you don't want to live near the smell and chemicals. If someone wants to change the status quo, say because they think the current treatment of Xs by Ys is unacceptable, then you can bet that both supporting and opposing the status quo will become political.

Yup yup yup.

"Using a weapon gives your enemy explicit permission to use it against you." ~Me

I'd love to live in a world where we speak to the average most reasonable person in the room instead of the most sensitive, easily offended, and brittle person in the room. But that might be my age showing.

And that's the tension between the majority and the minority, an ageless tension.

Is it ageless? Or is it a sign of a jaded societal class living during an era with relatively few hardships?

No, it's ageless. It's why the United States has a Congress and a Senate. It's why the Jews left Egypt. At some times some minorities will truly be oppressed by a majority. That's not just human nature, it's nature.

The trick is always eschewing pareidolia.

Calling a person a pronoun they don’t like probably is not why the Jews left Egypt; they were persecuted with far more than words. Congress was created to allow for representation for citizens (wealthy land owners) within a Republic and was not addressing minor infractions like pronoun disagreements or backlash against disagreements over debatable events.

You've missed the point. But that's okay, it seems like you didn't want to understand me.

The average most reasonable person in the room cares about other people's feelings and life condition and tries to not insult or hurt them with what they say.

Depends on what you means by "cares"

Cares, like will bend over backwards to prevent any possible perceived insult? No, that's not reasonable. We don't need to revamp our language. Intent, not language, should be the focus. For example master and slave are perfectly fine terms for the relationship between pieces of hardware or software. No actual slave in this world would care. No actual person descended from slaves should care. If someone is truly insulted by language and not intent they need to grow up.

Cares, like makes reasonable accommodations, sure. That's what handicap parking places are about. That's why there's ramps on sidewalks in cities. That's why there's a push for accessibility in software for colour blind people.

> If someone is truly insulted by language and not intent they need to grow up.

Spoken like someone who's never had to hear a slur about them in a joke. "But I was just joking!" - oh, then it's okay?

Maybe the person using slurs should grow up? In the article, the author specifically discusses a case when a new hire used a pejorative.

Intent doesn't matter. What you say and do matters. "Well I just wanted to get home safe and to bed" isn't a good defense when you get into an accident while drunk driving.

> Spoken like someone who's never had to hear a slur about them in a joke.

"Personal argumentation on the internet is the bastion of the shallow." ~ Me

I cannot prove over this medium if I had experienced that or not. You cannot verify either way. Your use of this argument saddens me. You could have just left it out and strengthened your apparent position.

> Intent doesn't matter.

Mens Rea doesn't matter? There's more than a few hundred years and dozens of generations of judges and lawyers from around the world that would like to have a word with you.

> "Personal argumentation on the internet is the bastion of the shallow." ~ Me

If you believed what you're saying above, then why respond? Also, you don't need to quote yourself; you can just write the sentence.

> I cannot prove over this medium if I had experienced that or not. You cannot verify either way. Your use of this argument saddens me. You could have just left it out and strengthened your apparent position.

It was rhetorical. Someone who's actually experienced this doesn't take the attitude you're taking.

> Mens Rea doesn't matter? There's more than a few hundred years and dozens of generations of judges and lawyers from around the world that would like to have a word with you.

I'm talking about racist jokes and being a decent human being, not legal precedent.

> Intent, not language, should be the focus.

Changing the language with good intentions isn't a problem if intent should be the focus instead of language.

What is not ok is demanding that people be mind-readers and pull the "good intent" out of the people's heads who use harmful language widely identified as unacceptable. Language changes over time, except for dead languages.

> ... good intentions isn't a problem

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

> harmful language

No such thing.

Your comment is sufficiently vague and mealy-mouthed so as to be useless.

All the I see here is you complaining about shifting social mores. Toughen up.

Maybe if you weren't so "sensitive, easily offended, and brittle" then the notion of a window of acceptable social behavior, that changes over time, wouldn't be so radical and hurtful to you.

Ah, the "no-you" gambit, classic.

Your inability to articulate a meaningful response is all about you, not me.

Ah, a one note debate technique. Reminds me of the clatter of a train going by.

I had nothing to respond to, hence the lack of meaning.

It's not your age showing. Coming from a guy who comes off horribly from his posts online, if you are self aware enough to put a disclaimer (might be my age), maybe uhhh ????

This person proposes the OPPOSITE of a weapon. A constructive tool to disarm potential issues in the workplace to redirect focus to the task at hand is not a weapon. That you view it as such might be a flag for yourself to look at how you view workplace discussions.

You want it to be ok to STEAL the effectiveness/contributions of MARJINALIZED people from the company for irrelevant purposes. These people were not placed ( placed, these are not your friends who can choose to hear your funny quips, these are co-workers just trying to do their job) to work with you to give you opportunity to offend, they were placed there for a business purpose. Why do you want to STEAL potential contributions from the place you work while at the same time reducing quality/effectiveness instead of just being, you know, professional?

A weapon is a tool used to injure. A tool used to heal or comfort is medicine, or something like that. Right? Still, it's a tool. There's no such thing as an opposite of a tool. Anyways, again, it's about intent.

Your first paragraphs seem fine. Your second reiterates my last sentence. Your last paragraph seems unhinged. There's no need to yell or put plans in my mouth, that's just poor arguing.

Most tools never stay in their original places of use, they drift.

I think a simple "This is against our discrimination policy" would be fine. Of course, it could not be applied just for "gay" people, but potentially anyone--including--gasp--Conservative Christian discrimination.

> "gay" people

What do the quotes signify here?

What the article referenced.

The article used quotes around gay to signify that it was discussing the adjective "gay" as a noun. You _used_ it as an adjective while surrounding it with quotes. Do you mean "people who are attracted to people of the same gender", or something else?

The article provided two potential definitions of the word. I mean the term to be inclusive of the whole situation the article described as a concept which encapsulates both meaning of the word--hence why I quoted it and referenced discrimination policies which usually address both definitions conceived of in the article in the workplace.

That makes sense, thank you for clarifying.

Like the article author, you sound like a self-elected cop of sorts. Have you considered channeling your energy elsewhere?

I was asking for clarification and got it. What's the problem with that?

Seemed to me that you were attempting to sniff out some heretical speech.

Maybe he's distinguishing it from light-hearted.

E: Removing inflammatory language, and rephrasing.

While this is true, that means that you can't discriminate against someone for how they believe. If they act in an unacceptable manner - for whatever value of unacceptable is used for am environment- then putting a stop to that is not discrimination.

I'm not the author, but I can imagine one problem I would personally encounter, were this my employer, would be that there is no discrimination policy.

So now you've lied to the speaker. Or you have to write that discrimination policy yourself, pushing it through HR and C-level.

And as the author says, that's what they would prefer, if they had all the time and energy in the world - and the sentence "We don't do that here" serves to say "Please don't make me have to write down a rule that says we don't do that here.".

It's like seeing a sign "Please don't pee in the washbasins in the 3rd floor mens' room". There's a reason someone had to put down that rule in writing.

I’m sure it’s fun to fantasize about turning a conversation-stopper back onto a habitual wielder of such, but like with any other tool whose effectiveness is unconnected to the validity of your point (from universally condemned things like violence to fairly common and unpolarized ones like emotional-appeal PSAs), it seems to be vaguely hypocritical and self-defeating in the long run.

> our current path of Orwellian new-speak, where a new group of religious extremists deem ever more language as blasphemous and everyone joins the witch-burners for fear of being labelled a witch themselves.

I think you perhaps do not understand the text of 1984, never mind the subtext. In the novel, Newspeak is a part of intense and total historical revisionism in support of a coherent government agenda enforced by a powerful central authority, not a decentralized and gradual change in the language people use "enforced" only socially.

> Someone starts to lecture you about how referencing "winter" is non-inclusive to Southern Hemisphere readers? "We don't do that here".

This is a very interesting example. If you're a global company and you make your product, say, snow-themed globally during the Northern winter, it's simply inaccurate for Southern hemisphere users. I don't really see how that's a political correctness or language issue as much as a factual correctness issue.

> I think you perhaps do not understand the text of 1984, never mind the subtext. In the novel, Newspeak is a part of intense and total historical revisionism in support of a coherent government agenda enforced by a powerful central authority, not a decentralized and gradual change in the language people use "enforced" only socially.

Misunderstanding 1984 is extremely common. Especially amongst people who haven't read it.

1984 might not have had the subtlety of what is happening today, but isn't that true of most literary evils? It was written post-communist takeover of Russia. Post-Weimar Germany. It abstracted much of what actually happened and what was being attempted throughout the world as power struggles erupted under instability.

My argument here is that centralized, top-down, authoritarian, and violently enforced changes in language are a different and separate issue from decentralized, gradual, and unenforced (or, at worst, socially enforced) ones, since that's how language has usually changed.

> Post-Weimar Germany.

Very post. 1984 was written in 1948, notably after the fall of Nazi Germany. It was about the dangers of authoritarianism and how authoritarians can use their control of the academy and the media to increase their control on the rest of society, not the dangers of people asking their coworkers to change the name of a Git branch.

Right, it's the standard "racism is privilege+power" argument? 1984 is (this particular toolkit for controlling how people behave)+power? Am I understanding that correctly?

Because if I am, I'd say that you're building tools for your enemy to use. There's no reason the alt-right can't use the same tactics on LGBT teens as you'd want to use on alt-right nutjobs. There's no inherent reason why these tools can only be used on the guilty. That's why fairness in discourse is important (to me at least). Think of it as a social Geneva convention. Once you start thinking "the ends justify the means" and using saran gas you're giving the hated enemy permission to do the same.

Take a look at the playbook of the trump subreddit before they got banned as an example.. They learned most of those plays they used to dominate the front page and silence outsiders from leftists, often even using automated moderation tools that were initially created explicitly for leftist subreddits.

"We don't do that here", if it becomes a normalized part of the discourse, will be used by the hated enemy once they're powerful enough to do so effectively.

Enlightenment and free speech are the Geneva convention of discourse. I really don't think it's in anybody's best interest to erode those protection, but I suppose time will tell. Still, it feels like the left is building the social infrastructure for fascism that the right will inevitably figure out how to co-opt...

> 1984 is (this particular toolkit for controlling how people behave)+power? Am I understanding that correctly?

What I'm saying is that it's _not the same toolkit_ because it doesn't include state power or historical revisionism.

The problems LGBT people have (speaking about the US right now because that's where I am) are with the application of state and state-aligned media power against us, not the application of social power.

Social power is important, but it is much less likely to be deadly without state power at least tacitly supporting it.

Does "much less likely to be deadly" mean it's not a problem?

It means I'm much less motivated to solve it when there are deadly concerns to deal with, yes.

I think that it would be easier to support the idea of the far-ish left in power if you were concerned about it. I don't think that the left will abandon those tools when they do gain control of state media and state power.

Since I'm an anarchist, talking about what would happen with someone like me "in power" quite literally makes no sense. I'm interested in removing the power of the state, not turning it to my own ends.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/613948-hitler-has-grasped-t...

Orwell's thoughts on Hitler don't line up with your convenient framing of his book.

> This is a very interesting example. If you're a global company and you make your product, say, snow-themed globally during the Northern winter, it's simply inaccurate for Southern hemisphere users. I don't really see how that's a political correctness or language issue as much as a factual correctness issue.

I mean, it's also inaccurate for people in Florida, or when it's brown out etc.

> If you're a global company and you make your product, say, snow-themed globally during the Northern winter, it's simply inaccurate for Southern hemisphere users. I don't really see how that's a political correctness or language issue as much as a factual correctness issue.

If you're a global company then you should already be used to localizing products for various cultures and/or regions. Political correctness would be criticizing the North American branch for selling winter-themed products in the North American Winter months - and variations of that criticism do happen. People doing X in X country where X is normal get criticized because it is not normal in Y country despite taking place in X country where it is normal.

A small, loud, and extremely obnoxious group has mistaken speaking alongside minority groups to help advocate for them and make sure they are heard as speaking for minority groups even if it means speaking over them. They take the far extremes of everything and pretend that's the norm. It's been especially common for people without dyslexia to speak on behalf of those with dyslexia about a particular "puzzle" (Enter the Nth Word of the Nth Sentence of the Nth Paragraph to prove you've read this.) And as someone with dyslexia phrased so well: "I'm dyslexic. Not illiterate and unable to count. I don't think you realize that you come off as patronizing and condescending wanting to "dumb down" the puzzle for me. More likely I think it is because you failed to read and now feel stupid. Please don't speak for me or people like me in the future."

For some context - the "puzzle" occurs when you fail to follow directions on how to continue setup. If you read the instructions - it tells you to hold CTRL while clicking the "continue" button. If you fail to hold "CTRL" while you click it will give you a 2 minute timeout, remove the "continue" button, and provide you a message to please read all of the instructions in order to proceed or you will need to solve an obnoxious and time consuming puzzle. Failure to do so will result in the obnoxious puzzle where you must enter three randomly selected words from the setup instructions to make the "continue" button visible again. Failing to follow instructions will repeat the puzzle over-and-over until instructions are read and followed. There have been no complaints from any dyslexic users about this puzzle in the support Discord - but several complaints from people who do not have dyslexia speaking on behalf of those who do who "might" struggle with the puzzle that would never be encountered in the first place if people followed the setup instructions.

> A small, loud, and extremely obnoxious group has mistaken speaking alongside minority groups to help advocate for them and make sure they are heard as speaking for minority groups even if it means speaking over them.

I agree completely with this, but I really do not think that this is what most "anti-woke" people are criticizing, including GP.

Stalinism might had a top down approach to ideology, but what would get you in a gulag is the people around you reporting you to the kgb. This made oppression including linguistic also bottom-up

Newspeak is actually a very similar approach to what’s going on currently because it removes words that allows communicating ideologically problematic concepts. What’s going on with the entire blacklist/whitelist issues is based on the assumption that removing a word that describes a perceived injustice will remove that injustice from the world. It is an approach that is completely blind to the real meaning a word has taken, and tries to folk etymologically hack a different interpretation. This is why the real insulting words are never these that debated.

Both Newspeak and "rightspeak" think that language creates reality rather than the other way around

> Stalinism might had a top down approach to ideology, but what would get you in a gulag is the people around you reporting you to the kgb. This made oppression including linguistic also bottom-up

Snitching on your neighbors to the state secret police because they criticized the state is not a bottom-up movement. It is possible only when there is a coherent, centralized state agenda.

There are no woke police. There is no woke Stalin. The analogy is utterly inapplicable here.

> the real insulting words are never these that debated.

I'm curious about this, do you have some examples?

In a corporate environment you do have an investigation department that enforces such language. However, my point is that in a totalitarian environment people treated you as a pariah for non conforming, as they would not want to face a similar fate. This is a similarity to the taboo of advocating against such an ideology.

about the examples, if you would take extreme slurs against minorities, these are not used in a professional environment already so they are never these that are discussed

The words that are discussed are such that are established for a different connotation. that connotation is completely metaphorical and does not carry any real insult, yet some insist on literalizing those, or finding hidden meanings

The only people I hate more than woke people are anti-woke people.

I used to agree. Now I'm not so sure. :-)

Best policy is to hate everyone equally, right?

I think in my whole professional career I've experienced a colleague being annoyingly "woke" literally once – and even then, it was someone talking about a view that I thought was silly, rather than any kind of demand.

Conversely, the number of times I've sat through people losing their shit about some trivial perceived "wokery" is way higher. YMMV.

Way to misinterpret the post under a cloud of perceived oppression

> Or, we could continue down our current path of Orwellian new-speak, where a new group of religious extremists deem ever more language as blasphemous and everyone joins the witch-burners for fear of being labelled a witch themselves.

We don't do that here. If a belief or position or ideology is bad, you should be able to skewer the actual position rather than an exaggerated strawman of it.

Who is exaggerating?

Do you think the people OP was complaining about would say, "Yes, that's a fair summary of what we think"?

This is how you turn a useful discussion into a pointless shouting match - you caricature and exaggerate your outgroup's position. "You're a bunch of religious extremists!" "Well you just want to be biased and get away with it!" "Stop trying to be thought police!" "Stop being so racist!"

Do you think prohibitions on "whitelist" etc are a strawman?

I quoted the part I was referring to. I think it was a reasonable comment until OP had to throw on some kerosene at the end there - that's the thing we (I hope?) don't do here.

Oh, yeah.

While each individual bit is mostly true ("new-speak", a group that shares many religiosity traits deeming more and more parts of language bad and people joining the witch hunters out of fear of being labelled witches (I'm guilty of this)) the extra adjectives and hyperbole are harmful to discourse.

Have an upvote.

The crimes of religious extremists and witch burners are imposing religious law, imprisonment, and murder. And now you want to claim that someone asking you to change "whitelist" to "allowlist" is equivalent? Give me a break.

Either you agree that language matters and so we should be considerate about how our language affects our thinking, or you think it doesn't matter, in which case it shouldn't bother you when someone wants to update terms to be more accurate or inclusive.

dang routinely does so when moderating things here in HN. It's explicitly in the guidelines.

I'm not sure "we don't do that here" is any more neutral than any other way of telling someone to stop doing something. It has the added weight of "we," which implies a shared set of cultural values, which in turn may help get the message across. But it does nothing to defuse someone feeling defensive about their actions.

It makes clear, though still implicit, that was has been transgressed is a social norm specific to that context. It communicates that if you mean to oppose it, you're opposing the social cohesion of that context rather than the value of the thing itself.

It doesn't address the feelings of the person or help their defensiveness, no. It just makes it less likely they'll continue to push against it.

>It makes clear, though still implicit, that was has been transgressed is a social norm specific to that context.

But it really doesn't though. In the example of the off color, (e.g. racist), joke, saying "we don't do that here", doesn't specify what "we" don't do. We don't make jokes about that specific race, but others are ok? We don't make any race based jokes, but sex based jokes are OK? We don't make jokes specifically about that topic?

Its farm more effective to say something along the lines of "what you just said is inappropriate for our work environment, please keep others in mind when making jokes"

No you've got it but maybe don't see the value of it fully.

It's pointing out an instance of transgression, not articulating a general rule. There probably is or needs to be a rule as well, but this doesn't by itself tell you what it is or define its bounds.

You want to separate the definition of a rule and its enforcement. Even if the rule is just an informal social one among a friend group this is valuable. Think about the common trope of someone in a group making a joke about a car accident, potentially funny, but not knowing someone else in the group recently lost a parent in a car accident. You shut them up tactfully and then give them the context of the transgression later and potentially debate its boundaries then if that's valuable.

What you absolutely don't want is, on the spot, having a public group-wide conversation about jokes about car accidents. Are they ever ok? Ok when someone isn't grieving from one? How long a buffer do we give for grief? Those are probably useful questions for this group to tackle, but this is the wrong time for it. "We don't joke about that" is good enough for now.

Your point is fine when it comes to a group of friends, that you most likely self selected, but I have to disagree when it is in the workplace, (a mixture of different values and opinions).

It is important that everyone is aware of the rules, (boundaries), not just the person that may have violated them. I agree a public group wide discussion is not appropriate, but we still need to communicate what rule was violated for the sake of the entire group, not just the transgressor.

In all of my years of experience, I haven't met a bigot who didn't know they were being bigoted and why it was bigoted. I have met so very many who when confronted with their bigotry fail very badly at claiming that they don't know. Instead of sticking to their guns they decide to become the world's worst improv actor - it's very easy to spot. Their whole idea is to become as slippery as possible with ignorance and it shows.

I fully disagree with your sentiment. Yes there are outright bigoted jokes, but I believe many people have a different line in the sand of where appropriate and inappropriate are. There are many jokes that one workplace may deem 100% harmless and another might cause offense. My general assumption is that the person didn't mean to be bigoted, they just didn't understand where the line was.

This of course is not speaking of outright racism, but an example might be wearing a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo. Some workplaces would find this perfectly acceptable, whereas others might deem this racially insensitive and rude. It's not outright bigoted, (in my opinion), and not meant to cause harm, but the workplace culture is the what determines if it is acceptable or not.

It sounds like we're talking about different things and I don't disagree with what you described. In the example you used, where people are unaware of where the line is, I would fully expect that a person caught unaware, would, without trouble, be able to deduce the reason.

It's the hardline bigots who, again in my experience, cannot tolerate being confronted and feign ignorance in an attempt to misdirect. I'm pretty sure, if you found yourself face to face with one of these, you would be able to identify them easily.

I'm generally in agreement with you, but what I don't agree with is the author's assertion that it is a "magic" phrase that "ends the conversation". Realistically, it's very easy to imagine someone saying "why?" afterwards, leading to the exact kind of debate the author is trying to avoid. Anyway, I think it's a useful tool in the toolbelt, just not magic.

Yeah also agreed. I wasn't super impressed by the article, don't really find this to be a magic solution. It's solid when what you want is to avoid immediate pushback especially in public, and you don't mind generating some resentment in the other party for it. That describes plenty of situations but nowhere near all.

And just shrugging off and ignoring the person just makes them less threatening.

I personally find that people who thrive on loudly speaking their mind take a lack of opposition as confirmation of their beliefs.

On the other hand, it doesn't have the heavily implied threat of "that's against policy".

I don't like it. It sounds too close to "we've always done it this way" which is often a terrible answer to someone challenging the status quo.

"We don't do that here" is very easy to abuse.

That's exactly the point. It's a feel-good way to exercise power in a non-confrontational way (or else...)

Awesome article, but:

>It turns out talking about diversity, inclusion, and even just basic civil behavior can be controversial in technical spaces.

Modifying anyone's behavior can cause people to go on the defensive, it's just normal human behavior. It's also to good to remember that because you have a hammer, not everything should be a nail. These stop signs do lose their potency if they're overused.

This felt off to me as her goal wasn't to figure out how to work with the person, it was to win. Her strategy is to fully shut the person down using seniority and peer pressure. She claims anything softer will result in an argument.

It just feels wrong that the interpersonal tool she likes best gives no consideration to her coworker being a rational individual who can have a discussion, I don't know about her "interpersonal toolbox".

I like it. I think this is a good approach to take.

We don’t have to convince someone to change their worldviews. Its not that useful, especially in work context.

This goes on both ways, left or right.

Just say “we don’t do that here”, like “we don’t discuss politics here in the workplace”.

Changing to an employer who happened to be death on politics at work was such an incredible relief. Coming from a place where the break areas were full of vile politics on one side of the spectrum and the e-mail/slack channels full of vile politics on the opposite side, wiping both of those from my daily life significantly reduced my stress and friction working with others.

"When I’m able I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity and inclusion issues and see if I can change how they see the world a bit. ... And sometimes...the person involved doesn’t want to be educated."

This mindset seems to me the reason that there's a backlash against (us) progressive-minded people. Can you imagine a more condescending, insulting approach? "I'm advanced, you're a Neanderthal" doesn't win many hearts or minds.

“Neanderthal” seems to be a bit of an exaggeration there, don’t you think? That seems to be applying the worst possible lens to what the author stated, and frankly I don’t think the text supports it.

I suppose so. Sometimes we use colorful language to make a point. I think the text absolutely supports the idea that the author feels it is their place to educate others in what they (the author) have determined is the correct moral stance. Frankly, it makes my blood boil (metaphorically, of course), and I'm on the author's side, politically speaking.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate colorful language. Frankly, I wish we used more of it.

I do disagree with the point you were trying to make, though. The author described themselves as a “custodian of culture” in several instances where such an informal position might legitimately arise. If we take that at face value (it’s certainly hard to refute, in any case), then the technique they describe doesn’t seem to be as harsh to me as your colorful language implies.

I mean - the scenario wherein someone appoints themselves a culturally custodian when they really aren’t would be pretty different. And annoying. But that’s a lot to read into the article (in my opinion).

The author didn’t exactly say they were such a “custodian of culture.” They said one will find themselves there. I reread the article, and stand by my opinion. The whole article seems to me a rationalization for cutting off conversation because they (the author) don’t want to practice listening or empathy. They say in very simple words that their technique is “a conversation ender.”

We may have a difference in personality. I consider myself pretty thoughtful. And sometimes I have a difference of opinion with someone. If they choose to use a “technique” on me that is “a conversation ender,” I will not like it. By extension, I wouldn’t use that technique on someone else. Feels an awful lot like bullying to me.

What would make someone an “official” custodian of culture, rather than a self-appointed one? And did the author say that they had that imprimatur?

This person sounds like a huge pain to work with.

The article:

> It turns out talking about diversity, inclusion, and even just basic civil behavior can be controversial in technical spaces. I don’t think it should be, but I don’t get to make the rules.

The comments:

Controversy about talking about basic civil behaviour.

If you’re talking about civil behavior, you’re not working are you?

I honestly did not expect this topic to be this controversial.

As a reader, I am always disappointed when a HN submission gets torn apart disproportionally to its original scope (just look at every submission on the topic of dieting, psychedelics, microservices, TSLA).

On the other hand, it does make me happy to see that lots of people are unable to relate to the uncomfortable social situation the author describes. In a naive way, I hope that means the commenters haven't experienced it, rather than having experienced but not noticed it.

I think this is a very HN phrase and sentiment

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

"We're trying to avoid that here."

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by%3Adang%20%22that%20here%22&...

Of course - it’s a very common rhetorical tool.

The reason it’s getting so much debate here is because of the context in which the author employed it - shutting down someone who used homophobic language.

Just thinking out loud...

Initially it smells a bit like fascism to me, not sure why. Maybe some unspoken assumptions based on unquestioned privilege.

> If no one has told you yet, as your career in tech progresses you will eventually become a “custodian of culture.”

There it is.

Will I? progresses over time or progresses up the ladder? I'd have to assume the latter.

>... but I don’t get to make the rules.

IMHO enforcement is 10/10ths of the law. If you're enforcing it you're making it, you're taking personal responsibility for it. Being an authority is being as good as an author. Letting something die is the same as killing it. Omission is as good as a lie.

> a tool for ending and defusing situations when other approaches don’t work.

And that's the lede, buried. An argument of last resort. I would have started with that. That's why it smelled like fascism. It is, but it's got an on-by-default safety on it.

Ok, the specific culture that she wants to protect aside, I can see this being an effective way to give reminders. It's not going to work with people that are so new that they don't know what the cultural norms are. But, let's say there's an issue with the continuous deployment system:

"Ah, let's just build it locally and copy the binary to the production servers."

"No. We don't do that here."

<sigh> "Yeah. Ok, I'll see if I can debug this thing..."

The reasons are obvious, and we don't need to open a debate right now, despite the inconvenience at the moment.

"It is a conversation ender."

I have no doubt the author is correct, but I suspect it's frequently not because they have won or settled the issue at hand, but rather signaled that they are not willing to have a reasonable conversation about it. When you have someone using a slur, it's probably a mutual scenario, where that person isn't interested in being reasonable either. In many other cases, this technique is a symptom of disagreeableness and a sign of someone to generally avoid.

I get what you're saying, but if someone uses a slur it's actually totally reasonable not to want to have a debate with them about it.

There's an easy way to practice this skill and that's to learn how to say "no" without feeling like you have to explain yourself. Once you get the hang of it, saying no becomes a magic word that puts control of your life where it belongs: with you

France had to use legal means so women are not skin shy on the beach. Maybe they should have told them we don't do that here instead. The article reeks of elitist ignorance of reality outside exclusive bubbles like academia or tech, and that irks me

It's nice when you can pass laws.

Why, in any sane moral scheme, should women be forced to display skin on the beach? Why is "skin shy" a problem that the state should step in to solve? Let them be free to dress how they want on the beach. (But then, I guess France has a problem with letting them dress how they want other places, too...)

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point that your workplace is not an appropriate place to hold political debates. Just treat each other with respect and do your job.

> This is when I pull out “we don’t do that here.” It is a conversation ender. If you are the newcomer and someone who has been around a long time says “we don’t do that here”, it is hard to argue. This sentence doesn’t push my morality on anyone.

False.

That's my conversation ender that I like pulling out.

People seem to be mistaking the author's claim that this phrase is useful with a claim that it is moral. The phrase makes it clear that something is not open for debate - which saves everyone from wasting time and losing face by having an argument. That's useful. Even if I disagree with a workplace norm, even if it makes me mad, I would rather know that people are not going to be open to discussing it. If you disagree with the workplace norm, your options are now very clear: get over it, leave, or, depending on what the norm is and where you are, file a lawsuit.

Oof these comments.

Let's take the "woke" part of this whole argument out, and apply this to technical bikeshed debates over inconsequential minutia that go on for days, that you're probably very familiar with as a tech worker.

Would be nice to employ a Thought-terminating cliché like of some sort to nip these things in the bud, instead of "fostering a culture of questioning everything".

Well, the same applies to those wishing to engage in an inconsequential cultural debate in a workplace. I welcome this "We don't do that here" thing.

Or maybe y'all are right, this is literally 1984.

We avoid talking about morality and morals based behavior in a business context because it triggers feelings of righteousness, and the number one way to get non-constructive fights is to get humans to share conflicting feelings of righteousness.

When our morals are challenged, our lived experience is also challenged, because we've used those morals to make or justify many decisions and feelings.

It should be possible to share personal experiences or points of view. I don't know what needs to change in our behavior to let this happen.

A truly pluralistic, non-oppressive society is a necessary prerequisite.

If that is a prerequisite, how do we get there? Maybe it's a forlorn hope, but it's how I imagine the future of the human race.

I honestly wish I knew.

That's the best recipe to favorite tribalism. No thank you. New age patronizing is as old as humans. It's just that the current humans think it's new

Absolutely.

> I’d much rather spend the time to educate someone about diversity

On what aspect of diversity are you conducting this education? "We don't do that here" doesn't sound very diverse. This whole piece is about how to take down an outsider. Then, "I am here to educate you about inclusion." I wonder if the author actually read the piece and realized how it comes across.

It's fitting that this is a post about "magic" phrases. Uttering "diversity" means nothing when you are cultivating a monoculture. Just stop using that word. Say what you really mean. Is it really worth the effort to try to redefine terms like diversity and inclusion to mean their opposites?

You're going to have much more success with your team when you are honest. Don't hire someone from a different camp if this is your attitude.

I didn't read it as how to take down an outsider, because why would an outsider care how "they do things there"? If someone has a club where they only open doors with their left hand, it isn't particularly interesting to me as an outsider who isn't subject to the same rules.

It seems more about educating a newbie to the group, or someone in-group who broke some social rule, in a manner that accepts no rebuttals. The "we" in that sense seems inclusive of the person being chastised too.

If a parent says to their child "We don't throw balls in the house", they aren't saying their child isn't part of the family.

Having said that, I don't like this advice because it is condescending(which is why it was so easy to find an example of about a parent-child relationship).

Maybe stop defining cultures and simply define the rules?

Wow. The fact people are downvoting this just goes to show there are people in the world who get their rocks off on defining cultures--as if anyone has the authority to do that...

As a business owner, I have the authority to define what the culture of my company is. I get to print up manuals and make people sign them and everything.

Manuals are rulesets, you can evaluate if they’re being followed or not. How do you do that for culture?

What do you believe the difference is in evaluating whether someone is following the rule of "Be kind" and whether someone is contributing to a culture of kindness?

I think both are equally ambiguous, and I don't think a "Be kind" clause in a contract would hold up in court.

Are you under the impression that, every time someone is fired for violating a rule in an employee manual, lawyers get involved?

It’s not possible to define what your company’s culture “is”. Culture is an emergent thing, that arises in the innumerable interactions between and among people. At best, you can hope to influence it. But you can never control it.

The author is taking part in the current trend of implicitly (and without consent) grouping people into a “we”, or a “community”. It’s presumptuous, and it weakens the individual’s opportunities to think critically and grow their powers of reason. Hard pass on the nonsense offered by this author.

That's an example of very poor communication skills.

All points for the 'why' given by the author are fair enough

But if you can't explain, in very simple terms and briefly why "we don't do X here", you probably have nothing to stand on yourself to make such a statement in the first place.

'One day someone came to visit and used the word “gay” as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s.'

People in certain spaces need to understand that, for most people, this is just as prevalent today as it has ever been. And I don't mean to justify this kind of language, but it is my experience that progressivism has become insular.

I joined a gaming group recently for "adults," and I was blown away by the amount of casual homophobia expressed in this group. When I brought this to the attention of the moderators, they explained that they didn't feel comfortable addressing the issue because of the backlash that they might receive.

We need to reassess what we believe about American culture, what we aspire to, and what the reality is. The Internet is not real life - it gives an outsized voice to vocal minorities, for better or worse.

Overall, I think I like this approach quite a bit, and the rational behind it.

Though I have no doubt it will run afoul of people who believe there's some inherent virtue in running around acting like Mindy from Animaniacs.

He's just replacing "don't stand so close to that person" and "I found your joke offensive" with a weird personal-responsibility-avoiding phrasing.

Do we do that here?

Honestly? Flag and move on. It’s really not worth getting controversial over something like this. It’s clearly a cultural/power flex bereft of any technical curiosity and it serves the HN crowd absolutely no use nor leads to any enlightenment to further discuss it - let alone try to “educate” (pardon the term) the author as to why their musing on calcification of thought and behaviour is unhealthy.

Whenever someone tries to pull a little clever power trip and politely silence you or tell you how you should behave and that your language is inappropriate, you owe it to yourself to tell them to fuck off (right after you call their behaviour “gay”, of course.)

But you just told people how to behave...

Using "that doesn't work for me" as a euphemism for "no" sounds crazy to me.

I'm personally glad to hear that!

I have also personally met people who,

- when I tell them "You're sort of right, but I have to disagree", hear "I agree with you".

- when I tell them "No, that's wrong", hear "I'm challenging your ego to prove that you're right!"

It takes a lot lot lot of nuance to discover how to communicate effectively.

Even though I disagree with the article, a variation of "not here," is appropriate in a bunch of different contexts. The way the article presents it is just as a thought terminating cliche (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A..., which itself is an oddly circular reference), but there are a bunch of legitimate ways to recognize what are essentially personal epistemic boundaries.

However, someone collecting catchphrases to re-use as cliches in discourse is only signalling they are beneath the bar for engagement. Cliches are the torches and pitchforks of cognitive tools. "Please not here," I would evaluate and accept. "We don't do that here," just begs one of dozens of responses that would humiliate them and reinforce their sense of aggreivement.

What I think triggers people is the passive appeal to authority in the use of "we" that doesn't exist. If someone addresses me from the royal "we," without establishing some kind of bona fides, it's just a threat that earns an insult.

The funny things about a lot of the words that are now policed is that those words themselves were informal shorthand or euphemisms for much more serious accusations. As if to say, "I'm not going to issue an ultimatum to your integrity, but your behaviour is a bit <euphemism>." These weren't challenges, they were collegial and polite. The sentiment behind many of the words that are now policed can be adequately (if less satisfyingly) captured in terms like fatuous, pretentious, unctuous, perfidious, pandering, ingratiating, pusilanimous, inferior, morbid, infra dig, perverse, lurid, oily, prefect, errand runner, unmasculine, unfeminine, impetuous, disgusting, dishonest, misleading, back biting, patronizing, matronizing, histrionic, low, cunning, brutish, proletarian, palooka, bumpkin, predator, seducer, sleaze, lazy, fraudulent, sadistic, animus, avarice, petty, small, spiteful, vengeful, begrudged, aggreived, etc.

These are all important concepts and values, and I can see why someone invested in behaving this way would like to remove our words for them, but the concepts and sentiments are there whether we use a shorthand for them or not. Our species uses words as an alternative to violence, and if we want to dissolve language we can, but the outcome seems foreseeable.

I talk to people all the time who repeat phrases they think are powerful, and they're not trying to be enlightening, they're invoking an imagined power. They want to be humiliated because it reinforces their sense of self righteousness, and the more absurdly they behave, the more of a burden they place on others not to give them the humiliation reinforcement they are seeking. Personally, I've shrugged. I deal with individuals, and not groups, symbols, or identities. The rest is small.

"It is a conversation ender."

It certainly is.

There is a reason a new person was hired. For example, to start doing something "they don't do here".

People like this are why I'm working remotely from a rural area and never want to set foot in an office again.

Excellent article. This is the professional version of "OK Boomer" and we really need this to be the standard response to behaviour that needs to be immediately stopped and not debated, along with an implied threat that it will be escalated if continued.

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