Discussing politics at work: Don't, just don't
betterthanrandom.substack.com
betterthanrandom.substack.com
The experience left me deeply cynical and firmly against bringing politics into the workplace.
It also made me view the ‘everything is political’ mantra with suspicion, because it reminds me of the saying: argue with a fool, and he’ll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience. People who see everything through a political lens want to make everything political, because that’s how they gain power.
Right- power over others seems to be the primary motivation for bringing up modern politics. I think it would probably be fine to have a classical political debate absent power dynamics at work - say discussing the relative merits of increased government spending vs tax reduction. But that's not the politics people mean now, it's all in-group signaling and getting people to submit.
The people who say "everything is political" always seems to mean "you have to agree with my politics, and you aren't allowed to ignore it". Such people can get lost; I'll ignore politics to the degree I choose, and I'll ignore you.
Now, they do have something of a point, namely that politics does affect (almost) everything. If you remain uninvolved in politics, politics will still be done to you. That is true. I'd be more inclined to listen to them on that point, though, if I didn't get this vibe that they were really saying "everything is political, so you must join the battle on my side of it."
Alice: something political
Bob: "You're obsessed with politics. Just don't talk about politics. Stop talking about politics."
Alice: "Everything is politics. It's impossible not to talk about politics because everything is politics."
Bob: what you said
Nope. When I say it I just mean, everything's political. There is no part of human life that is untouched by some kind of politics.
I don't give a shit whether you agree with me or not. I just don't think we can talk about politics if you don't see that politics isn't a narrow profession that people who don't have proper jobs do for a living; it's one of the great flows of human social energy.
(Politics and sport: two interlocking alternatives to violence and war. 2026 is going to be a very interesting year because of this)
But I have no idea whether they lean left or right, blue or red - as an organization, or the owners of an individual restaurant, or any individual employee. Nor do I care. I just really like their fries.
That's not political at all. And I claim that much of life is similarly not political.
Now, you could say that the owner has some political stance, and you could find out, and use that to decide whether you want to eat there or not. You could, but that's you making political something that wasn't inherently political on its own.
Or you could say that the roads I drove there on are the result of political choices. That's also true, but neither Five Guys nor I care. If the city were built differently, I could take a tram there, and they'd feed me just the same.
Of course it's political -- affected by and affecting organisation, governance, rules etc.
You have just temporarily re-defined "political" to mean "the differences between or positions of political parties".
It is a particularly US thing that nothing that is political escapes being reduced to party politics; school boards increasingly divide up red and blue, even.
But politics is vastly bigger than political parties. Most political issues are independent of party politics until the parties choose their stances on those issues, which they usually do by selecting the position that alienates the least of their base. But the politics exists regardless of the alignment.
Politics is how entities with equal power and individual objectives resolve disputes, ultimately. Everything is political.
As Bismarck said, "politics is the art of the possible".
I wouldn't be so sure that Five Guys don't care about transport policy; I don't know either way. But I would say with certainty that if they do, they donate to whoever says they will fix them in a way that align with their own needs. That too is politics, even if they don't pick a colour.
People who say this think politics means which party you vote for, but that's not correct. It reminds me of arguing with an art teacher that using 3D modeling software wasn't art because I thought art meant drawing.
I have zero regrets.
I have also seen how engaging in politics at work has (sometimes significantly) negatively impacted others over the same period of time — and how people have alienated themselves from professional contacts often without even realizing it.
There is no upside. Save your visible activism for outside of work.
He was brilliant.
We were collaborating w/ another start-up on a project and he identified a subtle, but "embarrassing" error that the other company had made in our collaboration (the rest of my team missed it--including me).
A few years after I had left the company, the CEO of our collaborating company called me up and said, "I'm trying to hire <brilliant guy> away from your old company. Anything else I should know about him?"
I said, "Do you know how you're not supposed to talk religion or politics at work? Well, <brilliant guy> will do both--He won't be obnoxious, but he won't hesitate to express his opinion and argue. If you can deal with that, he's worth his weight in gold."
They hired him.
He says you shouldn't engage in diversity hires, but he himself has been going around hiring ex-DOGE people to join Coinbase, an explicitly political move:
> In a May 13 X post, Armstrong said members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, spearheaded by Elon Musk, though not set up as an actual department, would be welcome to implement cost-cutting changes at Coinbase after leaving the US government.
> Armstrong offered to set up an accelerated onboarding process with the exchange, responding to an interview in which at least one DOGE staffer felt ostracized from Harvard University, where he had been enrolled.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/brian-armstrong-coinbase-poli...
This is Coinbase UK advertising and it is aligned with the UK right - saying the system is failing:
https://x.com/coinbase/status/1950843893240496564
He is doing that to curry favor with the US and UK right. No doubt.
He is an explicitly political person who wants his employees to not be. This is just two separate systems of rules depending on whether he agrees with you or not.
If people stopped talking about politics in Coinbase offices towards the end of 2020, perhaps it was to stop staff pushing back on their very deliberate movement towards self-serving politics.
> This is Coinbase UK advertising and it is aligned with the UK right - saying the system is failing
That advert blew me away when I saw it on streaming TV. It is simultaneously quite obviously a work of art and also staggeringly reprehensible; it should be regulated as a Party Political Broadcast because it is a political statement clearly aimed to benefit Reform, for one thing.
It is also being used to persuade the very people who have not got even the base of their investment risk pyramid sorted out to just abandon all of it and work on the high risk stuff that should be at the top, which really should be attracting the attention of the ASA, who have banned adverts for less. Appalling and actually quite worrying.
There are numerous conversations that led to me losing respect for people because they see fascism as a completely valid step forward. I now make a conscious choice to support and lead folks that share similar political leanings because if I don't respect your sincere beliefs, I cannot support you in proliferating those beliefs in society.
Generally speaking you want a harmonious office.
But I would caution people to understand the times in which they live. If you are in the USA and you are avoiding discussing politics with the most consequential people you know outside of your own family, then you are playing into the very fundamental aim of the administration, which is that they should be able to do what they want without criticism.
Fascism is predicated on the silence of people who could and should speak out. And the US government is either fascist already or soon will be; all the things they are doing are not for show.
And using Coinbase as an example of why you shouldn't talk about politics is pretty hilarious.
My coworkers are nowhere near the most consequential people I know outside of my own family.
Today, I think, may be one of those days, for a lot of people; a line is being drawn and people will be on either side of it.
Is it? It's not at all unusual in my experience.
> when the chips are down, if you do not share your morals and ethics with those around you, you all fail.
Don't get me wrong, I agree. However, I also think that venue is important. If the workplace is a place where political or religious wars are fought, then the workplace is effectively destroyed and there's zero chance that any real progress (politically or work-wise) will happen.
We can hash these things out elsewhere, we don't have to bring this stuff into a place where it's counterproductive for everybody.
> a line is being drawn and people will be on either side of it.
That's fine -- but if your workplace is on the "right side" of that line, there's little to argue about and if it's on the "wrong side", then why are you even working there?
On the other hand, I can't believe the author thinks our political unrest has peaked in the 2010s. I wonder what country they live in; it can't be the US. Maybe they don't read the news. Someone at their workplace should inform them.
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You live in a country called Politistan, you own a tech startup in which 75% of engineers are foreigners on a PL-VISA. A new party comes into power, and draft a proposal do abolish said visa.
Do you expect your employees - that could be at risk of not being able to renew their visas - to not discuss politics at work?
—-
I know my example is flawed, I don’t have a good proposal either, but hard “Don’t, just don’t” isn’t enough for extreme cases.
I don’t remember thinking more highly of a coworker because of their politics. I can think of many people who lost my respect because they felt they had to speak out.
The best, most welcoming and inclusive work environment is apolitical.
Actively preventing people from sharing their ideas or being exposed to different points of view is one of the ways that despots stay in power. Don't be part of the problem. The first amendment was the first one for a reason.
People don't realize how disconnected they are from certain world topics and you're not an exception.
The workplace is not supposed to be an unwilling audience for your reeducation campaigns.
That's the point, really, discussing politics at work is like discussing religion at work.
Then leave the less important thing if you want to do the more important thing.
After all, nothing is stopping you from doing the politics outside of work.
WTF?
> that any and all discussion on things you don't already agree upon is a "reeducation campaign"?
It literally is. Why else would you want to proselytise a certain PoV to someone who doesn't share that view unless you wanted them to change their view?
When JWs[1] come to your door, from their PoV, they are "just disucssing things". From your PoV they are annoying you.
You need to make a convincing argument why you attempting to "just discuss things" is different to a JW attempting to "just discuss things".
From where the rest of us are, we see no difference. Show us that difference.
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[1] Jehova's Witnesses
It seems like we're in agreement then. Why comment if you agree?
[1] Except when talking about politics that are directly affecting work and are raising legitimate work issues that have to be handled.