[HN Gopher] To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are...
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To do politics or not do politics? Tech startups are divided
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 61 points
Date : 2020-11-22 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| kelp wrote:
| I another problem is this can also lead to not being involved in
| the local community.
|
| In San Francisco, the collective "tech industry" has long been
| demonized for various things. IMO, some fair, some not. "Google
| Buses" taking space at MUNI stops was one for quite a while.
| Contributing to increasing housing costs is a long time favorite.
|
| But a lot of these come from a culture where you build your
| company on top of the infrastructure provided by the local
| community and government. Then build a very successful business
| on top of that, but have minimal engagement with the local
| government and community. So you create a perception that you're
| just taking, and not actually part of the local community.
|
| It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on this
| attitude.
|
| In contrast, Salesforce has the largest building in San Francisco
| named after them, and a huge urban park. I don't see them getting
| dragged into the anti-tech sentiment. Because I think they've
| effectively engaged with the local community and given back a
| lot.
|
| They have a culture of volunteer work, strongly encouraging
| employees to take time off to volunteer for local causes. They
| also donate to many local causes. Marc Benioff is certainly
| involved in politics, and advocating for specific ideas and
| policies. But because him and his company engage in various ways,
| and make substantial philanthropic contributions, they are
| usually respected for it.
| [deleted]
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I doubt that anti-tech people really discern different
| companies. Most likely Salesforce is not consumer oriented and
| therefore not really a name that springs to mind when it comes
| to tech.
| skybrian wrote:
| I don't see how Salesforce Park avoids getting demonized. It's
| a nice park, but it's literally above it all, set up in a way
| so that homeless people can't really do much.
|
| In San Francisco, aren't people going to object to this,
| eventually? Symbolism seems to be what people care about, and
| the symbolism of being above it all seems unavoidable.
| sershe wrote:
| If you go to a random park in Seattle, you'll see there are
| two types of parks - the ones where homeless people don't do
| much (yet?), and the ones where nobody else can do anything
| whatsoever. So I think that is a plus... saying "your park
| sucks because people cannot camp and do drugs in it" also
| sounds like lunacy to most people, so it's extra nice because
| you cannot make it sound like it's a bad thing, like some
| other exclusion policies that can be twisted and made into a
| strawman.
| 9HZZRfNlpR wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what are the mechanisms they use in
| Seattle or SF to keep that kind of activity at bay?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| To be frank from a North Eastern admittedly suburban
| perspective the "local community" manages to seem to be in the
| wrong here and sound very entitled. Reaching out for
| philanthropy is well and good and a positive thing, but the
| hostility and demands runs afoul of "minding your own business"
| essentially. It is one thing if they were say polluting or
| being an attractor of crime would be fair enough but
| complaining about high paying jobs seems downright spoiled and
| unpleasable. Essentially if the local government can't handle
| the issues with an increased tax flood the problem isn't the
| goose that lays the golden eggs.
| carapace wrote:
| I grew up in SF, _and_ I 'm a tech weanie, and I gotta say: We
| have been terrible neighbors. We have been like the guy that
| bought a condo in North Beach and then sued the church for
| ringing their bells, but 10,000x worse. We've kind of ruined
| the city.
|
| As for Marc Benioff, he's the only billionaire who seems to
| actually, visibly give a shit. He's _Jimmy James_. (Even if
| that fwcking tower looks alternately like a phallus or a giant
| middle finger. Whatever, dude 's cool.)
| jseliger wrote:
| SF politicians and the voters who keep them in office have
| "ruined" SF in the sense of driving up housing costs by
| restricting supply, and failing to build adequate
| transportation infrastructure expeditiously:
| https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget
| or https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/, to cite two
| examples.
|
| Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise
| to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's
| culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want
| that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state
| level.
|
| Let's get the diagnosis right first.
| DerekL wrote:
| Of course, it's not just San Francisco, it's practically
| all cities in the Bay Area that strictly limit housing
| development but allow office construction.
| carapace wrote:
| Have you read this, and, if so, what do you think of it?
|
| https://experimental-
| geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...
|
| > Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good
| old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary
| construction rates were never achieved even when planning
| and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are
| now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy
| is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things
| from getting worse.
|
| > In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average
| income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of
| employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which
| together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-
| adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if
| price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens
| should try to increase the housing supply by an average of
| 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate
| since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700
| units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead,
| prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably.
| creato wrote:
| I think it would only take a few years (very few, as in
| low single digits) of 1.5% growth in housing supply to
| invalidate the extrapolations being used here.
| carapace wrote:
| As it stands now there's not enough construction
| capacity. Santa Rosa burns in a wildfire and you can't
| get a contractor to stucco a wall in SF that summer, eh?
|
| However, we _could_ do it: "Prefab housing complex for
| UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018
| https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-
| compl...
|
| > This new 22-unit project from local developer Patrick
| Kennedy (Panoramic Interests) is the first in the nation
| to be constructed of prefabricated all-steel modular
| units made in China.
|
| An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of
| trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more
| expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong."
|
| So yeah, if we really had the political will we could
| build arcologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
| Kalium wrote:
| Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and
| do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, except
| to criticize them as being insufficiently charitable when it
| happens to be noticed. I think Benioff gets a pass not
| because he visibly cares, but because he's got that local boy
| made good story.
|
| Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner
| Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes
| your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's
| fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or
| the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices,
| blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember
| how many millions.
|
| I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing
| to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far
| as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I
| can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate
| myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.
|
| And why _should_ I care about a community that refuses to
| grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my
| misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity
| and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?
| carapace wrote:
| > Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures
| and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares,
| ...
|
| ...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too
| little too late.
|
| It was _insane_ for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle
| of SF 's skid row.
|
| Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of
| downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and
| wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-
| fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right
| or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never
| about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're
| never going to get credit for saving the world when they
| are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh?
|
| > Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the
| inner Bay) is next to impossible.
|
| Ask Rainbow Grocery. https://rainbow.coop/ No one blames
| them for anything.
|
| > Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how
| unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like
| the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or
| SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after
| he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.
|
| It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't
| "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people
| are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or
| not.)
|
| (And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased
| virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on
| it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about
| him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth
| company are causing, because it makes me look like an
| ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.)
|
| > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and
| contributing to, a community that seems to not want me.
| There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain
| welcome.
|
| Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
|
| Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places
| in the whole of this planet of Earth.
|
| > The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long
| as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of
| different.
|
| Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are
| hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love,
| not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay
| culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love
| yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that
| this city has been so many things to so many people in it's
| brief and drama-filled life.)
|
| > And why should I care about a community that refuses to
| grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my
| misery?
|
| Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or
| to hate yourself.
|
| I don't know you or what you've personally experienced
| here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why
| most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001
| you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was
| already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?)
|
| A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us
| who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or
| yes, outright hostile.
|
| > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and
| contributing to, a community that seems to not want me.
| There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain
| welcome.
|
| So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or
| disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just
| moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve
| problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does
| the trick.
|
| Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF
| crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the
| city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella
| recent. Less than a generation.
|
| The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to
| California, and all the crazy people in California move to
| SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)"
|
| - - - -
|
| Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C.
|
| https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-
| homeless...
| Kalium wrote:
| > It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the
| middle of SF's skid row.
|
| I remember SF city government going out of their way to
| try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter
| made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the
| city government.
|
| > Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
|
| Yes.
|
| The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your
| stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a
| QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness,
| compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them
| actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.
|
| > Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are
| hanging out with the WRONG SFians
|
| I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just meet
| the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity as
| bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize SF's
| xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's
| supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't
| conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for
| treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to
| understand as they refuse to return the favor.
|
| I cut them out of my life as quickly as I can, because I
| have very little tolerance for that kind of hypocritical
| xenophobia.
|
| The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind
| of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other
| hand...
|
| ----
|
| But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?
| carapace wrote:
| > I remember SF city government going out of their way to
| try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter
| made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the
| city government.
|
| Sure but SF gov and SF culture aren't co-extensive. A lot
| of us were not happy with what City Hall did to make that
| deal go through.
|
| Also, it's not a case of wily city officials tricking
| Twitter is it?
|
| >> Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
|
| > Yes.
|
| > The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your
| stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a
| QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness,
| compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them
| actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.
|
| Well,
|
| > "fuck you"
|
| Let's discount that one right off, eh?
|
| > "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity,
| ...
|
| That is actually good advice, or at least similar to what
| Jesus said. But a bit extreme if you're not feeling it.
|
| > "...give your job to a QTPOC, and leave"
|
| Hmm, well that's back in the "discount right off" bin,
| eh?
|
| > None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a
| decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the
| possibility of welcome.
|
| Well then, who the hell are these folks? It may be that
| you're just talking to loud mouths and freaks.
|
| > I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just
| meet the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity
| as bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize
| SF's xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's
| supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't
| conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for
| treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to
| understand as they refuse to return the favor.
|
| Yeah, to me it sounds like you've gotten an earful from
| some of the louder and less hip freaks. Ignore them,
| they're loud and ineffectual.
|
| I once had a Marxist roommate who tripped a circuit-
| breaker by trying to move an external electric socket to
| let a bookshelf be set flush with the wall. She went at a
| live circuit with a screwdriver! This person was over
| fifty yet didn't know enough about home electrical wiring
| not to stick a screwdriver in a live socket, but somehow
| felt that she knew how a city or country should be
| governed!?
|
| So yeah, pick your friends wisely, there are a lot of
| losers here (because this is the town you move to if you
| can't make it in Cleveland or wherever.)
|
| Remember that Burning Man started here as a fire-on-the-
| beach birthday celebration, eh?
|
| > The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind
| of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other
| hand...
|
| So you are sharing and understanding the problem?
|
| ----
|
| > But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?
|
| It's too late: you're already one of us. Welcome.
| bsder wrote:
| > Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming
| places in the whole of this planet of Earth.
|
| JWZ's struggles with San Francisco about the DNA Lounge
| were quite legendary and that was prior to 2001.
|
| SF was welcoming as long as you were buying shitty
| property in a shitty area and helping to gentrify it.
| Anything else and they fought you tooth and nail.
|
| The difference now is that all the shitty property is
| gone.
| carapace wrote:
| He took it over in 1999, so that's not much prior.
|
| You're conflating SF Gov with SF culture.
|
| Mayor London Breed didn't support Prop C, eh?
| Kalium wrote:
| > Mayor London Breed didn't support Prop C, eh?
|
| I guess Benioff represents SF culture, while Breed
| doesn't?
|
| It's perhaps worth remembering that Benioff - who also
| bought his name on a hospital - got a pass well before
| Prop C came along.
| carapace wrote:
| > I guess Benioff represents SF culture, while Breed
| doesn't?
|
| In re: Prop C, _yes_.
|
| > It's perhaps worth remembering that Benioff - who also
| bought his name on a hospital -
|
| Really? Which one?
|
| Huh, so he did: https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/
|
| Okay, I hate him now. (Just kidding. I will admit that I
| am not upset by this in the same way that Zuckerberg's
| thing makes me feel. FWIW, I'll examine that personally
| on my own time.)
|
| > got a pass well before Prop C came along.
|
| You mean he didn't suddenly become cool _circa_ Prop C?
|
| ;-P
|
| Well met Kalium.
| michaelt wrote:
| I find it slightly ironic that in one post you're
| complaining that when it comes to supporting the
| community "nobody cares, except to criticize", then a
| post or two later a dude's gifted a load of money to a
| children's hospital and you describe that as "buying his
| name on a hospital"
| Kalium wrote:
| I was deliberating mirroring my interlocutor's phrasing
| to make a point. One was resented, and used as a point
| against the person. The other passed unremarked.
|
| As a rhetorical flourish, it did it was intended to do
| and exposed an apparent double standard.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > So go somewhere else?
|
| A better solution is to simply stop caring about the
| opinions of the entrenched SF special interest groups and
| simply go on with one's life, and ignore the attacks that
| are never going to go away.
|
| Those entrenched groups are getting less powerful by the
| day, anyway. Their opinions can't be change, and they
| aren't going to matter much soon.
|
| And the other, newer, techie focused groups are getting
| more influence.
|
| There isn't much point in "negotiating" with the
| entrenched groups when they are never going to be
| convinced, and you can just usurp them instead.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the
| inner Bay) is next to impossible._
|
| I used to live in an area where a nuclear power plant was
| being built.
|
| For them, it basically meant the corporation handing out
| $$$$ - doubtless budgeted for in advance - on things like
| building swimming pools in public schools, sponsoring local
| sports teams, and so on.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Benioff is mensch
| newfriend wrote:
| Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex.
|
| Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People
| who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who
| steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors.
| People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the
| ground are terrible neighbors.
|
| Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young,
| educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask
| for a better group to populate a city.
| carapace wrote:
| > Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex.
|
| The what now?
|
| > Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors.
|
| Individually no, collectively yes.
|
| > People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors.
|
| I would agree with that if it was possible to shit in a
| bathroom downtown, it's hella hard to shit downtown without
| $$$ in your pocket.
|
| > People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible
| neighbors.
|
| Yes.
|
| > People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the
| ground are terrible neighbors.
|
| Drug addicts are a complex problem. I agree that we
| shouldn't have the open rampant drug abuse going on that we
| see downtown. I've seen guys shooting up in the metro
| staircase. It's bad. It's not "terrible neighbors" who just
| happen to want to smoke crack in the streets though, and
| it's not isolated from the economic shifts that have rocked
| the city since ~2001-ish.
|
| > Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city.
| Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could
| hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.
|
| Is that the tech guilt/savior complex again?
|
| The problem is they aren't populating an empty shell!
|
| They come as a displacing wave of invaders, made all the
| more insufferable because they're convinced that they're
| God's gift to the world at a subconscious level.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > They come as a displacing wave of invaders
|
| This has been happening continuously since San Francisco
| was first settled by Spanish explorers and soldiers in
| 1776, displacing the Ohlone peoples who lived there.
| There are SF history articles in the library that go into
| great detail about the shift in neighborhood demographics
| since the initial Gold Rush.
|
| When I first perused the source material back in the
| 1990s, I learned about the hidden history of San
| Francisco. Of particular note, was the Irish and Polish
| presence in the Mission in the early to mid-twentieth
| century, and the Scandinavian wave to Upper Market around
| the same time.
|
| These waves of ethnic migration to the city influenced
| its development, brought people with new skills and
| culture, and greatly contributed to the multicolored
| tapestry of San Francisco. Many of these groups had
| organized meeting places and interest groups which
| directly benefited their districts, and they performed
| charitable work to improve the city in which they lived.
| carapace wrote:
| Oh yes, in the grand sweep of things, this is all
| business as usual, eh?
|
| Points for knowing the history.
|
| FWIW, the Ohlone people _still_ live here.
| 9HZZRfNlpR wrote:
| Reading posts like these make me wonder as an European
| what is the difference between this and the rural maga
| types? Both complaining about invaders taking their jobs,
| homes, replacing culture, bringing misery.
| newfriend wrote:
| One is complaining about rich people moving in and
| increasing property values.
|
| And the other is complaining about illegal aliens
| breaking the law by being here illegally, while either
| committing fraud by using someone's SSN or avoiding
| paying tax entirely, often unable to speak English,
| increasing competition for unskilled labor (construction,
| landscaping, cooks, dishwashers, etc.), putting downward
| pressure on wages of the working class.
|
| One is lamenting supply and demand, and the is other
| upset about blatant illegality that has gone on for
| decades.
| sershe wrote:
| What really boggles my mind (I 100% agree with GP and
| left SF in part because of the actual bad neighbors) is
| that activists in SF harp on trump and call tech
| "invaders" or not welcome or whatever and don't see the
| irony.
|
| The easiest way to shut up an SF-based activist or NIMBY
| ranting against tech invasion is to say smth like "it
| sounds like you are saying you want to keep them out,
| perhaps build that wall?" :D
| carapace wrote:
| It's an imperfect metaphor. In SF it would be like the
| "invaders" are bringing the wealth with them but not
| sharing it; while in the larger context the "invaders"
| are coming in from an effectively failed state in order
| to take advantage of the wealth in the "invaded" state.
|
| But yeah, in general, by the time you're a capital-A
| "Activist" you're not well able to see your own foibles
| and ironies. The mote in your neighbor's eye occludes the
| plank in your own, eh?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Really I have come to the conclusion that "localism" is
| essentially the socially acceptable outlet for left
| leaning xenophobic personalities. Racism, sexism, and
| homophobia are a path to be a pariah but outsiders to
| "the local community" are fair game as an outgroup and a
| place their anxieties and anger on an other outgroup.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If that were true, where do the terrible neighbours come
| from? Perhaps tech corporates may have something to do with
| the reasons these people are trying to survive on the
| street?
|
| I wouldn't blame FAANG specifically, because of course the
| problem is more complex than that. But there's a certain
| complacency involved in being young, educated, and in-
| demand - which can be knocked out of you far more easily
| than you might think when the next bust happens and
| suddenly _you_ are the one on the street being told you 're
| a bad neighbour.
|
| This is not hyperbole. It has happened in every dot com
| recession, and it will happen to people you know - possibly
| even to you - in the next one.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on
| this attitude._
|
| It isn't just that attitude that's the problem, it's the
| insistence by Coinbase that they're apolitical, yet the company
| makes significant political contributions themselves[1].
|
| [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-
| contributions/?...
| bobbygoodlatte wrote:
| Looking through these entries, I believe these are
| contributions made _using_ Coinbase, not by Coinbase. I.e:
| political donations processed using cryptocurrency, not ones
| made by the company or its employees.
|
| Just speculating here based on the repeated small dollar
| amounts.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I doubt it. There are a lot of $5k+ donations, and a $21k
| donation. The dozens of $2k and $5k donations are mostly to
| Brian Forde's campaign, famous for his Bitcoin
| connections[1]. Upon looking at the smallest donations, the
| majority go to Brian Forde, too.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/bitc
| oin-s...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Others said opting out of politics was itself a political
| statement."
|
| Kind of like saying atheism is a religion.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Atheism isn't a religion, but it is a position on religion.
|
| An atheist may not believe in god, but all of them have a
| position on whether religion belongs in a science class, for
| instance.
|
| You can opt out and say "I don't care if biology is taught
| using creationism or evolution", but opting out means you are
| ok with creationism being taught.
|
| And if you're ok with that, fine (I mean, you're wrong, but
| you're entitled to an opinion). But you can't pretend you
| haven't taken a position on it.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Having an attitude like Coinbase is the way to go, in my opinion.
| That is to say, disinterest in politics while allowing employees
| to do whatever they want in their own time.
|
| As for politics entering aspects of the company, such as right vs
| left wing healthcare plans, wearing or not wearing masks, etc,
| the decision should be towards the most scientific approach that
| helps the most number of employees.
|
| For less scientific things, such as BLM or allowing/disallowing
| guns, where it's not related to any clear scientific purpose but
| to people's opinions, there should be no stance that the company
| should take, but it can encourage employees to support causes in
| their own time.
| theplague42 wrote:
| Both of your "scientific" issues are fantastic examples of
| science having been politicized. Or at least trust in or
| acceptance of science.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Yeah I know they've been politicized but people not believing
| in science is not my problem. If they don't want to wear
| masks that is their problem. If I ran a company I wouldn't
| care that masks for example are politicized, I'd just mandate
| that all employees wear them.
| christophilus wrote:
| My guess is that even your below average computer scientist
| will have a reasonable respect for science. So, assuming that
| we're talking about tech companies here, I think this is
| decent approach to policy.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Is there a limit to the politicization of scientists past
| which we should cease to respect it?
|
| How about the Leninists who had armies of scientists and
| professors willing to tell us that communism was
| "scientific"? Does that deserve our respect?
|
| I respect apolitical scientists; I was one. My respect is
| theirs to lose.
| tuna-piano wrote:
| This is a somewhat tough problem for companies at this point in
| time. To executives focused on customers, sales, product - this
| is an even more interesting issue because it has really nothing
| to do directly with the company itself.
|
| Most customer segmentation problems can be solved with an
| optional feature or a new product line - make both chunky
| marinara sauce and a smooth variety.
|
| Most employee problems can be solved similarly - optional
| programs, different roles for different folks, etc.
|
| But this problem is unique because a certain segment of the
| employee+customer base is asking the complete company to take
| their side in certain matters. Of course the company taking that
| stand alienates the other segment of the population.
|
| However, rationally, it becomes much easier to deal with this
| than what Coinbase did.
|
| It seems though that the vocal side (liberal) is vocal because
| they care about companies stances on these matters, while the
| silent (conservatives) are silent because they don't seem to care
| as much.
|
| Therefore, rationally, companies generally take the liberal
| position or no position at all.
|
| When conservatives listen to politically-left company seminars,
| see liberal company statements, etc - they mostly just ignore and
| move on with their day. I don't think many conservatives would be
| motivated to quit or boycott a company due to a liberal company
| seminar that they disagree with. I get the feeling (due to the
| walkouts, etc) that liberals are much more likely to sever
| relationships due to differences in political beliefs.
| theplague42 wrote:
| Conservatives burned their Nikes because Colin Kaepernick was
| in an ad.
|
| Not to mention the months-long propaganda campaign claiming
| that Big Tech was silencing conservatives on social media.
|
| Also, conservatism is basically supporting the status quo. Why
| would conservatives have labor protests against the status quo?
| hnracer wrote:
| "conservatives are silent because they don't seem to care as
| much."
|
| It's certainly the case that they don't _seem_ to care as much,
| given that they 're less outspoken, but is there any evidence
| that they actually don't care as much?
|
| Another explanation for being less outspoken is that they're a
| small minority in these companies, so they lack the confidence
| to go against the grain, perhaps out of fear (whether valid or
| not) of alienation. Or conversely liberals are more confident
| to voice their opinion because they know they're in the
| majority opinion group and doing so isn't likely to stymie
| their career or cause stressful backlash.
|
| Paul Graham tweeted out some survey evidence yesterday that
| supports the idea that conservatives are simply more afraid to
| speak their mind in these companies.
| Kye wrote:
| Is it that they're conservative, or that they know how their
| ideas will be received?
|
| I've seen conservatives support things like trans rights,
| marriage equality, antifascism/antifa, and Black Lives Matter
| from conservative first principles. They would say the same
| about not feeling like they can share their views in places
| where a certain kind of conservatism is rampant.
|
| Bigotry is not something inherent to conservative values.
| john_moscow wrote:
| >while the silent (conservatives) are silent because they don't
| seem to care as much.
|
| Most of the conservatives I know are silent because they are
| busy. Busy raising and teaching their kids. Busy taking care of
| their property. Busy making their own life better. It doesn't
| mean that they don't care. They just believe that each person
| should be first and foremost responsible for their own well-
| being. If someone asks for help with a specific quantifiable
| problem, they will gladly help.
|
| Most vocal liberals, on the contrary, are priced out of having
| a large enough property to take care of, or a large family that
| takes a lot of energy. Because they have extra time and energy,
| they tend to spend it on the causes that the media presents to
| them as important. Note that their salary expectations will be
| lower, compared to conservatives, since family, property and
| retirement plans are one's biggest expenses. I would dare say
| many of them feel jealous towards the conservatives and believe
| they got an unfair advantage.
|
| In short-term, it's beneficial for companies to support
| political activism, because it keeps the employees busy with
| projects that don't increase their monetary demands. In long
| term, this ends up with tribalism, where people spend most of
| their energy attacking their peers over growing number of
| differences.
| philwelch wrote:
| This is an instance of "The Most Intolerant Wins"
| (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
| dict...).
|
| Also, like most exercises of power, one has to _have_ power in
| order to exercise it. Conservatives are usually more worried
| about not being fired for their views.
| evan_ wrote:
| > When conservatives listen to politically-left company
| seminars, see liberal company statements, etc - they mostly
| just ignore and move on with their day.
|
| Trump signed an executive order banning the government from
| doing business with vendors that do racial sensitivity
| training.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/915843471/trump-expands-ban-o...
| geofft wrote:
| There's an interesting asymmetry between the liberal and
| conservative sides that isn't captured just by left/right: the
| liberals generally have some active change they want to make,
| and the conservatives don't - they just want to "conserve"
| what's currently being done. That means that if a company just
| takes the default position on things, it's _already_ siding
| with the conservatives. So it 's unsurprising, in that sense,
| that the liberals are more vocal: there's no real point in a
| conservative organizing a protest for "We should not extend our
| anti-discrimination provisions beyond what is legally required"
| or "We should be willing to sell to all customers that we can
| legally sell to" or whatever.
|
| One example of that latter bit: Google rank-and-file protested
| against the executives' plan to run censored search in China,
| even though if you listen to the media, Google is "left" and
| it's the "right" who's worried about China and their
| authoritarianism and censorship and all that. The more
| elucidating explanation is that the disagreement was between
| the people who wanted to make money wherever legally permitted
| vs. the people who felt a sense of broader social
| responsibility regarding what they worked on, which is why you
| see the _same_ fault lines (rank-and-file vs. execs) protesting
| against Google selling cloud services to ICE, even though that
| 's a concern of the "left."
|
| More generally, about which side finds itself being vocal, I
| recently ran across this passage from a Wikipedia article about
| a video game released in 2013:
|
| > _Following the announcement of a worldwide release,
| controversy arose concerning the impossibility of same-sex
| relationships. Nintendo stated, "The ability for same-sex
| relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original
| game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the
| same code that was used to localise it for other regions
| outside Japan." [...] Despite various campaigns from users,
| Nintendo stated that it would not be possible to add same-sex
| relationships to the game, as they "never intended to make any
| form of social commentary with the launch of the game", and
| because it would require significant development alterations
| which would not be able to be released as a post-game patch._
|
| This game ( _Tomodachi Life_ ) is in the same approximate genre
| as _The Sims_ , i.e., the complaint wasn't about pre-programed
| characters with stories, it was that user-generated characters
| couldn't be in same-sex relationships. If a game like that
| launched today - in Japan or anywhere else - it would certainly
| not manage to avoid "any form of social commentary" by not
| having an option for same-sex relationships. It's just that _at
| the time_ , that genuinely was the default, conservative
| option. If you were a conservative in Nintendo at the time, you
| hardly had to argue for this position. It only became
| controversial because public opinion had just started to shift.
| (And there are much fewer conservatives / right-leaning folks
| today who would feel the need to argue the same position
| _against_ the new status quo.)
|
| So I don't think it's true that companies "take the liberal
| position or no position at all." They start out taking the
| conservative position, and it's only through specific action -
| either the desire of management, or pressure from either the
| product's market or the labor market - that they end up with
| the liberal one.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| By this logic someone who wants to change an existing game
| that allows same sex marriage to be one that doesn't is a
| "liberal" because they're advocating a change to the status
| quo.
|
| But if we take this as a given then the original claim
| doesn't make sense anymore, because in the original claim
| "conservative" essentially means Republican, but the
| Republicans would be the "liberals" in many cases under your
| framework. And yet we don't really see employees pressuring
| companies to implement mandatory drug testing or refuse to
| hire H1B workers or stop offering healthcare plans that cover
| abortion, even though those would all be divergences from the
| status quo in many companies.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| This is just not true at all. Conservatives aren't looking at
| the status quo and saying, "Yes, more of this, please." I
| don't think you could find anybody who'd look at the current
| state of affairs, decide it should continue, and describe
| them as conservative.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Yes, the current order is a liberal order. Authentic
| conservatives want to undo all the damage that
| neoliberalism has inflicted upon the various so-called
| liberal democracies in which we live. Many (most?)
| republicans are actually liberals from a policy standpoint
| just to be clear, including Reagan and Trump.
| crankyoldcrank wrote:
| The words conservative and liberal are both completely
| overloaded to the point of being meaningless in the
| context of their use in comments on an international
| internet forum.
| neves wrote:
| Well the article points the question: "The shift has grown
| partly out of a realization that no tech platform is completely
| neutral"
|
| Not taking a political stand IS political stand. And it is on
| the side of the status quo.
| bitmunk wrote:
| An apolitical being is as real as a unicorn.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| Technically, I agree, but there is a sizable range of opinions
| where reasonable folks can agree to disagree, and produce good
| work. The set of people holding opinions in that range is
| larger than some of the commenters in this thread seem to
| believe.
| bitmunk wrote:
| That's another issue, my point is that this isn't new.
| Business have always had political postures and actions, the
| only different thing is that the illusion of Silicon Valley
| being "neutral" isn't working anymore.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Just to be clear, we're talking about a real unicorn, not the
| SV term "unicorn" since those are comparatively common.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| One of my favorite moments of 2020 was when coinbase stood up
| against the madness of people using the company as a vehicle to
| promote their irrelevant politics. Politics has its place but
| just gets in the way of doing work in the workplace. The only
| politics that should be promoted in the workplace is the politics
| that helps the company accomplish its specific goals. I predict
| that market forces will cause more startups to follow suit.
| tyre wrote:
| What's interesting about that case is that >5% of employees
| quit.
|
| So these were people that coinbase decided, out of all
| available applicants--and as a well-known, hugely profitable
| company that is the only "in any way mainstream" success story
| of cryptocurrency-based businesses, there are a fair number of
| them--thought were the right fit. (That's excluding the people
| who were given offers and didn't accept, of course.)
|
| And then greater than one in twenty employees (that's a lot)
| heard what he said and were like, nope, this is not someone I
| want to follow.
|
| Is that a success? Maybe! I can't think of a time when we've
| seen that level of voluntary departure from a company and
| thought, "ah yes, this is good." Or when we've seen something
| like that and thought, "ah yes, this is what leadership looks
| like."
|
| Maybe he's right! I don't know. We'll see.
|
| But when I look at America, with its staggering income
| inequality and tremendous corporate cash investments into
| political elections, I don't personally think, "wow there sure
| is too much social accountability at companies."
|
| You know?
|
| I don't look at Facebook and think, "they should really just
| focus on being a data mining advertising business. This thing
| about fomenting extremism is distracting us from them as a
| corporate enterprise in a capitalist system."
|
| Yikes.
| blackearl wrote:
| I hate the idea that massive corporations should be leading
| some progressive charge rather than holding our politicians
| accountable.
| adamsea wrote:
| If the workplace did not have its own issues I would agree.
| But, since, to take one example, sexism is a known problem in
| tech - and throughout corporate America and society, to be fair
| - in order to _not_ have a sexist workplace, one would need to
| be _proactive._
|
| Broadly speaking. Point being, it's easy to not want "politics"
| in the workplace when the workplace works well for you. If
| you're someone whom the workplace doesn't work well for, like a
| person of color, a pregnant woman, new mother, or new father,
| for that matter, well, then it's a different story.
|
| If you yourself believe that sexism/systemic racism _aren 't_
| issues that show up (even inadvertently or despite the best
| intentions of individuals) in the workplace, well, then that's
| a different conversation entirely.
|
| I think this is different from someone in a position of power
| promoting a particular candidate in the workplace. That is more
| complex and problematic. The 2020 election was obviously an
| extreme example, and, tbh, with things like global warming, I
| think we'll be seeing _more_ politics like that in the
| workplace, not less.
|
| Which, to me, means it's not an easy or one-size-fits all
| solution, but rather, a challenge which requires each of us to
| exercise care and our own judgement.
|
| For example, personally, I would have liked to see Hacker News
| take even a small explicit step of endorsing the Black Lives
| Matter movement (such as putting 'Black lives matter' on the
| top of the homepage), seeing as how it's one of the major civil
| rights issues of our present moment. I can also understand
| their concerns around doing so, even though I disagree with
| them.
|
| IMHO it's too easy for those of us doing well and making money
| to forget that the institutions we work for have a social
| impact and are a part of society.
| roenxi wrote:
| Thread ancestor was hedging carefully with the word
| 'irrelevant'. I'm not drawing any instances to mind where
| someone argued that sexism was irrelevant to the workplace,
| only people arguing that the current crop of policies are
| unfair or counterproductive. Damore springs to mind, he had a
| section titled "Non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender
| gap" and so it would be difficult to argue that he thought
| inaction was the goal.
|
| What is politics is in itself political, but I expect there
| will be a fair majority of people who want corporations to
| focus on carrying out basic tasks effectively rather than
| devoting resources to experimental (or divisive) social
| reform. The risks of corruption and bad outcomes are real.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| If the issue directly hinders the company's goals as
| determined by the leadership then it should be addressed,
| that could include sexism. Main point is that the issue has
| to be relevant to the company's goals as determined by the
| leadership.
| adamsea wrote:
| For sure. But right now we're in an era of change. Should
| addressing the existential threat of climate change be a
| goal for every company, or not? That's one example.
|
| The Expensify CEO believed that democracy itself was on the
| line in the 2020 election, and that supporting democracy
| was relevant to the company's goal.
|
| We can disagree with him but I respect him for exercising
| his judgement about the situation.
|
| EDIT: I'd like to add, IMHO, workers should have more
| control over their own labor and see more of the profits of
| their labor, so, actually I'd like to see companies evolve
| to become less hierarchial institutions and thus decide
| priorities in a more democratic / consensus-based fashion.
|
| I don't know how we'd do this. But I know we collectively
| are smart enough to figure out how to get closer than we
| are now : ).
| rayiner wrote:
| Even many on the left don't agree that climate change is
| an "existential threat."
| https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-
| ameri...
|
| "Science" does not agree that climate change is an
| "existential threat." https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-
| opi-climate-change-existent...
|
| > Such talk has scared many young people. Shortly after
| the 2016 presidential election, a young Clinton volunteer
| named Zach was upset the Democrats failed to beat Trump.
| According to cbsnews.com, at a meeting of the Democratic
| National Committee, Zach yelled at a senior official:
| "You and your friends will die of old age and I'm going
| to die from climate change. You and your friends let this
| happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life
| expectancy."
|
| > Do scientists agree with Zach? The federal government's
| Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last
| November. Hundreds of scientists from 13 government
| agencies compiled the 1,500-page report. It finds no
| existential threat from climate change. Zach is likely to
| have a long life.
| seveneightn9ne wrote:
| Fires, hurricanes, extreme heat, and drought are made
| more frequent & severe by climate change, and they
| certainly kill people. Climate change also disrupts food
| systems and will cause civil war and mass migrations.
| Millions will need to migrate just from coastal flooding,
| which I'd imagine will cause plenty of geopolitical
| strife and ultimately lead to many deaths.
|
| "Existential threat" in my mind means humanity itself is
| threatened. The species will likely survive but millions
| if not billions will die due to climate change.
| rayiner wrote:
| Current projections of the effect of an RCP 8.5 scenario
| (a "do nothing" approach) suggest severe impacts to the
| Florida and gulf coasts, creating significant migrations
| inland. But the projected GDP hit will be an estimated
| 5%--i.e. losing a few years of growth.
|
| It will be bad and disruptive and many people will die.
| But based on what we know about the "science" it's not
| going to be "existential." For example the wildfires on
| the west coast killed 35-40 people. We could have a dozen
| of those a year and it wouldn't threaten the existence of
| humanity or really even civilization as we know it.
| lopmotr wrote:
| > more frequent & severe
|
| If you don't quantify that, it's meaningless in relation
| to somebody's life expectancy.
| refurb wrote:
| I agree 100% politics should be a part of any company.
| I'd like to see time set aside to educate employees about
| their 2nd amendment rights and maybe the company can do a
| dollar for dollar match on NRA donations?
|
| Oh wait, you meant you want to see _your politics_
| supported in the workplace. Not politics in general.
| harryh wrote:
| _see more of the profits of their labor_
|
| If you look at wage income as a share of (wage income +
| corporate profits) it hovers between 85% and 90%. How
| much higher do you think it needs to go?
|
| See some relevant charts here:
| https://taxfoundation.org/walkthrough-gross-domestic-
| income
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female
| employees so they can talk about their careers and how to
| advance and get promoted. I don't know, due to lack of
| experience, but I assume this is beneficial to one's career.
| Presumably benefiting careers is why they're doing it.
|
| And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit
| benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged
| in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on
| the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This
| isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and
| documented process. Even before that, in college, we had
| events for women who code, women in STEM, career
| opportunities for women, etc.
|
| I get that these things are all because women are
| underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for
| women and sexism against women. However, the examples above
| still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact
| that men have better representation in upper levels is
| meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female
| peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how
| they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless.
|
| On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever
| suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real
| name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by
| my coworkers as a deplorable sexist.
|
| My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much
| prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to
| treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company
| taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using
| them to make decisions about what happens at work.
| zo1 wrote:
| You're not the only one that sees the downright blatant
| sexism and hatefulness of some of these policies. There are
| probably a lot of people at your workplace that feel the
| same way that you do, but repress themselves for fear of
| being put on a train and shipped off to a "re-education
| camp".
| adamsea wrote:
| Would love for downvoters to explain their downvotes and
| contribute to the discussion : ). IMHO it's the ethical thing
| to do.
|
| IMHO downvoting without an explanation, without contributing
| to the discussion, is just code for "I don't like how what
| you said made me feel."
| remarkEon wrote:
| Your posts take what may sound like a benign or reasonable
| position (civil rights are good, right?) and uses that as a
| means to _assert_ that supporting BLM is the same thing.
| For some it is, for some it isn't. And for some it's green
| grocerism or a Kafkatrap.
| adamsea wrote:
| How in any possible reality is BLM _not_ a civil rights
| issue? Did you read about the murder of George Floyd?
|
| You're totally wrong.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This is precisely what I'm talking about. You're
| continuing to assert that if you support civil rights you
| _must_ support BLM. Others have pointed out why this
| comes from a faulty assumption.
| rayiner wrote:
| Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights
| issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political
| organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by
| those same organizations. Those organizations view the
| policing issue as just one symptom of a larger societal
| problem and advocates particular solutions not only to
| that problem, but to other problems that are, within
| their intellectual framework, related.
|
| It's the difference between "child malnutrition" and
| activist organizations that have particular explanations
| for and proposed solutions to that problem.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Police brutality against Black people is a civil rights
| issue. BLM is a group of affiliated political
| organizations, and a slogan coined and popularized by
| those same organizations.
|
| That's historically false. The slogan was popularized
| before the key organizations existed; the organizations
| were, in part, a response to the criticism that the
| movement united by the slogan lacked a clear and coherent
| agenda.
| zapita wrote:
| Don't take it personally. Hacker News leans right-wing
| politically, under the guise of being apolitical. You're
| just being downvoted by people who disagree with your
| political views. Their rethorical device for holding the
| moral high ground is to frame their political views as
| neutral and apolitical, while framing views they disagree
| with as divisive and "political". This allows them to
| attack you for your views without having to acknowledge
| having views at all; it makes them arbiters rather than
| participants in the debate.
|
| Don't waste too much energy changing their minds. They're
| not representative of the tech community as a whole.
| [deleted]
| rayiner wrote:
| Your post actually exemplifies why this is so fraught. The
| first part of your post is hard to criticize--every workplace
| has to think about how they're accommodating and trying to
| foster quality amongst employees with different backgrounds.
| Companies should be talking about how their promotion
| practices affect working mothers, etc.
|
| But your example of HN endorsing "Black Lives Matter" is
| different. Taken literally it's a straightforward slogan, but
| it's also the name of a specific political organization with
| a broad political agenda:
| https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-
| ant.... It's not just an articulation of a single problem. It
| identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire
| system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to
| solve that problem and others.
|
| What part of the various political ideologies that could be
| deemed to fall within the umbrella of "BLM" are you asking HN
| to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think
| others will perceive HN as endorsing?
|
| This is not a criticism of BLM--I go to a church that has a
| BLM banner and I understand what's being conveyed and not
| conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of
| expression of ideological alignment from organizations that
| aren't ideological and activist to begin with is very
| problematic.
| mrcrowqaw wrote:
| The HN banner idea would only antagonize the HN folks. In my
| childhood, parents made me eat tomatoes, because, you know,
| it's healthy. Since then I despise tomatoes, even though at a
| rational level I understand that my parents were right.
|
| The techies types are knowledge first people. If you want to
| win their support, appeal to knowledge, make a rational case,
| but avoid trying to fool them, as the moment they notice a
| logical inconsistence in your ideas, they'll dismiss them
| entirely.
|
| Most activism appeals to emotions, to feelings, because it
| matters a lot to most people. But techies put dry knowledge
| first and so needs to change your tactic.
|
| Nevertheless, I'm upvoting your comment because I believe it
| presents an important viewpoint.
| free_rms wrote:
| The kicker here is that _actual_ politics is prohibited by law.
| Companies can 't be endorsing candidates or providing in-kind
| contributions without getting into trouble with the FEC.
|
| So this is all about performative poses in the workplace, on
| the topic of politics, rather than being about actual politics.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Companies get involved with politics all the time, and policy
| in the US seems to be far more about keeping corporations and
| the shareholder class happy than keeping voters happy.
|
| So it's more that companies can't do certain limited things,
| but companies - and CEOs particularly - can do plenty of
| others.
| free_rms wrote:
| Sure, in terms of lobbying, contributing to PACs, etc. But
| that's very rarely aligned with what the social justice
| activists want.
|
| What they get, instead, is a performative pacifier. Which
| IMO makes the problem worse as they realize how
| unsatisfying it is and demand more and more strenuous
| performance.
| tehjoker wrote:
| There is something to what you're saying, but politics isn't
| only electoral. The two poles of attraction are pro-labor and
| pro-capital, so if startups do real politics in the
| workplace, it won't be to the benefit of anyone that isn't in
| management.
| zdragnar wrote:
| One of the things that made me quit my last job was the
| director frequently talking politics before meetings while
| waiting for everyone to join.
|
| There's no winning. Agree and risk setting yourself at odds
| against your peers and future managers, or disagree and put
| yourself at odds with the person who holds the purse for your
| team.
|
| Even worse, complain to HR, and risk politically disagreeing
| with them.
|
| I stuck with that job long enough to find something better, and
| almost regret staying with it as long as I did.
| [deleted]
| nullc wrote:
| > Dick Costolo, a former chief executive of Twitter, tweeted that
| "me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from
| business" would be shot in "the revolution." He deleted the post
| after, he said, it set off violent threats and harassment.
|
| I reported this tweet to twitter. Twitter responded that it
| violated their policies and was removed.
|
| I don't doubt that he was also subjected to threats-- after all,
| his own comments sets a tone where casual assault is, apparently,
| okay. It's not okay. It's not okay when he does it nor is it okay
| for people to do it in retaliation.
|
| "Don't be a dick" has always been good advice.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| This guy must be worth at least a million bucks. It's certainly
| weird to hear these ultra privileged people talking like they
| are far left wing revolutionaries or something... not realising
| they are the very establishment themselves. It's the purest
| example of "virtue signaling", because ultimately, it's all
| about clout.
|
| I'd like these people to focus on privacy, open standards,
| ethical business practices in IT and so on instead of calling
| every business who isn't displaying a "BLM" banner on their
| websites "traitors"...
|
| We went from "please join our righteous cause" to, "if don't
| ostensibly support our cause you're a f*cking bigot".
|
| It's like the good ol' Bush II's "Either you are with us or
| you're with the terrorists".
| rayiner wrote:
| Costello is worth $500 million.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Costello is worth $500 million.
|
| well well... such a deep far left anti capitalist
| revolutionary he is, isn't he?... who the hell is he
| kidding?
| rayiner wrote:
| It's hilarious that Dick Costello thinks that capitalists like
| him will be spared in "the revolution." Costello is like the
| bourgeoisie in Russia that were sympathetic to Bolshevism and
| collaborated in their own executions.
| zabhi wrote:
| Isn't choosing not to participate in politics just another
| political stand?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Only sophists think that way. Nobody is owed ostensible
| activism.
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes and no. Politics has both procedural and substantive
| aspects. A company choosing not to participate in politics is
| taking a stand about the appropriate scope of political
| advocacy--where, when, and how politics should play a role in
| society.
|
| Companies not choosing to participate in politics is not, as
| some urge, de facto support of the status quo. It's quite
| possible that e.g. Twitter taking a stand on some issue
| actually sets things back, by creating a stronger opposition.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| No, for the same reason that refugees fleeing from Syria are
| not ISIS/Assad sympathizers for not fighting back. They just do
| not want to be shot at.
| [deleted]
| sgift wrote:
| Yes, since you cannot not participate in politics in reality.
| What you can do is not participate in _active_ politics if you
| are happy with the status quo.
|
| What is far more popular is hiding your politics behind some
| more lofty words (like the linked article by the Coinbase CEO
| trying to hide his personal politics that "economic freedom" is
| the most important thing behind 'this is not politics' and
| 'this is our company mission').
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| There are reasons for not bringing politics into workplace
| other than "I support status quo". Such as wanting to get
| some work done, or being tired of endlessly debating the same
| things over and over again. (Or not wanting to get fired if
| it turns out that your opinion is somehow different from the
| majority, even if it does not support the status quo. There
| are more than two possible opinions.)
|
| By similar logic, if you are not arguing about politics 24
| hours a day, you spend the rest of your time defending status
| quo. Would you agree that this is a fair description of the
| moments you don't spend talking politics?
| bassman9000 wrote:
| _What is far more popular is hiding your politics_
|
| Is it, though? Because I see tremendous amount of virtue
| signalling in today's corporations, including Bay Area ones.
| How many social media woke campaigns? How many TV ads?
|
| What's truly radical (and beneficial) today is what Coinbase
| is doing. And yes, Coinbase CEO is enacting a political
| approach ( _leave politics for your spare time_ ), so
| employees are not compelled to do it by mob mentality.
| irateswami wrote:
| I strongly disagree with this statement. A corporation (despite
| our current legal definition in the US) is not a person, and
| therefore shouldn't take sides in political matters, nor should
| it's representatives make overt political statements as though
| the company is a monolith. Companies are made up of people, and
| as individuals on their personal time and without conveying
| themselves as representatives of the company, should be able to
| to engage in politics.
|
| If Silicon Valley executives are now going to be the arbiters
| of all that is good, we are in for a load of trouble. At best
| it's cringeworthy, at worst it's a load of limousine liberals
| wagging their fingers at the rest of us from their ivory
| towers.
| judge2020 wrote:
| "not participating in politics" is impossible, like another
| person in the thread stated[0], so simply not taking a side
| is taking a side, such as when deciding if your employees
| must wear a mask during work or if they can choose not to.
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25178761
| d4rti wrote:
| At least in the US, the current case law is against your
| conclusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._F
| EC#Corpora...
| irateswami wrote:
| > A corporation (despite our current legal definition in
| the US) is not a person
|
| What part of that was difficult for you to understand?
| [deleted]
| coding123 wrote:
| It should be simple: No party politics.
|
| Everything else is fair game, even if it typically falls under a
| party.
|
| For example: Gay stuff - it's typically democratic/liberal -
| although many would argue it's being supported more and more by
| the right. But one should be able to discuss and support gay
| agendas - as long as there's no specific party endorsement. Stick
| to specifics like bathrooms (for example) but don't mention
| "democrats support this too" or whatever.
|
| Another example would be to around climate change. It's okay to
| discuss ways to reduce pollution, just don't endorse candidate or
| party X as the way that's going to happen.
|
| So stop mentioning parties or candidates and shit - just issues.
| readams wrote:
| That doesn't help at all. It would just be a long list of the
| issues that a particular party espouses, and just as toxic.
| awak3ning wrote:
| The answer to the question is no. Companies should not do
| politics.
|
| Companies, however, will continue to do politics so long as it
| furthers their self-interest as there is a failure of separation
| of powers between government and corporations in the modern age.
| cgrealy wrote:
| "Not doing politics" is itself a political position. It is a
| tacit endorsement of the political status quo.
| Google234 wrote:
| Or accepting the current trends? We're not frozen
| rayiner wrote:
| No it's not. It's an endorsement of norms about the role of
| political activism in relation to other aspects of society.
| But it's not an endorsement of the status quo on particular
| substantive issues. It doesn't necessarily even have the
| indirect effect of propping up the status quo.
|
| Consider, for example, endorsements of political positions by
| Hollywood celebrities. The practice probably had a net
| negative impact on most of the substantive political
| positions they support. (E.g. Jane Fonda effect.)
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Problem with companies doing politics is it's the corporate
| officers using shareholders money to do politics to push
| officers agenda not the shareholders.
| skybrian wrote:
| There is some politics in every organization, because
| organizations are created with some mission in mind and people
| are going to disagree on how to accomplish it and how to
| balance it with other things.
|
| The question is, can people concentrate on the mission and
| agree to disagree about many other things? Or are you going to
| try to limit the organization to people who agree on a lot of
| different political questions?
| jcfrei wrote:
| Why should there be a separation between corporations and
| government? I could see a valid argument for limiting their
| influence on government but they are an important stakeholder
| in society. So why shouldn't they have some influence (in
| particular on the legislative process)?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Pay wall bypass:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201122160535/https://www.nytim...
| pochamago wrote:
| Did I miss it, or did this article specifically leave out the
| paid leave packages Coinbase put together for the employees who
| wouldn't want to stay after his post?
| mas3god wrote:
| Im very concerned hearing this from a newspaper that told us
| Saddam had WMDs
| satya71 wrote:
| Everyone is so focused on making money that they're missing the
| foundations of that money-making collapsing underneath them. When
| the society no longer operates on rule-of-law, and people are
| impoverished, there is no market anymore.
| shruubi wrote:
| As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is
| unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as
| an entity should have no public stance on politics.
|
| From the outside looking in, American politics has long since
| ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of
| identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long
| as they are on the team I support.
|
| In this kind of climate, for a business or other entity to
| involve themselves in politics would be consciously choosing to
| more or less blacklist themselves from doing business with the
| other side or run the risk of having their brand tarnished via
| social media for whatever stance they take.
|
| Finally, a business that takes a political stance does damage not
| just to themselves but to their employees as in the current
| political climate, both sides have no problems harassing a person
| or worse if they are viewed as not "on their team". Once a
| company takes a political stance, it doesn't matter if what that
| employee believes or does nor does it matter that said employee
| might be working for this company because they have a family to
| feed and don't have the luxury of quitting and looking for a new
| job, the very fact that they work for said company means that
| they should be treated as persona-non-grata.
|
| Make it simple, a company can't vote, so a company doesn't have a
| political affiliation (unless of course, it is some kind of
| lobbying company etc).
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| >a company as an entity should have no public stance on
| politics.
|
| In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will
| not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media
| outlets will write article after article about how you platform
| Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. And
| there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban
| these people there's barely a blip in their business.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Politics not software is eating the world.
|
| I will never turn my company into a political cause.
|
| I don't care what the cost is and my guess is that in February
| next year companies will realize that this is a bad move as their
| sworn enemy the big bad orange man is gone and all they can now
| do is turn on each other and they will finally start eating their
| own.
| intended wrote:
| The answer is yes.
|
| All precious entities, realized that power will be used.
|
| Politics is essentially the superior level of effective
| communication. For firms to exist and make their point of view
| heard they will engage in politics.
|
| And they will get good at it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Politics is essentially the superior level of effective
| communication. "
|
| You mean, communicating, what other people are allowed to do
| and what not? Politics is first about power (so the big
| companys were always involved in it). Not about communicating.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If you are a US company, or have a US user base, politics is non-
| optional. How do you deal with "hateful" user-generated content?
| Hate is now politics. How do you deal with employees expressing
| thier opinions at work? Basic fashion is now politics (masks).
| Which health care plan do you adopt? There are right and left-
| wing plans (birth control etc). The holidays are comming. Do your
| employees say "merry christmas" or "happy holidays"? Dont think
| you can avoid that one. Letting them pick is still taking sides.
| What is your policy on weapons? Can guns be sold/discussed on
| your platform? Then politics comes knocking on the door directly.
| To which parties or candidates will you donate? Will you create
| special rules for well-connected users? (Facebook). Will you turn
| off a politician's account when it violates your rules?
| (Twitter). Will you accept a political party as a customer? What
| if they insist you then turn away a different party?
|
| Politics cannot be avoided. It is part of the US tech landscape.
| The only option is to plan and engage thoughtfully.
| carapace wrote:
| Not to mention the whole, "to 'not do politics' is itself a
| political stance [in favor of the _status quo_ ].", eh?
|
| (I'm not "that guy" myself, but I bet he'll show up. edit:
| There we go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25179187
| Thank you zabhi. )
|
| - - - -
|
| > The only option is to plan and engage thoughtfully.
|
| FWIW, I feel that that begins with getting real clear on one's
| deepest values and motives. I think what we're seeing in the
| USA is kind of like when a kid from a small town goes to the
| big city for the first time. US culture even after WWII has
| always been kind of insular and provincial. (As a kid, my world
| was divided into SF, the East Bay, and the rest of it.) Now
| with the Internet everybody is up in each other's faces (also
| driven by those clicks, gotta get those clicks) and we're a bit
| shocked, collectively.
| freshhawk wrote:
| It's a bit weird from the outside, as a non-american. When I
| was growing up there was a very narrow window of acceptable
| ideas in the US, anything else was "unamerican". "The two
| parties are basically the same" was a cliche when I was a
| kid.
|
| The reaction to a relatively tiny number of new acceptable
| ideas in the discourse has been pretty surprising, even to
| someone who thought they already had a low opinion of
| American culture.
|
| And yeah, sure, the ad-generated enragement feeds don't help.
| But it is clearly mostly the small town kid getting exposed
| to more ideas thing, no question.
| carapace wrote:
| Heck, when I was growing up, just being a nerd was enough
| to catch flak. I was once literally called a "poindexter"
| by a shirtless yokel while travelling by train though the
| Midwest!
|
| Granted, there's always been an undercurrent of counter-
| culture in America. The Puritans had their witches. But by
| the 50's at least it was all buttoned up tight, and then
| exploded in the 60's and 70's, recoiled in the 80's, then
| everybody took a decade off in the 90's, and somehow in the
| 00's and 10's we all lost our fwcking minds.
|
| The thing about mainstream American culture is that it
| pretty much had been under the thumb of mass media and
| religion. That's why the whole "fake news" attack is so
| devastating: our news has been fake. I read Noam Chomsky at
| an impressionable age and I recall the realization that we
| (in the USA) were living in what I called a "media
| blackout". Anything "they" didn't want you to know was
| simply omitted. It worked so much better than the Russian
| system.
|
| But only until the Internet hit...
| freshhawk wrote:
| haha ... yeah, that's kinda "the thing" you don't mention
| to Americans because they get mad. It's incredibly
| apparent from just outside the bubble (or half-in it like
| in Canada).
|
| Every country with a heavily controlled media, with a
| people indoctrinated with a nationalistic fairy tale is
| having the same problems with the internet breaking down
| the old singular media narrative. The heavier the
| controls were, the larger the societal shock now.
|
| It's ... touchy. We have all learned in the last couple
| years how to empathize with our American friends who just
| learned about Tucson or the MOVE bombing or something we
| learned in school that they just learned about from a
| superhero show or an apology. It's fine to blame it on
| your schools, it is definitely a bad move to mention the
| actual cause.
| mantas wrote:
| As non-american... I don't get offended when somebody mentions
| halloween or that green thing day. If people ask how was the
| celebration, I've no issues telling that I don't participate in
| said holidays and maybe introduce to my culture and what we do
| instead. I'd expect same response from me telling "merry
| christmas".
|
| As for political donations - one of the best things in my
| country is that non-personal political donations are banned,
| period. And personal donations are capped. There're safeguard
| to prevent bums from suddenly getting lots of money and
| donating that too.
| stazz1 wrote:
| That sounds sensible and Scalia in the court said he didn't
| think such rules would make much difference. Still not happy
| about his call there.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Banning commercial donations is a good idea, but difficult in
| reality. How do you handle commercial speech? What if a
| corporation wants to express its opinion using its own money?
| That is common in the US. Can a company come out for/against
| a new law, a proposed project, a pipeline?
| mantas wrote:
| Specifically donations to political parties and individual
| politicians are banned.
|
| If a corporation wants to run a media campaign on social
| issues - that's fine. But if an ad features a politician,
| especially leading up to election, that'd be treated as
| illegal political ad.
|
| The legal way to do is through legal lobyist. Companies can
| pay them and certified lobyists can talk to
| institutions/individuals/parties. But meetings are semi-
| public and the public is +/- aware of what is lobying what.
| Lobyists can't give gifts to politicians, otherwise they
| risk their license.
|
| There's a workaround though. Politicians love to establish
| NGOs, then corporations donate to NGOs and politicians go
| on speaking tour in the name of NGO to cash out. But at
| least that limits use of corporate money for over-the-top
| election campaigns.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| > If a corporation wants to run a media campaign on
| social issues
|
| Well the problem is that "running media campaigns" is the
| vast majority of what political donations are spent on.
| All the other stuff (campaign salaries, etc) fits easily
| into any candidate's totally-aboveboard-donations revenue
| account.
|
| Not saying I approve of the current system; just that
| this is not a problem with an easy fix.
| manfredo wrote:
| Is a whiteboard political? If I buy a whiteboard from Staples,
| and draw a confederate flag and some hate speech it does not
| get erased automatically. Have the whiteboard manufacturers
| made a political statement because their products do not censor
| hate speech?
|
| I'm skeptical of this claim they everything is political. A
| forum they hosted any and all content will definitely host
| political speech, but those are the politics of the users not
| the site. Your kind of rhetoric seems like an attempt to say
| that hosting something is equivalent to an endorsement of it.
| This is not at all the case.
| bitmunk wrote:
| >Is a whiteboard political? If I buy a whiteboard from
| Staples, and draw a confederate flag and some hate speech it
| does not get erased automatically. Have the whiteboard
| manufacturers made a political statement because their
| products do not censor hate speech?
|
| Considering that in that case you are the "moderator and
| owner" of that white board, yes it would be a political
| action if you decide to remove or not the confederate flag.
| That's without getting into the fact that the whiteboard
| didn't come from the ether and it's production, sale and all
| processes that compose the two are, also in some manner,
| political.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Where was the whiteboard manufactured? Did the frame use
| Canadian aluminum?
| zo1 wrote:
| Then there is that pesky issue of it being a _White_ board.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Most stuff from canada comes in white these days. The
| country is litterally covered in snow at the moment.
| bird_monster wrote:
| If content is posted onto a site that is obviously hateful,
| the site has the choice to keep it up or take it down. The
| outcome of that choice is a political act (to not act is to
| act). The severity of the hate speech might matter, but
| ultimately regardless of which path they take, they've taken
| a path.
|
| In your whiteboard analogy, if you were giving an interview
| to a candidate and walked into a meeting room that had a
| swastika on a whiteboard and opted not to erase it, as a
| candidate I would assume that was an endorsement.
|
| Not taking a side is taking the side of whoever is being most
| aggressive. "I don't want to get involved" is getting
| involved.
| dk775 wrote:
| I am a policy person by trade, I will say that there is a
| quote "you cannot separate politics from administration" this
| is a public sector term but I think it applies to any admin
| functions of a business. I also think politics (more accurate
| policy, regulatory, and administrative law) would play a huge
| role in making a white board due to compliance requirements.
| But maybe not in the way you say.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > How do you deal with "hateful" user-generated content
|
| Consistently. Whatever you policies, apply them as consistently
| as possible.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| "our policies are a living document" -- Twitter
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor
| alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
| steal their bread._
|
| -- Anatole France
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And when short of bread, both rich and poor alike are free
| to eat cake.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| I've never gotten this quote. On the face of it it seems
| like a high priority that the law should not respect the
| station of a person. If a society has made something
| illegal it needs to apply from the least to the greatest,
| or the law is unjust.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Equally-applied law sustains inequity.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Any sort of bettering that is not globally experienced
| equally sustains inequity. To go to an absurd place the
| improvements I made to my garden this year sustain
| inequity since I now have and enjoy them and others do
| not, but they would if I had donated the same amount of
| time to a community garden. That alone should not be a
| compelling reason to act.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| Inequity is a natural state.
|
| Should discrimination be applied to achieve "equity"?
|
| If so, how is that fair to those being discriminated
| against?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > On the face of it it seems like a high priority that
| the law should not respect the station of a person.
|
| Generally the opposite is true. Consider, say, sumptuary
| laws.
| AlphaSite wrote:
| I think what I would take from it is that it all though
| the laws are the same, they do not effect each person in
| the same way.
|
| How likely is it for the rich to sleep I under a bridge,
| beg or steal bread? Those are crimes to punish those too
| poor to be able to afford anything else.
|
| Or to put it another way, it's a crime to be poor.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Isn't that just to say that murder is a crime both for
| the pacifist and the psycopath? If society deems
| something to be illegal it is illegal for both those who
| would never do it and those who could gain from doing it.
| That is fundamental for all laws.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| The law, also in its majestic equality, forbids rich and
| poor alike to murder, physically harm others etc.
|
| Less fancy.
|
| Consistency is not perfect but it is better than dictators
| picking favorites.
| danarmak wrote:
| Then all political camps will be against you, as you violate
| each of their norms in turn.
|
| Once at least one major (political) group calls views held by
| tens of millions of people hate speech, there is no way to
| avoid being in _someone 's_ black book. This is why many
| companies are aligning with one party - they can't have both,
| and it's better than none.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| People shouldn't care if trying to do the right thing makes
| you end up in someones black book. There will always be
| people who are on the wrong side of things. Just do what
| you think is best for our society.
| judge2020 wrote:
| But "the right thing" differs from person to person. A 10
| person company [say, running a local grocery store]
| comprised entirely of conservatives will think it's right
| to allow customers to decide if they want to wear a mask,
| while the same company comprised entirely of liberals
| will think that it's right to make customers wear masks
| and otherwise refuse servicing them. Who decides which
| company is doing the right thing? You?
| cercatrova wrote:
| That is fine. Consistently being on no one's side is better
| than being on someone's side.
| danarmak wrote:
| Then you'll have to withstand at least one party: twitter
| mobs, editorials, maybe employee protests or
| resignations. Both you personally, and your company. It's
| not surprising that many companies give in. They want to
| make a product and make money, not to make a political or
| moral stand.
| cercatrova wrote:
| That's also fine, Coinbase is doing that, and giving
| generous severence packages to leaving employees as well.
| There will always be detractors but most people won't
| really care.
| nullc wrote:
| Conveniently not mentioned in the article, though it saw
| fit to point out that "About 60 Coinbase employees, or 5
| percent of the work force, have resigned,"
| m0ck wrote:
| >black book
|
| Careful with those metaphors!
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Then the side you take will be determined by whatever content
| you move against first.
| leetcrew wrote:
| most of this only applies to social media companies. there are
| business models, even in tech, that simply don't revolve around
| user-generated content. but yeah, if you host mass UGC and have
| moderation, you can't really escape the political implications.
|
| > How do you deal with employees expressing their opinions at
| work?
|
| have a policy that work comms are only for discussion of work-
| related topics. keeping politics outside the permanent record
| is probably beneficial for everyone, and people are usually
| less nasty in person anyway. you'll probably end up with only a
| handful of employees who routinely start arguments over non
| work-related topics. after a couple warnings, it's time to
| "separate" them from the company.
|
| > There are right and left-wing plans (birth control etc).
|
| this is currently not an issue for the company. per ACA,
| employers are required to cover birth control in their health
| plans.
|
| > The holidays are comming. Do your employees say "merry
| christmas" or "happy holidays"?
|
| I really don't believe many people care about this. I work with
| people of every major faith, and it has literally never been an
| issue. if you want to be extra neutral, you can get rid of
| company holidays and just give everyone a little extra PTO.
| this way the company doesn't have to play the delicate game of
| deciding which faith's holidays to recognize.
|
| tl;dr: I don't think any of this stuff is terribly hard to
| sidestep. many tech companies choose not to; I suspect they
| feel they benefit from playing the game.
| dk775 wrote:
| A lot of b2b firms deal with political issues - Axon,
| Microsoft, hosting companies, etc. many of them are in the
| position where they will be approached to do a function for a
| government entity at some point and their decision, if not
| compelled, will have political ramifications.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There are exceptions to the ACA mandate. Small/closely held
| corporations (most startups) can opt out if they have
| religeous objections. Last time i looked there was no price
| difference between such plans. So if you are a small
| business, by not opting out you are taking a side. The system
| abhores indecision and so will make them for you.
| [deleted]
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Just do the right thing. If the thing happens to be heavily
| politicized, don't try to defend yourself. Just say you're trying
| to do the right thing.
| lolinder wrote:
| If the thing happens to be heavily politicized, how can a
| diverse organization possibly agree that it's the right thing?
| That's the Coinbase idea, as I understand it. If we can't all
| agree it's the right thing, it's just divisive for the
| organization to try to push it on employees.
| carapace wrote:
| "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish
| the rest." - Mark Twain
| gotoeleven wrote:
| I would pay a premium for employees who can work with people
| whose opinions they strongly disagree with. If you're one these
| people please try to signal it somehow during the interview
| process.
| [deleted]
| eat_veggies wrote:
| There are opinions about technology stacks and code style, and
| there are opinions about whether Black people deserve to be
| alive. We can disagree about code style.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Have you ever actually met anyone who thought black people
| didn't deserve to be alive?
| eat_veggies wrote:
| Yes, I have.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Working in tech companies? I'm sure it happens sometimes,
| but it must be extremely rare.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Have you checked the dark corners of the web, in the last
| time? Or did you do (unmoderated) gaming at some point?
|
| Maybe don't, if you want to keep your point of view.
|
| The point is exactly, that those people spreading the
| hate online - are very reservated when you meet them in
| person. Because they have a mask.
|
| But when they do gaming or chatting on 4chan or wherever
| - then all their hidden opinions, they are not allowed to
| express at daytime, burst out.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I think that perhaps we have not yet adjusted to the full
| implications of the democratization of speech. Extreme
| opinions, held by the tiniest, most unhinged minorities,
| get amplified precisely because they are so unusual. In
| other words, its not so much that violent, racist
| ideologies are on the rise, as much as we have access to
| the ramblings of the entire country and the ideas that
| most easily stand out in the noise are the horrific ones.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Jesus, how many people have you ever met that openly stated
| that X people do not deserve to be alive?
| Kye wrote:
| Quite a few. I see prominent people on my own "side"
| calling for the genocide or isolation of entire states, one
| of which I'm in, because an election swung the wrong way by
| a few percent.
| cco wrote:
| In San Francisco? No one I ever met personally said that,
| but I heard plenty of "chatter" at BBQs where SF police
| officers were guests.
|
| Where I grew up, in the "East Pacific Northwest", some were
| violent enough to actually say that out loud. I never knew
| anyone personally that murdered a black person, but I knew
| several who got into fights for this reason. These were
| kids in high school, police officers, elected political
| officials, etc.
|
| I'm very happy to say I've never personally heard anything
| like that in a professional setting, but I'm sure it exists
| and I hope it'd be treated very seriously.
| mas3god wrote:
| Mccarthyism is alive and well in 2020
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| In real life? Maybe 10.
|
| On the internet?
|
| Maybe I spend too much time on discord, but I've met
| potentially hundreds of people who unironically believe
| that the value to life of non-white people is very low and
| that most do not deserve life.
|
| Lots of actual crypto Nazis and fascists are there and they
| radicalize young and impressionable gamers...
| username90 wrote:
| Refusing to work with people encouraging genocide is a bit
| different from refusing to work with a person who wants to
| reduce social benefits to the poor.
| lghh wrote:
| Yes, they are different. Yet, I also don't want to work
| with anyone who doesn't think a child born to a poor family
| should be allowed to eat.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Does anyone actually advocate that? insane mis
| characterization of the other side is another reason
| politics should be avoided at work. People who would
| otherwise get along just fine become enemies because they
| are fighting the most despicable possible interpretation
| of the others position. It's nuts.
| lghh wrote:
| If people rely on food stamps to eat and you cut food
| stamps, what happens?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into pointless flamewar like
| this. It helps no one and leads noplace interesting or new.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| In fact, it's so over the top that it's basically trolling.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=troll%20effects%20by:dang&date.
| ..
| hnracer wrote:
| And almost everyone will agree with you, as long as you're
| not using the latter as a strawman for arguments that
| advocate no such agenda.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Let a hundred flowers bloom.
| freedomben wrote:
| Linked FTA an interesting piece by Rob Rhinehart:
| https://www.robrhinehart.com/why-i-am-voting-for-kanye-west/
| carapace wrote:
| Is it a joke? (I'm asking in earnest, I don't know who Rob
| Rhinehart is, is he a comedian? Is this satire?)
|
| Edit: AH! It is a joke. The whole site is a wonderful parody,
| like "The Onion" but in the form of pitch perfect clueless
| privileged tech weanie.
|
| - - - -
|
| "Ideas for the Board of Coke"
|
| > There is nothing better, than a Coke. It is the perfect
| product. It is so many things and all of them are wonderful.
| Coca-Cola is a beautiful, simple, quality, affordable, durable
| product that serves a real need, is available all over the
| world and appeals to pretty much every human alive, as well as
| many animals and single-celled organisms. It is liquid life.
|
| ROFL! THis is priceless! Cheers!
| bigbubba wrote:
| Sounds like he confused coca-cola for the other sort of
| coke...
| eat_veggies wrote:
| He was the CEO of Soylent and it's not satire, he's just
| unhinged. Soylent had to write an announcement that Rob does
| not speak for them anymore.
|
| https://twitter.com/soylent/status/1322588020185341952
|
| https://soylent.com/blogs/news/update-from-soylent-ceo-
| demir...
| carapace wrote:
| I started to feel bad (for making fun of someone who might
| be having mental problems) but then I realized that being
| CEO of Soylent is consistent with my mental model of him as
| a brilliant performance artist/comedian.
|
| (If he breaks character now he could be liable for some
| lawsuits, I imagine, so we may never know.)
| lle-bout wrote:
| It is nonsensical to write the title as such, all tech startups
| (since we're talking about them, but not only) do politics. They
| just choose it to do it in different directions. Most often when
| someone says they don't want to involve themselves with politics
| they are alright with the status-quo, which is a political
| position in itself. Politics is not just about a vote at a
| presidential election, it's the how and why of everything you do
| and will do, be it in the tech startup or elsewhere.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Most often when someone says they don't want to involve
| themselves with politics they are alright with the status-quo,
| which is a political position in itself.
|
| Or they just do not want to get involved in a complex, messy,
| and and potentially expensive social conflict.
| boldslogan wrote:
| The quoted post is talking about the benefits of non
| action(are more than the implicit cost) where I think you are
| saying the costs of the action are more than the benefits.
|
| These seem really similar. Did you mean to say the same
| thing?
| rayiner wrote:
| > Politics is not just about a vote at a presidential election,
| it's the how and why of everything you do and will do, be it in
| the tech startup or elsewhere.
|
| That's certainly not true, outside an extremely expansive
| definition of politics.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| The World needs more politics, not less. USA particularly needs
| more politics.
| kodah wrote:
| Businesses were always involved in politics but you didn't really
| know the politics of your business or leaders as you do today.
| They did lobbying but it really wasn't something discussed openly
| and often-times had varied interests.
|
| > "Anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against
| democracy," Mr. Barrett proclaimed.
|
| To see a business say this nature of thing is really shocking. I
| have a hope that all of this behavior is a one-off to rid the
| world of Donald Trump, but I really doubt it. Judging by the
| respondents just on this thread, people aren't bothered by this.
|
| This is very dystopian.
| bitmunk wrote:
| > Businesses were always involved in politics but you didn't
| really know the politics of your business or leaders as you do
| today. They did lobbying but it really wasn't something
| discussed openly and often-times had varied interests.
|
| This is the dystopian part.
| wrnr wrote:
| I just can't wait for the 2020 presidential elections to be over
| already.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Don't worry, they are already gearing up for the next one. And
| the midterms.
|
| Too bad we can't just randomly pick candidates 2 months before
| the election, they couldn't possibly be worse than the previous
| ones.
| eat_veggies wrote:
| politics goes beyond the presidential election every four years
| rayiner wrote:
| One of the great and durable things about America is that,
| for most people, it doesn't. As someone who comes from a
| country where there are violent riots after every election, I
| have watched the last four years (starting with the 2016
| protests and four years of "resistance") with tremendous
| alarm.
| wrnr wrote:
| Heavens it is exhausting to deal with this partisan bickering
| in a sincere manner, what's next, are you going to tell me
| what to eat?
| lghh wrote:
| Luckily, they are.
| bird_monster wrote:
| I got bad news for you
| lghh wrote:
| What news is that?
| [deleted]
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| Kanye West won 270 electoral college votes.
| api wrote:
| I'll take it.
| sgift wrote:
| Honest question: Do you expect these topics to go away when the
| "elections are over" (let's say at latest on January 21th)?
| vsareto wrote:
| No, the momentum of left-wing media covering Trump is going
| to swing to the other side with right-wing media covering
| Biden. It's a perpetual, cyclical attention grabber. It won't
| go away.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Dick Costolo, a former chief executive of Twitter, tweeted that
| "me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from
| business" would be shot in "the revolution." He deleted the post
| after, he said, it set off violent threats and harassment
|
| Reminds me of this:
| https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/america-is-...
|
| > One of contemporary progressivism's commonly used phrases--the
| personal is political--captures the totalitarian spirit, which
| seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness.
| Indeed, the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the
| private realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life
| uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is
| ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what
| totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.
|
| > Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar
| (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to
| keep politics out of the game. "We must finish once and for all
| with the neutrality of chess," he said. "We must condemn once and
| for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like the
| formula 'art for art's sake.' We must organize shockbrigades of
| chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year
| Plan for chess."
| throwawaygh wrote:
| For every Dick Costolo there are 100 execs of small midwestern
| firms that hire exclusively from the protestant
| church/christian private school network. Even after Bostock
| people are still explicitly fired for being gay [1], and before
| Bostock it was extremely common. To say nothing of huge
| employers arguing
|
| You literally can't get a job at many firms around Springfield,
| MO without attending the right (right-wing evangelical) church.
| And don't expect promotions into upper management if you're not
| part of the right small group at the right church. This is
| particularly true in accounting/finance, but it's also a
| problem in some of the region's tech shops.
|
| Ironically, "politics seeping into the workplace is a left-wing
| problem" sounds totally insane to anyone who has spent
| significant time outside of the coastal/metro bubble. It's a
| huge problem on both sides of the political spectrum.
|
| [1] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/scott-maxwell-
| commen...
| [deleted]
| hairofadog wrote:
| I love the going-over-the-peak-of-a-rollercoaster feeling of
| these essays on the topic of whether and how America is tilting
| toward fascism. They start by discussing disinformation,
| authoritarianism, the perverse prioritization of loyalty above
| all else, marching in lockstep, and then... are they going to
| say that the problem is the guys marching in the street with
| swastikas saying "we are Nazis?" Or are the _real_ Nazis the
| ones promoting "transgressive sexuality"?
| rayiner wrote:
| We have had guys marching in the streets proclaiming to be
| nazis for decades. They're scary, but they're a known
| quantity. The ACLU has long represented nazis and protected
| their rights to have those marches, and things have been
| fine. Liberal democracy works. This other stuff is new.
| notahacker wrote:
| The guys calling themselves Nazis haven't usually been
| having their marches in honour of the POTUS whilst the
| POTUS openly states his court appointees should set aside
| liberal democracy's verdict on his first term, or plotting
| to assassinate a state governor he's clashed with.
|
| I'm not convinced that's actual totalitarianism either, but
| it takes an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance to
| argue that flourishing of alternative sexualities is the
| _real_ alarming new development towards totalitarianism...
| rayiner wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that's actual totalitarianism either,
| but it takes an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance
| to argue that flourishing of alternative sexualities is
| the real alarming new development towards
| totalitarianism...
|
| That's not what's being argued.
| notahacker wrote:
| It probably isn't _your_ argument, but the author devotes
| enormous amounts of effort to arguing that
| 'transgressive sexuality' was a precondition to the
| Russian Revolution (meanwhile, when the actual
| authoritarians took charge, they wasted no time setting
| boundaries for relationships based on their concept of
| the state's needs) and doubles down on it with passages
| that start off with 'social justice warriors play a
| similar historic role to the Bolsheviks' and end it with
| corporate America no longer frowning on homosexuality.
| I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the actual
| Bolsheviks had a somewhat different approach to
| bourgeouis institutions than convincing them that people
| of alternative sexualities were employees and customers
| they might wish to retain...
|
| It's not insight from Arendt, it's a religious
| conservative arguing his laundry list of dislikes, from
| acceptance of homosexuality to -checks notes- mayors
| _not_ crushing protests must be totalitarian because
| -spurious parallel-. Totalitarianism isn 't bottom up
| social consensus, and it definitely isn't the mere
| absence of social consensus around one's own moral
| values.
| rayiner wrote:
| That is not the argument the author is making at all. The
| portion of the article you're referring to begins:
|
| > Her point was that these authors did not avail
| themselves of respectable intellectual theories to
| justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves
| in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so
| as acts of liberation. Arendt's judgment of the postwar
| elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at
| respectability could easily apply to those of our own day
| who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race
| neutrality, free speech, and free association as
| obstacles to equality.
|
| The author isn't criticizing non-discrimination--which
| can be justified by reference to traditional "liberal
| principles." He's criticizing things like Mozilla's
| firing of Brendan Eich for his political donations, or
| declaring judges unfit because they are members of
| Catholic organizations that reject abortion. Those
| efforts go beyond non-discrimination to trying to stamp
| out traditional beliefs in ways that are often at odds
| with liberalism.
| notahacker wrote:
| As I said, your own views may not match the author's. One
| doesn't subtitle a passage 'the desire to transgress and
| destroy' and cite the 'sexual adventurism, celebration of
| perversion and all manner of sensuality' in great detail
| as an illustration of its relevance to the Russian
| Revolution to argue that Brendan Eich ought not to have
| felt the need to resign. If he was making a freedom of
| conscience argument rather than a _decadence leads to
| totalitarianism_ argument he 'd hardly be suggesting that
| it was _lamentable_ that labourers were sufficiently far
| from village gossips and 'the church binding their
| conscience with guilt' to find comfort in sex.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Ah yes, the opposite of "totalitarian" is "no questioning how
| society works at any level other than the political parties".
|
| Makes sense, the totalitarians are always lax about having
| rules about what you can talk about. It was so much better when
| there was just "how things are done" and talk that was
| "unamerican", so much less political.
| philwelch wrote:
| Do you seriously think the present climate is _more
| welcoming_ to this sort of "questioning"?
| rayiner wrote:
| > about. It was so much better when there was just "how
| things are done" and talk that was "unamerican", so much less
| political.
|
| We managed to get a lot of stuff done that way.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Definitely! And now a lot of the children of the people it
| was done too are getting all "political".
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure that justifying certain areas of debate or
| complaint being off limits to normies because "things get
| done" is an _anti-_ totalitarian stance...
| errantmind wrote:
| Companies are collections of people, each of which are free to
| have their own beliefs, but that doesn't mean the company should
| officially share and support their individual beliefs. I see this
| only causing endless division within the company, instead of
| people being (more) unified in their pursuit of the company's
| vision.
|
| Why not encourage employees to represent their beliefs
| individually, and off company time, by giving them more vacation
| and flexible working hours instead? Empower the employees to
| participate in politics without the company taking a side itself?
|
| I'm tired of people pushing their political beliefs onto me at
| every opportunity, in every available setting, IRL and online.
| exogeny wrote:
| Ironically, I'll bet most people think they can assume what
| your politics are just based on this post alone.
| rayiner wrote:
| You might be surprised. There are a lot of traditional
| liberals who are beginning to take exception to this sort of
| thing. Megyn Kelly had Matt Taibbi on her show recently to
| talk about this and it was quite odd to see them agreeing on
| something.
| adamsea wrote:
| > Why not encourage employees to represent their beliefs
| individually, and off company time, by giving them more
| vacation and flexible working hours instead? Empower the
| employees to participate in politics without the company taking
| a side itself?
|
| IMHO it's about power and the profits power leads to, and the
| desire of large companies to maintain their power and their
| profit.
|
| IMHO on some level large corporations know that if they did
| this employees would get politically active and push more for
| their own interests to be represented in government over that
| of the large companies, resulting in less profit for said
| companies because government is investing in civil society and
| public infrastructure instead.
|
| IMHO part of the reason the George Floyd protests were as big
| as they were is that folks had time on their hands, which is
| not the normal case for most folks in our system as it is
| today.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Encourage employees to represent their beliefs individually by
| giving them more holidays?
|
| Looks like you're trying to shoehorn your belief, i.e.
| employees to have more vacation time, which is fine, but has
| nothing to do with "have more time to express themselves
| politically". That's a stretch.
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