Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without complete agreement.

Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage women in STEM. There are hundreds of Women in Tech meetups, scholarships, Womens only courses... yet the numbers have barely budged in more than 10 years. Personally, it looks like in aggregate it will be difficult to get 50/50 representation of women and men in tech. To make it clear, we should definitely support everyone who is in tech, and make it an inclusive environment, but the continued push for 50/50 isn't going to happen so perhaps its not worth the huge money sink it is.

At the last place I worked that opinion was flat out branded "sexist", and if you didn't vocally agree with every women in tech initiative people asked why.

So I would say the ability to speak openly about politics was shut down long ago, and not by the people you think.

Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work.

If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds) from equal participation in this industry.

One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.

If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let microaggressions stop you from doing that thing? I mean, being a programmer is not exactly a high status thing for white males either. If I tell people I'm a programmer, I generally am competing with the perception that I am socially awkward. People assume I'm like some Big Bang Theory character until I prove otherwise. I don't like that stereotype, but it never stopped me from learning to code, or even was a thought that crossed my mind.

Also, how many other industries are or have been actively hostile towards women and still have plenty of females in it? Show business is an obvious example.

I'm not saying that things can't or shouldn't be improved, but I feel like the argument that goes "well the nerds are making women uncomfortable" is just a cartoon with very little evidence other than anecdotes.

Women in tech report more mistreatment than in many other male-dominated industries. See: https://www.axios.com/tech-sexual-harassment-women-silicon-v...

People thinking you're socially awkward is different from people sexually harassing you at work.

> If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let microaggressions stop you from doing that thing?

Yes, actually, people do this all the time. They find new things to be passionate about if being passionate about something is too painful.

I have trouble really imagining someone finding much success if they drop things they care about because the situation around them isnt ideal.

And that second part of your post is really damn far fetched. I never even mentioned anything remotely related to gender.

to give you a better example: since guido van rossum gave up leadership of python, does that mean that he wasn't passionate enough about it?

absolutely not. but how he was treated destroyed his passion, and he couldn't handle it any more and burned out. this is the argument above. women leave despite their passion they got more pain than they could handle. just like guido.

If you really love knitting then you're not gonna quit it altogether because you once had a shitty experience with a knitting group. You're just gonna find another knitting group or do it alone. But if you do quit, then you never were passionate about it. That's my point and that has nothing to do with female gamers or whatever juvenile bullshit GGP is currently interpreting into it.

There is evidence that more freedom and equality for everyone to be in any job they want leads to even less women choosing STEM careers (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...) That might be because of social issues you mention (harassment, under valued, talked over, underpaid, stalked, etc). It might also be a result of natural selection causing women and men to differentiate in useful ways wherein women were more attracted to nurturing roles, and men more attracted to technical challenges.

I don't think it's useful to pick one reasonable hypothesis and ignore other reasonable hypotheses. Let's explore all the useful ideas and recognize how little we actually know for sure.

If you want to do one on gender, you would go in for self-reported gender, and have 3+ selection options (m/f/o).

If you're going to talk about natural selection resulting in career preference, you should talk sex, not gender.

I don't mind recognizing any individuals uniqueness or their socially less-privileged situation for social or political purposes, but it shouldn't have any affect on the science of sexuality which should just reflect nature as it is.

Sexual dimorphism in animals can be dramatic. The male angler fish is a tiny parasite, the dramatically larger female does all the angling work. And we aren't seeing non-binary angler fishes. If none of the other species are coming up with non-binary specimens, why should we assume humans are any different?

Ah, if that's what you're getting from what I'm saying, then I don't think you getting what I'm saying.

If your theory is that biological factors drive differences in behavioral outcomes, then I'm saying you should measure those biological factors, and you should do so on a more detailed level than genitals. I'm not arguing that sexual dimorphism isn't a thing. I'm arguing that a simple m/f measurement of it is insufficient, particularly if you're trying to correlate it to behavioral outcomes. As for your science paper request, I'll just go with this, instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism_measures

If your theory is that gender (how society treats you) affects this, then measure /that/; which itself is more complicated than a simple binary. A masculine woman and a feminine man are treated very differently by society than a feminine woman and a masculine man. Although it's a lot more reasonable to go with a binary here, since basically all of society will put people into that binary, I'd definitely want some measure as to how well or poorly that category fits the person in question. It would make for a much more compelling case to see that the outcome isn't affected by that second measure.

That "many" sounds anecdotal. Since we're doing that: In my experience woman don't go into tech because they enjoy other, more social, jobs more.

> One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.

There is an obvious reason. Autism-like traits are more prevalent in men.

There's a very strong inverse correlation between a country's gender equality and female representation in STEM. I.e. countries like Algeria and the UAE have much higher female participation in tech than countries like Sweden and the Netherlands.

That doesn't necessarily mean that women in tech don't face discrimination or harassment. But it strongly suggests that discrimination isn't the primary driver of female under-representation in the industry.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

I don't see that it does. It's entirely possible that in less egalitarian countries, women are just less likely to leave tech on account of discrimination or harassment. I can think of several reasons why this might be the case:

- Women in poorer countries might be more likely to endure mistreatment for financial reasons.

- Women there might just be more accustomed to mistreatment.

- Tech might be less hostile to women relative to other fields in those countries. Eg. in Western countries, it's "normal" for women to become teachers, but somewhat less normal for women to become programmers. In more misogynistic countries, it's considered abnormal for women to be teachers or programmers, so there would be less to differentiate the options.

Overall the general theme of these findings is that gender parity is not a good proxy for gender equality. Equality is a very important goal that we should strive for. But the reality is that increasing equality may paradoxically result in larger divergences among the genders in terms of behavior, life trajectories and modes of expression.

In my opinion if there is a tension between equality and parity, than gender equality is a much more important goal. And that's what we should be measuring, not parity metrics like representation percentages.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/gender-pe...

This is something I can attest to personally to a certain extent.

I've encountered at least two at every single one of the 15 or so jobs I've had prior to this one. Most of them weren't in tech and I'm a man. Having a shitty job isn't exclusive to being a female in tech.

Maybe because it was considered mostly a secretarial job and they did not have a lot of other opportunities. Once given the choice to get into more fulfilling careers they took it. It's only because there's money in what is thought as "easy white collar job" that some women try to do it. And it is only because coders cost a lot that there is a push to get more women doing it as a way to lower wages. Even if they don't want to.

This is the kind of unsupported claim that makes these discussions unwelcome on hn.

Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50/50 will "lower the bar". So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipeline and all. The more I said I am leaning towards that it will lower the bar, the more uncomfortable people around me looked.

I was too socially ignorant to realize we aren't talking about math problem here and that they don't want anything said that might weaken their cause, good faith argument or not.

After that I got no more women in my interview pipeline and a "talk" from my manager.

The problem is that none of your assumptions hold water. Technical interviews are about as accurate as flipping a coin. Mundane factors like whether or not the interview is after lunch have a major impact on pass rates. Performance on the interview has little to no predictive value for future job performance.

You can't brush this off as social ignorance, this is simply ignorance of the facts.

Your presumption that I have some agenda and it wasn't social ignorance is a little offensive but whatever. "Ignorance of facts" should not be used as an insult but an opportunity to educate. The social fact that I am guilty of not knowing is that this a commonly parroted argument instead of the first logical model you come up with.

I do think you represented the argument I had at the time very well. The difference is that I used competitive programming as my example for something more controlled (plenty of stats going all the way back to high school level and on the internet no one knows if you're a man/woman/dog). Your counterargument that it isn't predictive is still valid.

Regardless, my current stance is that the question of "whether it lowers the bar or not" is not a relevant question to ask.

The only point I was trying to make with my story is that you can evoke very passionate attacks just for talking about the topic.

Why can't you criticize your own model, though? Your assertion that hiring more women will lower standards is premised on a belief that men are inherently better. Isn't that embarrassingly obvious to deduce from what you say?

Why isn't it the case that the bar is already lowered for straight, white men or people who otherwise fit tech stereotypes?

Or why does the value of diversity have to manifest in every individual? Maybe being in a diverse work force makes the cis, straight, white men and the company as a whole perform better.

And even if everything I'm saying is just flowery rhetoric with no rational basis, it's still a respectful way to view and treat other people, and your model that suggests women are generally inferior to men takes a big shit all over the aspiration of living in an inclusive, harmonious society.

I do but lunchtime only lasted so long before it imploded

> Your assertion that hiring more women will lower standards is premised on a belief that men are inherently better. Isn't that embarrassingly obvious to deduce from what you say?

If you're making "embarrassingly obvious deductions" you might be pattern matching me into your favorite straw man and not really deducing anything at all.

I never said women are inferior to men and it's not possible to logically deduce that from what I said. The only premise I assumed is that there are currently more men than women at the top (e.g., pipeline problem). You can even have the average women be way superior to men and still have the problem of hiring more women leading to lower standards, if the few top women are all happily employed elsewhere. I am not even saying this reflects reality, just that your logic sucks.

Why does everything have to be a dog whistle to fit people into hate groups? Some assholes like me are merely technical correctness assholes.

So you were just trying to make a nuanced point about women's general engineering skills based on their biology and don't want to be lumped in with all those unsavory people who give lesser consideration to women engineers based on sexist beliefs about women. Noted.

>I never said women are inferior to men and it's not possible to logically deduce that from what I said.

Didn't you imply that hiring women would be 'lowering the bar'?

If there are significantly less women applying for software development jobs then statistically, assuming women are equally good software developers as men, aiming for 50/50 representation necessitates lowering the bar

This does not mean that it’s not a worthwhile pursuit to aim for equal representation

It’s an argument for working towards more women in STEM (we want bigger application pools!)

Not at all. Consider:

- You have a pool of 100 men to choose from

- You have a pool of 10 women to choose from.

- You need to hire 20 people.

So, you choose the top 10% of the men and 100% of the women in order to achieve gender parity.

There is no premise that men are inherently better, only that the talent pool is so much larger that you can more easily distill high quality candidates.

Well, you explicitly contrived a premise that suggests women are excluded from hiring for some other reason. Why are you only choosing from 10 women? And did you not consider the point about the benefits of diversity not needing to manifest in every individual?

Because only 10 women applied. Meanwhile 100 men applied.

So then you say: "Your recruiting efforts need to target more women".

How? If you go to a college STEM fair to recruit, the same thing will happen. 10 men will stop by your booth for every 1 woman.

Why couldn’t you criticize your own model of what you assumed the guy you were replying to was talking about?

He said nothing about women being inferior to men

The fact that you seem to think that challenging your own assumptions is so easy while at the same time being fully incapable of doing so is pretty damned rich

No, he just clearly implied it.

What I suggest is to just be polite to your coworkers and let HR worry about the hiring process. Don't say anything to your coworkers that could suggest they are somehow inferior or have "bad" genetic traits. This seems like basic human civility that gets tossed out the window when someone has a right-wing view about a minority or women.

You are incorrect. Let's imagine a group of ten men and ten women: we want to hire four in total. Let's assume that we can reduce a potential employee's worth down to a single number from 1 to 10, in order to simplify the example. The men are rated [1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10]; the women are rated [3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10]. In this example the women are better on average (5.6) than the men (5.5) — but hiring the top four candidates results in hiring three men [9, 9 & 10] and one woman [10].

This is because while the mean woman is better than the mean man, the standard deviation of skills is more widely distributed across men than women in the example: more men are excellent, but also more men are terrible (in the example, the lowest three candidates are men!).

Beyond your contrivances, I take issue with you suggesting that employees can (or should) be rated on a linear scale. Companies have very specific needs and maybe a candidate who is a "2" on your scale is a "10" at fulfilling what the company needs.

I'll say again too that the value of diversity doesn't need to manifest itself in every individual.

[citation needed]

If this is just inferred based on that observation about judges and meal breaks, then keep in mind that this is just a factoid, and a one that fails the sniff test. C.f. http://nautil.us/blog/impossibly-hungry-judges.

Or is the idea that, because the old model sucks, we need to optimize this intermediary metric (diversity) in the interests of the ultimate goal of raising-the-bar?

If this was indeed a shitty model, it would have been pointed out to grandparent when he brought it up, but since this model is commonly used and extremely useful, what he got instead was silencing and penalizing through anonymous back door channels.

If you truly believe that 'interviewing is completely random' then I have some other, far deeper concerns you might want to address before we even remotely broach the subject of gender disparity.

Moreover - you're totally missing the point: it's not sexist to merely make the argument that 50/50 hiring can lower the bar. It's just intellectual rhetoric. Maybe it's good maybe it's bad, but it's not inherently sexist.

Ergo: if you don't agree with the PC, even if you make a reasonable argument (or even one that's very good) you're put out to pasture.

This is just one example of PC insane enforcement, there are many.

Which is why it's probably better to avoid such subjects because even intelligent people seem to have difficulty being tolerant, or even navigating the issues.

Nor should they. The pursuit of equality has been replaced with a demand for equity and the talking heads espousing this demand have become sufficiently skilled at publicly shaming companies and individuals that leaders have decided that acquiescing and silently taking on the bill involved in prioritizing in-office demographic makeup over all else rather than ending up on Vox & co. and being publicly tainted forever.

On an individual level, it is career suicide to go against the corporate narrative supporting the above, particularly when you consider that the most ardent supporters of the narrative are empowered to also have some of the most significant impact on your career (HR).

This type of discrimination has a name, it’s called “affirmative action”. This argument that fixing an imbalance is discrimination and therefore somehow worse seems to be really common but I think it’s a little misguided to say we shouldn’t use it, and here’s why.

The imbalance we have is an imbalance that was caused by cultural discrimination against women, and it’s a type of discrimination that is often unseen and is hard and time consuming to fix. (Not to mention, nobody actually knows how.)

The idea for affirmative action is to provide a counter-acting force to the already existing discrimination. Furthermore, the idea is to use this force gently and, most importantly, temporarily, until some balance is restored.

We already know what happens if we take no action at all: we get discrimination against women. The industry used to be a much higher percentage of women 40 years ago. Why has it declined? It’s obviously cultural because it used to be higher in the recent past, and just before that it was near zero and women weren’t allowed to vote. The numbers have been swinging all over the map in just 100 years, so it clearly has not settled from the perspective of history.

So what would you do to fix an imbalance? What is your suggestion? Doing nothing already has a known, negative outcome. There are other ideas besides affirmative action. How well have they worked in the past?

Look at other previously male dominated positions like doctors and law where you now in Sweden have more women graduating those fields than men. Something changed there. I doubt software development has been more hostile and conservative than for example law.

The thing is that women are studying at university at a larger degree than men in Sweden but they are not selecting STEM fields, especially not computer science.

Maybe it will change with role models, culture and different initiatives but I suspect that most young women right now think it is a boring as fuck career (at least those I talk to).

It would be like someone asking me if I would like to study to teach kindergarten. Maybe I as a male have been conditioned not to see that as an option and maybe many more would choose that career if we were raised differently but for me it just sounds like something I would really really not like. I respect the work but for me taking care of tons of kids all day sounds incredibly boring and rough. The idea that there is discrimination (which there is and some men suffer from) is not near my mind.

Most women I talk to express similar thoughts about software development.

Why do you think those two things are mutually exclusive? What if women are choosing to leave computer science because it's somewhere between subtly discriminatory and outright hostile?

I'm sure it's cultural because: in the US women in CS was ~37%, today it's 18%. Why the huge swing? There have been times in recent history when many many more women chose computer science. In India, there have been years when the participation rate was above 50%. There are places on earth today where many many more women chose STEM.

So, it's obvious based on the data we already have that today's low participation rates by women in the US and Europe is not an intrinsic property of women, rates are neither fixed nor the natural state of things.

All the rest of what you said is that maybe it's attitudes, and sure, maybe it is. Maybe that's the problem?

I've spoken with women too, and anecdotally, most women say the exact same thing as most men when they say computer programming sounds super boring. Some women I know confirm that discrimination and hostile behavior exists and is alive and well, especially the higher you go in an organization.

Participation used to be higher but now it is less; despite women getting more agency, doing better at school and getting high education than men. If you look at the most equal and rich countries where women are doing as well or in some areas better than men you don't have many who chooses software development as a career.

It could be just that fewer women want to be software developers and that is all that there is. And that more choice and more opportunities just makes other career paths more alluring.

Of course there can still be sexism and discrimination in certain cases but it is also very possible that it does not affect the number of women in tech much at all.

> If you look at the most equal and rich countries where women are doing as well or in some areas better than men you don't have many who chooses software development as a career.

That is not true. Participation rates have been very high in some of the countries that are now low. Participation rates in some of those countries are currently high.

You're trying to suggest that women as a group don't want computer science, by their nature as women, but to make that claim you have to deny history and ignore facts.

> It could be just that fewer women want to be software developers and that is all that there is.

The numbers changed a lot, and there is a reason. What you're saying is you don't know the reason, and I agree with you.

> it is also very possible that it [discrimination] does not affect the number of women in tech much at all.

I think it's extremely, extremely unlikely. It's demonstrated that the choices are cultural and not intrinsic to gender. So, your job then is to show that cultural attitudes are not affected by cultural discrimination. You're setting yourself up for an impossible task.

Yes, and my point is that when those women got more power, more choice, more money and more freedom they started to become less likely to choose software development and more likely to select other professions. Other professions that had historically been male dominated.

So it could be that if you are free to choose there are certain professions that will have a larger part male or female and that will amplify in a culture of freedom. You will choose what your friends choose.

For example I don't think that you would ever have 50% men/women that are interested in working in kindergarten. I think there is some biology in that and then it is amplified by most men not wanting it making it less likely for those that might want it to actually choose.

You're cherry-picking there, and incorrectly assigning causation to correlation. Before 1984 in the US, women's choice and power was increasing, and so what their participation in CS. In some other countries, women's participation rates in STEM have continued to increase as they integrate with the workforce. So you could use the very same argument you used to come to the opposite conclusion.

> You will choose what your friends choose.

Totally agree there! That may or may not have to do with discrimination, but you're right about that.

> I think there is some biology

This is the root of it. You've decided that women intrinsically don't want to do math or engineering.

There's data that shows otherwise, but it is indeed difficult to prove anything concrete. Nonetheless, we have strong indicators that today's ratios are not natural. And why would they have settled yet? It's barely been 3-4 generations since women were allowed to even vote. It's clearly still in flux, so suggesting that biology explains today's difference is obviously stretching.

Bottom line is I don't doubt preferences are at play, and what I'm saying is that biology can't explain the current preferences in the US or in Sweden either. Biology is not fluctuating on the 100 year time scale, and cultural norms are. Assuming that the known, documented sexism during the last century is fixed now and that cultural attitudes have settles and job choices reflect intrinsic gender differences... well it's my opinion, but looking at all the facts we do have, that seems so unlikely I believe it's impossible.

This is a very bold assumption on your part. For one, representation of women in technology was actually higher when discrimination against women was more prevalent, during the 1970s and 80s. This inverse relationship between gender equality and representation of women in technology is reproduced today. Countries with less gender equality actually see higher rates of women in tech as compared to countries with more gender equality.

The notion that discriminating against men will somehow end discrimination against women is similarly naive. When discrimination in the workplace occurs, employees are aware of it. Putting women in a situation where the majority of their coworkers know that they are being held to a different standard is an exceedingly easy way to foster a toxic workplace.

> So what would you do to fix an imbalance? What is your suggestion? Doing nothing already has a known, negative outcome. There are other ideas besides affirmative action. How well have they worked in the past?

Rethink whether there's anything that needs to be fixed. We should see women as individuals capable of making their own career choices, instead of as objects to be herded into one field or another.

Also, it creates a situation where people are aware that non-diverse employees are held to a more selective standard. This can increase impostor syndrome among diverse employees who may feel that they would not have been employed if they weren't of a specific gender or ethnicity.

1. The position that it's OK to fight discrimination with more discrimination is very different from the idea that discrimination is inherently bad.

2. The theory that some gender differences in occupation choice are caused by discrimination is both controversial and unproven.

If the difference is mainly caused by the genders having different statistical distributions of interests, you're actually using discrimination to fight peoples career choices.

Conversely, if genders don't have a different intrinsic, permanent distributions of interests, then not using some affirmative action to correct the situation amounts to preserving the status quo of known cultural discrimination.

The problem with what you said is that we already have data, the distributions of interest have changed dramatically over time recently, and they are currently different from country to country.

That's pretty clear, hard evidence that the gender differences in occupation choice we have today in the US (for example) are not intrinsic to the genders. So, what does that leave as possible causes?

The most fascinating fact here is that the more rich and gender equal societies become, career choices end up more "gender stereotypical"!

It's easy to interpret that as when you're rich enough to pick the career that actually interests you, rather than the career most likely to keep starvation at bay, people follow their interests more.

> the more rich and gender equal societies become, career choices end up more "gender stereotypical"!

What if gender stereotypical career choices is an indicator that our society is not gender equal, and that we're patting ourselves on the back prematurely?

BTW, not really true that there's a correlation between gender equality metrics and stereotypical career choices. To come to that conclusion, you have to ignore some periods of time and ignore some countries in the world.

This is very controversial among political activists, but established fact in the relevant sciences.

Pinker's "The Blank Slate" is a good introduction.

I didn't ask if the distributions are different. They are different, that's a fact we know, and what many people believe is the problem.

The question is, what evidence is there that the differences are intrinsic? For that, there's very little evidence in favor and strong evidence against. Specifically, the differences in the distributions of preferences among women over time and country by country are larger than today's differences between men and women in the US. That's pretty solid evidence that the distributions are cultural and not intrinsic to gender.

If those distribution differences were constant over a long time, say a thousand years, and constant globally, then your argument might have a leg to stand on.

The established way to classify people's personality traits is the "Big Five"/OCEAN model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Systematic gender differences show up across all cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge...

Your second non-answer to my question is to point at the updated version of the Myers-Briggs test, right after saying ‘but, science’? Okay, what do personality tests have to do with cultural sex or race discrimination?

This only repeats your previous argument, it shows that cultural differences currently exist. Again, we already know that. It does not show that intrinsic sex differences exist. I recommend reading all of that article carefully before assuming it’s helping your argument in any way. The conclusion of the section you shared on gender differences says:

“It is important to recognize that individual differences in traits are relevant in a specific cultural context, and that the traits do not have their effects outside of that context.”

And Big Five is “established” as a personality test. Personality tests are pseudoscientific, even if Big 5 is ‘more scientific’ than Myers-Briggs.

“Like the Big 5 model, any personality or behavior assessment can’t know things you haven’t explicitly answered in the questionnaire, Stein says. Sometimes commercial personality tests ask odd questions—like, Do you identify with snakes? or How do you react to a certain color?—and try to draw inferences from your answers. Those kinds of conclusions venture into the pseudoscientific, Stein says.“

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-...

https://qz.com/1201773/we-took-the-worlds-most-scientific-pe...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#...

I gave you a Pinker book to read and a well footnoted Wikipedia article on the science. I've spent enough work trying to educate someone who gives all the signs of just not wanting to change their mind.

> Okay, what do personality tests have to do with cultural sex or race discrimination?

Nothing, and I never claimed it had.

> Personality tests are pseudoscientific

The big five is the established scientific fact of 2019. Denying science because it doesn't fit with your ideology doesn't put you in great company.

I’m sorry I made you angry, there’s some miscommunication going on here. I’m not convinced we’re talking about the same thing because you haven’t brought anything to this conversation that demonstrates there’s evidence of intrinsic sex differences when it comes to career choices, you’ve only pointed to known cultural differences.

I agree with you that there are cultural differences.

> If those distribution differences were constant over a long time, say a thousand years, and constant globally, then your argument might have a leg to stand on.

So your standard of proof here 1000 years of studies, until you can agree that there is a chance this could be true.

Obviously, nothing anyone can say convince someone with such firm beliefs.

I agree there is miscommunication. I've been as clear as I can be, and I don't think any amount of me restating things can reach you.

I’m ignoring your ad hominem, but FWIW it weakens your argument because it demonstrates you didn’t understand mine. It has also become clear you didn’t fully understand my question. So, yes, you could keep restating that cultural differences exist or bringing up other irrelevant things like personality tests, and yes, that will continue to fail to show that intrinsic sex differences exist.

Its certainly not controversial that _some_ of the discrepancy is caused by discrimination. It is very obviously true historically for many careers. Consider medicine, where women were relegated to nursing because they couldn't cut it as physicians. Today that idea seems absurd, and of the brightest people I met in medical school, there was a fairly even split of men / women. So far medicine was more challenging than the typical programming job I"ve held, which is at least partially relevant.

To be clear I am certainly not arguing that 50/50 is the natural distribution of men/women among programmers. I have no idea what it is. But I'll bet it is higher than 98/2, which is about the ratio in the last 4 programming jobs I've held.

Lastly, I have two young daughters now. Its been a bit shocking to me to see how early they are inundated with messaging steering them towards being pretty, dressing like a girl, etc. I have no doubt the lingering stereotypes and cultural pressure steers women into so called traditional roles from an early age.

Yeah, the smartest women go into medicine and law instead of programming. I claim it's largely because they find working with people more interesting than working with machines.

Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female, and that is who they genuinely are.

Please think carefully about what happens if your claim turns out to be wrong. If males and females turn out to have equal interest in people and things, then your argument that you're spreading here is unintentionally a cultural gender based bias, in effect unconscious sexism.

Well two in particular went into pathology and radiology, so its definitely not the social aspect (they don't regularly deal with patients). Also, what do you claim of the equal number of men who go into law and medicine?

> Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female,

They aren't interested in much of anything yet -- they are 6 months and 2 years old.

https://www.enjuris.com/students/law-school-female-enrollmen... https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/12/19/women-a...

Breaking down the medical fields by gender distribution also follows expected patterns:

https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/specialty-profil...

I'm not saying these facts proves anything in particular, but they're good to be aware of.

The symmetry you're trying to imply doesn't really exist. Victims of cultural discrimination in history have been killed, enslaved, raped, harassed, etc. There is no analogue to that for the receivers of affirmative action. It's frequently quite difficult to show who's being materially harmed by affirmative actions as a group. It's common to say that giving a job to a women or black person because of affirmative action is discrimination, but it's not always zero-sum, it doesn't always mean someone else lost the job. And you just can't forget that if someone did lose the job, they still, as a group, already had unfairly high numbers of that job.

Another problem with your judgement is that the whole idea with affirmative action is to favor whoever is the underdog and only until they no longer are, where cultural racism doesn't change sides.

> when “positive racism” became fashionable some 8 years ago or so.

This comment sounds like it doesn't know any history. Affirmative actions have been used globally for a very long time in repose to times & places when discrimination occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

> The obvious alternative is to discourage racism and promote (real) equality.

Ah, so you do you do that? People have been trying that for a very long time. How well is it working? When has it worked better than affirmative actions?

To make a more subtle and deeper point about the irony of what you're saying, how do you actually "discourage" racism without in some way, shape or form giving preference to the downtrodden group? Isn't "discouraging" racism discriminatory against someone? If all discrimination is deplorable, is "discouraging" racism then deplorable because it's discriminatory against racists?

> But even if you do nothing, it's strictly better

Disagree. And note that proponents of actually fixing the problem would call doing nothing deplorable, because it in effect protects existing known discrimination by refusing to fix it.

The issue isn't positive vs negative discrimination or else the "fight racism with racism" camp wouldn't cry foul when positive discrimination is applied toward whites or men (in those rare cases when it actually is) nor would there be so much overt negative discrimination toward men and whites (the use of "white men" as a slur, the accusation that men are rapists and need to be trained not to rape, the propensity to blame all problems on whites/men, the existence of work groups and meetups that specifically exclude whites/men, etc). It's pretty clearly that there is some notion that certain genders/races are more deserving of both negative and positive discrimination than others.

> This comment sounds like it doesn't know any history. Affirmative actions have been used globally for a very long time in repose to times & places when discrimination occurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

The confusion is understandable; I should have used a different term. I coined "postive racism" to mean discrimination (specifically negative discrimination, per your definition) toward some group that is perceived to deserve it--those who advocate for the discrimination see it as righteous, hence 'positive'--for the sake of a somewhat familiar, concrete example, Antifa advocates for negative discrimination toward whites, men, etc. I should have used different words since "positive racism" sounds too similar to "positive discrimination" which already has an established meaning (and perhaps "positive racism" also already has an established meaning as well). I also used "discrimination" a lot when I technically meant what you're referring to as "negative discrimination"; in general, my post was ignoring affirmative action or "positive discrimination" because I don't understand it to be even remotely central to the broader national debate on race and social justice.

I would specifically not consider "affirmative action" to be a form of racism, although I think it's ill-considered and probably produces more racial tension, division, and strife than it alleviates. The specific reason I wouldn't consider it a form of racism is that I think racism implies animosity/hatred and not just discrimination. And while there probably are some who support affirmative action to antagonize whites, the overwhelming majority of proponents of AA over time have certainly been genuine in their intentions to reduce suffering.

> Ah, so you do you do that? People have been trying that for a very long time. How well is it working?

It's been working very well. Racism has been declining since the civil rights movement by all indicators. Equality of opportunity is at an all-time high in the history of the US, the West, and the whole world. You promote equality by promoting education, prosperity, and western/judeo-christian values. Chief among those values is individual liberty which naturally gives way to equality, and which is the antithesis to collectivist movements such as white supremacy, fascism/nationalism/national-socialism, communism, and so-called "anti-fascism" and "anti-racism" movements that are popular today.

> When has it worked better than affirmative actions?

I speculate (speculation is all we can do for this question) that it has always worked better (and far better) than affirmative action. As previously mentioned AA has probably not had a net positive impact even if it was well-intentioned.

> And note that proponents of actually fixing the problem would call doing nothing deplorable, because it in effect protects existing known discrimination by refusing to fix it.

Depends on how the problem is defined and one's values (hence the "subjectivity" in my original comment).

If the problem is "too much racism", then most people (including me) who are "proponents of fixing the problem" will naturally disagree with the idea that racism can solve the problem--racism is deplorable.

If the problem is "certain races and sexes deserve to be treated poorer than others" then of course racism will appear to be the solution. It's an inherently racist viewpoint, and people who espouse that viewpoint are (by definition) racists.

Agreed. Whatever differences of opinion we might have, this was well said, and I agree with you there.

The last part of your comment seems like it switches back to calling affirmative action racist implicitly though? Or, maybe I can't tell. I don't really understand the distinction you're making between positive discrimination and affirmative action.

I would totally agree that hateful discrimination is a bad thing, but from the top of the thread down, all we've been talking about is affirmative action, as far as I can tell, and nothing else. When @manfredo said "such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination", by "discrimination", he means affirmative action, right?

> You promote equality by promoting education, prosperity, and western/judeo-christian values.

Yes, true! And... this is exactly why some colleges have prioritized making sure they admit a few extra people from minority groups known to be suffering from discrimination, right?

> most people (including me) who are "proponents of fixing the problem" will naturally disagree with the idea that racism can solve the problem

Except nobody proposed racism as the solution in the animous/hateful sense. People proposed affirmative action as the solution.

> As previously mentioned AA has probably not had a net positive impact even if it was well-intentioned.

It sounds like you're hinting at the mismatch theory here and elsewhere... which is a common criticism, and it has been debated and studied at some length. Might be worth looking up some of the results.

Since AA has been used a lot, I'm not clear on why you're saying that racial tension and opportunity has improved dramatically, but that AA had nothing to do with it? Why are you sure that AA isn't the reason things are now better?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Mismatching

This article demonstrates some of the positive effects of AA, and also some of the negative effects of banning AA:

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/07/case-affirmative-a...

I guess if I have a single point it's that framing affirmative action as discrimination isn't clear thinking. It sounds like that's not what you're talking about, but this is what I jumped into the fray to say. The argument used above, not by you, is trying to suggest and imply there's a hypocrisy to taking any action to prevent cultural discrimination because the action is also discriminatory. That's true only in a technical sense, but is only FUD that confuses the issue. The goal is what's important, and the goal is equality of opportunity and removal of all animous/hateful behavior. Taking actions to meet that goal have worked in the past and will continue to.

There are a number of sensitive issues where stark logic and "inconvenient" facts are very much not appreciated. Best to avoid them in polite discussion.

Given that most social issues are not cut and dry, there is difficulty in finding the logical answer anyway. Rarely do we have all the facts available, even if a correct decision could be made with them. Rather we have mostly personal anecdotes which are not sufficient.

So the unpopular technical point of view is rarely worth giving, while also potentially a CLM (career limiting move).

This is one of the problems a lot of engineers have, and I make this mistake too more often than I want to admit.

Cultural discrimination isn't a math problem, and however you modeled it, your logic doesn't map well to history at all. When you double down on a math argument, what it sounds like to other people is that you're not open to the possibility that you made a logic or modeling mistake, that you've decided men are better than women, and that you're trying to confuse the argument with a technicality.

FWIW, there might be math problem with your suggestion that 50/50 would lower the bar. The ratio is not absolute, and this isn't zero sum. More women participating doesn't mean fewer men, it means more people. When there are more people, in general, the absolute number of excellent people goes up.

I don't know what you mean by "the bar". What does it mean to lower the bar? Are you talking about how hard it is to get a job, get promoted, be in the top 10%? I don't understand your argument.

No matter what math/logic you used, the layman translation of saying the bar goes down with inclusion of more women is that you believe women to be inferior. That may not be your intent, but that's what people are hearing you say.

I say the below not as an attempt to criticize you for this viewpoint, but as a way to try to explain why this viewpoint is often interpreted as sexist.

The question is why do you believe this? The possible explanations for why women are underrepresented in tech basically comes down to either nature or nurture. Either there is something in the way we as a society and industry educate, hire, manage, and promote women or there is something fundamentally different about women that prevents them from participating in this industry at the same rate as men. The former is fixable and you say this isn't fixable so we can assume this isn't your viewpoint. That would seem to mean your explanation relies on the idea that there is something fundamentally different about women that leads to them not going into tech. Do you see how that could easily be interpreted as sexist? It doesn't take much of a leap for people to hear the non-sexist "woman don't do this" as the sexist "women can't do this". You need to be able to articulate why you belong in that first camp or else everyone will just write you off as being in the second.

You essentially have to practice some kind of biological denialism in order to believe this "problem" is entirely managerial in nature. Discussing biological differences between sexes should not be considered sexism.

There's also more male electricians than female ones.

I feel that if females who would have made good engineers are turned away by discrimination or harassment, there's a good opportunity for a company to find hidden gems of an employee for lower cost than the equivalent male by making sure she is treated well. Then natural competition should balance out the cost difference over time.

Here you've identified the actual problem, which is people hearing "don't do this" as "can't do this". I.e. people failing to apply their brains to a basic comprehension task. If we're to levy accusations of "-ism", then I'd call promoting this behavior as anti-intellectualism, or being pro-stupidity.

I don’t know how many times I have seen the “don’t do this” argument being propped up by a due to “can’t do this” argument.

If you let these things run it’s course then it always ends up at the genetics/skull. And it’s always by people who clearly have no idea about what they are talking about and can’t actually point to any biological differences that would cause it, other than child birth... So it ends with “must be biological” because reasons, so “don’t do anything”.

Seeing the same argument play out over and over, always ending at the same spot with no evidence is infuriating.

That would make them not only anti-intellectual/pro-stupidity, but also assuming and acting in bad faith to shut down the discussion. A honest person would point out that the conversation makes them uncomfortable, and that they don't want to continue it.

> If you let these things run it’s course then it always ends up at the genetics/skull.

Except all the times it doesn't. Quite often, the conversation ends up being about voluntary preferences (people will e.g. point out that the weaker the economic pressures and the higher the freedom of choosing your own career, the more gender-segregated the job market becomes). Also, even if the discussion ends up at genetics, it's only ever a problem if one or both parties make the error of reasoning and passing judgements about individuals from population-level statistics.

> So it ends with “must be biological” because reasons, so “don’t do anything”.

It can be a valid and correct conclusion. If you starts by assuming something must be done, then there's no point in even having any discussion, because you've already made up your mind and seek justifications. It would be then best if you left the discussion to those who want to discover the truth about the issue.

> Seeing the same argument play out over and over, always ending at the same spot with no evidence is infuriating.

How can people tell, if they always shut the argument down beforehand with some underhanded maneuver like reading "don't do" and accusing the person of saying "can't do"?

People can tell if they have seen it lots of times before they start to shut it down.

I would also argue that it makes them smart, not pro stupidity or anti intellectual. Let me try and use a tech analogy to explain it. Say you repeatedly see junior admins putting unsecured databases on the internet which subsequently get compromised. How many times do you need to see the beginnings of that event chain before you start intervening?

Also there is nothing intellectual about entertaining the same argument over and over. Or do you also think we should seriously consider the flat earth argument every time someone brings it up.

Yeah, I can buy that. So now please scroll to the top of the thread and see the topic - the question why some people don't want to discuss politics at work. Exactly because of that - because it very predictably leads to nothing good.

But unlike the anti-intellectual position we're discussing in this corner of the thread, opposing political topics at work because of their inflammatory nature is a rational, consistent, and smart position. Nobody is telling a particular political position is wrong - just that work is not a right place for off-topic, highly emotional discussions. "Don't discuss politics at work" is the equivalent of "don't let junior admins manage public-facing databases with sensitive data without supervision".

And as for the anti-intellectuals, the reason they like to do the "don't do/don't want to" -> "can't do" substitution is because without it, if viewed calmly and rationally, they would reveal themselves to be similar to anti-vaxxers, in terms of pushing positions unsubstantiated by evidence but emotionally appealing.

And in that case challenging the popular opinion better come with actual scientific research, not lunch time napkin math pulled out of thin air.

Poor Yorick will never live it down, will he?

This has been studied now, and the data points strongly towards nature. Country's with a higher level of gender equality have more gender disparity in fields such as STEM, not less. The country's that have done the most to alleviate the issues you've mentioned have the lowest percentage of women engineers.

It was the exact opposite of what everyone thought would happen. These results were so unexpected that we called it the Gender-equality paradox.

Have you considered that this assumed malice is creating a false sense of sexism in the industry and in turn driving women away from the industry?

I would add raise and socialize as kids to the list, but to me that's clearly part of it.

The entire evolution of a person from baby to adult is moulded by society, which makes it pretty ridiculous when the enlightened techies want to solve the lack of women in tech by only "fixing" hiring and promoting. And management, if we're feeling generous.

My response to bluntfang, HN is rate limiting my office IP:

> Who's to say there's a reduction?

Anyone who studied gender relations over the last half century will say so, unambiguously, Trump notwithstanding. Women didn't have the right to abortion 50 years ago. They earned college degrees at half the rate of men (today, 3 women earn a degree for every 2 men). Workforce participation was much lower. Many states did not allow women to initiate divorces except under specific circumstances. Explicit denial of employment on the basis of sex was socially acceptable.

I'm willing to claim that women are better off today than they were in 1969 is a fact. I suppose "equality" is fundamentally subjective, and there might be people who genuinely believe that women getting the right to abortion, divorce, protection from discrimination, etc. somehow harmed them. But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most women see such changes as beneficial.

For one, 50 years ago in America, women were unintentionally at the frontline of computers perhaps because high numbers of women were the "computers" before machine computers were introduced. And when the machine computers were introduced, the departments of women "computers" got exposure to them perhaps because of a high overlap in the departmental "compute" functions.

Similarly if you look at high level women in computing from 50 years ago, they often got chances to apply their extraordinary skills because they happened across extraordinary opportunities - in some part because no-one else was above them for unique job, nor was there a formal role to hire for and choose between a woman or man. Another contributing factor might be the nature of war as well as the newness of the tech that created a temporary gender-blind vacuum.

The correlation between lower gender equality and higher rates of women in STEM is not just a pattern in US history. It also holds across different countries in the modern day [1]. The idea that this is just a coincidence that electronic computing happened to come into existence around the time that women started gaining more rights does not hold up.

> Similarly if you look at high level women in computing from 50 years ago, they often got chances to apply their extraordinary skills because they happened across extraordinary opportunities - in some part because no-one else was above them for unique job, nor was there a formal role to hire for and choose between a woman or man. Another contributing factor might be the nature of war as well as the newness of the tech that created a temporary gender-blind vacuum.

This, too, does not hold up to scrutiny. Women's share of computing jobs did not drop after the war was over. It continued to rise until the late 1970s or early 1980s depending on which estimate is used. Since the share of women in computing continued to increase several decades after WWII, the idea of a temporary gender-bind vacuum is not promising.

1. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/03/14/investigating-the-stem-...

This is a misstatement of my idea, which is that which is that greater numbers of women were higher in stem at the beginning because of a historical circumstance. The data you show in [1] is a snapshot of the modern day, and really says nothing about the historical circumstances.

> Since the share of women in computing continued to increase several decades after WWII, the idea of a temporary gender-bind vacuum is not promising.

You act as if there are no momemtum effects of the initial higher rate of women in computing technology. A baseline rate of women in the culture at the time would encourage more women to be in the industry, perhaps until other effects became stronger. That the numbers continued to rise, in my opinion, say nothing about my second proposition one way or other.

For the third time, the inverse correlation between gender equality and women's participation in engineering and technology hold true both when viewed over time within individual countries and when comparing different countries at the same time. Look at the rates of women's participation in engineering and technology in the US and it peaks at in the 1970s and 80s and tapers off after that. It does indeed show a relationship between the historical circumstances of women and their career choices. And when the same circumstances exist today in other countries, the inverse relationship between gender equality and rates of women in STEM holds true as well.

> You act as if there are no momemtum effects of the initial higher rate of women in computing technology. A baseline rate of women in the culture at the time would encourage more women to be in the industry, perhaps until other effects became stronger. That the numbers continued to rise, in my opinion, say nothing about my second proposition one way or other.

The same trends are observed in countries that did not participate in WWII which makes this hypothesis that the war imparted some sort of momentum on women in computing questionable.

For the second time, that's not what the data in your link shows. It shows a single data graph of the modern day state. It is an interesting conundrum - but I don't understand how it supports what you are saying about the historical state.

Other nations who didn't participate in WWII were largely further behind the industrialization curve. Not sure what that means for interpreting STEM data other than there wasn't as much STEM in those nations then.

Because you asked for evidence on geographic trends, and I provided it. If you insist that I demonstrate statistics that are widely known, I'll oblige:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-declinin...

> Other nations who didn't participate in WWII were largely further behind the industrialization curve

Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark (only fought for 9 hours, so it effectively didn't fight) are further behind in the industrialization curve? France, too, could be counted in this category, as their wartime contribution was largely paused from 1941 to 1945 besides partisan activity and French forces outside of mainland Europe.

The gender equality paradox is widely understood. What is motivating the instinctive dismissal of such a widely studied and known phenomenon?

Moreover, it doesn't address the underlying assumption that 'equality' actually has to imply 50/50 in every labour category.

I personally believe that anyone should be able to do anything, but that gender is so deeply ingrained into culture and society, that there'll never be 50/50 in most professions not matter what we do - and that we should consider accepting 'different strokes for different folks' - and that ironically 'diversity' means people will do different things. There can still be equality in the world even if people do different things, we might just have to look at things a little differently and make sure 'fairness' is applied from another angle.

In the 1920's, Lenin tried to abolish that utterly bourgeois institution of the 'family'. He banned 'weekends' and made Russia work on a 5 day work day. Everyone got one day off - but different days off were assigned to different workers. Husbands and wives would often be assigned different days off specifically so they'd never see each other, i.e. to wear down the coherence of the family. This is not some Netflix Dystopia - this was a reality for 10's of millions of people in a 20th century country.

It failed miserably because I think the hyper intellectual social egalitarian attitudes were at odds with the social reality of humanity. I believe much of our gender wars boil down to this as well: we have gender, it's never going away, and trying to kill it is absurd. It's ok, we can have real equality without having to wipe out gender - we just have to think a little bit about it.

That sounds like a cherry-picked example. For example, Eastern Block (USSR and similar countries) had a lot more gender-equality than the Western Block (like US) and has way more women in STEM.

The gender paradox is also poorly explained through the narrative that historical gender roles is the cause of gender segregation today.

Why does tech take longer than other professional fields like medical and legal? Harvard law started admitting women in the 1950s. MIT started admitting women in the 1870s. Yet the gender balance in the legal field narrowed much more rapidly.

Highly talented women are not having to work as nannies and school teachers because they're kept out of tech. They choose other high paying careers and do very well in them.

Pardon? 50 years ago was 1969. Not discounting the fact that lower class women have always worked, the 60s saw a huge growth in Women's liberation, with the first woman to be a Fortune 500 CEO happening in the 1972.

To say Women were "barely allowed in the workplace" during the 60's, 70's 80's and 90's needs significant proof.

In 1969, the labor force participation rate of women was 37.8%, and today it’s 46.8%. That’s a big change, and you have to realize that this difference is also coming out of the men’s share; it’s a bigger change than it looks. Also the women’s share was much lower - only 29% - just 20 years before that in 1949. In 1920 it was 20%. And don’t forget 1920 was the first year that women were allowed to vote. So if you’re looking at the bigger point and don’t fixate on exact dates, the pattern is one of massive change in the last 100 years from almost nothing to now nearing 50%.

FWIW, while the comment you replied to maybe seemed to overstate the claim a little for recent years, your response here doesn’t look particularly good in this sensitive/divisive topic, if you’re actually worried about being unfairly labeled. For example, the fact that the first woman Fortune 500 CEO happened in the last 50 years, after 1969, really goes straight to the parent comment’s point, and constitutes extremely clear proof that in 1969 women were barely allowed in some parts of the workforce.

I would not call 38% participation "barely" in the workforce. And the point of noting the first female Fortune 500 CEO in 1969 was to highlight that while it is a shame it took so long, women would have been in senior roles well before 1969 to make her promotion possible.

What are you talking about? The numbers have varied wildly in the last 50 years. In the US it was almost 40% women in CS in 1984. Now it’s 18%. Why? The numbers also vary wildly from country to country, and in India some years have seen greater than 50% women in CS. Why?

Cherry picking numbers to make it seem like it’s not changing and make it seem like today’s numbers are the natural order of things, when that’s very very far from the truth, is a way to ensure people who think will interpret your argument as sexist.

Not worth the huge money sink to whom? The companies involved? Because the ideologues of identity politics capitalizing on this "shame"-induced economy are making a fortune from it and while they continue to do so, you can expect more of the same.

It will stop of course when the bubble pops, lucrative front-end JS jobs requiring a 3 month "bootcamp" to get into disappear and every remaining IC is stack ranked based on that which is quantitative.

- Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21078125

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20722525

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599451

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20140962

— Women in tech: Nope, let’s not go there, too political.

— Underrepresented minorities in tech: Sorry it’s a pipeline problem, don’t bring politics into this.

In my experience in tech (though only Silicon Valley tech companies, so that's a narrow sample) this the opposite of what is true. Companies are very eager to display how much they support LGBT movements and announce how they'll increase diversity by offering larger hiring bonuses for diverse hires and institute systems of reservations for women and non-Asian PoC. Both the private and public companies I've worked with have been very active in pursuing these goals. And we're not alone Microsoft offers larger bonuses for hiring managers that hire diverse candidates [1], and Intel withholds portions of bonuses unless diversity quotas are not met [2].

1. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di...

2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-hits-a-novel-diversity-ta...

The reason they are so divisive is because the loud people fall into two categories: 1) people who loudly and constantly complain about these issues and for whom no amount of improvement is enough, and 2) people who think all these problems are greatly exaggerated, part of the liberal culture wars, and find it extremely annoying that anyone would bring it up.

The "silent majority" in these issues are people who say "yeah, sure, it seems fair to allow gay marriage, why not" and "let's see what we can do to improve female and minority representation but let's not jump to the conclusion that anyone in particular is to blame".

The hallmarks of being in this silent majority are:

- being generally well-intentioned

- supportive of incremental, common-sense solutions that are not zero-sum

- dislikes intense conflict and blame games

- does not take a view of the issue that makes one group of people the "heroes/victims" and another the "villains"

So, if you hear the proposal "let's allow politics at work", who do you think is actually going to speak up? That's right, the loud and annoying people that you can hear anytime by turning on the news. Ideologues for whom compromise and assuming good faith in your opponents is anathema. No thanks.

For a very long time this was NOT the majority opinion despite some brave tech companies imposing policies that prevented LGBT discrimination.

Keep in mind too that many states in which tech companies do business still (with the support of the majority) legalize discrimination of LGBT in hiring, housing, lending, everything. Some states even have policies that try to prevent LGBT people from raising families.

This isn't a case of two strident extremes causing a ruckus while the well-mannered majority knows best.

But these people would do well to remember that the bulk of the public they are trying to convince are not ideologues as well.

The well mannered majority may not know best but it is what is ultimately making the decisions.

I think a large majority of the arguments here are folks looking at this through an engineering lens, trying to optimize the workplace at the cost of minorities or discriminated groups, but shouldn't this be the other way around? Workplaces should instead be optimized for everyone to be able to work there, and inclusion is an important part of that goal.

The ideologue does what the ideologue does, and campaigns for change. That's as you said, their role is to believe that change is possible, and that their efforts will contribute to bringing it about. And the whole point of theirs is to reach out to the non ideologues. The fact that there's some bad actors out there that either die to incompetence or maliciousness make a mess of it doesn't mean that the ideology is flawed.

A line is crossed when they come into the workplace and make wrongthink a fireable offense. The proper place for these things to be worked out is, for the most part, in the media and on discussion boards like these. Or in private conversations like the bar. The key to understanding this is in the word "workplace": it isn't the "socialjusticeplace" or the "inclusionplace".

Conservatives have their place too. The role of progressives is to introduce new ideas. The role of conservatives is to present the argument about why these new ideas might not work. "Change" is not an automatic good. For example, all of us will undergo the change from "alive" to "dead". Personally, if it were within my power, I'd prefer not to undergo that particular change.

If I could wave a magic wand and create a space for conservative and liberal ideologues to beat each other senseless, and leave the rest of us out of it until the winner is decided, I would certainly do so.

When you contend (at work) that some of your coworkers ought to be second-class citizens and be considered inherently inferior due to their biology then you absolutely should be fired. That is in clear violation of most companies' very reasonable policies. This isn't merely "stating why new ideas might not work" (also, people's existence are not "new ideas"). Furthermore, spreading these negative attitudes about your coworkers very likely contributes more negativity to the workplace than arguments that workers should be treated with similar respect and dignity.

Imagine yourself noticing that people around you start to reveal themselves as strongly religious - and not in your religion, if you subscribe to any - and very much into proselytizing. Not a day goes by without someone approaching you to convince you to believe in their god. Even when not explicitly preaching, they keep invalidating everything you worry about. "You fret about your 401k as if you were to use it. Armageddon is coming soon, and if you believe in God, you'll get the best 401k there is!". "I wonder how can you spend so much time on that hobby, when so many people still haven't heard the Good News." "Yes, this disease is a tragedy, but God's Kingdom will soon cure it, and all others too. These doctors are wasting their time." "You're depressed because of climate change? Don't be! God won't let anything happen to Earth!"

At some point you would really start to prefer people to stop talking any and all religion at workplace.

This isn't an arbitrary example. As a teenager, I've been that preacher. People who do that believe strongly in what they talk about - it's literally the most important issue in their lives. The conflict stems from failure to understand that just because they care about an issue, doesn't mean everyone else does too. Failing to recognize that, doubling down on efforts to make others pay attention, breeds contempt, resentment, and otherwise achieves the exact opposite of what's intended.

I've seen both sides of this, and the way the topics you mention are approached today very much reminds me of such religious groups. There's a time and place for all discussions, but they need to happen in contexts where all parties are at least a little receptive, and not by performing DDOS on someone's attention, or invalidating everything they care about that's not related to the important issue.

* - Inclusive environment obviously cannot include the people who hardened their hearts to God, and apostates who turned their back on the Word of God and only speak to poison the minds of good people.

The OC named LGBTQ+ people as an example, which is fair, as at many workplaces discussion of family or inviting family to social functions is considered a norm and perhaps even a core value. If gay employees face harassment or (in some jurisdictions) termination for discussing their family, that is a failure of inclusion policies.

Another example of inclusion is related to accessibility. Is your workplace welcoming of colleagues with disabilities? Can someone with limited mobility attend all corporate events? Are people with speech impediments given time to speak on meetings? This is outside of my personal wheelhouse but I hope the point is clear.

There are many ways in which a workplace can improve its inclusivity, and they are all rooted in improving the performance of the employees.

The point of my thought experiment is not to diminish these issues, but to point out why people may oppose bringing up those topics. Most reasonable people won't react negatively to issues of accessibility, or someone feeling uncomfortable because of their LGBTQ+ status in context of a mostly non-LGBTQ+ workplace; they'll often jump to accommodate their colleagues. But there's a bunch of people wielding these topics the way preachers from my example wield the Bible, and these are the people who are first in line to tell that you need to discuss politics at work (and everywhere, all the time). If one is sympathetic to their position, it may be hard to imagine why others oppose it - hence the example from the other side of social spectrum.

People who promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace are not trying to change the lifestyles of all employees, as your hypothetical preacher is doing. In the context of discussing "politics" at work, the point is to create a more inclusive workplace. Yes, that means people may have to attend uncomfortable trainings or learn to behave differently on the clock. But nobody is being asked to change their behavior outside of work.

It may be true that some people in some companies are overzealous in their enforcement of inclusivity policies. It may be that the way they are trying to implement those policies has an adverse effect on some other groups in the company. But that is an issue of execution that can be taken up with the people responsible for the initiative. At larger companies, these sorts of programs will be run by professionals who have studied these topics extensively, and who have goals and metrics just like any other employee. If their programs fail to produce the results leadership is looking for, presumably the approach will change.

Oh, but they are. Don't do "not all SJWs" argument ;).

Seriously though, this is a bit motte-and-bailey-ish. Sure, diversity and inclusion in the workplace are desirable, but the meaning of those terms is quite different from the one that's being actively promoted (until challenged, when the promoters revert back to pointing out the desirable characteristics; hence the motte-and-bailey).

> Yes, that means people may have to attend uncomfortable trainings or learn to behave differently on the clock.

Yeah, and this is where it often starts to feel like indoctrination. You have the trainings telling you what to do, and HR playing the role of commissars, ensuring you comply. Things like [0] don't happen when it's the level-headed people who are promoting diversity.

> It may be true that some people in some companies are overzealous in their enforcement of inclusivity policies. It may be that the way they are trying to implement those policies has an adverse effect on some other groups in the company. But that is an issue of execution that can be taken up with the people responsible for the initiative.

There's a very real and documented risk that trying to do that will result in the termination of the person doing the taking up, perhaps loud enough to attract a headline.

--

My point with the religious example is to try and make you change perspective, to look at things from the POV of people who oppose discussion of diversity/inclusion politics at work. I'm not it's a perfectly rational position. Feelings are involved. But it is a position that has reasons behind it, and I try to shine the light on those reasons. Do the thought experiment. Look at your social feed, and mentally replace every minority issue with a theocratic issue. Look at the co-worker zealously fighting for social justice and imagine they have a Bible in their hand instead of the rainbow in their lap. This is how it feels to be a person for whom diversity, while still desirable, isn't the most important issue in their lives.

People who say they want to keep politics out of work aren't enemies. They're often sympathetic to your cause, and at the very least willing to accommodate your personal idiosyncrasies. They just know that once you start encouraging such discussions at work, some preacher will always come out of the come out of the woodwork and turn the workplace into a battleground between two rabid minorities fighting it out and trying to desperately recruit people from the indifferent majority to join the cause. None of this is conductive to work, happiness or civilization.

What I'm trying to do with the preacher example is to point out that just because you care about some issue deeply, doesn't mean others do, and you'll get much better headway with them if you respect the fact they have different priorities, and don't want to join wars they don't believe in. It's just as true in case of religion as it is in case of diversity.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21276507

Allowing religious employees the space to practice their faith at work is explicitly part of diversity and inclusion. That is why many workplaces have prayer rooms, why dress codes allow people to wear crucifixes, why on-call rotations are moved around to cater for high holidays, why the cafeteria has vege options, and so on. Religion isn't the opposite of diversity - on the contrary!

I think it's disingenuous to portray modern attempts to make the workplace a more inclusive environment for people of different backgrounds as some kind of political indoctrination. There is nothing controversial about companies expecting their increasingly diverse workforce to do their best not to offend one another. It's good people management. It's good business.

If there really is - as you suggest - an "indifferent majority" who find it outrageously disruptive to learn how to treat their colleagues with respect, then that just reinforces the OC's point: people who resist "discussing politics" at work are privileged because they are the majority.

Fortunately, in my experience, that is not the case. I don't think most employees have a problem with doing training on unconscious bias or inclusion or whatever else, because they understand that they are at work and they are expected to uphold a certain level of professionalism. There are lots of trainings people do at work that they don't care deeply about - bribery, first aid, occupational health and safety, etc. Some of that will sink in, some of it won't, but overall the trend will be toward a happier, safer and more productive workplace for everyone.

Much like many workspaces cater to the regular needs of religious people, many workplaces cater for the diversity requirements for their employees. This is non-controversial, and people generally aren't against it.

But there is a reason why most of the same workplaces will frown upon making a show of practicing your own religion at workplace, or constantly bringing it up and pushing your religious views on your co-workers. There's a difference between inclusiveness and converting. The same applies to politics, and to identity politics in particular.

> If there really is - as you suggest - an "indifferent majority" who find it outrageously disruptive to learn how to treat their colleagues with respect

I really hate this rhetorical trick. It's totally disingenuous. The indifferent majority doesn't "find it outrageously disruptive to learn how to treat their colleagues with respect". They treat their colleagues with respect already. What they find disruptive is the disrespectful colleagues who try to bully them into things by abusing their minority status, or aggressively try to force their involvement in issues they're not interested in. The "practicing politics" of this colleagues is the adult environment of punching someone in the face and then asking, "why are you hitting my fist with your face?".

You may not agree with anything I said. But consider at least the possibility that the opponents of politics at workplace, who you try to paint as morally deficient and ignoring basic decency, actually view this the way I described it. That it's true from their point of view. Accepting that will make it much easier for you to understand why they react the way they do.

All that the OC pointed out is that there are situations at work - and diversity and inclusion programs are one - where the discussion of issues deemed to be "politics" can be in the interests of improving the workplace.

Obviously if an employee is disruptive, that is a problem. Your hypothetical preacher is disruptive. Your hypothetical diversity advocate who bullies their colleagues is also disruptive. But both of these are straw people. Bullying is clearly not appropriate at the workplace. That is separate to the issue of discussing politics.

I would be very surprised if the "indifferent majority" feels that inclusion programs containing some political discussion is tantamount to workplace bullying. If that were the case, it would be observable in the metrics. At least engagement and likely also productivity would take a hit if the majority of employees felt bullied. I am quite sure HR and People Ops professionals would adjust their programs if they were received that poorly.

I think the reality is that the majority of people truly are indifferent. That is, they don't care about diversity and inclusion one way or the other. They do the trainings. They hear that certain groups feel oppressed in society. They stop describing situations as "gay" or "retarded". They let women speak first sometimes. Then they get on with their day because really what difference does it make? It's just work.

Please understand that I do know there are people who are very offended or unhappy with the idea of politics in the workplace. I read HN. I can see lots of them like to comment here. These people's feelings are important to consider too, and HR professionals do exactly that when thinking about how to implement their initiatives. It's a delicate balance, and whatever they do may upset someone. But trust that they are working in good faith, and they are doing their best to try serve the interests of all employees. That is their job, after all.

(If you live in a western country, surely you know of at least one such faith, perhaps more. And to be clear, I'm not picking on those religions here, but pointing out an experience most westerners can probably relate to, that has strong similarities to the way certain political topics are handled.)

I don't think this is a sensible idea or common sense.

The problem with it is that it's fine as long as science shows our ideal workplace environment as more productive or superior. We can say things like "diverse working environments increase productivity" and act backed by those facts.

Problem is that it's not really guaranteed that the mechanisms science might suggest in the future actually do support our ideal workplace conditions.

Do we then act on those productivity enhancing ideas as well, even in cases in which they are against our ideals? Would we embrace racism or ageism in the name of productivity?

To me normalizing (allegedly) neutral arguments based on productivity feels like a dangerous shortcut.

Having a discussion is hard. While you come to this well-intended, participants bring their own life experiences and hardships. They may not agree on the starting point of the conversation:

How is "marginalized' and "privileged" is defined? Some may not take that perspective on the above issues, and people with these characteristics may not consider themselves part of the "group", they may believe overcoming hardship by the way of grit and merit being the ideal.

People with these characteristics who don't consider themselves part of the "groups" may find the rhetoric being used patronizing, they don't want to be treated special or different, they want to be recognized for their contribution to the collective. That's where role models come from, to some.

They may disagree on what "empathy" means. Casting a group as marginalized draws broad strokes about others, because who isn't marginalized? How could someone know how someone else feels or what they have faced in life? If you don't like having your hardship belittled, why potentially do the same thing to others? We all have feelings and bring our unique stories and experiences to the table.

The definition of "inclusiveness". To some, the qualm isn't the subject, it's how some people who cite these groups disregard the larger collective or group they're apart of (e.g. their team, their workplace).

The definition of "discussion". There are stories of people being fired for merely citing agreed upon academic social/psychological research. Some sense viewpoint discrimination - fear of being sanctioned for stating their perspective - or to even say they're hurt by the topic's inferences.

Let me give you a real world example.

In the US, the average white person goes to a better funded school than the average minority. That is a form of privilege. I personally am white, but went to a majority black school that is extremely underfunded and around an 80% below poverty level. I (and all others attending my school) missed out on numerous opportunities that other schools provided.

But when people see me, they immediately stereotype me as having gone to a better funded school. This is an assumption they make about me based on my race, and which some use against me (thinking me privileged in relation to school system).

When applying to college, many colleges use race to assume a level of hardship and then adjust admission standards based on hardship. Someone who goes to a very underfunded school won't score as high on the SAT as they would have if they had gone to a better school. Yet because of my race, the assumption is made that such reasoning does not apply to me.

> When applying to college, many colleges use race to assume a level of hardship and then adjust admission standards based on hardship. Someone who goes to a very underfunded school won't score as high on the SAT as they would have if they had gone to a better school. Yet because of my race, the assumption is made that such reasoning does not apply to me.

I do not think this is true for the highest tier of colleges, who will also consider what highschool you come from.

Conversely, they might use it FOR you. They might assume you're smarter because you're white and went to a better school, and give you that promotion or that job or that loan.

Those who like debating about politics can always gather after work.

I don't see what it has to with a level of privileges.

That being said, I also don't like being told what type of conversations I'm allowed to have.

Because the discrimination laws as they are currently setup in the US do not protect LGBTQ folks in the way they protect others. For example, in many states people can still be fired based off their gender or sexual identity [1].

I don't have to give a second thought to bringing my significant other to an office holiday party. If my coworker needs skip that same party out of fear of being fired for bringing their significant other, that is a workplace problem.

[1] - https://www.fastcompany.com/90369004/lgbt-employee-protectio...

In San Francisco, almost everyone expressing a political opinion will support gay rights. In rural Mississippi, many of those workers will be bringing out their anti-gay inflammatory baggage when discussing politics. I'm virtually certain that far more anti-LGBT vitriol occurs within political discussions than the average non-political conversation.

This isn't unusual either. Throughout history oppressed groups have very frequently found refuge in the apolitical world of commerce. Just look at the history of Jews in Europe. Even when surrounded by a bigoted culture, trade and business ties encouraged tolerance and cooperation. The worse periods always tended to be the points where some ruler decided that politics all of a sudden needed to be injected into every sphere of life. Just look at the Spanish Inquisition or the Nuremberg Laws.

Not talking about these issues allows the underlying bigotry to fester unchallenged.

The first panel depicts Kelly's perception of race in America in his everyday life: people of different races exist (as horrific outdated stereotypes) but there is absolutely no tensions between them. The second panel depicts Kelly's perception of what it feels like to him when racial tensions are discussed. Kelly, like most white people in America, experiences "white fragility"[2] when race is discussed. Because white people have usually not been regularly exposed to racial issues discussions of such create mental stress which can feel like a personal attack on them which Kelly depicts as a general riot. To white people, the easiest way to alleviate this stress is to shut down the discussion altogether and return themselves to the ignorance depicted in the first panel.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/vIHrvlg.jpg

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-sociologist-ex...

Because what if you are an LGBT person and such things materially affect you? What happens when you bring your same-sex spouse to a company party? What happens if you realize you were born the wrong gender and decide to (publicly) transition? Suddenly you are not just "discussing" politics, your very identity is political (and that distinction is something imposed by society on you).

Also note that in the US not every state has laws against LGBT discrimination. There's currently a lawsuit before the SCOTUS to decide if the existing federal ban on "sex discrimination" also applies to sexuality and gender identity but with the current composition of the court it's likely to be decided that those categories are not protected under the law.

In the United States, right now, trans people can literally be fired for being trans. The "laws against discrimination" that you refer to do not protect trans individuals, and those laws themselves the product of people organising together and deciding that certain kinds of discrimination should not be allowed.

That you included trans people in your example suggests you are currently unaware that laws against discrimination do not provide trans people the protections given to other groups.

If you're gay and you mention the gender of your spouse, you are going to get a reaction. People consider the existence of LGBT individuals to be political. It's hard to have anything other than surface level conversations without family and relationships coming up.

because it is entirely unfeasible that any social problem that arises is immediately delegated to a court. workspace problems that are not necessarily criminal are most effectively solved directly where they occur. This requires that discourse at work is allowed so that information can be exchanged freely.

Carrying every conflict into a legal battle because employers don't like the fact that human interaction on occasion results in tension and is messy is quite ridiculous. You might as well start pouring Xanax into the water dispenser to calm the employees.

>> If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.

I'm a underrepresented minority in just about everywhere but tech, yet you draw the line "at tech" for some arbitrary reason (as if my place of work or work opportunities defines who I am).

This is why I disagree. Someone is making arbitrary groups of underrepresentation and/or minority harm who have no real claim over said power.

Also:

>> I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege...

I am one of said underrepresented minorities "not in tech" (I also don't work in tech anymore, so I guess I'm in the clear now) who have no interest or desire to talk politics at work. Not when I was poor and drawing on EBT/SNAP/WIC and not when I've been well off, or anywhere in between.

There is no absolute reason you have to be privileged to not want to talk about politics at work. This is a majorly false assumption.

Or, you could address the same issue by saying "We need to pressure HR to require them to present at least one under-represented minority candidate for each open position." That's a much more political approach to the same problem.

On a more general level:

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

Sure. But don't do the discussing at work. That's not what work is for. (The exception is when the problem does affect work. If the workplace is trans-hostile, say, you need to address that at work, and there's probably not a non-political way to do it.)

Work isn't a debating society. It isn't part of a political campaign. It's a place for efficiently producing things that people want. If it fails at that, society suffers, even if some really good debates happen. We have other places for those debates; we don't have other places for producing the things that society needs.

  tech culture has skewed
  so insanely towards the
  authoritarian left

Have you also considered that while a "marginalized" person might be keenly aware, researched and emotionally invested in discussing these things, a "privileged" person may feel ambushed and distracted by these questions while they are trying to focus on work? The language and obvious expectation in many of these "discussions" is a with-us-or-against-us recruitment for the agenda, often backed up with moral blackmail(e.g. "we're fighting for our lives here and you won't even help us"). At work we try to afford each other respect, politeness and professional courtesy, but from what I've seen, these "discussions" are anything but.

I don't think imposing oneself onto other people like these "discussions" do is effective. Surely you've seen the hyperbole, the aggression and vitriol that goes with them and can imagine how it seems to someone who isn't invested in the agendas? After all you ask to not be downvoted even in your meta-discussion about the topics, what about when discussing the topics themselves?

I agree with the progressive arguments - that you can't just say "no politics in X", that politics are inherent to what you do. What I absolutely disagree with is the tactics employed, and I think they are not just ineffective, they have a negative effect on engagement. People may want to help, but they don't want to feel like they're being coerced to. People may want to discuss, but they want to do it on their terms. People may want to listen, but they don't want to be lectured.

I think this is why there is such a strong push to disengage and ignore these problems - and I agree that they are problems that need discussion and need solutions. The in-your-face unapologetic advocacy, the constant motte-and-bailey argumentation, the extreme emotional reactions to any dissention, the preaching from a perceived moral high ground - these are not a conductive environment for changing minds.

So I agree with you. I'll go even further. It's bullshit to say "no politics at work", and it's hypocritical. I will keep supporting that policy, because it's the lesser of two evils, because I think progressive strategy is counter-productive and a recipe for disaster. I'm happy to have any of these discussions, on a neutral, preferrably anonymous forum, where there is enough distance that perhaps we could have a productive argument. Work is none of those things.

I would push back on this. In a trivial sense, politics is in everything, because everything is somehow related to everything else.

For most work-related purposes, an LGBT issue, to take a random example, is relevant in the same way it is relevant to include the gravitational influence of Neptune when calculating the trajectory of a thrown object on Earth: technically there is an influence, but it is minute. This would be true unless, perhaps, you work in HR and dealing with this stuff is part of the job description. Naturally, strongly committed activists won't see it that way because they see literally everything through the lens of their hobbyhorse.

But I agree very much with your second paragraph. I work in medical research. The important thing about it is to find cures for diseases. If some allegedly or actually marginalized person comes in and attempts to derail this important work with their own issues, it is incredibly self-centered. I don't care how bad you think your group has it, it isn't as bad as "the group of people with metastatic cancer". Privileged as I may or may not be, it isn't me such a person would be harming, it's the patients.

I think most people in my field recognize this and political issues generally aren't a problem there. I wonder if there is an inverse correlation between the importance of the work and the likelihood that people will bring up political issues.

> The in-your-face unapologetic advocacy, the constant motte-and-bailey argumentation, the extreme emotional reactions to any dissention, the preaching from a perceived moral high ground - these are not a conductive environment for changing minds.

^^^ privileged white male

- A women-only Slack channel.

- Women-only events, such as a free screening of Wonder Woman. The men at the company were expected to work during that time.

- An "ally skills workshop"[1], which attempted to indoctrinate us with an explicitly racist and sexist ideology.

- A Diversity Council that had the explicit goal of increasing the number of non-white non-men in engineering. One time when I was invited to a meeting of the council, I said that their goal should be to eliminate bias in the hiring process (such as by blinding resumes, replacing phone screens with text-only mediums, etc). I was taken aside and chastised for my statements.

If I had actually said my opinions, I have no doubt I would have been fired for my beliefs. If that's what happens when people are encouraged to bring their politics to work (especially in SF), I will gladly take the "no politics" option.

1. Slides from the workshop: https://files.frameshiftconsulting.com/Ally%20Skills%20Works...

Edit: the slides have been updated since I last saw them. The slides presented to me were closer to this version from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170911021528/https://files.fra... Though even that version is more toned down than what I saw.

Heck, despite what happened, I still like and admire the leadership of the company.

While it does sound like a good idea to eliminate bias, appearance is a contributory factor in the hiring process. If someone turns up with matted hair, hasn't showered in months, and is wearing a pizza stained t-shirt then most companies won't want to hire them and most employees won't want to work near them. Good idea in theory, not really in practice. You're going to have to have a face-to-face interview at _some_ point and that's when (mostly subconscious) racism/sexism/\*ism will

Also, that first slide from the workshop presentation reminded me how much I hate the push for people to declare pronouns. Contrapoints tweeted about this from a trans perspective[1] and got labeled "problematic" by a lot of leftists.

[1] https://arcdigital.media/contrapoints-and-the-scandal-that-s... (referencing the first set of tweets)

Such a person would probably stink, which is a sensible reason for employees not to work with them. Such a person also appears to demonstrate either being unaware of (very unlikely unless their sense of smell is broken and they don't have any friends who have told them it's a problem), or not caring about inflicting their stench on their prospective coworkers, which probably implies something bad about their judgment and considerateness, which is also a sensible reason not to hire them.

If you never saw the person until hiring them, that could be an issue; but if it were a line item in company policy (maybe alongside the dress code) that employees shall not inflict a stench on others, then at least you could get on their case about it on day 1, and have a fully justified reason to fire them quickly if they didn't shape up. Of course it'd be more efficient to have not hired them at all, but there will always be some problems you just don't find out about until later. I don't think this particular failure mode is common.

> Ally is a verb, not an identity

That's... that's a noun.

Those slides present a rather extreme ideology, which is not based on (and is often flatly contradicted by) evidence.

Western society has a long history of producing ideologies centered on guilt and sexual propriety, and intersectionality is just the latest iteration. It's a descendant of puritanism.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ally

> Ally is a verb, not an identity

> [...]

> Acting as an ally is about action - it is not an identity, which is why we talk about "ally skills" instead of "allies"

(In military slang 'ally skills' could be adjectival use, but I'm pretty sure this is using it like 'friend skills', a noun.)

I take the following sentences as confirming this reading:

> Being a marginalized person takes no action - it is an identity:

> Acting as an ally is about action - it is not an identity, which is why we talk about "ally skills" instead of "allies"

> Depending on what is most relevant about you to the situation, you may switch between being marginalized and acting as an ally

> 2 hour-long workshop: most common complaint was "Too short!" >3 hour-long workshop: only a few complaints that it was too short

There’s no other data or reasoning presented. Surely other factors must be important and it seems unwise to select a time solely on these two points.

Using evidence to support statements is even more important when introducing a new concept to an audience.

Believing that the teaching you how to be a good ally is racist and sexist (against white men, I assume) is probably why you didn't fit in great there. I read that whole slideset and there's nothing racist in there - unless you're counting the scenarios of "what not to do."

If it's "stop the world" important and absolutely needs to be dealt with right now, interrupt it, same as you would any other break. Otherwise, deal with it like you would any other situation.

"Marginalized person: Any woman who wants to work for pay for an employer"

"Oppression: The self-reinforcing system of stories, TV, news coverage, police, and legal system stereotyping Black people as criminals, that benefits non-Black people and harms Black people"

What TV shows has the author been watching? For my entire life, at least 95% of the depictions of black people that I've seen on television have been positive, sometimes to the point of being pandering. (For example, if a show has a black character and a white character, and one has to do something wrong to advance the plot, it will be the white character, because that won't cause outrage, while the reverse will.)

"You are eating lunch in the employee kitchen when a group sits down near you. One person comments loudly “If I ate that, I’d be as big as a house!” A higher-weight coworker is sitting nearby and can clearly overhear."

It's not clear who's talking to whom here. If it's someone commenting on the lunch of a coworker with whom they're not sitting, well, I've never seen behavior like that in any workplace, nor have I heard of anything like that happening. If it's someone commenting on one of their lunch-mates' lunches, then it's none of the "higher"-weight coworker's business.

"Higher weight people face workplace discrimination, particularly women, regardless of ability to do the job Body size is falsely equated with virtue: self-control, hard worker, in good health"

Body size is correctly associated with self-control, energy, and good health. The proportion of overweight people who couldn't reach a normal weight if they ate sensibly and exercised is tiny. The "healthy at any weight" meme is absurd.

"Black people face a much a higher bar than white people during hiring (and in general), and white people often get a pass or exceptions to the process"

Bullshit.

"A co-worker shares an article on your work Slack claiming that white men are biologically more suited to STEM careers, saying "I don't agree with all of it, but it has some good points." Another co-worker replies, saying that they disagree with the article but we have to be tolerant of co-workers with different political views because diversity of thought is important too."

Men are biologically more suited to STEM careers, on average. You have to be willfully blind not to see that this is true. Why does this make people so angry?

""Office housework" is necessary but unrewarded work (taking notes, organizing parties, tidying, etc.) People of color and women of all races are expected to do more of this work and punished for not doing it"

Bullshit.

"On a company mailing list, someone writes “How would you explain this [technical thing] to your grandmother?”"

Old women (and, to a lesser extent, old men) are much more likely to have trouble with technology than are young men (and, to a lesser extent, young women). Again, why does this make people so angry?

Intersectionalism is just borderline personality disorder in ideological form.

You're projecting emotion on your perceived opponents ("why does this make people so angry") because your dismissal of their arguments depends on it. If you instead took this discussion seriously, you'd lose the ability to be sure you were right.

I don't expect you to have a revelation overnight, but sit down and think sometime about why this topic is so scary for you.

I called two claims bullshit, so I presume you believe that one of them has been proven. Which one? Citation?

I'm not projecting anything onto anyone. I--like many other reasonable people--am bewildered by the intersectional left's refusal to accept reality. They are in fact the ones who become enraged when you point out obvious truths, such as that men and women are different.

The topic doesn't scare me, but if the discourse in the West continues down its current path, intersectionalism could become a dangerous thing. The core of the ideology is resentment, and history has shown that these resentment-based ideologies often have horrific results. (See, e.g., the the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the Russian Revolution, etc.)

Anti-black media bias. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/5420/

Racial hiring bias: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870.short

Men aren't somehow biologically more in tune with computers: https://peerj.com/preprints/1733.pdf

"Office housework": https://worklifelaw.org/publication/climate-control-gender-r...

So I guess it wasn't that half your claims were scientifically wrong, sorry. It was all of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I felt this way as a poor minority. This statement people keep bandying about that white people are forced to repeat lest they seem racist is absurd.

The problem with this kind of identity framing is that politics is central to it. One wrong step and your enemies of color (for instance) may play their victimhood against your prosperity and it'll become brutally obvious how political you are by merely existing within a demographic.

Also, please note this guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I guess the difference in what is allowed is between “positive” vs “negative” politics. By that I don’t mean positive politics is absolutely the best whereas negative is stuff I disagree with, but saying “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se. But negative politics might be something like “we are going to ban X because we find it abhorrent” whether X is racist stuff, antivaxx stuff, or LGBTQ stuff you are directly prohibiting beliefs.

Note that I don’t necessarily agree that positive vs negative (or, un-disagreeable vs actively disagreeing) is exactly where you should draw the line where politics is allowed, but I’m just trying to rationalize and say maybe it’s not inherently hypocritical.

The problem with your "negative" vs "positive" distinction is that it's quite subjective and not at all clear cut.

> “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se

There are groups who have very big problems with this statement per se. See the numerous court cases over the past decade challenging affirmative action in university admissions. Many view helping one group as oppressing another (a view I find quite misinformed given the inequities in our society, but not completely irrational, given bad priors).

Maybe what you're trying to get at is progressive politics vs. oppressive politics. This distinction I can understand more clearly, however when you choose to oppress a group that is oppressing others, maybe this is justified?

For instance, banning ISIS from access to Twitter seems like a pretty morally sound decision to me as an American. Given that, is there really a difference between banning ISIS and banning white supremacists who discuss violence? Or Presidents who promote violence against journalists? What's the moral outcome of NOT banning any of these groups?

Any choice, including choosing not to act, is morally liable. I think Gitlab's stance here is quite morally lazy, if not wrong.

Regarding eg affirmative action, I guess that also brings up a good point that the implementation of an affirmative/positive/progressive opinion may start to get a bit hairier than a simple platitude. Platitudes or moral statements can easily be defended but once you begin to take concrete action based on those, people may disagree with how you rationalize those actions

This also means nothing. What does "empower" mean in this context? Define it, and you are guaranteed to piss off plenty of people in the marginalized groups, to say nothing of the majority groups (whose rights today apparently are meaningless).

Your rights aren't minimized by granting rights to minorities. I can't believe I have to explain this to you. This isn't a zero sum game.

"Is it because you're a woman," I asked her. She said, "No, I don't think that's it." .. and he did get along with another woman; one of our Functional Analysis.

Sometimes person x doesn't like person y because .. they don't like person y. They don't think person y is effective or useful or good at his or her job, not because y is an Asian, or woman, or trans or Mexican. ... or it could be and the person is a victim of bigotry and doesn't know it.

I know it's anecdotal, but I've worked in a lot of different places, in 3 different countries, and in my experience, I think it's the opposite. I think people are afraid to say anything remotely non-left or criticize any minority employee or say anything that could remotely be inferred as problematic.

For example, if someone at an office in downtown SF openly announced they didn't want to work with an lgbt person, would their coworkers look at that person and be like "Aww, poor thing, lets discuss this with him or her so I can understand his way of thinking" or would they just think "bigot! I knew something was off about him"

Btw, I think these are all important topics and I agree that we should be trying to educate people via discussion and empathy.

Why do you need to discuss anything at all? Work is where I work. I'm being paid for my time and professional expertise, not my opinion on anything else. I don't get why would I be allowed to spend that time on conversations not related to work.

Being allowed to have some short talk, maybe discuss something quickly, like a game last night or something, is and should be more of a nicety. Nobody gonna stop me from doing this. But I don't see why we should be allowed spending long periods of time discussing other important issues.

There are meetups, we can get together after work, go for a beer etc... And have those conversations in our personal time if we deem it important. But not during business hours.

Work is for work. So banning conversations is reasonable imo, and not only political.

I think that's a very sad thing to say. Say conversation is banned but "small talk" is allowed, where's the line between that? And like the guy above said, there's also no line on what's political - even talking about a video game like you said can be political.

So in the end, I believe that would end up with people just avoiding talking to each other at all, to avoid any complications.

And that "Why discuss anything at all?" could be applied to other places - "Why discuss anything political at a school/dance class/supermarket/bar? You're just here to learn/dance/shop/drink-and-relax. Those conversations are _banned_ here".

It seems like a slippery slope to ban this natural social interaction.

I was only saying if from my perspective - when I talk about anything other than work, I don't code, I don't talk about possible solutions, I don't explore... I don't work.. while being paid for it.

Short amount is ok, it helps to recharge, remain sane.

At large companies, this can include things going on in different parts of the company. You don't know them or how they work, but you start taking it personally because it affects the company's reputation.

I'm retired, but if I went back to work, I would want to pay more attention to helping my co-workers and accomplishing the team's mission (which of course involves some politics) and pay a lot less attention to other, less relevant politics.

You can say it's privileged to want to shut out the world and concentrate on improving one thing, but I prefer to think of this as an aspirational goal.

In reality, politics happens everywhere and you can’t really avoid talking about it.

“Don’t talk about politics not relevant for the workplace” could be reasonable (most poltics is after all not related).

As long as speech is not offensive, I think it should be protected.

Speech that isn’t offensive usually doesn’t need protection.

A person's privilege to speak out about issues facing them in the course of their work is to be protected, irrespective of it being offensive.

I would say that an employer that prohibits free exchange of ideas is not "open minded". I would not want to work for such an employer, without getting paid extra for having to work under such dire circumstances.

It could also be phrased in terms of "Everyone has a right to decline to talk politics". If people agree to talk politics I don't see problem, except of course it can lead to lower productivity perhaps.

So then maybe all non-work-related speech should be forbidden? That just sounds inhumane.

It still exists. Gitlab does not infringe on your freedom of speech. The government does.

Anything you agree with some entity that isn’t the government doesn’t count as infringing your freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is a narrow legal thing. It’s not “I can say what I want when I want it”.

But we're getting wall-to-wall coverage of basically those exact issues, all the time, with only one point of view endorsed. It's uninclusive to anybody who thinks differently in terms of methods or priorities.

Here's the problem: at least in SV, you're going to be restricted to a sub-set of very narrow beliefs which are acceptable to express. I may hold a personal belief that, say, trans-sexuality is not a "real thing" or ought not to be treated with surgery. Do you honestly believe I'd be able to express that in such an environment, as much as someone who believes it is "a thing"? You may believe my belief is just too "in-tolerant" or "bigoted" to be expressed, but who are you to be the arbiter thereof?

Now let's take the other side of the coin. If you work in the energy industry, heavy manufacturing, etc., you probably couldn't express support for trans-sexuals without having problems. On the other hand, you'd likely have no issue saying you didn't believe in such a thing. I know someone in energy who wore a rainbow flag pin during one gay month a few years ago; he wasn't fired, but many of his superiors became noticeably cold toward him and he left after realizing he probably couldn't move up at that company. Again, why ought that to be the case?

The biggest issue is that when people start talking politics, you are expected to participate. Some one looks over and says, "Hey Big Chungus, what do you think?" In such a situation, I cannot reasonably say, "Oh, I have no opinion." Certain issues are simply so partisan that such a response, even in the rare circumstance that it is true, will anger both sides and damage me.

So, I avoid talking politics at work and try to work at places where others do the same. People I work with generally never know my politics. I am more than happy to bloviate about political stuff with friends and family, or to go be mad online after work. At work, it is best to stay non-partisan.

Should you be able to comfortably express that to your trans co-worker, no matter how uncomfortable that makes them?

That's why this is not a symmetrical issue.

And a few parallels - what do you do about the person who's afraid of being shot if the government comes to take their guns (and thus is going to be uncomfortable with opinions leaning that way), or the person who's afraid of their kids being shot at school (and thus is going to be uncomfortable with opinions leaning towards fewer restrictions on guns)? You can't satisfy both of them without banning discussion, and a lot of issues are like that.

So I don't see some things as political issues at all; they have political components, and extend into politics, but they start somewhere else: I see them as human rights issues, and issues around empathy. If you're going to deny someone their existence, and are arrogant enough to proclaim that your lived experience is the be-all, end-all of everything, and that your exclusionary way of life should be enshrined in law, then I frankly just don't think you're a good person. And that has nothing to do with politics.

(To stop the expected rejoinder: no, this isn't a way to justify things like pedophilia. Everyone should be able to live their life they way they want to, but the key component is: as long as they aren't hurting anyone else in the process. Gay rights doesn't hurt anyone else. Pedophilia does.)

Regarding guns, I've had many productive discussions with people who own guns and staunchly support the 2nd Amendment. (My personal view is that 2A should be repealed, and we should have strict licensing and training requirements around gun ownership.) I don't know that I've changed anyone's mind, but I do feel like I understand some people better, and vice versa. With a few people I just hit an impasse; then I agree to disagree, and get on with my day.

And regardless, there's plenty of room for common ground there, too. Most of the gun owners I know think it's ridiculous how easy it is to get hold of a gun, and support more restrictions and requirements. Some even agree with me that "assault style" weapons should be restricted to gun ranges (or banned entirely) and not sold to the general public. And I've fired guns at ranges before and totally get how fun it can be. I'm generally skeptical of self-defense arguments, and think defense-from-government-tyranny arguments are laughable, but there's still plenty of common ground and productive discussion to be had.

This is one of the most overused, vague and inaccurate arguments. Nobody is denied from existing. These kind of extreme claims cause more friction than any actual discussion of the issue at hand.

Regardless, if you don't like it, remove that phrase from your reading; my point still stands without it.

If your identity requires acceptance by others for you to consider yourself valid then it's not really your identity at all. If that sounds strange then replace gender identity and sex orientation with religion. Nobody needs to accept your faith for you to have one. You remain fully independent and capable of having whatever identity you want.

Does that include Muslims and Catholics who oppose gay marriage?

> And regardless, there's plenty of room for common ground there, too. Most of the gun owners I know think it's ridiculous how easy it is to get hold of a gun, and support more restrictions and requirements. Some even agree with me that "assault style" weapons should be restricted to gun ranges (or banned entirely) and not sold to the general public. And I've fired guns at ranges before and totally get how fun it can be. I'm generally skeptical of self-defense arguments, and think defense-from-government-tyranny arguments are laughable, but there's still plenty of common ground and productive discussion to be had.

To me, this looks like you're so far to the gun control side of things that you're having conversations with milder gun control advocates and then thinking they're second amendment supporters. Have you ever had such a conversation with a true, "machine guns and artillery should be unregulated"-tier 2nd Amendment advocate? Or any 2nd Amendment advocate that doesn't support increasing gun control?

Your example discusses risks and statements about the future, but not questions of identity and personhood.

Identity is whatever a person decides it is, according to progressive doctrine, therefore it's not intrinsic to the person either. There's no objective identity-o-meter.

Interestingly, even that statement takes a particular religious stance.

Some branches of Christianity hold that a person does not choose to be Christian, but rather is chosen by God to be a Christian [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_grace

When two deeply-held elements of personal identity are in conflict, the only way to resolve it is for both sides to keep silent or for a third party to insert himself and pick the side in which he believes. In either case, you are telling someone he must change who he is.

The alternative is to simply not discuss such matters at work.

And yes, I believe both sides have the right to express their beliefs and that the comfort of neither trumps the right of the other to speak. I just think time, place, and manner are generally reasonable constraints.

This asymmetry of feelings is actually an argument in favor of not talking about some topics at work, unless all involved parties voluntarily agree to it. A less controversial but essentially equivalent example would be religion. It's widely recognized that you shouldn't spend time at work trying to invalidate your co-worker's religious views (or lack of them), unless they specifically ask you to. This applies to everything people build their identities around.

However this clearly won't lead to a productive workplace, which is why it's not a good idea to allow these discussions. There are plenty of other restrictions within a private company to create the best conditions for the work they're paying you for. It's perfectly reasonable.

Politics are making work hostile for everyone. Let's avoid them altogether.

The point is that instead of drawing a line around topics to say which ones are acceptable and which ones are not, there should be a line that says any discussion that causes harm/hurt to colleagues is frowned upon and to be avoided?

It's quite easy to say let's avoid politics because it causes problems at work, but that stance ignores the nuance in the situation.

Salary disparities based on completely arbitrary physical characteristics is not harm, it's politics. What does gender and race have to do with your salary? Aren't you negotiating your salary based on experience and competence? Is someone actively being harmed? How so?

That's the difference.

A salary disparity is also not a political discussion but its not a easy topic to bring up as in any company there will be multiple disparities. Work hour disparities. Work freedom disparities. Perks disparities. External disparities such as commuting distance between work and home. Flexibility disparities. Skill and social contact disparities. Education disparities. There are even game theory issues such as optimizing for retention might not always end up with all employees being identical cogs that can simply be replaced.

Just recently I know a very skilled employee that left his company after almost 10 years because the company had a policy of having every employee under the same title, same wage system, and same heavily rotating schedule. That place suffer a very heavy turnover and looking at their strategy for handling employees it is not that surprising, but in fairness they have no salary disparities if you account for hours worked. Everyone is treated as an identical cogs in the machine.

Spreading a view that trans people should be supported acknowledges that everyone is different, and even if the speaker is not comfortable with the concept of people being trans, recognizes that someone else's gender orientation has nothing to do with them, and that people deserve to live in a way that makes them feel whole. This is a "positive view": it acknowledges the experience of others, even if that experience is incomprehensible to the speaker, and advocates support, not ostracism. (A simple test can also be: "does supporting X cause actual harm to anyone", and if the answer is "no", then one ought to support it, or at least not oppose it.)

So yes, I certainly take a dim view toward people who have the first kind of view (regardless of what the topic is about). I would feel uncomfortable working with someone like that. But if we didn't talk politics, and I didn't know -- is ignorance bliss? Perhaps? I'm not sure. I mean, it's certainly possible that I work with people right now who have views that I would find gross, and maybe we get along (professionally) just fine? Is being in the matrix better?

But what about the larger implications? I would refuse to work for a company with leadership that was actively anti-trans. Take Chik-fil-a for example. They've come out against LGBTQ rights, and have donated to anti-LGBTQ groups. I'm very glad I know this about them, because I would never take a job with them if offered, and I boycott their restaurants. On the flip side, I'm pleased that I work for a company whose CEO speaks out publicly in favor of diversity and inclusion, and I respect him for using his position of (relative) power to promote good.

I think it's important to recognize that companies are made up of people, and people have political opinions. It's hard to say that political opinions are always unrelated to work; sometimes those opinions do actually intersect with what the company works on. For example, if I were at Google, I would definitely have pushed the company to cut ties with China; I don't think it's worth supporting a repressive, authoritarian government in exchange for profits. Should I have been prohibited to talk about politics at work and let that go? Should my only recourse be to quit in protest?

> Education: Too political to discuss the fact that schools are trying to balance their admissions in the face of very uneven opportunities amongst their applicants. Never mind the fact that school admissions were never fair to begin with.

Women outnumber men in universities and pretty much throughout the pipeline (EDIT: to clarify, I mean the broader education pipeline, not the tech subset thereof). This whole post is so disconnected from my experience and any experience I've heard about that it feels like it's from inverse universe.

That's why these discussions aren't a good idea. Companies are paying you for productivity and ensuring a calm environment is important. You have plenty of opportunity to discuss and create all the change you want elsewhere.

If I ran a company and had LGBTQ employees, I would not want what you just described because it would be creating a hostile environment for those employees.

Coming into your workplace and telling your co-workers that they don't deserve equal rights under the law is just a shitty thing to do. It's an issue of basic respect and has nothing to do with politics.

There is no harassment when someone simply states "I don't think same sex marriage should be legal.". And before I get downvoted into oblivion, I don't agree with that statement, I'm actually completely apathetic to it and think it's unimportant.

So discussion for the sake of discussion is not exactly what I would see as a high need for the workplace. If you are trying to address these types of issues in a way that has business impacts, I think you’re outside of what I would term as “discussing politics”. From that list — discussing inclusivity initiatives has clear workplace benefits. Discussing a highly charged political event involving lgbt issues is adjacent to that, and has a highly likelihood of being inflammatory, and isn’t directly correlated to anything actually going on with the business.

I think that framework would also help everyone stay on point. You don’t go to work to solve the worlds ills. But you can address some of the ills where it’s actually impacting your life at work. Further, it should prevent backlashes from other groups, and help humanize by getting out of ephemeral arguments and getting into discussions about building a collective environment where the business thrives and everyone is equally entitled to feel safe at work. Making work a better place — good. Making work look like Crossfire — bad.

Generally though, when people say something is "politics" what it means is it comes down to a value judgement, rather than there being a middle solution, or the issue is too complicated for there to be a general consensus. As an example that probably wouldn't come up at work, consider the abortion question. If you're of the fundamentalist religious sort, your values practically demand you believe that aborting a baby is wrong. If you're not, then it's a lot more grey. Something like that is a value issue, there isn't really a compromise that doesn't involve one side changing fundamental beliefs about the world and the universe.

To answer your specific issues though:

- lgbt: not relevant. It's illegal to discriminate on that, so... either your company is following the law or it's not. Also: nobody needs to know. It doesn't need to be discussed, it just either needs to be litigated or not litigated. But no smart company wants their employees talking about their personal views on that because that could be a huge liability if someone has intolerant personal views (even if they don't apply them professionally).

- Women in tech & underrepresented minorities: ... well it IS a pipeline problem. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of companies would love to have more diversity, but you can only hire the people that apply. I see a lot of the SJ types make offices miserable hammering on this stuff that frequently can't be fixed locally. I mean yeah, if someone is scaring away people, then address that behavior, but that's more of a "having respectful competent management" issue.

- Education - Never really heard of this being an issue that isn't allowed to be talked about. I don't think anyone would really get upset about this though.

Also, as others have mentioned... a lot of times when people say these issues should be "discussed" they don't really mean that. The far left generally hates "discussion" on their pet issues if there's even a hint of not towing the party line, and it quickly escalates into people being called racist. So frequently, avoiding "politics" is just saying, "please pick your fight somewhere else"

Around 40% of voters support Donald Trump in some way. Are you sure you really want to discuss politics at work? Do you want someone wearing a MAGA hat explaining to everyone why immigration is too high?

Because that is what real political discussion will involve. In fact, I suspect many people who are advocating for politics at work, actually only want people whom they agree with to be able discuss policies that they generally agree with.

So for me, as long as the company does not prevent political activity outside of work, I am happy to have work be a neutral zone where people from opposite ends of the political spectrum can just work together on how to make money for the business.

Likewise, anything publicly debated at work has to be inherently bland and without class consciousness, as that calls into question relationship between the workers, the professional management classes and the reigning neoliberal order. The only approved topics will ones that distract from class consciousness and divide the workers into factions that render them unable to operate cohesively.

It would really depend on the individual Trump supporter whether I would want to discuss politics with them or not.

However I don't think whether I 'want' the discussion has anything to do with anything. Discussion of communal affairs is basic to humans, and my 'wanting' has nothing to do with others' need and right to continue to be human. An employer does not own people (even during their hours of employment), and this kind of clause would be illegal in any reasonable polity.

Obnoxious behaviour, forcing of one's opinion (or neurotic need to discuss) on others, etc, is another matter and prevalent enough in plenty of areas quite outside of politics. The only simple authoritarian solution to that would be to ban conversation altogether.

If you want to protect marginalized groups write and enforce policies that focus on inclusion, equality, and anti-discrimination regardless of politics or preference. In other words: when nobody is special everybody is equally special.

I think politics being a taboo topic is an attempt to keep workers in order and ignore any political or environmental impact that their own company might have.

But this particular perspective isn't necessarily a function of their 'privilege' in the sense of cultural capital and an advantageous background etc, but just of their own self-interest in this exact moment.

My counterpoint would be that it takes a certain level of privilege to be able to discuss politics at work. Or, to be more specific, anything other than the job you are working. (And, of course, the things your employer can't legally stop you from talking about.)

Or, to put my point more specifically: Almost all of the discussion I have seen ignores that most of these problems are, at their root, class based problems. I suppose what is more saddening from a humanist standpoint is the way the extremists on both sides wish to eventually put the other under their heel.

That said, touching specifically on my personal experiences in Education, the issue is that any Metric based solution will likely run up against Goodhart's law sooner or later. While what I witnessed in Academia was probably far from the norm, I doubt it was rare.

I think the privilege right now belongs to those in those 'marginalised' groups, who have the privilege to advocate for their views.

On another note, anecdotally, how many people have had a work relationship or project suffer due to discussion of politics at work, or alternatively, improve? (This being a reason not to discuss, it would be beneficial to sample for how likely it is to occur negatively.)

In the spirit of imagining you're in the out group: Imagine you're a Trump supporter and work in a big-name SV tech company. Someone asks you at work "Boy, Trump is a bonehead, isn't he?" Well, now you're put in a no-win situation: You have to either lie about your beliefs to keep everyone happy, share your beliefs and risk getting fired or some other type of discipline. Or, you'll need to dodge by saying "I don't think it's appropriate to talk about politics at work," leaving it to the asker to speculate about your views.

Remember "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" At the end where most people are aliens and the few real humans have to put on a fake persona in order to walk around freely? If you slipped up and dropped the persona for an instant they'd all point at you and make that alien noise, and you're done for! That must be what it feels like to hold unorthodox political views working in a Silicon Valley tech company these days.

I don't disagree, but I'm "privileged" and want to keep it that way for me and my posterity. Not ashamed in the least because its not bad to be privileged.

Something I find pretty odd given that fucking a cow is a lot better for the cow than eating it.

I don't think politics should be discussed at workplaces that do not participate in political systems in an official capacity (lobbying, PACs etc.). If your employer engages in politics, then that should be an allowed topic and/or other accommodations should be made for employees who regard their employer as morally reprehensible.

> LGBTQ+, women in tech, underrepresented minorities in tech, education

I don't consider these political in any way. Employees should be able to talk about how the company can improve its own diversity policies, irrespective of what the government decides what to do. The line of thinking here is similar to "separating church and state," and also that it's easier to change company policy: changing company policy provides quick and "easy" improvements to social progress, while the longer and more difficult fights at the political level occur.

Those in a democratic system who do not engage in politics are bad citizens.