Re:Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work
by jka on Thursday October 17, 2019 @05:17AM
(#21280206)
You're right, this was an off-the-cuff generalization and wasn't well explained; here's roughly where I was coming from:
- GitLab is claiming to do business with any customer, on the basis of free trade and contribution
- GitLab is encouraging a culture where employees do not discuss or talk about those relationships
- I believe that technology is not neutral and the behaviours we as software engineers define in code, which then may affect thousands or even millions, are a result of customer influence (product decisions, feature requests, pull/merge requests, etc)
The commit[0] I read describes this as inclusion and 'efficiency' (i.e. 'yours not to question why'), but the real outcome I foresee is: "we are going to do business with shady companies and/or countries, and we want to encourage a company culture where this is seen as fine and dissent is discouraged"
This is self-interest on the part of GitLab the corporation - and ironically it also reduces liberty and freedom for GitLab employees to speak openly.
Meanwhile I can understand the top-level comment's description of why this might in some sense be a good business strategy. There's not a whole lot of discussion around the negative externalities of being successful in a way that compromises values though.
- GitLab is claiming to do business with any customer, on the basis of free trade and contribution
- GitLab is encouraging a culture where employees do not discuss or talk about those relationships
- I believe that technology is not neutral and the behaviours we as software engineers define in code, which then may affect thousands or even millions, are a result of customer influence (product decisions, feature requests, pull/merge requests, etc)
The commit[0] I read describes this as inclusion and 'efficiency' (i.e. 'yours not to question why'), but the real outcome I foresee is: "we are going to do business with shady companies and/or countries, and we want to encourage a company culture where this is seen as fine and dissent is discouraged"
This is self-interest on the part of GitLab the corporation - and ironically it also reduces liberty and freedom for GitLab employees to speak openly.
Meanwhile I can understand the top-level comment's description of why this might in some sense be a good business strategy. There's not a whole lot of discussion around the negative externalities of being successful in a way that compromises values though.
[0] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/b5a35716...