I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to make a stand on some political issue, but don't make a show of it, because it implies that all your employees should agree with your position.

People in the world have different opinions on things, we need to be able to work with eachother on shared interests without making every place and occasion a battleground. If not in the workplace, then where?

On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'. My relationship to my employer is a professional one, trying to disguise this by intermingling personal feelings can only end in tears, when one day you discover that it was such all along, only you deluded yourself (or let yourself be led) into thinking differently.

Let’s say one of your colleagues or managers occasionally makes decisions that would be frowned upon by some people. Maybe you’re recruiting, and they let slip that they passed over a female candidate because they thought she might have a child soon. Or maybe they passed on a gay man because they didn’t think he should be working in a role where he’d interact with children.

This is a political act. Deciding to respond to it, or to ignore it, is also a political act. If this culture is widespread, it would seem reasonable to object to it at a company-wise level. It seems infeasible to separate politics from employment in that sense.

When the pet cause is something that affects working conditions at the company, then that "issue" you describe is simply expecting the company to follow labor laws.

Workers have the right to organize with other workers and advocate for change in their working conditions without retribution from the company.

You're misrepresenting the facts. The newspiece states that the activists were fired for tracking and doxxing colleagues that they seemed reactionaries. This sort of abuse is hardly defensible.

    the issue is practicing political activism 
    for your own pet cause in the workplace on 
    company time 

The big political fights we are seeing in USA are not local reality. It is like me being in Sweden saying that we aren't progressive enough since Poland has a lot of conservative views, and that therefore we need to add even more protections for women and minorities in Sweden until they are properly accepted in Poland. If someone told me that I have to be engaged in their rights in Poland or I am a misogynist and homophobic then I'd just sigh and ignore them.

The point is that expecting the law to be upholded is hardly a political act. It's basic rule of law.

EG as per a sibling comment, if an HR Rep is not convinced regarding trans-rights, they should absolutely not let that impact their treatment of a trans person that comes to them.

Or, more famously, (and not that it did him any good) Brendan Eich made a political donation to candidates opposing gay marriage, but (afaik) there were never any reports of him mistreating any LGBTQ+ employees.

Maybe you’re recruiting, and they let slip that they passed over a white male candidate because they're working on a new diversity initiative. Or maybe, after being trained constantly on gender bias and seeing vigorous workplace political debates on the subject, you investigate the issue and find no evidence to support anything other than the fact that men and women have different preferences, and you present this evidence to the debate and get fired.

Even acknowledging such cases seems to be political.

I don't really believe that people should be expected to respect inane illogical arguments just because they have a political side to it.

In fact, doing knowledge work, being unable to form a coherent argument or inability to distinguish faulty logical arguing, would in fact make you a lot less qualified for it.

I, too, old this belief, but it's kind of hard when the "new culture" is overwhelmed with a sense of entitlement to "be heard". Everyone thinks their individual opinions should be able to be shared whenever they feel the need to be validated, and that everyone must hear their opinion in that moment, regardless of how controversial it may be. And if you try to stifle their attempt or even mildly disagree, then you are the bad person. Couth and tactfulness have given way to entitlement and postmodernism in the modern work culture.

If you want to disagree about, say, LGBT rights, then I will probably deem that you are the bad person. That's how strong, deeply held beliefs work. I'm sure if I tried hard I could come up with an example of a belief that would make you consider me a bad person if I stated it as a coworker.

What you're describing is just that your values differ greatly from "new culture" values, not some new entitlement among young people.

People in the younger generation (myself somewhat included in that) do feel extra entitlement toward saying what they want, when they want, in whatever forum they want. But it's a lot harder nowadays to keep one's personal and professional lives completely separate. I'd lean toward considering this trend a good thing; we don't work in a vacuum. Activism absolutely does have a place in a professional setting when so many social and political issues contribute to discrimination in the workplace.

At the same time, making judgments about the parent's values is a bit out of line. Some people really do just want to go to the office, put in a full day of work, and go home where their "real" life happens. I personally think that's a limiting attitude, but don't begrudge people their need or desire to go that route.

My impression, from working in one of these progressive workplaces, is that nobody is forced to interject or defend their personal opinions, or be a part of those discussions at all. Indeed, just as we have employees bringing the latest from the social justice circus to work, we also have employees who sit it out entirely. We even have a dedicated #activism slack channel, which is obviously opt-in.

So when I see complaints like the parents, my impression is the true feelings are "I want to disagree and say X but my coworkers will think I'm a bad person." Obviously, the coworkers will only think you're a bad person if you're disagreeing with them on a strongly held, deeply personal value, hence my example of LGBT rights.

There are a such thing as bad opinions. If I share bad opinions, people will think I'm a bad person. Every person's conception of bad opinions is a little different - For example, most people here agree that mass surveillance and censorship is bad, but only some people here feel that deporting DACA immigrants is bad.

Thus, I concluded the parent probably just holds vastly different values from his or her more vocal coworkers. There's nothing wrong with having different values, in fact it's quite normal. I don't know why else parent would be concerned with being labelled a bad person.

People holding the majority view are publicly cheered by the company, but people holding minority views are (at best) tolerated.

This frustrates me on several levels:

- There's no room for debate on these topics. The official company position is treated as so obviously correct that a reasoned debate on the matters is treated as unnecessary, or even worse, immoral. I find this insulting.

- The company / majority position seems to be self-contradictory. E.g., they promote LGBTQ behavior as praiseworthy, which implies that certain religions' teachings about sexual ethics are factually incorrect. But the company also claims to respect people's religious choices.

These leave me with the impression that the employer is hypocritical and/or disingenuous.

May I have a specific example?

There appears to be a lot of negative opinions about this kind of workplace based on the comments (and my downvotes on some of my comments haha). I'm just trying to understand it.

If you're curious, you can see a specific example from my workplace in the edit region here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21524930

I've never personally had a bad experience from being in a "progressive" workplace. I don't agree with them on everything, but in general I've never had a bad experience. The "social justice" aspect is pretty opt-in, so I don't know what could lead to a negative experience such as being less than tolerated.

> The company / majority position seems to be self-contradictory. E.g., they promote LGBTQ behavior as praiseworthy, which implies that certain religions' teachings about sexual ethics are factually incorrect. But the company also claims to respect people's religious choices.

I don't really see the contradiction. My work celebrates employees by giving us catered lunches that often include pork but nobody perceives that as being anti-muslim, as long as there are non-pork choices. The vegetarians and vegans don't mind meat on the table as long as there are vegetarian and vegan choices.

A subset of teachings from a subset of Christian faiths will say something like "[homosexuality] is an abomination". It would be disrespectful to employee's religion (and common sense) for the employer to tell their employees they must be homosexual. It is not disrespectful for the employer to celebrate other employees who are homosexual. Am I misunderstanding?

> May I have a specific example?

I can't without giving out too much detail. I shouldn't have stated that without being able to provide substance, sorry.

> It is not disrespectful for the employer to celebrate other employees who are homosexual. Am I misunderstanding?

I think we're getting close to the fundamental issue here. Let me unpack my logic a bit:

1) Celebrating behavior X implies that X is in some way virtuous.

2) To claim that X is virtuous, is to claim that any belief system S which states X is not virtuous is in error.

So I see the current discussion as having the structure shown above, with:

X = partaking in a homosexual relationship, and

S = the theologies of various Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sects.

So in short, it seems to me that employers are logically implying that certain employees have false religious beliefs, but the employers are hiding behind the fact that the their implication isn't clearly stated.

I think that's inconsistent with the employers' claims to respect employees' religious views.

3) an employer can respect employees religious views only if they will not imply the religious view is in error

It's clearly (from your logic) the case that employers description of "respects" violates axiom (3). If you belong to one of the sects in question I can understand being upset, but I would argue that (given the breadth of beliefs in the world) it is impossible to not imply some employees "respected" belief is wrong.

So perhaps this is the point, that employers should not claim to respect beliefs because they necessarily must act inconsistently while doing so. Thus, one might conclude, a workplace should stand for nothing in particular and thus allow employees to believe anything without celebrating or respecting it.

However, I wouldn't agree with this conclusion. I would rather that my employers tries the best possible at the (futile) task of being respectful and celebratory to all, and if problems are raised they try to be concluded with minimal conflict and maximum respect.

In fact, I'd claim this the common sense approach. This is how I resolve having friends with non-identical belief sets, for example.

(An example: one coworker made a joke to the expense of astrology. A different coworker chimed in that she and others adhered to astrology and found this joke offensive. The original coworker offered an apology and all was well.)

> I would rather that my employers tries the best possible at the (futile) task of being respectful and celebratory to all, and if problems are raised they try to be concluded with minimal conflict and maximum respect.

I think we agree that employers ought to take positions somewhere on the Pereto curve [0] of that tradeoff-space.

At one level, it seems to be a question of how happy various employee groups would feel for the different policy options. I don't have a principled reason for my own preference in that trade-space, so I try to not put my own views on a pedestal for this topic.

If nobody has a convincing argument for the proper balance in that tradeoff-space, though, it makes me wonder if it's simply a matter of personal preference / opinion for everyone involved.

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

> If nobody has a convincing argument for the proper balance in that tradeoff-space, though, it makes me wonder if it's simply a matter of personal preference / opinion for everyone involved.

I would suspect that it is, so I guess we've gone a bit meta because the "accepted" way for large organizations of humans to make these trade-offs is politics

So then is it right to say the solution to "too much politics at work" is office politics to decide the right amount of politics at work?

I have the feeling I'm a few philosophy-degrees short of being confident in any particular answer to that question :(

I hate it when discussions about potentially important topics end with a muddle of uncertainty about metaphysical matters. It seems to end this way just about every time.

They can probably avoid the more metaphysical questions but as soon as they have a canteen there's going to be issues if any group assumes their religious rules must be applied to everyone's food (and indeed what they're eating outside of work).

What is "right to be heard" mean? For me it usually means employees speak their concerns with management, and management is receptive enough (ie they care about employee retention) that if something is really bad they hold a Q&A session. Maybe act on it.

I'm an empowered, high-demand employee in a high demand industry. If management doesn't want to hear about my concerns, that's fine and they can say so. I'll find another employer in less than a week.

Edit: to give a more concrete example, my employer was in talks to write software for client X, a corporation well known for being Bad People™️. A bunch of employees came forward that they didn't want to do business with client X. Management discussed it thoroughly with these employees, hosted public roundtables, etc. I wasn't part of this discussion so I can't say the outcome, but yes the employees who cared demanded a right to be heard, because often that's why we work for progressive employers in the first place.

For example, a CEO might not want someone who is anti-LGBT representing their company in any way. On the flip side of that, I wouldn't want to work for a company where the leadership was anti-LGBT. Even if these people are otherwise good at their jobs, a person's morality does matter when deciding who to work with/for.

You might make the argument that no one at work should even know if anyone else is anti-LGBT or not, or argue that people should put those cares aside in the interests of a harmonious workplace, but I just don't think that's how (all) humans work.

There are practical considerations to this, too: say a trans employee has to deal with an anti-LGBT HR person regarding trans healthcare and the company's health plans. The HR person is going to be uncomfortable about that conversation, and the trans person isn't going to feel like their concerns are being taken seriously, or even feel safe having that conversation in the first place. That's... not okay.

> On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'.

Just like any other random group of people in the world, some of my colleagues are my friends who I socialize with outside work, and some (most) aren't.

(Agreed, though, the whole "company is family" nonsense needs to stop.)

What would be the expected reaction in this case? We'd want (or require) those people to keep their desires to themselves and choose their employees/employers professionally without discrimination, right?

Thing is, you can't both have your cake and eat it; if we argue that companies should be allowed to act on political/social opinions, then that applies also if you don't like them; and if we argue that it should keep their nose out of what position their employees take on various political/social issues and just focus on their work, then again this will apply to both positions that we like and those we hate.

If employers are allowed to fire (or not hire) someone for pushing anti-LGBT agenda, they'd be allowed to fire (or not hire) someone for pushing a pro-LGBT agenda. Either employees have the right to freely express their political positions or they do not - but that right doesn't depend on which of opposing positions they hold.

Your example of the HR person who has to make decisions about medical issues obviously falls in a different category, but even in this case discretion could be assumed to be the default.

I have friends who work in LA and in SF and they constantly bombard me with stories of how employees of all levels (even recent hires) just spew the most extremist political diatribes at all times and some just do it to troll other employees of the different faction. It has gotten so bad that there are several "secret" slack channels for these cliques dedicated to continue gossiping and sharing memes that are pretty distasteful.

Whenever I ask about them reporting it to HR they just tell me that HR doesn't really exist and they pretty much exist just to make sure payroll is distributed.

Just my 2 cents but I prefer just clocking in and talking about the weather than have to put up with that kind of toxicity.

It's in vogue to use the ideas from the Nonviolent Communication book to make this work better. But those ideas are of course politocal.. as is the debate on whether to allow political discussions.

Also it's pretty hard to separate political discussions from work if you're doing something that impacts people's lives. (I'm leaving out jobs where the societal impact is clearly negative, there discouraging discussion might be rational for the employer)

From the company's PoV you're correct. From the employee's PoV I'm not convinced.

To be less glib, the level of acceptable discourse tends to be built into a companies culture. I've never seen a workplace with zero discourse on the outside world, and I doubt it exists. Companies like google clearly push the concept to its breaking point, though.

Do you allow colleagues to become friends?

I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.

Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.

The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.

    The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably 
    in part due to the rise of teleworking. No 
    longer do people grab a drink after work.

Now that I'm a teleworker, I've got about 10 extra hours of time each week that I don't have to spend commuting. So that actually has benefits for my social life, since I never really hung out with my coworkers anyway!

Of course, I'm a best-case scenario. I have a wife. I have pets. I've lived in this area my whole life and have friends here. I don't need workplace friends. If you don't have those things then you might depend on your workplace for your social connections a little bit more.

To be honest I think workplace friends can really suck anyway. I have made great friends at various jobs, but these days I sort of like to keep "work" and "friends" separate. Having workplace friends can be healthy, but depending on your workplace for friends seems extremely unhealthy. I mean, what happens when you're no longer with the company? It's like you've left a cult and now all your connections have been severed.

When I was in my early 20's, my social life was all about where I worked but now that I'm an adult, I've started to build a solid social network within my town and its various groups. I would hate to socialise with people purely from my office now.

That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying.

I'm trying my best not to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm trying to make friends outside of work. Everyone knows you shouldn't date a coworker but really we should also not base our entire social life around coworkers either.

But as mentioned above you are in that bubble. Apple even went so far as to encircle everyone with their new building.

This culture of being friends with your coworkers is odd to me. My coworkers suck as friends, the vast majority of the time. And heaven forbid you don't want to be friends anymore, because now you're stuck with them. I have much better luck making friends by joining and participating in clubs dedicated to my hobbies.

It's even more the case I assume to people at Google or other big multinational s. People there are much more likely not to be locals, and a lot of their colleagues are going to be in the same situation. That's the perfect context for friendships.

From personal experience, clubs can be difficult if it is a tightly knit community and you're an outsider; especially so if you don't speak the language. It's not that they are not nice, it's just that you need 2 people to form a friendship.

That said, I'm friendly at work, I've made many friends at work. Some jobs have been a lot friendlier than others. But the idea that you need a job to make friends or you'll lose your friends when you lose a job is alien to me. If they don't want to spend time with you outside of work, they're not your friend.

Would not go into detail but in my past I've encountered some peculiar things that HR was trying to impose on employees. I just told them to sod off and keep me away from their kindergarten. The HR person I talked to was sort of shocked but they did leave me alone. No actions were taken. They just asked me not to promote my view among other employees which I was not interested with anyways.

Teleworking is a major benefactor to breaking that imbalance. Typical IT workers out of every 24 hours you spend about 9 working, 8 sleeping, 2 on commuting and 3 on grooming, meals and chores. That leaves just 2 hours of uncommitted time in which to fit me-time, sports, hobbies and friends. So some things will have to give.

Teleworking doubles the amount of time you have uncommitted. That is not just a 100% quantitative increase. 4 hours can fit things that 2 hours just can not, as any outhouse activity (gym/evening class/pub/cinema/theater/...) has setup/travel/wind-down time as well.

Teleworking, or more general, the absence of the typical commute is what enables you to have a social life.

I spent 7 years teleworking and had no problem grabbing a drink after work. Now that I have to physically co-locate with cow orkers I can't do that because (a) I'm driving and (2) they want to join me.

Drinking alone is the best kind of drinking.

Drinking alone? I dunno about that.

This is absolutely, 100% false. This is exactly what you SHOULD do, and this is what unions are for.

Always organise with coworkers. Otherwise you are giving employers more power over you than you should.

I don't want to be in a union. I don't want to join some club. I don't want to pay dues. I don't want to read newsletters or listen to speeches or be involved at all in the grubby, underhanded manuevering for power that would come with a union. And I'm tired of people condescendingly telling me that I'm wrong for feeling this way. I'm not wrong. Power corrupts and labor is no more pure than mangement. If labor gets the upper hand it will abuse its position.

The solution is a balance of power between labor and management. In my case, I feel I have plenty of power. In the case of Google employees, I feel they have plenty of power. Broadly speaking, programmers (in the US) have plenty of power.

If you want to do good, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Of course that would be hard and would involve looking at things you'd rather not see.

Respectfully - were you a programmer during the last recession? I only ask because this power dynamic you imply is inherent in being a programmer can change (and has changed) in a matter of weeks and you'll find the entire industry is not hiring, not seeking consultants, and not looking to buy your *aaS product.

There were a lot of desperate programmers during the great recession (and before that, the dotcom bust)

edit: removed age from what should have been a more general question.

The employer has a workforce and resources at their disposal, you bring to the table only your time. You can eschew unions all you want, but it's simply untrue to state that "a union is no more pure than management."

I'm sorry you feel condescended to to be told this, presumably yet again. Perhaps we can find a way to preserve your feelings, because condescension isn't my intent; I'm just trying to address a century's worth of anti-union propaganda.

By the way, labor organizing is significantly harder than volunteering at a soup kitchen. In the past, employers have hired private armies (the Pinkertons, etc) to attack and kill labor organizers; these days, despite it being illegal, employers often fire workers for legally-protected labor organizing activity. No one's being fired from a soup kitchen.

"Balance of power between labor and management" doesn't mean 50:50. It means the employee has some leverage.

The employer should have more power than the employee. Just like the president should have more power than the citizen, the general should have more power than the private, and the parent should have more power than the child. Power differentials are necessary.

> The employer has a workforce and resources at their disposal, you bring to the table only your time. You can eschew unions all you want, but it's simply untrue to state that "a union is no more pure than management."

Unions are pure when they are correcting an imbalance of power. They're corrupt when they're are accumulating power for its own sake.

> I'm sorry you feel condescended to to be told this, presumably yet again. Perhaps we can find a way to preserve your feelings, because condescension isn't my intent; I'm just trying to address a century's worth of anti-union propaganda.

After reading this paragraph, I have a really hard time believing that condescension isn't your intent. I don't think "unions are bad," I think they are a valid tool to correct power imbalances but they're just a tool, sometimes there is no power imbalance, and a union for programmers is a terrible idea.

> By the way, labor organizing is significantly harder than volunteering at a soup kitchen. In the past, employers have hired private armies (the Pinkertons, etc) to attack and kill labor organizers; these days, despite it being illegal, employers often fire workers for legally-protected labor organizing activity. No one's being fired from a soup kitchen.

Yeah, we've all heard the stories about Google putting out hits on dissident employees.

A unionized workplace doesn't mean you 1) need to join the union (closed shops are illegal in the US) or 2) be involved in the "grubby underhanded maneuvering for power" -- in a pragmatic sense because you can't be compelled to join a union, but more importantly because that is not what union activity is.

What I would find far more convincing is an explanation of how a workplace like Google would be worse if it were a union shop. Lower pay? Nope, union shops consistently draw larger salaries for their workers. Less workplace safety? Nope, union shops consistently have fewer injuries than non-union shops. Fixed salary schedule? Nope, a technical union could easily be structured like SAG -- e.g. Tom Cruise doesn't have a salary cap. Can't fire a bad apple? That seems like a bad idea until someone decides you're the bad apple.

I bet that Damore guy would've appreciated having a union rep sitting at the table with him in those HR meetings where they were going over his blog posts or whatever.

Really? My argument is very straightforward:

> The solution is a balance of power between labor and management. In my case, I feel I have plenty of power. In the case of Google employees, I feel they have plenty of power. Broadly speaking, programmers (in the US) have plenty of power.

> I don't think "unions are bad," I think they are a valid tool to correct power imbalances but they're just a tool, sometimes there is no power imbalance, and a union for programmers is a terrible idea.

I'm not a cog in a machine. I have a significant amount of control over what I'm working on and who I'm working for and how that work gets done.

> What I would find far more convincing is an explanation of how a workplace like Google would be worse if it were a union shop. Lower pay? Nope, union shops consistently draw larger salaries for their workers. Less workplace safety? Nope, union shops consistently have fewer injuries than non-union shops. Fixed salary schedule? Nope, a technical union could easily be structured like SAG -- e.g. Tom Cruise doesn't have a salary cap. Can't fire a bad apple? That seems like a bad idea until someone decides you're the bad apple.

This is exactly my point. Unionization for programmers is about MORE money, LESS work, and LESS accountability. It's an employee cartel. The idea that agitating for a union is a moral endeavor is laughable. It's a moral endeavor when you're a serf or a coal miner.

Correct, and it is certainly your right to wish for less money and more work, even if that is an unorthodox position to take. Perhaps unfair to advocate on behalf of your coworkers for, in your own words, less money and more work, however.

I'm under the impression that once a union takes hold of a company, you're required to join the union to work there. That was certainly the case when my spouse was a teacher.

So, then, isn't fighting for a union shop also unfairly advocating on behalf of your coworkers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

As for advocating for organizing at your workplace being unfair to your coworkers: they are not required to join, but as union shops consistently pay better, are safer, and provide better protections against arbitrary firing, I would still be comfortable advocating for those conditions for my coworkers.

Your employer doesn't have power over you, but you have power over them. Organization is about choosing not to exercise that power by leaving for greener pastures and letting the company rinse and repeat with the next cycle of college graduates, but by staying and choosing to influence the direction of the company in a positive way. You can choose to do your 8 hours every day and devote a full one-third of your life - the only life you get - to someone else's work that you don't have a stake in. But that just seems like the stupid, easy way out.

If I thought that the company was doing something deeply unethical then I'd quit. I'm comfortable saying "I don't want to work for a company that is complicit in X bad thing". But we have to understand that "complicit" and "bad" are not easy to define. Each individual should decide what those words mean and collectivizing these decisions is a massive mistake.

> Your employer doesn't have power over you, but you have power over them. Organization is about choosing not to exercise that power by leaving for greener pastures and letting the company rinse and repeat with the next cycle of college graduates, but by staying and choosing to influence the direction of the company in a positive way.

I don't want to "influence the direction of the company" in the way that you mean. I want to influence its culture by speaking and writing precisely and being nice. But I don't want to make the kinds of decisions you're talking about. I don't know what a "positive direction" is (I don't think you do either). We are constantly acting into an uncertain future and the idea that "the laborers are the good guys who know what's positive" is infantile. I already said what I think about that: if labor gets too much power to "influence the direction of the company," labor will abuse that power (less work, more pay). If management has all the power, management will abuse its power (more work, less pay). The answer is a balance of power and I don't think we, in software, are doing too bad.

> You can choose to do your 8 hours every day and devote a full one-third of your life - the only life you get - to someone else's work that you don't have a stake in. But that just seems like the stupid, easy way out.

If I want to take the plunge and choose what I do with 8 hours a day, I'm sure as hell not going to choose "working for someone else". By "working for someone else" I am making a very clear decision to avoid risk. I'm fine with this decision. You're trying to have it both ways. You want the control without the risk and, sorry, but you don't get to do that.

And the deeply unethical behavior would continue to happen.

>Each individual should decide what those words mean and collectivizing these decisions is a massive mistake.

You have to make a compromise here. As an individual you don't have much power to stop those unethical behaviors, and as a group you do.

>You want the control without the risk and, sorry, but you don't get to do that.

No, you can have this. By collectivizing.

Hardness of an activity or it involving things you don't want to see have no bearing to its goodness.

It's like suggesting that everyone should give gifts of 100 dollars to each other for Christmas. No one wants that. People aren't rational agents with utility functions or, if they are, the utility functions are unknown, vary from person to person, and are not solely based on material well-being (my guess is that they're mostly based on the esteem we estimate that we have in the eyes of our peers).

Pick a problem in your community, directly contribute to its solution, and you will be happier plus the people around you will respect you more. If you give money, that won't be the case. You can insist on a strict utilitarian perspective but you're fighting reality and you can't rewire your brain.

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

He didn't repeatedly claim women were inferior engineers (but I understand why people will believe it). Nor was it in my opinion intolerant but it was championed by those who are (there's a difference). It was some other unhelpful stereotype based on gender differences.

The key take away is that generalising based on group Identity should not be done.

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

His rant was basically just of a list of stock arguments from the scientific racism era.

After he got fired his fans started a fundraiser on a white supremacy website.

His arguments were stock white supremacy and the people who adopted him as a hero were stock white supremacists. This isn't hard to figure out.

But honestly it's better if you don't know, you're better adjusted to living in this world by remaining ignorant. Just keep reading Vox.

While other people may have used his memo to justify sexist beliefs about the capability of female engineers, attributing those words to the original author is at best intellectually dishonest if not outright dishonest.

I will add that many people who only read articles paraphrasing and quoting it, did seem to react unfavorably, likely taking the opinion the article wished to portray.

Damore's links weren't the problem. The unsupported conclusions he drew from the research and the policies that he proposed were the problem.

I think it's more accurate to say his rant was a list from the era of a generation ago which might be the same as the scientific racism era? I don't know.

Damore said exactly this in the memo, your post only proves that you didn't really read or understand it.

Perhaps other Google employees should have responded with "You appear to be making a flawed argument. Here's where we think your argument goes off the rails, and why."

Assuming Damore was arguing in good faith, such a response might have changed the minds of Damore or other like-minded employees.

But simply firing Damore was at best a missed opportunity, and at worst evidence that the majority view is simply a matter of opinion with no real justification.

--

So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall term for anything that argues a biological basis for group differences. Thank you for the links and for not just being aghast that I didn't know this. :]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Damore#Sex_and_drugs_and...

RationalWiki has a very opinionated take on things, but that article is very well-sourced (75 linked sources!) so you can read right up.

Now, it could fairly be said that his pro-KKK arguments were more "glib humor" than endorsement and I'd agree. I would also say it's part of the pattern of negative workplace behavior that got him terminated.

In a larger sense, its these "oh, [group A] isn't performing as well as [group B]... must be biological differences" arguments that often form the faux-scientific basis for discrimination. Read any racist literature, and you will find a lot of "science" claiming that [insert racial group] here is biologically inferior. And, yes, that includes much Nazi propaganda.... justifications used by American slave-owners, etc.

Hell, those titles being cool without their association to the KKK is why the KKK used those titles.

    So it seems that "white supremacy" is a catchall 
    term for anything that argues a biological basis 
    for group differences.

No, not quite.

It's just that their history is inextricably linked.

We can all agree that there is certainly much valid research to be done here. For example, why is sickle-cell anemia so much more prevalent in African-Americans? What biological adaptations allow some populations (Nepalese, etc) to thrive at high altitudes? Nobody finds that sort of thing objectionable.

However, things get ugly fast when we start talking about the study of why one group is best suited for one task or another, or which group is superior in general.

There is a long and sordid history of biological arguments in favor of the superiority of certain groups of people, typically white European males. It should not surprise you to learn that these arguments come from white European males.

Not all studies of "group differences" have anything to do with white supremacy, but every white supremacy movement that has ever existed has claimed a biological basis for their views.

We sort of fought a world war over this (among other reasons) and a lot of people died. These sorts of arguments have also been used to justify slave ownership (a rather large war was fought over this as well) and the oppression of women.

Wikipedia is a reasonable place to start

https://web.archive.org/web/20170808155320/https://www.wesea...

Wayback link to front page of the site at the time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170808121314/https://www.wesea...

Characterizations of the site: https://www.splcenter.org/splc-lists-wesearchr-white-nationa...

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/24/wesearchr-charles-johnson-al...

Alt right is a branding of "white nationalism":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

Who? Please provide quotes to support your case if you’re thinking of the most famous example because I don’t recall any such argument. It was all about interests, not capacities.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170809220001/https://diversity...

Note that I still think there are some questionable things in the memo, but the way people demonize it shows that they can't read controversial texts or didn't read it and just relied on second hand information from those who can't read controversial texts.

0: (posted here regularly) https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

Does it? Because the metrics it reported just this year says it's made up of mostly still white males. https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2019/04/07/googles...

As an example of what is in there, for their tech workforce, whites have declined from 57.8% to 43.5% in four years. (see page 33) You can decide for yourself whether this suggests racial bias in hiring.

Download the PDF here: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/...

edit: I was mistaken about the intersectional part. The corresponding stat for white males is a decline from 47.5% to 33.3% in four years. Stunning.

All roles: Asian, 43.9% Black, 4.8% Latin, 6.8% Native American, 1.1% White 48.5%

Women: 33.2% Men: 66.8%

Tech Roles: Asian, 51.8% Black, 2.8% Latin, 5.3% Native American, 0.8% White, 43.5%

Women: 25.7% Men: 74.3%

Well, this is exactly the question at stake. And it's not Google that makes some of us believe that it is indeed possible to not be estranged from our labor, but the history of human cooperation related to sharing our labor and other resources.

We dream of sharing labor and governance of said labor. To say Google did not hire their employees to do that is resorting to one level of rules (legal or operational). But these employees are implicitly contesting a deeper level of rules (constitutional). The question of _who we are_ is deeper than any contracts or protocols that Google explicitly defines.

I don't really like Google very much, but I'm with them on this one, these people sound nuts.

This is not my experience at all. Work-life balance there was way ahead of other tech companies I’ve worked for. Most people show up, work reasonable hours, and go home. Evenings and weekends are yours.

In my experience, Bay Area startups are way more guilty of trying to exploit young people with a sense of that the startup is your family. Eat, work, play, and socialize with your team, 24/7. Some people enjoy that, and sometimes these same startups go belly up, and your social network is lost.

I have no idea where your rhetoric comes from, though.

They go out in the pub around the corner after work with their company badge on display, they leverage having worked at Google in later jobs as if it has blessed them with infinite wisdom and knowledge.

It's quite cringe worthy to see people fall into that trap. And yes, it's not every single one of them but not exactly a fringe group either.

I don't understand why this phrase itself has such a negative connotation. I bowl alone frequently (three times a week after work), often as a form of personal practice, so I can concentrate on getting better. Doing so has never meant that it was difficult to join a league or find people to socialize with - often by being at the alley I was able to get updates about leagues and clubs starting and I would run into and chat with people (individuals and groups) at the bar or in the lounge.

It was a great way to get outside of my CS/STEM bubble in college.

Surely this is an exaggeration? I mean, being friends with co-workers is great, but surely people at google also have friends outside Google, right? Right?

[1]: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html

What's next, suing a woman because she breaks your heart?

>Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait)

Imagine thinking that you can literally publish and circulate several revisions of an internal company memo telling 50% of your coworkers that they should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you in regards to the job and then when people tell you that you're kind of a dick and they want nothing to do with you, getting outraged and making a grandstand about being unfairly and terribly oppressed, while bemoaning of course that people nowadays are "too sensitive".

Sadly, you can find many examples of this amazing exercise in woke coherence right here on HN.

#Edit, since I've been accused of "being ignorant" and not having read the memo by people who clearly haven't read the thing themselves. In a section titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", wholly dedicated to justifying, among other phenomena, gender pay gap for reasons other than sexist bias, in James Damore's own words:

> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

>Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

>Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

I've not cherry-picked these quotes. There are no omissions, they're whole, untouched paragraphs.

This is an outright fabrication. Nowhere did Damore write that women should be paid less, or that they were genetically inferior at tech. He said that gender differences can explain, in part, difference in preferences between men and women.

Is it sexist to say "hey, maybe 95% of kindergarten teachers are women not because men are discriminated against, but because men don't prefer to work with young kids at the same rate as women due to innate biological reasons."

Oh no, he simply stated that women get paid less not because of sexism, but because it's natural, since they genetically lack assertiveness and are worse at leadership positions and negotiating:

>Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

And certainly he didn't say that women were genetically inferior in high-powered tech jobs! He simply said that they're genetically predisposed to dislike jobs that involve systematizing (such as...tech jobs), and that they're genetically inferior when it comes to handling stressful jobs (which, by pure chance, he happens to exemplify with Googlegeist, a...tech job), since they can't handle stress as well as men do because they're genetically predisposed to anxiety and neuroticism:

>Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing). (...) More men may like coding because it requires systemizing. >Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist

I don't even know why I bother. I regret getting into this argument. Believe what you like; as long as you see movements for social improvement as some kind of personal accusation, it's what you'll do anyway. Yes, women in tech are not discriminated against, or if they are, it's either exaggerated or there's a reasonable explanation for it. Whatever, downvote away.

Closer to reality, but you're still injecting your own narrative here. He did not say that women are worse at negotiating. He said that Google rewards assertiveness rather than agreeableness in it's negotiations, and because women are on average more agreeable this disadvantages women. And later, he suggested that Google should make it's environment more rewarding of agreeableness to make things fairer for women.

How people made the jump from this to, "women are genetically inferior at tech" is astounding to me.

And regardless of the correctness of firing him, him getting fired is a little stronger than "people tell[ing him] that [he's] kind of a dick".

On a section dedicated to offering alternative explanations to sexism for the gender gap in tech, James writes:

>Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

>Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

The implication is that it's partly natural that women do worse and get lower salaries at tech. In case there's any adoubt, the section it's written in is titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", in the subsection "Personality differences".

People make these leaps of fiction on their own from usually well meaning but confused stances.

>Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

Do you see it? The part where he says women are genetically worse leaders, and have worse salaries because they're genetically worse negotiators? Remember, the section is titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", implying that women are paid less because it's natural, not because of sexist bias.

At any rate, I appreciate the patronizing "making well meaning but confused leaps of logic" pat in the head.

Yes, your are making an unsubstantiated leap from what was actually written to claiming that Damore write that his female coworkers should be paid less than men for the same work.

Statistics are all we have to go on in this regard, and they are in Damore's favor.

The truth is not bigoted.

"White men can't jump" is generally true.

Personality traits are like most things on a spectrum, and women tend to have less of the traits which have until now been perceived to be necessary for "negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading"

There are leaders that are women, see AMD.

Dunning/Kruger etc

> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.

Yes, that does say that women are genetically worse leaders and implies that their lower salaries are at least in part because they are naturally worse negotiators.

The whole section it's written on is focused on explaining how sexism is mostly a exaggeration and that sex differences can instead be explained by genetic factors. Any more questions?

No it does not. It says that women are more agreeable and less assertive, on average. And because Google rewards assertiveness, this means women have a harder time negotiating salaries at Google. In a workplace the prioritizes agreeableness over assertiveness, women would be at an advantage. And later in the memo he says Google should better reward agreeableness.

It does not claim "women are genetically worse leaders". This is a fabrication.

Please, PLEASE look up the definition of 'discrimination' in any dictionary you like, and tell me if you really believe that saying 'women are more agreeable and less assertive, on average' does not fit the definition, or that James Damore's many characterizations of women on his memo ("higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance", "women generally have a harder time leading") don't, either. If that's the case, we are simply not going to agree with each other, so we shouldn't waste our time trying.

In order to be discriminatory, they would have to be broad, ignorant statements based on personal anecdote and prejudice that he pulled out of his ass right before adding 'on average' at the end of the phrase; since they are not that in any way, but carefully researched, unbiased observations, they do not fit the definition of discriminatory.

Now that you've explained to me what facts are, I finally understand James' logic, so please consider this argument won.

What happened to James, who simply circulated a fact-based memo telling half of his coworkers that they need special rules to make things fair since they're at least partly genetically inferior when it comes to the job, was yet another gratuitous act of SJW, PC, fact-censoring repression against one of society's most silenced and powerless collectives: top-salaried, Ivy League educated young white males working at the top companies of male-dominated high growth industries in the largest economy on the planet, like so many others we sadly see so often here on HN.

It's time we finally took a stand on these issues.

If you think that there is no difference between saying people who belong to a certain group are more or less X on average, and saying that individual members of that group are X then I really cannot help you. This is just patently wrong. There's nothing sexist about saying "men on average commit rape 50 times more than women". That's fact. If you told a man, "you're a rapist" because of mere fact that he is a man, then yes that is prejudice.

He didn't just add the word "on average" at the end. He explicitly pointed out that conflating population wide averages and individual characteristics is wrong:

> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

If you think his presentation of this data is ineffective, then the productive thing to do is offer a reasoned refutation. Not exaggerate (to be generous, I'm more inclined to call these fabrications) and write that he claimed "women are genetically worse leaders" and "naturally worse negotiators."

1. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-13299-011

So for example "I want to hire people who don't have trait X. I give an objective test for this. More men than women pass it. Studies have shown that more men than women pass this globally, so it is as expected. Therefore, due to this test, the people I hire tend to be more men than women." is not discrimination.

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

>Definition of sexism

>1. prejudice or discrimination based on sex

Enough. Just believe what you want, I give up. There's no sexism on the tech industry or schools. James Damore is right and is an oppressed victim of his own bravery. Whatever.

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

>1. prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment

Hm. Let's check out the definition of sexism again.

>1. prejudice or discrimination based on sex

Prejudice or discrimination. And discrimination also means prejudiced or prejudicial...since I'm not a tech person like yourself I wouldn't know what 'or' means, it's too complicated for me, but I think I do know what 'and' means: for example, you are wrong about your definition of sexism, and about your definition of discrimination, and about your use of 'or'.

This is great, I love learning new tech concepts on tech forums from tech experts.

what's wrong with these employees? Keep your political opinions to yourself. So they propose that my company lose money because of your activism. Don't agree! What if some employees asked that Google cancel any deals with climate change NGOs? How would these employees feel about it?

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

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