And that's fine. It's a choice. One I personally disagree with, but at least it's a deliberate choice. But if you make such a deliberate choice you need to be frank about it: you're making a tradeoff between, let's say, tranquility and openness, and favoring tranquility at a cost to people whose views are less mainstream. Or (under an alternate definition of political), you're making the choice to accept without argument the whims of the current government, in other words making company values dictated by the environment instead of by the company itself. This is, again, not inherently wrong, but you should own this and understand that it isn't a morally superior or better position, it's just an arbitrary stance that might make sense for you, but it comes at a cost to others.

> but it's miles better than the scenario where politics is allowed to invade every minute of everyone's life.

I just want to note that, as someone who works at Google, its very easy to turn politics "off", so to speak. There are mailing lists and group chats I just don't access. I'm privileged enough to be able to do that because there are very few political issues that directly affect me. That isn't true for some of my coworkers. Those who are, to take one example, immigrants are directly affected by "politics" on the daily. And so avoiding discussion or interaction with politcal issues isn't possible for them. The same is true for coworkers who are Muslim, or who have undocumented family members. The political realities are inescapable for them. Asking them not to discuss those issues at work is like asking me not to discuss, say, a parent being hospitalized. They're real issues that affect and weigh on people. Forcing people to keep those things bottled up, especially when the company may be taking action that negatively impacts those people, isn't nice.

But I think your framing is backwards here.

* Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy.

* Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics are allowed, you constantly have to monitor the political landscape to make sure following your company values won't make your employees rebel.

* Your analogy does hold, and it would be unreasonable to have a rule where I'll be punished for chatting in the breakroom about how my cousin might be deported. But it would also be unreasonable for me to interrupt meetings with demands that the company must cancel its medical plan, because my dad has the same insurance and I don't think they're treating him right.

More broadly, I don't think anyone actually wants or would benefit from politics in general in the workplace. The only people I've seen argue for it are confident that their politics will be popular, and that all political views they find offensive will continue to be forbidden.

(fyi I really appreciate this thread of discussion, it's quite interesting)

To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to express their political views is unreasonable, but that also isn't a position I've seen expressed except as a Boogeyman.

To your second point, if your values are independent of the current political climate, you need to be able to discuss how your actions align with your values. If you're working in political spaces, this necessitates discussion of political issues. To be concrete, if your values are "don't be evil", you need to be willing to have the discussion on whether or not working with the Chinese government on a censored search tool is evil. This is a really complex question (and I use this example because I've heard great arguments in both directions), but if you censor political discussion, the organization can't be held accountable, because no one is allowed to ask.

To your third point, I'm in agreement with your specific example, but asking a question about improving the healthcare policy at an all hands on HR issues would be warranted. Similarly, asking about access to gender neutral restrooms would be warranted even if it's political to some people.

To your last bit, I'm not saying that you can't ban certain things for certain reasons. As an example, banning discrimination is okay, even though some discrimination might be political.

In essence, I'm of the opinion that if you hold a belief strongly enough to ban dissent, you should be forthright about the belief. If your want to ban Republicans, or ban people who openly identify as trans (both of which are legal in various US jurisdictions), at least have the decency so say so and not hide behind banning "political discussion" or "political activism".

(Agreed! I'm glad we're having it.)

I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman. There was an article a couple months back[1] where a guy was publicly offended that (admittedly among other complaints) his coworkers weren't talking enough about police brutality. Anecdotally I have a lot of stories; for Hispanic Heritage Month, for example, we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posters all around the office.

It's definitely important to discuss how your actions align with your values. Sometimes that will mean discussing values issues that are also political issues, and sometimes that will mean making a very slippery distinction. But this isn't the extent of the political activism at Google. When employees insisted that Kay Coles James must not be allowed on the AI advisory council[2], they didn't argue that having her would make Google do some particular evil thing. They argued that she's a mean person who holds the wrong political views, so Google must shun her.

People definitely should be honest about what they want to ban and why. But again, in my experience, most people opposed to politics in the workplace honestly do have content-neutral motivations. I'm a very strong Andrew Yang supporter, bumper sticker and pile of campaign swag and all, and I never bring it up in the workplace because I'm not there to do partisan politics.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kd3w/google-employee-me...

[2]https://medium.com/@against.transphobia/googlers-against-tra...

> I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman.

Sure, someone complained that people weren't knowledgable and up for debating an issue that was important to him. But notably, no one was forced to express anything, he was simply disappointed that they weren't willing to discuss the issue. Actually it wasn't even that, he was disappointed that, instead of expressing concern over the death of a black man, his coworkers were more concerned over how people were protesting[0]. No really, what he complained about was his coworker expressing this opinion:

> “These protestors aren’t going to solve anything, ” she said. ”Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can’t get to Grand Central? It’s annoying . I just can’t stand it.”

I can see why that would be disappointing, but even still that disappointment is a far cry from forced political expression.

> When employees insisted that Kay Coles James must not be allowed on the AI advisory council[2], they didn't argue that having her would make Google do some particular evil thing. They argued that she's a mean person who holds the wrong political views, so Google must shun her.

But they did! There were other objections too, but one of the objections was specifically that James's values are directly contradictory to those that Google expresses, both in terms of diversity issues and in terms of AI.

> Not only are James’ views counter to Google’s stated values, but they are directly counter to the project of ensuring that the development and application of AI prioritizes justice over profit.

From the original petition. The thinking, which I broadly agree with, goes something like this: KCJ isn't an expert on AI. She's essentially a layperson, so her value on the ethics board would be as an ethics person, not as an AI person. Two of Google's AI ethics principles are "2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias." and "3. Be built and tested for safety.". KCJ appears to be comfortable using AI for military applications, arguably a violation of 3, and certainly doesn't care for avoiding bias towards trans people, a violation of 2. She didn't make any sense on the committee, and I'd argue that the followup made it clear that it was more meant to pander than to actually address issues.

> I'm a very strong Andrew Yang supporter, bumper sticker and pile of campaign swag and all, and I never bring it up in the workplace because I'm not there to do partisan politics.

Sure, and I don't generally bring up politics at work either. But that doesn't mean that I should deny other people, who are more directly affected by things, the ability to do so.

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjvy3/heres-the-memo-abo...

Maybe I'm misreading the argument. It sounds like the petition claims merely hearing her out is wrong; that because she disagrees on some hot-button political issues, nothing she says can possibly be valuable, and listening to her thoughts on AI ethics would constitute pandering to her side on those political issues. If so, that's a core example of the kind of toxic political wrangling that I'm opposed to in the workplace.

Personally, I think there's a difference between hearing someone out and elevating someone to be on an ethics council. And the only reason she was included was that she's a notable Republican, and Google was concerned that conservatives would complain if there wasn't a notable conservative in the group. In other words, she was included only for (partisan) political reasons. Calling that out isn't introducing politics, it's recognizing them.