As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics.
From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support.
In this kind of climate, for a business or other entity to involve themselves in politics would be consciously choosing to more or less blacklist themselves from doing business with the other side or run the risk of having their brand tarnished via social media for whatever stance they take.
Finally, a business that takes a political stance does damage not just to themselves but to their employees as in the current political climate, both sides have no problems harassing a person or worse if they are viewed as not "on their team". Once a company takes a political stance, it doesn't matter if what that employee believes or does nor does it matter that said employee might be working for this company because they have a family to feed and don't have the luxury of quitting and looking for a new job, the very fact that they work for said company means that they should be treated as persona-non-grata.
Make it simple, a company can't vote, so a company doesn't have a political affiliation (unless of course, it is some kind of lobbying company etc).
> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity
We have confused being politically active with being partisan.
Even this article conflates the two. Yet there is a world of difference between taking a policy stance and promoting a candidate or a party.
Companies have a legitimate stake in policy that commercially affects them. Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. One may disagree, but it’s coherent. (Hobby Lobby taking a stance on gay rights, on the other hand, is incoherent.)
Companies must be politically active because nothing is apolitical. But companies shouldn’t be partisan. And when you are doing your work, the partisan affiliations of those around you should not matter.
> Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them.
What? I absolutely hold it against them, given how much of it was pure and unpunished chicanery like tricking drivers into agreeing to 'petitions' then used in published advertising.
>Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them.
Just as a customer, I hold it against a business when they too aggressively tell me how to vote. Campaign for whatever, but don't make me sit captive to it in order to do business with you.
> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics.
Statements like yours are very easy to make and sound fine at a superficial level, but quickly run into problems when you try to actually apply the rule. For instance: does a company that sells drugs that can be used off-label for executions of human beings have a "product [that] is directly related to politics?"
This problem is a lot like writing good requirements. Your rule above is a lot like a requirement of an HR system that states simply "the system will reject the resumes of all unqualified candidates." There's a lot to unpack there, and that requirement, as stated, doesn't even get you 1% of the way there.
You are making it intentionally over-complicated. There isn't much to unpack at all. A company becomes political by making a political decision, not by consequence of someone else using its products to make political decisions.
Nearly every substance has an LD50. I wouldn't say they should be used for that, but trying to attack something like the death penalty at that level seems absurd given that there are so many alternate means.
> the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics.
You make it sound simple, but it’s not.
If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.
If your workers use open source software and ask if they can contribute back upstream, but you deny them on grounds of intellectual property, you just did politics. The same if you allow them. If you pay your workers above market rate, allow them to unionize, have a liberal vacation policy, or force them to work on-site, you are doing politics. Albeit on a more personal scale then in the previous example.
If most of the other offices in your downtown building where your startup resides put a BLM flag in their window, but you opt not to, you just made a political decision. If an employee puts a prominent Palestinian flag on their desk, and you ask them to take that down, you do so on a political basis.
I hope you get the point. Businesses simply don’t have the option of not doing politics. The power dynamics involved simply prevent that from being a possibility. “Not doing politics” is more often then not simply an excuse for doing highly questionable politics.
> If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics.
Is there a way to go back from your binary opposition:
- "I support what you are doing and will help you"
- "I oppose what you are doing and will fight you"
to at least a ternary:
- "I support what you are doing and will contribute to your cause"
- "I don't care what you are doing and will sell you the same services as to anyone else (I am only interested in your money)"
- "I oppose what you are doing and will do what I can to impede your cause"
I find the binary exceedingly demanding and almost insane.
This is a terrible argument. Replace politics with religion to see why.
You can try to be clever by listing ways religion might relate to business, but that doesn't change the fact that businesses generally, and in many ways are legally required to, let people do their jobs regardless of their faith. It works just fine.
Everyone knows it's possible to make things more political. Being apolitical means doing the opposite. It's a very simple concept from kindergarten, "more" and "less".
Drawing some strained connection to politics doesn't magically make it impossible for us to say "try to have less politics at work".
If I followed you around all day complaining that you're not vegan enough, you'd suddenly regain the ability to notice that some things are more political and more related to your job than others.
I don't think any business should be forced to put a BLM flag in their window just because all their neighbors are doing it.
BLM is a cause. It's OK to care about other causes too. Is it racist of my company to buck the norm and put up a flag or fliers supporting an environmental cause like recycling or composting instead?
You're right, though; politics cannot be completely avoided. I just hope my friends don't assume I'm racist because I'm not constantly publicly shepherding racial equality and civil rights. A person should be allowed to have other hobbies and interests. A person should not be required to be vocal and outspoken. Neither should businesses.
As an employee, I'd prefer if my company did its part in hiring diverse candidates and fair pay, but I don't want to work at a place where I feel compelled to join in political discussions and movements that aren't really part of my job description.
If you operate a delivery company, and a factory farmer approaches you to deliver to grocery stores nationwide, you suspect it might be used to transport their specialty, veal. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to transport their goods, you are being complacent in the torture of sentient baby mammals, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.
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Note the above is only partially tongue-in-cheek, but I do it to make two points:
1. To you, your political viewpoints are obviously "morally correct". But the whole point is many people disagree with what you consider morally correct. I used my veal example because I feel it's something a lot of people on HN wouldn't have much of a problem with, but to me it clearly is torture to these animals, and the only reason society at large doesn't have more of a problem with it is because how the animals are treated is mostly hidden from view.
2. My broader point is that virtually every company could sell some product or service that could be used to further an end that equal number of people on both sides could think is morally horrid or morally righteous. It's dangerous to think that your view is the only right one.
It is simple. Toolmakers are not responsible for moral arbitration. A convicted felon can legally buy a Craftsman wrench, even if he plans to bludgeon someone with it. Craftsman is not responsible for preventing the convicted felon from buying one of their products. And that's fine.
Hard disagree. Not doing a thing is by no means a political statement (your BLM example). Now if they put up an All Lives Matter flag, then you have an argument.
Further, I'd argue selling a service or product with no judgement of the buyer is also nonpolitical, even ICE. I'm not sure what the opposite side of ICE is, if it exists, but as long as you'd be willing to sell to that entity also, it can still be politically 'neutral.' Only when you decide to refuse or discontinue something have you made a stand, which is what many said about Cloudflare's semi recent takedown and why it was murky.
If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics
It's morally correct in your opinion.
This is the crux of the problem - corporate bodies taking a single stance while being comprised of multiple individuals with differing takes on the (often complicated) issues at hand.
Incorrect. If a company buys my services, they are free to do with that service what they please. We don't shut down hammer companies because some dude whacked another with one.
You think you are on the moral high ground here, which is why you are taking such a strong stand.
Also, I think you were looking for "complicit", not complacent. You are also wrong there as well. We are voters, that is how we approve or disapprove of government actions. Not everyone has a high paying job and can afford the luxury of ignoring new clients or stopping business because of some holier-than-thou nonsense. People have bills to pay.
I don't know, we seem to have done ok about companies not being political a decade ago. It seems it's only recently companies, especially prominent ones, started getting dragged into political positions.
Maybe this is an extension of cancel culture; you're either with us or against us. If you don't believe what we believe then you're evil and we must do everything we can to drown you out. The statement here even has it. If you work with ICE you're morally incorrect and highly questionable. Never mind that it's legal and supported by ~50% of the population.
Why is the work place the appropriate venue for non-industry politics?
Lobby groups, human rights associations, charities and polticial groups would gladly take your ICE funded profits and work for your goals.
The requirement for bosses and employees to be personally calling political shots in their personal and professional lives makes me think the corporations would prefer to be divided so they can make the call on their own terms.
We know ICE can get SAAS services elsewhere so what consequence is really being prosecuted here?
If you shop at Trader Joe’s, and Trader Joe’s sells food to ICE employees that participate in the family separation program, you just took a supportive political stance.
Did you pay any federal taxes this year to support ICE instead if refusing to pay them? You just took a supportive political stance.
This is kind of a motte and bailey fallacy, the motte "everything is political" and the bailey of "what politics should corporations have, and for that matter its employees". That leads to some ominous answers as a corporation is purely in the business of making money, nothing more, nothing less. Anything else is simply internal policy for operating the organization, and can be done for any number of reasons. Ideology in work is for a privileged few, and the vast majority simply trade their labor for a paycheck. We would be better off recognizing this reality.
> you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics.
Disagree. Family separation for illegal border crossings was an Obama-era policy that only became considered an important issue by the left when when the government changed. This is a matter of optics, not ethics.
None of these examples you brought up are political in nature. Not one.
Some idiot chooses to try to make it political in nature and a bunch of other equally uninformed idiots believes the original idiot or takes up the cause.
Example 1: SaaS company is breaking no American laws and ICE isn't either. The fact you even think its morally correct to deny them service screams how ideologically possessed you are. Here's a hot fuckin' take for you... don't illegally come to America.
Example 2: I don't know enough about intellectual property and open source contributions to have an opinion.
Example 3: Maybe you're not doing politics, maybe you're just not a shitbag.
Example 4: Maybe you don't give a shit and just want to be left alone.
Example 5: You're just a controlling asshole, not politically against Palestine.
I would say, "I hope you get the point", but you won't... because its clear just from these examples alone you're so politically motivated that you can't see the world from any other vantage point.
"From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support."
It sure looks that way if you watch american news. Reality is pretty different. Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral - or at least try to be an "agent for good" while avoiding controversy.
He means that politics about ideas would sound like, "Should we spend more money on infrastructure vs. health care vs. lowering taxes," whereas politics about identity is "Black vs White vs. Gay vs Straight vs Native vs Immigrant, etc." There is no discussion to be had in the latter. When people are divided that way, politics is strictly negative sum.
The problem is, those who don't do politics can still have politics done to them. This can take two forms.
One way is that the government makes decisions. Some of those decisions affect businesses. If the businesses don't give any input, the government still decides - they just decide in a vacuum. That could be sub-optimal for businesses. (I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.)
The second way politics can be done to you is that someone outside decides that you aren't active enough in supporting their political side, and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left, but that's not universal.) The only thing you can do to avoid that is try to move in lockstep with the most strident voices telling you what you should do... but I've never been a big fan of appeasement. My preferred approach is to ignore them - but then, I don't have to make a payroll, so it's really easy for me to say that.
I upvoted you as I think you make some interesting points, but I hope you don't mind me challenging them a little.
> I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.
I wonder what sort of policies a coal company would view as "sane", as it affects their business.
> and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left
Are you perhaps limiting the scope of your consideration to just "cancel culture"? I don't want to make a whataboutist response, but it's not good to cherry-pick a single mechanism of political oppression (which is disproportionately used by people with a certain political leaning) and miss out other sorts, such as business owners firing employees, or violence by the state against unarmed civilians, or attacks by politically-motivated armed extremists.
I completely agree, except this isn’t an American position and it isn’t actually about politics. It’s the culture of the valley, a tiny little geography in California and it’s about identity. Many there will form every imaginable excuse to conflate their employment with politics as a means of identity expression. Most people in the US find this subculture just as bizarre.
Where do you draw the line on what participating in politics means exactly? Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics?
In practice having "no stance" means supporting the status quo
> Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics?
IMO, no, no and no.
Where it becomes politics is when you start trying to force others to follow your preferred behaviours in those areas, over and above what the law requires. If you want to do that then you should vote and/or campaign to get the law changed, via the usual routes, and normally outside the workplace (unless directly related).
Here are a few ways the role of a US corporation may not translate everywhere:
- Employers have a direct role in the social safety net, for example choosing health care and retirement savings options for their employees.
- Related to above, because there are limited gov't protections for things like vacation and childcare leave, and firing in general, employer policies form a bigger part of work/life tradeoffs.
- The US workforce has more diversity than most countries along several axes, including race, age, and immigration status, so employer policies about minority protections impact more employees.
Since stances on the policy areas above form the main battleground for American politics, companies make many decisions that are politically valenced.
> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics.
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support.
Yeah I have intentionally avoided the media and political nonsense of the last decade or so, and it just seems increasingly absurd. Everyone is a radical activist these days. And to radicals, there is no neutral position.
Much of the article talks about Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, and if the CEO says not to engage with broader political and economic issues, he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing.
> Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, ... he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing.
No one is joining Coinbase if they're opposed to Coinbase's financial system objectives. It's not a secret.
If someone was actively opposed to Coinbase's primary business objectives, how would they even be a productive employee of Coinbase in the first place?
It's a false equivalency to try to equate the company's core business with completely unrelated political topics.
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas, it is now a contest of identity
Lay political discourse (and especially partisan media) does frequently fit the description of identity banners and other tribal + value markers.
But it's also very, very wrong to say that politics has ceased being about policy and ideas. It is definitely true that there are marked differences between policy goals advanced by parties (and sometimes individuals within). And it's not exactly rare that you can find lay participants who have a policy or ideas that are important to them.
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas...
This was long the norm in Europe and North America. Western Europe seems to have less of it at the moment, and perhaps for the last 25 years; the US had a ~30 year stretch from the mid 50s. The current situation is quite bad, but has of course been worse.
Everything you do is political. Advertising on certain channels like MSNBC or Fox News will cause some customers to boycott you. Even trying to go carbon neutral is a stance. Show gay couples in your ads, that’s also a politely statement.
I'm am guessing you do not live in Hungary, Poland, Brazil or Turkey either.
Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address.
But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?
> why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?
I can foresee a near future where this becomes a very pertinent question. Suppose that, due to some underhanded dealings of the Electoral College (and/or SCOTUS), the current President were to be granted a second term. Further suppose that 70% of the country saw this process as illegitimate, but wanted to avoid any direct violent conflict.
My question is: Would big tech companies (or key employees within them) work together to implement a digital General Strike across the country?
This would be an extreme and probably criminal form of civil disobedience, although I imagine the perpetrators could be motivated by an expectation of receiving a presidential pardon if they were successful.
I'm sure that someone in the contingency planning departments of these big companies someone has gamed out what would happen if Apple and Google and Microsoft all pushed software updates to devices and online services which blocked certain activities (e.g. use by fossil fuel companies?) while controlling the media narrative by promoting messages from their side.
Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't), it's not the purpose of a business to defend democracy. If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people.
Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?
>a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics.
In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media outlets will write article after article about how you platform Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. If you stand up to them they will go after the advertisers. "Why are you advertising on a site that platforms Nazis?" And there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban these people there's barely a blip in their business.
I agree, and this leads into a wider point about political discourse in the modern era.
To me, as a person who doesn't live in America, the US has gone absolutely crazy over this idea that policy doesn't matter so long as a person is on my team. This is an indictment of the media who have failed in their job at keeping the public informed in an unbiased manner, reducing complex macro-economics and geopolitics to catchy headlines and gotcha-questions.
Is my country any better? God no, most of our media is just a budget version of the American model, but it is America who infected the rest of the world with this.
When policy and idea's become the most important part of any election, that's when you can start addressing real social and economic problems like homelessness, LGBT rights, wealth disparity and the loss of jobs to offshoring manufacturing, because you'll have more time to discuss these things like adults now that politicians aren't reducing their job to 140 character hot-takes.
For starters, the fact that nobody can agree on what a “fascist” even is these days. And when you have a generic term like that which essentially boils down to “people whose opinions I dislike”, then you’re advocating for the blacklisting of arbitrary groups of people. Not going to turn out well, especially when you yourself get included in one of those groups.
> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's
I don't know how anyone can say this and be considered a serious person.
One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism.
But by all means, remain "apolitical," since apparently this isn't about policy anymore. Wacky stuff man...
What exactly is wacky about limiting legal immigration and/or asylum if that is what the citizens want? IMHO, Those don't seem like insane ideas when there is crazy amounts of unemployment in the country.
> One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism.
This doesn’t describe either party. Also, there isn’t a problem with systemic racism. And no, I don’t support the party that you think.
You know, you're not allowed to say that in a lot of American offices now. Even in a technical context where it has an established meaning and multiple alternatives are now jockeying for mainstream. It's "exclusionary", which is a new HR code word for "politically incorrect". The battle is over and lost. Everything is politicized now, and all anyone who doesn't like it can do is fall on their sword. Alone.
One of my favorite moments of 2020 was when coinbase stood up against the madness of people using the company as a vehicle to promote their irrelevant politics. Politics has its place but just gets in the way of doing work in the workplace. The only politics that should be promoted in the workplace is the politics that helps the company accomplish its specific goals. I predict that market forces will cause more startups to follow suit.
One of the things that made me quit my last job was the director frequently talking politics before meetings while waiting for everyone to join.
There's no winning. Agree and risk setting yourself at odds against your peers and future managers, or disagree and put yourself at odds with the person who holds the purse for your team.
Even worse, complain to HR, and risk politically disagreeing with them.
I stuck with that job long enough to find something better, and almost regret staying with it as long as I did.
The other reason I totally agree with this is because there is always the unwritten rule that what a company can support politically is pretty much always in service to its bottom line. I mean, just look at Google, whose employees are known for being especially politically active. Except, that is, when it comes to the negative societal effect of large monopolies (there was a recent HN discussion about this). People at Google know what pays their (very large) salaries.
We don't get into politics until we need an emergency building permit approval at which point we will make a donation to the mayor's campaign even if he is a big Trump supporter and says things directly opposite of all the diversity meetings we have been going to over the past year.
What’s interesting about that case is that >5% of employees quit.
So these were people that coinbase decided, out of all available applicants—and as a well-known, hugely profitable company that is the only “in any way mainstream” success story of cryptocurrency-based businesses, there are a fair number of them—thought were the right fit. (That’s excluding the people who were given offers and didn’t accept, of course.)
And then greater than one in twenty employees (that’s a lot) heard what he said and were like, nope, this is not someone I want to follow.
Is that a success? Maybe! I can’t think of a time when we’ve seen that level of voluntary departure from a company and thought, “ah yes, this is good.” Or when we’ve seen something like that and thought, “ah yes, this is what leadership looks like.”
Maybe he’s right! I don’t know. We’ll see.
But when I look at America, with its staggering income inequality and tremendous corporate cash investments into political elections, I don’t personally think, “wow there sure is too much social accountability at companies.”
You know?
I don’t look at Facebook and think, “they should really just focus on being a data mining advertising business. This thing about fomenting extremism is distracting us from them as a corporate enterprise in a capitalist system.”
People leave jobs for lots of reasons. Coinbase was offering a very generous exit package for anyone leaving at the time. I am sure some split for reasons unrelated to leadership or these political policies.
The kicker here is that actual politics is prohibited by law. Companies can't be endorsing candidates or providing in-kind contributions without getting into trouble with the FEC.
So this is all about performative poses in the workplace, on the topic of politics, rather than being about actual politics.
Companies get involved with politics all the time, and policy in the US seems to be far more about keeping corporations and the shareholder class happy than keeping voters happy.
So it's more that companies can't do certain limited things, but companies - and CEOs particularly - can do plenty of others.
There is something to what you're saying, but politics isn't only electoral. The two poles of attraction are pro-labor and pro-capital, so if startups do real politics in the workplace, it won't be to the benefit of anyone that isn't in management.
If the workplace did not have its own issues I would agree. But, since, to take one example, sexism is a known problem in tech - and throughout corporate America and society, to be fair - in order to not have a sexist workplace, one would need to be proactive.
Broadly speaking. Point being, it's easy to not want "politics" in the workplace when the workplace works well for you. If you're someone whom the workplace doesn't work well for, like a person of color, a pregnant woman, new mother, or new father, for that matter, well, then it's a different story.
If you yourself believe that sexism/systemic racism aren't issues that show up (even inadvertently or despite the best intentions of individuals) in the workplace, well, then that's a different conversation entirely.
I think this is different from someone in a position of power promoting a particular candidate in the workplace. That is more complex and problematic. The 2020 election was obviously an extreme example, and, tbh, with things like global warming, I think we'll be seeing more politics like that in the workplace, not less.
Which, to me, means it's not an easy or one-size-fits all solution, but rather, a challenge which requires each of us to exercise care and our own judgement.
For example, personally, I would have liked to see Hacker News take even a small explicit step of endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement (such as putting 'Black lives matter' on the top of the homepage), seeing as how it's one of the major civil rights issues of our present moment. I can also understand their concerns around doing so, even though I disagree with them.
IMHO it's too easy for those of us doing well and making money to forget that the institutions we work for have a social impact and are a part of society.
Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female employees so they can talk about their careers and how to advance and get promoted. I don't know, due to lack of experience, but I assume this is beneficial to one's career. Presumably benefiting careers is why they're doing it.
And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and documented process. Even before that, in college, we had events for women who code, women in STEM, career opportunities for women, etc.
I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact that men have better representation in upper levels is meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless.
On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by my coworkers as a deplorable sexist.
My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using them to make decisions about what happens at work.
Your post actually exemplifies why this is so fraught. The first part of your post is hard to criticize—every workplace has to think about how they’re accommodating and trying to foster quality amongst employees with different backgrounds. Companies should be talking about how their promotion practices affect working mothers, etc.
But your example of HN endorsing “Black Lives Matter” is different. Taken literally it’s a straightforward slogan, but it’s also the name of a specific political organization with a broad political agenda: https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant.... It’s not just an articulation of a single problem. It identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to solve that problem and others.
What part of the various political ideologies that could be deemed to fall within the umbrella of “BLM” are you asking HN to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think others will perceive HN as endorsing?
This is not a criticism of BLM—I go to a church that has a BLM banner and I understand what’s being conveyed and not conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of expression of ideological alignment from organizations that aren’t ideological and activist to begin with is very problematic.
I agree with the phrase "black lives matter". But I absolutely do not support the political group "BLM", which stands for a number of liberal ideas that have nothing to do with black people. For example their "what we believe page" states: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."
Frankly I think this idea has awful implications that BLM does not grasp.
If the issue directly hinders the company’s goals as determined by the leadership then it should be addressed, that could include sexism. Main point is that the issue has to be relevant to the company’s goals as determined by the leadership.
The HN banner idea would only antagonize the HN folks. In my childhood, parents made me eat tomatoes, because, you know, it's healthy. Since then I despise tomatoes, even though at a rational level I understand that my parents were right.
The techies types are knowledge first people. If you want to win their support, appeal to knowledge, make a rational case, but avoid trying to fool them, as the moment they notice a logical inconsistence in your ideas, they'll dismiss them entirely.
Most activism appeals to emotions, to feelings, because it matters a lot to most people. But techies put dry knowledge first and so needs to change your tactic.
Nevertheless, I'm upvoting your comment because I believe it presents an important viewpoint.
Thread ancestor was hedging carefully with the word 'irrelevant'. I'm not drawing any instances to mind where someone argued that sexism was irrelevant to the workplace, only people arguing that the current crop of policies are unfair or counterproductive. Damore springs to mind, he had a section titled "Non discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap" and so it would be difficult to argue that he thought inaction was the goal.
What is politics is in itself political, but I expect there will be a fair majority of people who want corporations to focus on carrying out basic tasks effectively rather than devoting resources to experimental (or divisive) social reform. The risks of corruption and bad outcomes are real.
I another problem is this can also lead to not being involved in the local community.
In San Francisco, the collective "tech industry" has long been demonized for various things. IMO, some fair, some not. "Google Buses" taking space at MUNI stops was one for quite a while. Contributing to increasing housing costs is a long time favorite.
But a lot of these come from a culture where you build your company on top of the infrastructure provided by the local community and government. Then build a very successful business on top of that, but have minimal engagement with the local government and community. So you create a perception that you're just taking, and not actually part of the local community.
It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on this attitude.
In contrast, Salesforce has the largest building in San Francisco named after them, and a huge urban park. I don't see them getting dragged into the anti-tech sentiment. Because I think they've effectively engaged with the local community and given back a lot.
They have a culture of volunteer work, strongly encouraging employees to take time off to volunteer for local causes. They also donate to many local causes. Marc Benioff is certainly involved in politics, and advocating for specific ideas and policies. But because him and his company engage in various ways, and make substantial philanthropic contributions, they are usually respected for it.
> It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on this attitude.
It isn't just that attitude that's the problem, it's the insistence by Coinbase that they're apolitical, yet the company makes significant political contributions themselves[1].
Looking through these entries, I believe these are contributions made using Coinbase, not by Coinbase. I.e: political donations processed using cryptocurrency, not ones made by the company or its employees.
Just speculating here based on the repeated small dollar amounts.
Salesforce doesn't get dragged into anti-tech sentiment because they build a b2b product. The Twitter activists who lead most of the anti-tech crusades don't know what CRM is or what it does because they
never interact with it because they are unemployed.
The people who do use Salesforce for the most part hate it. But you'll never see widespread outrage about Salesforce because the people who use it have jobs, families, and friends that prevent them from spending all day on social media.
What makes you think "twitter activists" lead most of the anti-tech crusades? If it's based on your observations of them on twitter, that probably says more about where you're looking than where they are. I don't know where anti-tech activism is centered, but twitter wouldn't be my first guess.
I doubt that anti-tech people really discern different companies. Most likely Salesforce is not consumer oriented and therefore not really a name that springs to mind when it comes to tech.
To be frank from a North Eastern admittedly suburban perspective the "local community" manages to seem to be in the wrong here and sound very entitled. Reaching out for philanthropy is well and good and a positive thing, but the hostility and demands runs afoul of "minding your own business" essentially. It is one thing if they were say polluting or being an attractor of crime would be fair enough but complaining about high paying jobs seems downright spoiled and unpleasable. Essentially if the local government can't handle the issues with an increased tax flood the problem isn't the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I grew up in SF, and I'm a tech weanie, and I gotta say: We have been terrible neighbors. We have been like the guy that bought a condo in North Beach and then sued the church for ringing their bells, but 10,000x worse. We've kind of ruined the city.
As for Marc Benioff, he's the only billionaire who seems to actually, visibly give a shit. He's Jimmy James. (Even if that fwcking tower looks alternately like a phallus or a giant middle finger. Whatever, dude's cool.)
Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state level.
Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, except to criticize them as being insufficiently charitable when it happens to be noticed. I think Benioff gets a pass not because he visibly cares, but because he's got that local boy made good story.
Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.
I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.
And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?
Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors.
Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.
If rent control was more of a thing, and people were more open to have more buildings, then a lot of locals and culture would have stayed. Instead, everybody's rent went up, people were forced to quit, or got offered great sums of money to sell their place. It was a forced exodus due to stupid laws, and with covid19 we're seeing another exodus of engineers. Who will remain?
I don't see how Salesforce Park avoids getting demonized. It's a nice park, but it's literally above it all, set up in a way so that homeless people can't really do much.
In San Francisco, aren't people going to object to this, eventually? Symbolism seems to be what people care about, and the symbolism of being above it all seems unavoidable.
If you go to a random park in Seattle, you'll see there are two types of parks - the ones where homeless people don't do much (yet?), and the ones where nobody else can do anything whatsoever. So I think that is a plus... saying "your park sucks because people cannot camp and do drugs in it" also sounds like lunacy to most people, so it's extra nice because you cannot make it sound like it's a bad thing, like some other exclusion policies that can be twisted and made into a strawman.
Companies are collections of people, each of which are free to have their own beliefs, but that doesn't mean the company should officially share and support their individual beliefs. I see this only causing endless division within the company, instead of people being (more) unified in their pursuit of the company's vision.
Why not encourage employees to represent their beliefs individually, and off company time, by giving them more vacation and flexible working hours instead? Empower the employees to participate in politics without the company taking a side itself?
I'm tired of people pushing their political beliefs onto me at every opportunity, in every available setting, IRL and online.
You might be surprised. There are a lot of traditional liberals who are beginning to take exception to this sort of thing. Megyn Kelly had Matt Taibbi on her show recently to talk about this and it was quite odd to see them agreeing on something.
> Why not encourage employees to represent their beliefs individually, and off company time, by giving them more vacation and flexible working hours instead? Empower the employees to participate in politics without the company taking a side itself?
IMHO it's about power and the profits power leads to, and the desire of large companies to maintain their power and their profit.
IMHO on some level large corporations know that if they did this employees would get politically active and push more for their own interests to be represented in government over that of the large companies, resulting in less profit for said companies because government is investing in civil society and public infrastructure instead.
IMHO part of the reason the George Floyd protests were as big as they were is that folks had time on their hands, which is not the normal case for most folks in our system as it is today.
Encourage employees to represent their beliefs individually by giving them more holidays?
Looks like you're trying to shoehorn your belief, i.e. employees to have more vacation time, which is fine, but has nothing to do with "have more time to express themselves politically". That's a stretch.
I don't think it is that much of a stretch. As it is, most employees in the US barely have enough time to take a day off to vote, although that is getting easier with mail-in ballots. By giving employees more 'free time', they can spend it where they want, including political causes of their choosing.
The reason why politics used to be separated from business is that political processes must follow certain rules:
* If you wish to run a political campaign, you need to be very transparent about your sources of funding.
* If you wish to make certain idea into a law (that would force others to follow it), it must be approved by several layers of elected representatives, before it becomes mandatory.
* If someone believes that someone else does not comply with the law, they bring it to the court. Where the independent judiciary branch uses the due process to independently evaluate the situation and decide who wins the case.
These safeguards are put in place to counter abuse. They make sure that the laws (and their interpretation) serves the best interests of the general population.
Modern workplace politics completely bypasses these principles. If your activism fits a few select topics, you get to conduct it on your company's expense. You get to force people to follow the rules you set without any semblance of voting. You get to punish people you don't like without any due process. You can respond to any criticism of yourself with an accusation of one of the new deadly sins, and this immediately destroys your opponent politically and financially.
This is a somewhat tough problem for companies at this point in time. To executives focused on customers, sales, product - this is an even more interesting issue because it has really nothing to do directly with the company itself.
Most customer segmentation problems can be solved with an optional feature or a new product line - make both chunky marinara sauce and a smooth variety.
Most employee problems can be solved similarly - optional programs, different roles for different folks, etc.
But this problem is unique because a certain segment of the employee+customer base is asking the complete company to take their side in certain matters. Of course the company taking that stand alienates the other segment of the population.
However, rationally, it becomes much easier to deal with this than what Coinbase did.
It seems though that the vocal side (liberal) is vocal because they care about companies stances on these matters, while the silent (conservatives) are silent because they don't seem to care as much.
Therefore, rationally, companies generally take the liberal position or no position at all.
When conservatives listen to politically-left company seminars, see liberal company statements, etc - they mostly just ignore and move on with their day. I don't think many conservatives would be motivated to quit or boycott a company due to a liberal company seminar that they disagree with. I get the feeling (due to the walkouts, etc) that liberals are much more likely to sever relationships due to differences in political beliefs.
"conservatives are silent because they don't seem to care as much."
It's certainly the case that they don't seem to care as much, given that they're less outspoken, but is there any evidence that they actually don't care as much?
Another explanation for being less outspoken is that they're a small minority in these companies, so they lack the confidence to go against the grain, perhaps out of fear (whether valid or not) of alienation. Or conversely liberals are more confident to voice their opinion because they know they're in the majority opinion group and doing so isn't likely to stymie their career or cause stressful backlash.
Paul Graham tweeted out some survey evidence yesterday that supports the idea that conservatives are simply more afraid to speak their mind in these companies.
Is it that they're conservative, or that they know how their ideas will be received?
I've seen conservatives support things like trans rights, marriage equality, antifascism/antifa, and Black Lives Matter from conservative first principles. They would say the same about not feeling like they can share their views in places where a certain kind of conservatism is rampant.
Bigotry is not something inherent to conservative values.
Also, like most exercises of power, one has to have power in order to exercise it. Conservatives are usually more worried about not being fired for their views.
There's an interesting asymmetry between the liberal and conservative sides that isn't captured just by left/right: the liberals generally have some active change they want to make, and the conservatives don't - they just want to "conserve" what's currently being done. That means that if a company just takes the default position on things, it's already siding with the conservatives. So it's unsurprising, in that sense, that the liberals are more vocal: there's no real point in a conservative organizing a protest for "We should not extend our anti-discrimination provisions beyond what is legally required" or "We should be willing to sell to all customers that we can legally sell to" or whatever.
One example of that latter bit: Google rank-and-file protested against the executives' plan to run censored search in China, even though if you listen to the media, Google is "left" and it's the "right" who's worried about China and their authoritarianism and censorship and all that. The more elucidating explanation is that the disagreement was between the people who wanted to make money wherever legally permitted vs. the people who felt a sense of broader social responsibility regarding what they worked on, which is why you see the same fault lines (rank-and-file vs. execs) protesting against Google selling cloud services to ICE, even though that's a concern of the "left."
More generally, about which side finds itself being vocal, I recently ran across this passage from a Wikipedia article about a video game released in 2013:
> Following the announcement of a worldwide release, controversy arose concerning the impossibility of same-sex relationships. Nintendo stated, "The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localise it for other regions outside Japan." [...] Despite various campaigns from users, Nintendo stated that it would not be possible to add same-sex relationships to the game, as they "never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of the game", and because it would require significant development alterations which would not be able to be released as a post-game patch.
This game (Tomodachi Life) is in the same approximate genre as The Sims, i.e., the complaint wasn't about pre-programed characters with stories, it was that user-generated characters couldn't be in same-sex relationships. If a game like that launched today - in Japan or anywhere else - it would certainly not manage to avoid "any form of social commentary" by not having an option for same-sex relationships. It's just that at the time, that genuinely was the default, conservative option. If you were a conservative in Nintendo at the time, you hardly had to argue for this position. It only became controversial because public opinion had just started to shift. (And there are much fewer conservatives / right-leaning folks today who would feel the need to argue the same position against the new status quo.)
So I don't think it's true that companies "take the liberal position or no position at all." They start out taking the conservative position, and it's only through specific action - either the desire of management, or pressure from either the product's market or the labor market - that they end up with the liberal one.
This is just not true at all. Conservatives aren't looking at the status quo and saying, "Yes, more of this, please." I don't think you could find anybody who'd look at the current state of affairs, decide it should continue, and describe them as conservative.
By this logic someone who wants to change an existing game that allows same sex marriage to be one that doesn't is a "liberal" because they're advocating a change to the status quo.
But if we take this as a given then the original claim doesn't make sense anymore, because in the original claim "conservative" essentially means Republican, but the Republicans would be the "liberals" in many cases under your framework. And yet we don't really see employees pressuring companies to implement mandatory drug testing or to refuse to hire H1B workers or stop offering healthcare plans that cover abortion, even though those would all be divergences from the status quo in many companies.
> When conservatives listen to politically-left company seminars, see liberal company statements, etc - they mostly just ignore and move on with their day.
Trump signed an executive order banning the government from doing business with vendors that do racial sensitivity training.
If you actually look into the text of the executive order, it bans very specific and very divisive behavior [0]:
>(a) “Divisive concepts” means the concepts that
>(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
>(2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist;
>(3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
>(4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;
>(5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex;
>(6) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex;
>(7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
>(8) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or
>(9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. The term “divisive concepts” also includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating.
It is worth noting that the media trying to portray Trump's EO as fight against anti-racism is the same media that profits from creating divisive content in the first place.
>while the silent (conservatives) are silent because they don't seem to care as much.
Most of the conservatives I know are silent because they are busy. Busy raising and teaching their kids. Busy taking care of their property. Busy making their own life better. It doesn't mean that they don't care. They just believe that each person should be first and foremost responsible for their own well-being. If someone asks for help with a specific quantifiable problem, they will gladly help.
Most vocal liberals, on the contrary, are priced out of having a large enough property to take care of, or a large family that takes a lot of energy. Because they have extra time and energy, they tend to spend it on the causes that the media presents to them as important. Note that their salary expectations will be lower, compared to conservatives, since family, property and retirement plans are one's biggest expenses. I would dare say many of them feel jealous towards the conservatives and believe they got an unfair advantage.
In short-term, it's beneficial for companies to support political activism, because it keeps the employees busy with projects that don't increase their monetary demands. In long term, this ends up with tribalism, where people spend most of their energy attacking their peers over growing number of differences.
It is nonsensical to write the title as such, all tech startups (since we're talking about them, but not only) do politics. They just choose it to do it in different directions. Most often when someone says they don't want to involve themselves with politics they are alright with the status-quo, which is a political position in itself. Politics is not just about a vote at a presidential election, it's the how and why of everything you do and will do, be it in the tech startup or elsewhere.
99% of the time this just means: "If you are not doing something I want you to, I will call that inaction/indifference politics too so I can attack you and not being perceived as a radical"
But no, the guy who sells me nails (as long as he is complying with the basic regulatory framwework for his business) doesnt need to have a vocal opinion on Israel/Palestine, BLM or if the gender balance in Google is OK or not. I even prefer it that way.
Yes, I am not sure I want to discuss politics with anyone from a shop either, but the way that shop is managed is a political position. It doesnt need to be about voicing your opinion to your customers.
Also it is more relevant to tech startups because technology has that thing where it can greatly influence the world after it exists. There's more political decisions to make and positions to take when you do that.
> Politics is not just about a vote at a presidential election, it's the how and why of everything you do and will do, be it in the tech startup or elsewhere.
That’s certainly not true, outside an extremely expansive definition of politics.
I still think it is true, when you choose to create some technology for example, the way you choose to design it will favor some things more than others, and that can have direct impact on society and people. Deciding how the technology will be is politics to me.
For example, say a tech startup is creating a crypto-currency like Bitcoin, choosing to create it like Bitcoin conveys anarcho-capitalist values. That is politics. Choosing to design consensus differently than on competition for something of value (PoW, PoS) like what FairCoin does might convey different political positions. Choosing not to create crypto-currency technology at all is also another one.
Technologies after they exist will favor the world becoming closer to some political ideas, tech startups like Uber convey liberal values with their driver recruitment model. iFixit another tech company rather choose to empower people to repair their things or open their own repair services, that's another political position. They could've started a very successful repair shop franchise and earn lots of money with some kind of monopoly on repair, yet they choose to share knowledge and encourage people to do so with their website.
Sure, but J.P. Morgan being inherently political doesn't mean it's a net positive for them to start to take public stances on cultural issues, and it only serves to conceal their real political impact.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that –– even given your premise of all startups being inherently political –– we're better off for them focusing on their tangible contribution to the world and not obscuring it with politics-as-PR.
And if their "contribution" has a primarily negative impact, political or otherwise, it's arguably even worse to be a culture in which they can reach for cover under cultural politics unrelated to their bottom line.
> Most often when someone says they don't want to involve themselves with politics they are alright with the status-quo, which is a political position in itself.
Or they just do not want to get involved in a complex, messy, and and potentially expensive social conflict.
The quoted post is talking about the benefits of non action(are more than the implicit cost) where I think you are saying the costs of the action are more than the benefits.
These seem really similar. Did you mean to say the same thing?
Everything else is fair game, even if it typically falls under a party.
For example: Gay stuff - it's typically democratic/liberal - although many would argue it's being supported more and more by the right. But one should be able to discuss and support gay agendas - as long as there's no specific party endorsement. Stick to specifics like bathrooms (for example) but don't mention "democrats support this too" or whatever.
Another example would be to around climate change. It's okay to discuss ways to reduce pollution, just don't endorse candidate or party X as the way that's going to happen.
So stop mentioning parties or candidates and shit - just issues.
This is a really binary view of politics and to me represents why we shouldn’t talk politics at work. People’s views on issues aren’t binary and people on the same side of the left right political divide can disagree on issues. How many leftists disagrees with Expensify’s promotion of Joe Biden? How many black people may not want to get into the nuances of Joe Biden’s support of the 1994 crime bill, even if they end up supporting him? Does a woman who just went through a difficult abortion want to be around people passionately supporting abortion rights?
The problem with discussing politics at work is that we are not all 100% free to be there. We depend on being at work and potentially being offended by people who we have to continue to work with for our livelihoods.
That being said it’s incredibly nuanced. People should be able to be unabashedly out at work. People should be able to talk about why they support having birth control as part of their health plan. Vulnerable and targeted populations should be able to talk about the struggle and discrimination they experience.
Readit News
From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support.
In this kind of climate, for a business or other entity to involve themselves in politics would be consciously choosing to more or less blacklist themselves from doing business with the other side or run the risk of having their brand tarnished via social media for whatever stance they take.
Finally, a business that takes a political stance does damage not just to themselves but to their employees as in the current political climate, both sides have no problems harassing a person or worse if they are viewed as not "on their team". Once a company takes a political stance, it doesn't matter if what that employee believes or does nor does it matter that said employee might be working for this company because they have a family to feed and don't have the luxury of quitting and looking for a new job, the very fact that they work for said company means that they should be treated as persona-non-grata.
Make it simple, a company can't vote, so a company doesn't have a political affiliation (unless of course, it is some kind of lobbying company etc).
We have confused being politically active with being partisan.
Even this article conflates the two. Yet there is a world of difference between taking a policy stance and promoting a candidate or a party.
Companies have a legitimate stake in policy that commercially affects them. Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. One may disagree, but it’s coherent. (Hobby Lobby taking a stance on gay rights, on the other hand, is incoherent.)
Companies must be politically active because nothing is apolitical. But companies shouldn’t be partisan. And when you are doing your work, the partisan affiliations of those around you should not matter.
What? I absolutely hold it against them, given how much of it was pure and unpunished chicanery like tricking drivers into agreeing to 'petitions' then used in published advertising.
Just as a customer, I hold it against a business when they too aggressively tell me how to vote. Campaign for whatever, but don't make me sit captive to it in order to do business with you.
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If nothing was apolitical then we wouldn't have a word for it.
You've got black and brown lives right there, they're getting screwed. What, are we saving our powder?
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Statements like yours are very easy to make and sound fine at a superficial level, but quickly run into problems when you try to actually apply the rule. For instance: does a company that sells drugs that can be used off-label for executions of human beings have a "product [that] is directly related to politics?"
This problem is a lot like writing good requirements. Your rule above is a lot like a requirement of an HR system that states simply "the system will reject the resumes of all unqualified candidates." There's a lot to unpack there, and that requirement, as stated, doesn't even get you 1% of the way there.
You make it sound simple, but it’s not.
If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.
If your workers use open source software and ask if they can contribute back upstream, but you deny them on grounds of intellectual property, you just did politics. The same if you allow them. If you pay your workers above market rate, allow them to unionize, have a liberal vacation policy, or force them to work on-site, you are doing politics. Albeit on a more personal scale then in the previous example.
If most of the other offices in your downtown building where your startup resides put a BLM flag in their window, but you opt not to, you just made a political decision. If an employee puts a prominent Palestinian flag on their desk, and you ask them to take that down, you do so on a political basis.
I hope you get the point. Businesses simply don’t have the option of not doing politics. The power dynamics involved simply prevent that from being a possibility. “Not doing politics” is more often then not simply an excuse for doing highly questionable politics.
Is there a way to go back from your binary opposition:
to at least a ternary: I find the binary exceedingly demanding and almost insane.You can try to be clever by listing ways religion might relate to business, but that doesn't change the fact that businesses generally, and in many ways are legally required to, let people do their jobs regardless of their faith. It works just fine.
Everyone knows it's possible to make things more political. Being apolitical means doing the opposite. It's a very simple concept from kindergarten, "more" and "less".
Drawing some strained connection to politics doesn't magically make it impossible for us to say "try to have less politics at work".
If I followed you around all day complaining that you're not vegan enough, you'd suddenly regain the ability to notice that some things are more political and more related to your job than others.
BLM is a cause. It's OK to care about other causes too. Is it racist of my company to buck the norm and put up a flag or fliers supporting an environmental cause like recycling or composting instead?
You're right, though; politics cannot be completely avoided. I just hope my friends don't assume I'm racist because I'm not constantly publicly shepherding racial equality and civil rights. A person should be allowed to have other hobbies and interests. A person should not be required to be vocal and outspoken. Neither should businesses.
As an employee, I'd prefer if my company did its part in hiring diverse candidates and fair pay, but I don't want to work at a place where I feel compelled to join in political discussions and movements that aren't really part of my job description.
If you operate a delivery company, and a factory farmer approaches you to deliver to grocery stores nationwide, you suspect it might be used to transport their specialty, veal. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to transport their goods, you are being complacent in the torture of sentient baby mammals, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.
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Note the above is only partially tongue-in-cheek, but I do it to make two points:
1. To you, your political viewpoints are obviously "morally correct". But the whole point is many people disagree with what you consider morally correct. I used my veal example because I feel it's something a lot of people on HN wouldn't have much of a problem with, but to me it clearly is torture to these animals, and the only reason society at large doesn't have more of a problem with it is because how the animals are treated is mostly hidden from view.
2. My broader point is that virtually every company could sell some product or service that could be used to further an end that equal number of people on both sides could think is morally horrid or morally righteous. It's dangerous to think that your view is the only right one.
Further, I'd argue selling a service or product with no judgement of the buyer is also nonpolitical, even ICE. I'm not sure what the opposite side of ICE is, if it exists, but as long as you'd be willing to sell to that entity also, it can still be politically 'neutral.' Only when you decide to refuse or discontinue something have you made a stand, which is what many said about Cloudflare's semi recent takedown and why it was murky.
It's morally correct in your opinion.
This is the crux of the problem - corporate bodies taking a single stance while being comprised of multiple individuals with differing takes on the (often complicated) issues at hand.
You think you are on the moral high ground here, which is why you are taking such a strong stand.
Also, I think you were looking for "complicit", not complacent. You are also wrong there as well. We are voters, that is how we approve or disapprove of government actions. Not everyone has a high paying job and can afford the luxury of ignoring new clients or stopping business because of some holier-than-thou nonsense. People have bills to pay.
Maybe this is an extension of cancel culture; you're either with us or against us. If you don't believe what we believe then you're evil and we must do everything we can to drown you out. The statement here even has it. If you work with ICE you're morally incorrect and highly questionable. Never mind that it's legal and supported by ~50% of the population.
Lobby groups, human rights associations, charities and polticial groups would gladly take your ICE funded profits and work for your goals.
The requirement for bosses and employees to be personally calling political shots in their personal and professional lives makes me think the corporations would prefer to be divided so they can make the call on their own terms.
We know ICE can get SAAS services elsewhere so what consequence is really being prosecuted here?
Atheism is not a religion.
Bald is not a color of hair.
Not collecting anything is not a hobby.
Not putting the BLM flag out is not politics.
Did you pay any federal taxes this year to support ICE instead if refusing to pay them? You just took a supportive political stance.
You are confusing a willful engagement of opinion for a contractual or procedural obligation.
Disagree. Family separation for illegal border crossings was an Obama-era policy that only became considered an important issue by the left when when the government changed. This is a matter of optics, not ethics.
Or please define "political decision".
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When Google employees decided who google should work for THATS political.
Some idiot chooses to try to make it political in nature and a bunch of other equally uninformed idiots believes the original idiot or takes up the cause.
Example 1: SaaS company is breaking no American laws and ICE isn't either. The fact you even think its morally correct to deny them service screams how ideologically possessed you are. Here's a hot fuckin' take for you... don't illegally come to America.
Example 2: I don't know enough about intellectual property and open source contributions to have an opinion.
Example 3: Maybe you're not doing politics, maybe you're just not a shitbag.
Example 4: Maybe you don't give a shit and just want to be left alone.
Example 5: You're just a controlling asshole, not politically against Palestine.
I would say, "I hope you get the point", but you won't... because its clear just from these examples alone you're so politically motivated that you can't see the world from any other vantage point.
It sure looks that way if you watch american news. Reality is pretty different. Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral - or at least try to be an "agent for good" while avoiding controversy.
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One way is that the government makes decisions. Some of those decisions affect businesses. If the businesses don't give any input, the government still decides - they just decide in a vacuum. That could be sub-optimal for businesses. (I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.)
The second way politics can be done to you is that someone outside decides that you aren't active enough in supporting their political side, and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left, but that's not universal.) The only thing you can do to avoid that is try to move in lockstep with the most strident voices telling you what you should do... but I've never been a big fan of appeasement. My preferred approach is to ignore them - but then, I don't have to make a payroll, so it's really easy for me to say that.
> I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.
I wonder what sort of policies a coal company would view as "sane", as it affects their business.
> and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left
Are you perhaps limiting the scope of your consideration to just "cancel culture"? I don't want to make a whataboutist response, but it's not good to cherry-pick a single mechanism of political oppression (which is disproportionately used by people with a certain political leaning) and miss out other sorts, such as business owners firing employees, or violence by the state against unarmed civilians, or attacks by politically-motivated armed extremists.
In practice having "no stance" means supporting the status quo
Voting "remain" in Brexit was supporting the status quo. Voting "leave" was opposing it. Having no stance on Brexit means having no stance on it.
We're allowed to not have opinions on everything.
IMO, no, no and no.
Where it becomes politics is when you start trying to force others to follow your preferred behaviours in those areas, over and above what the law requires. If you want to do that then you should vote and/or campaign to get the law changed, via the usual routes, and normally outside the workplace (unless directly related).
same with the other two?
- Employers have a direct role in the social safety net, for example choosing health care and retirement savings options for their employees.
- Related to above, because there are limited gov't protections for things like vacation and childcare leave, and firing in general, employer policies form a bigger part of work/life tradeoffs.
- The US workforce has more diversity than most countries along several axes, including race, age, and immigration status, so employer policies about minority protections impact more employees.
Since stances on the policy areas above form the main battleground for American politics, companies make many decisions that are politically valenced.
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support.
Yeah I have intentionally avoided the media and political nonsense of the last decade or so, and it just seems increasingly absurd. Everyone is a radical activist these days. And to radicals, there is no neutral position.
No one is joining Coinbase if they're opposed to Coinbase's financial system objectives. It's not a secret.
If someone was actively opposed to Coinbase's primary business objectives, how would they even be a productive employee of Coinbase in the first place?
It's a false equivalency to try to equate the company's core business with completely unrelated political topics.
Lay political discourse (and especially partisan media) does frequently fit the description of identity banners and other tribal + value markers.
But it's also very, very wrong to say that politics has ceased being about policy and ideas. It is definitely true that there are marked differences between policy goals advanced by parties (and sometimes individuals within). And it's not exactly rare that you can find lay participants who have a policy or ideas that are important to them.
This was long the norm in Europe and North America. Western Europe seems to have less of it at the moment, and perhaps for the last 25 years; the US had a ~30 year stretch from the mid 50s. The current situation is quite bad, but has of course been worse.
Trying to remain neutral doesn’t work.
It's like the smartass kid who acts like he doesn't know what "clean" means because there might be a molecule of dirt somewhere.
Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address.
But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?
I can foresee a near future where this becomes a very pertinent question. Suppose that, due to some underhanded dealings of the Electoral College (and/or SCOTUS), the current President were to be granted a second term. Further suppose that 70% of the country saw this process as illegitimate, but wanted to avoid any direct violent conflict.
My question is: Would big tech companies (or key employees within them) work together to implement a digital General Strike across the country?
This would be an extreme and probably criminal form of civil disobedience, although I imagine the perpetrators could be motivated by an expectation of receiving a presidential pardon if they were successful.
I'm sure that someone in the contingency planning departments of these big companies someone has gamed out what would happen if Apple and Google and Microsoft all pushed software updates to devices and online services which blocked certain activities (e.g. use by fossil fuel companies?) while controlling the media narrative by promoting messages from their side.
Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?
In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media outlets will write article after article about how you platform Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. If you stand up to them they will go after the advertisers. "Why are you advertising on a site that platforms Nazis?" And there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban these people there's barely a blip in their business.
To me, as a person who doesn't live in America, the US has gone absolutely crazy over this idea that policy doesn't matter so long as a person is on my team. This is an indictment of the media who have failed in their job at keeping the public informed in an unbiased manner, reducing complex macro-economics and geopolitics to catchy headlines and gotcha-questions.
Is my country any better? God no, most of our media is just a budget version of the American model, but it is America who infected the rest of the world with this.
When policy and idea's become the most important part of any election, that's when you can start addressing real social and economic problems like homelessness, LGBT rights, wealth disparity and the loss of jobs to offshoring manufacturing, because you'll have more time to discuss these things like adults now that politicians aren't reducing their job to 140 character hot-takes.
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As opposed to non-American companies who never expose their preferences to leaders?
I think they could manage it by, stick with me here, not lobbying. Especially on issues unrelated to their core business.
I don't know how anyone can say this and be considered a serious person.
One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism.
But by all means, remain "apolitical," since apparently this isn't about policy anymore. Wacky stuff man...
This doesn’t describe either party. Also, there isn’t a problem with systemic racism. And no, I don’t support the party that you think.
You know, you're not allowed to say that in a lot of American offices now. Even in a technical context where it has an established meaning and multiple alternatives are now jockeying for mainstream. It's "exclusionary", which is a new HR code word for "politically incorrect". The battle is over and lost. Everything is politicized now, and all anyone who doesn't like it can do is fall on their sword. Alone.
There's no winning. Agree and risk setting yourself at odds against your peers and future managers, or disagree and put yourself at odds with the person who holds the purse for your team.
Even worse, complain to HR, and risk politically disagreeing with them.
I stuck with that job long enough to find something better, and almost regret staying with it as long as I did.
Many times managers are just unaware that their actions cause discomfort, and feedback could help and it is on the manager to encourage that process.
On a side note: small topics are always tricky , even sports can alienate co workers.
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So these were people that coinbase decided, out of all available applicants—and as a well-known, hugely profitable company that is the only “in any way mainstream” success story of cryptocurrency-based businesses, there are a fair number of them—thought were the right fit. (That’s excluding the people who were given offers and didn’t accept, of course.)
And then greater than one in twenty employees (that’s a lot) heard what he said and were like, nope, this is not someone I want to follow.
Is that a success? Maybe! I can’t think of a time when we’ve seen that level of voluntary departure from a company and thought, “ah yes, this is good.” Or when we’ve seen something like that and thought, “ah yes, this is what leadership looks like.”
Maybe he’s right! I don’t know. We’ll see.
But when I look at America, with its staggering income inequality and tremendous corporate cash investments into political elections, I don’t personally think, “wow there sure is too much social accountability at companies.”
You know?
I don’t look at Facebook and think, “they should really just focus on being a data mining advertising business. This thing about fomenting extremism is distracting us from them as a corporate enterprise in a capitalist system.”
Yikes.
People leave jobs for lots of reasons. Coinbase was offering a very generous exit package for anyone leaving at the time. I am sure some split for reasons unrelated to leadership or these political policies.
But yes it's a success if you want to run a company that really shouldn't be taking sides.
So this is all about performative poses in the workplace, on the topic of politics, rather than being about actual politics.
So it's more that companies can't do certain limited things, but companies - and CEOs particularly - can do plenty of others.
Broadly speaking. Point being, it's easy to not want "politics" in the workplace when the workplace works well for you. If you're someone whom the workplace doesn't work well for, like a person of color, a pregnant woman, new mother, or new father, for that matter, well, then it's a different story.
If you yourself believe that sexism/systemic racism aren't issues that show up (even inadvertently or despite the best intentions of individuals) in the workplace, well, then that's a different conversation entirely.
I think this is different from someone in a position of power promoting a particular candidate in the workplace. That is more complex and problematic. The 2020 election was obviously an extreme example, and, tbh, with things like global warming, I think we'll be seeing more politics like that in the workplace, not less.
Which, to me, means it's not an easy or one-size-fits all solution, but rather, a challenge which requires each of us to exercise care and our own judgement.
For example, personally, I would have liked to see Hacker News take even a small explicit step of endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement (such as putting 'Black lives matter' on the top of the homepage), seeing as how it's one of the major civil rights issues of our present moment. I can also understand their concerns around doing so, even though I disagree with them.
IMHO it's too easy for those of us doing well and making money to forget that the institutions we work for have a social impact and are a part of society.
And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and documented process. Even before that, in college, we had events for women who code, women in STEM, career opportunities for women, etc.
I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact that men have better representation in upper levels is meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless.
On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by my coworkers as a deplorable sexist.
My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using them to make decisions about what happens at work.
But your example of HN endorsing “Black Lives Matter” is different. Taken literally it’s a straightforward slogan, but it’s also the name of a specific political organization with a broad political agenda: https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant.... It’s not just an articulation of a single problem. It identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to solve that problem and others.
What part of the various political ideologies that could be deemed to fall within the umbrella of “BLM” are you asking HN to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think others will perceive HN as endorsing?
This is not a criticism of BLM—I go to a church that has a BLM banner and I understand what’s being conveyed and not conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of expression of ideological alignment from organizations that aren’t ideological and activist to begin with is very problematic.
Frankly I think this idea has awful implications that BLM does not grasp.
It has since been deleted, but can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20200816155814/https://blacklive...
The techies types are knowledge first people. If you want to win their support, appeal to knowledge, make a rational case, but avoid trying to fool them, as the moment they notice a logical inconsistence in your ideas, they'll dismiss them entirely.
Most activism appeals to emotions, to feelings, because it matters a lot to most people. But techies put dry knowledge first and so needs to change your tactic.
Nevertheless, I'm upvoting your comment because I believe it presents an important viewpoint.
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What is politics is in itself political, but I expect there will be a fair majority of people who want corporations to focus on carrying out basic tasks effectively rather than devoting resources to experimental (or divisive) social reform. The risks of corruption and bad outcomes are real.
In San Francisco, the collective "tech industry" has long been demonized for various things. IMO, some fair, some not. "Google Buses" taking space at MUNI stops was one for quite a while. Contributing to increasing housing costs is a long time favorite.
But a lot of these come from a culture where you build your company on top of the infrastructure provided by the local community and government. Then build a very successful business on top of that, but have minimal engagement with the local government and community. So you create a perception that you're just taking, and not actually part of the local community.
It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on this attitude.
In contrast, Salesforce has the largest building in San Francisco named after them, and a huge urban park. I don't see them getting dragged into the anti-tech sentiment. Because I think they've effectively engaged with the local community and given back a lot.
They have a culture of volunteer work, strongly encouraging employees to take time off to volunteer for local causes. They also donate to many local causes. Marc Benioff is certainly involved in politics, and advocating for specific ideas and policies. But because him and his company engage in various ways, and make substantial philanthropic contributions, they are usually respected for it.
It isn't just that attitude that's the problem, it's the insistence by Coinbase that they're apolitical, yet the company makes significant political contributions themselves[1].
[1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
Just speculating here based on the repeated small dollar amounts.
The people who do use Salesforce for the most part hate it. But you'll never see widespread outrage about Salesforce because the people who use it have jobs, families, and friends that prevent them from spending all day on social media.
What makes you think "twitter activists" lead most of the anti-tech crusades? If it's based on your observations of them on twitter, that probably says more about where you're looking than where they are. I don't know where anti-tech activism is centered, but twitter wouldn't be my first guess.
"Twitter bad. Don't use." is a much easier sell than "Salesforce bad. Other company uses Saleforce so it's transitively bad. Don't use other company."
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As for Marc Benioff, he's the only billionaire who seems to actually, visibly give a shit. He's Jimmy James. (Even if that fwcking tower looks alternately like a phallus or a giant middle finger. Whatever, dude's cool.)
Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state level.
Let's get the diagnosis right first.
Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.
I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.
And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?
Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors.
Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.
In San Francisco, aren't people going to object to this, eventually? Symbolism seems to be what people care about, and the symbolism of being above it all seems unavoidable.
Why not encourage employees to represent their beliefs individually, and off company time, by giving them more vacation and flexible working hours instead? Empower the employees to participate in politics without the company taking a side itself?
I'm tired of people pushing their political beliefs onto me at every opportunity, in every available setting, IRL and online.
IMHO it's about power and the profits power leads to, and the desire of large companies to maintain their power and their profit.
IMHO on some level large corporations know that if they did this employees would get politically active and push more for their own interests to be represented in government over that of the large companies, resulting in less profit for said companies because government is investing in civil society and public infrastructure instead.
IMHO part of the reason the George Floyd protests were as big as they were is that folks had time on their hands, which is not the normal case for most folks in our system as it is today.
Looks like you're trying to shoehorn your belief, i.e. employees to have more vacation time, which is fine, but has nothing to do with "have more time to express themselves politically". That's a stretch.
* If you wish to run a political campaign, you need to be very transparent about your sources of funding.
* If you wish to make certain idea into a law (that would force others to follow it), it must be approved by several layers of elected representatives, before it becomes mandatory.
* If someone believes that someone else does not comply with the law, they bring it to the court. Where the independent judiciary branch uses the due process to independently evaluate the situation and decide who wins the case.
These safeguards are put in place to counter abuse. They make sure that the laws (and their interpretation) serves the best interests of the general population.
Modern workplace politics completely bypasses these principles. If your activism fits a few select topics, you get to conduct it on your company's expense. You get to force people to follow the rules you set without any semblance of voting. You get to punish people you don't like without any due process. You can respond to any criticism of yourself with an accusation of one of the new deadly sins, and this immediately destroys your opponent politically and financially.
Most customer segmentation problems can be solved with an optional feature or a new product line - make both chunky marinara sauce and a smooth variety.
Most employee problems can be solved similarly - optional programs, different roles for different folks, etc.
But this problem is unique because a certain segment of the employee+customer base is asking the complete company to take their side in certain matters. Of course the company taking that stand alienates the other segment of the population.
However, rationally, it becomes much easier to deal with this than what Coinbase did.
It seems though that the vocal side (liberal) is vocal because they care about companies stances on these matters, while the silent (conservatives) are silent because they don't seem to care as much.
Therefore, rationally, companies generally take the liberal position or no position at all.
When conservatives listen to politically-left company seminars, see liberal company statements, etc - they mostly just ignore and move on with their day. I don't think many conservatives would be motivated to quit or boycott a company due to a liberal company seminar that they disagree with. I get the feeling (due to the walkouts, etc) that liberals are much more likely to sever relationships due to differences in political beliefs.
It's certainly the case that they don't seem to care as much, given that they're less outspoken, but is there any evidence that they actually don't care as much?
Another explanation for being less outspoken is that they're a small minority in these companies, so they lack the confidence to go against the grain, perhaps out of fear (whether valid or not) of alienation. Or conversely liberals are more confident to voice their opinion because they know they're in the majority opinion group and doing so isn't likely to stymie their career or cause stressful backlash.
Paul Graham tweeted out some survey evidence yesterday that supports the idea that conservatives are simply more afraid to speak their mind in these companies.
I've seen conservatives support things like trans rights, marriage equality, antifascism/antifa, and Black Lives Matter from conservative first principles. They would say the same about not feeling like they can share their views in places where a certain kind of conservatism is rampant.
Bigotry is not something inherent to conservative values.
Also, like most exercises of power, one has to have power in order to exercise it. Conservatives are usually more worried about not being fired for their views.
One example of that latter bit: Google rank-and-file protested against the executives' plan to run censored search in China, even though if you listen to the media, Google is "left" and it's the "right" who's worried about China and their authoritarianism and censorship and all that. The more elucidating explanation is that the disagreement was between the people who wanted to make money wherever legally permitted vs. the people who felt a sense of broader social responsibility regarding what they worked on, which is why you see the same fault lines (rank-and-file vs. execs) protesting against Google selling cloud services to ICE, even though that's a concern of the "left."
More generally, about which side finds itself being vocal, I recently ran across this passage from a Wikipedia article about a video game released in 2013:
> Following the announcement of a worldwide release, controversy arose concerning the impossibility of same-sex relationships. Nintendo stated, "The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localise it for other regions outside Japan." [...] Despite various campaigns from users, Nintendo stated that it would not be possible to add same-sex relationships to the game, as they "never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of the game", and because it would require significant development alterations which would not be able to be released as a post-game patch.
This game (Tomodachi Life) is in the same approximate genre as The Sims, i.e., the complaint wasn't about pre-programed characters with stories, it was that user-generated characters couldn't be in same-sex relationships. If a game like that launched today - in Japan or anywhere else - it would certainly not manage to avoid "any form of social commentary" by not having an option for same-sex relationships. It's just that at the time, that genuinely was the default, conservative option. If you were a conservative in Nintendo at the time, you hardly had to argue for this position. It only became controversial because public opinion had just started to shift. (And there are much fewer conservatives / right-leaning folks today who would feel the need to argue the same position against the new status quo.)
So I don't think it's true that companies "take the liberal position or no position at all." They start out taking the conservative position, and it's only through specific action - either the desire of management, or pressure from either the product's market or the labor market - that they end up with the liberal one.
But if we take this as a given then the original claim doesn't make sense anymore, because in the original claim "conservative" essentially means Republican, but the Republicans would be the "liberals" in many cases under your framework. And yet we don't really see employees pressuring companies to implement mandatory drug testing or to refuse to hire H1B workers or stop offering healthcare plans that cover abortion, even though those would all be divergences from the status quo in many companies.
Trump signed an executive order banning the government from doing business with vendors that do racial sensitivity training.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/915843471/trump-expands-ban-o...
>(a) “Divisive concepts” means the concepts that
>(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
>(2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist;
>(3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
>(4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;
>(5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex;
>(6) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex;
>(7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
>(8) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or
>(9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. The term “divisive concepts” also includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating.
It is worth noting that the media trying to portray Trump's EO as fight against anti-racism is the same media that profits from creating divisive content in the first place.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
Not to mention the months-long propaganda campaign claiming that Big Tech was silencing conservatives on social media.
Also, conservatism is basically supporting the status quo. Why would conservatives have labor protests against the status quo?
what’s more status quo than Joe Biden?
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Most of the conservatives I know are silent because they are busy. Busy raising and teaching their kids. Busy taking care of their property. Busy making their own life better. It doesn't mean that they don't care. They just believe that each person should be first and foremost responsible for their own well-being. If someone asks for help with a specific quantifiable problem, they will gladly help.
Most vocal liberals, on the contrary, are priced out of having a large enough property to take care of, or a large family that takes a lot of energy. Because they have extra time and energy, they tend to spend it on the causes that the media presents to them as important. Note that their salary expectations will be lower, compared to conservatives, since family, property and retirement plans are one's biggest expenses. I would dare say many of them feel jealous towards the conservatives and believe they got an unfair advantage.
In short-term, it's beneficial for companies to support political activism, because it keeps the employees busy with projects that don't increase their monetary demands. In long term, this ends up with tribalism, where people spend most of their energy attacking their peers over growing number of differences.
Not taking a political stand IS political stand. And it is on the side of the status quo.
But no, the guy who sells me nails (as long as he is complying with the basic regulatory framwework for his business) doesnt need to have a vocal opinion on Israel/Palestine, BLM or if the gender balance in Google is OK or not. I even prefer it that way.
Also it is more relevant to tech startups because technology has that thing where it can greatly influence the world after it exists. There's more political decisions to make and positions to take when you do that.
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That’s certainly not true, outside an extremely expansive definition of politics.
For example, say a tech startup is creating a crypto-currency like Bitcoin, choosing to create it like Bitcoin conveys anarcho-capitalist values. That is politics. Choosing to design consensus differently than on competition for something of value (PoW, PoS) like what FairCoin does might convey different political positions. Choosing not to create crypto-currency technology at all is also another one.
Technologies after they exist will favor the world becoming closer to some political ideas, tech startups like Uber convey liberal values with their driver recruitment model. iFixit another tech company rather choose to empower people to repair their things or open their own repair services, that's another political position. They could've started a very successful repair shop franchise and earn lots of money with some kind of monopoly on repair, yet they choose to share knowledge and encourage people to do so with their website.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that –– even given your premise of all startups being inherently political –– we're better off for them focusing on their tangible contribution to the world and not obscuring it with politics-as-PR.
And if their "contribution" has a primarily negative impact, political or otherwise, it's arguably even worse to be a culture in which they can reach for cover under cultural politics unrelated to their bottom line.
Or they just do not want to get involved in a complex, messy, and and potentially expensive social conflict.
These seem really similar. Did you mean to say the same thing?
Everything else is fair game, even if it typically falls under a party.
For example: Gay stuff - it's typically democratic/liberal - although many would argue it's being supported more and more by the right. But one should be able to discuss and support gay agendas - as long as there's no specific party endorsement. Stick to specifics like bathrooms (for example) but don't mention "democrats support this too" or whatever.
Another example would be to around climate change. It's okay to discuss ways to reduce pollution, just don't endorse candidate or party X as the way that's going to happen.
So stop mentioning parties or candidates and shit - just issues.
The problem with discussing politics at work is that we are not all 100% free to be there. We depend on being at work and potentially being offended by people who we have to continue to work with for our livelihoods.
That being said it’s incredibly nuanced. People should be able to be unabashedly out at work. People should be able to talk about why they support having birth control as part of their health plan. Vulnerable and targeted populations should be able to talk about the struggle and discrimination they experience.