[justin66]

This varies depending on the community you're a part of. I don't have any exposure to what Silicon Valley is currently like, so I can't speak to that. (other than to question how these people who are supposedly giving 110% have so much time to discuss politics...)

When I lived in Berkeley everyone felt very free to start a conversation about politics with any random person they happened to encounter. Nice people, but that can cause fatigue. My current Midwestern corporate work environment is basically the opposite of that: someone can talk about politics but if they're speaking in a group or to someone they're not very close to, they're going to get a funny look and they'll generally take the hint and drop it.

I don't know what our employee handbook says about all that but it's being handled at a different, social level. It's not perfect (my boss's boss occasionally makes bizarre political jokes which would cause a little trouble if they made people feel stepped on, instead of amused) but I suspect we should regard actual company policy as just a fallback for dealing with this sort of thing. Mostly, people just need to exercise some social discretion as part of the corporate culture.