[0xFFFE]

Why is it difficult to keep the political leanings, opinions, activism away from the workplace and act like professionals? If you disagree with something your colleagues or the company you work for, just quit and find another job.

In my humble opinion, there is a place for expressing/speaking up about the things you care about, but workplace is not one of it. You have no locus standi.

[overgard]

I think a lot of these people don't bring much to the table professionally, so they use woke call out culture to implicitly threaten those around them to treat them with kid gloves and give them a wide birth. I doubt these companies feel that sad when people like that leave.

[chickenmonkey]

This is a broad generalisation without supporting evidence - not sure if this helps improve the quality of the discussion. Can you substantiate your statement further?

[fighterpilot]

There's research that shows woke signalling is highly correlated with both psychopathic traits and narcissistic traits.

The correlation is around 0.3-0.5.

That's evidence that it's used actively as a tool to gain either social status or something else.

[tolbish]

The study you pointed to indicates that these psychopathic/narcissistic traits apply to virtuous victimhood signalers on both the woke ("Recognize your privilege") and the anti-woke ("The real racists are all on the left") side of thing.

[infinitezest]

Do you happen to have a link to that research handy?

[fighterpilot]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32614222/

[xwdv]

I think there is something to this theory IMO. Time spent being an activist is essentially time not spent honing your craft.

[bradlys]

As opposed to the people who spend their time just meandering on Reddit/HN in various non-technical posts...?

I think it’s a bad argument to say that those who aren’t activists are also those are who better at their jobs because those who don’t do activism must be spending their time honing their craft. Just because you’re doing one not doing one activity doesn’t mean you’re doing one other. The set of activities that exist is not (activism, honing craft) - it is a much bigger set of possibilities.

[dtjb]

lol this thread is off the rails

[fancyfish]

berth

[throwaway0a5e]

>Why is it difficult to keep the political leanings, opinions, activism away from the workplace and act like professionals?

Some people have made these things part of their core identity.

[tayo42]

America atleast created a society where life revolves around corporations. Your job is a big part of your identify. Corporations are part of your identity in general. Your a McDonald's or a burger king person, coke or Pepsi. private corporations run America. I think it's only natural for people to express them selves through their work

[chasd00]

I think younger workers bought the lifestyle pitch of their employer hook, line, and sinker. They see the office (virtual or otherwise) as a part of their identity.

[pseudalopex]

Right. Companies insist employees believe in the mission. Employees insist on a mission they can believe in.

[adrr]

It’s hard to get employees to work 60+ hour work weeks if they aren’t bought into the company mission. It is very effective to blur work and life lines to get workers to put in the extra hours.

[ViViDboarder]

> If you disagree with something your colleagues or the company you work for, just quit and find another job.

On the flip side, why should you? Companies and cultures are made of people and they change as people change. Why should you just quit before trying to institute change?

When I hire people, I generally look for people who don’t accept the status quo as inherently right and try to solve problems.

[yakshaving_jgt]

> When I hire people, I generally look for people who don’t accept the status quo as inherently right and try to solve problems.

There are limits to this aren’t there? I too am a fan of contrarianism, but at some point — depending entirely on the context and the role of the employee — self-indulgent contrarianism becomes counterproductive.

[protomyth]

I blame the long hours and dying of outside of work social groups. Churches and "bowling league"-style activities probably kept it out of work fairly efficiently.

[LegitShady]

>Why is it difficult to keep the political leanings, opinions, activism away from the workplace and act like professionals?

It's not a question of how difficult it is. Their goal is literally the opposite. Everything is a platform for political discussion, identity, etc. Work, culture, art, etc.

It's totally possible to have a workplace you describe, but when people view everything as a platform for activism they don't want that. They want the platform.

[alpaca128]

It's difficult when the company itself decides to be political. Acting like professionals and having official channels talk about ethnicity ratios is not very compatible:

> Medium said that 52% of departures were white, and that one third of the company is non-white and non-Asian.

[wildrhythms]

The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Corporations have vast, measurable influence in peoples lives, both good and bad. Why are the workers, to you, not permitted the agency to bring politics to work?

[agentofoblivion]

Because you’re being paid to come to work and work. That’s why they call it “work”, not “debate club”. The idea that young, affluent tech workers like those at Google expect to come to work and argue over the plight of black lives in between writing code for serving ads all while making $300k a year and complaining about other peoples’ privilege is just gross (and a little funny).

[hn8788]

> The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades.

Where are people working where the vast majority of their waking hours, for decades, are spent at work? At least be honest, these articles about bringing politics to work are talking about people in comfy tech jobs working 8 hours a day, not wage slaves in coal mines and factories working 12 hour days.

[kelnos]

"Vast majority" might be an overstatement, but if you work an 8-hour day, commute for an hour each way, and take an hour for lunch (which, let's face it, is often with co-workers and involves work talk), that's 11 hours doing things that you probably wouldn't be doing if you didn't have to work. If we assume 8 hours of sleep, that's only 5 waking, non-work-related hours.

It's... pretty lame, honestly. All these modern conveniences and we're working more than ever these days (in the US, at least).

Also not really sure where all these "comfy tech jobs" are; every tech job I've worked in the past 15+ years often has people working ~10 hour days. I'm not aware of many people in tech who work 9-5 and that's it.

[bradlys]

To be fair, these jobs do exist in a sizable amount. I’ve almost never worked more than 40hrs/week and have short commute times. (Lunch is included in my working hours) I’ve seen many places where people work potentially less hours than I do during certain seasons.

I’m a pretty productive employee (when I want to be and feel incentivized) and am paid well enough to be in the 1%.

I still agree with what you said. Just want to say that these jobs exist. It’s up to the employee to fight for it though more than anything. Many employees in tech are a bit of pushovers though. (Or are afraid of losing their visa)

[chillwaves]

What is the relevance of your comment? A comfortable job still robs me of my life.

[tootie]

I very strongly disagree. No one is asking their companies to stand up for trade policy or any wonky stuff outside their business. It's almost entirely about representation and discrimination. Things are part of everyone's everyday lives and things very much in every company's power to resolve.

I think the notion that companies should only care about their bottom line is the thing that needs to end. Returning profits for shareholders isn't enough. Employees have started to think that who they work for should reflect their values. And why not?

[dannyw]

It's false equivalence to say that just because someone wants identity politics out of work, they also are against representation and discrimination.

Someone may support active efforts to address inequality in the workplace (eg better interviewing procedures, bias training, inclusive language in products), but be against anything that's political, such as supporting black lives matter or taking a position on middle east conflicts at work.

It doesn't mean they disagree with the latter. They just want it out of work, they might even support it.

[tootie]

I don't think identity politics is really the problem. That's not synonymous with wanting representation. And BLM isn't political. It's just acknowledging that black lives matter. It becomes political when a political party makes a point of not refusing to say it.

[gorydetails]

And clean coal simply means coal that is clean.

[tootie]

Yeah and it would be great if it existed. I don't get your point. Some movements are fundamentally insincere and some are genuine.

[LegitShady]

I've read their platform and I disagree.

[tootie]

They don't have a platform besides what's in the name. Any website with a formal agenda isn't "official" in any sense nor have 99% of people marching for justice read whatever you read. It's just black lives matter. And people engineering reasons to avoid saying it without explicitly saying black lives don't matter.

[LegitShady]

You have it exactly backwards - I believe black live matter, but I don't believe in the organization BLM and they do have an an organization and an agenda.

It's a kafka trap to name your organization with political goals some obviously positive name, and then declare anyone who does not support your organizations methods or particulars of its agenda as a hater of that positive name.

It's so transparent we're just in an age where being honest is rare, and people will convince themselves obviously untrue things - 'they don't have a platform' but they removed their 'what we believe page' including being against the nuclear family https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/blm-removes-website-language-b... .

It's a weird sort of denial of reality to just insist things don't exist, like an organization (which BLM is) with a formal agenda (which BLM has, even if they tried to obfuscate after being criticized for it's more radical and harmful ideas).

[joegahona]

> Employees have started to think that who they work for should reflect their values. And why not?

Because employees don’t all have the same values.

[tootie]

Maybe because it's not allowed to be discussed openly. My company has absolutely let rip on political discussions and it's been pretty healthy. Nobody doesn't want diversity. It's purely a question of what we do about it.

[nathanaldensr]

> Nobody doesn't want diversity.

How do you know? Do you think everyone is being honest with you when they appear to state their opinions, knowing that saying the wrong thing could get them canceled? Are you naive enough to believe all humans are truthful?

[tootie]

Doesn't really matter does it? You can liken it to a Turing Test. If you can convince a naïve observer your not racist or even that you are anti-racist, then you are. Maybe you're faking. Maybe you're a lifelike android. The world still ends up a better place.

[insert_coin]

> Employees have started to think that who they work for should reflect their values. And why not?

Then this is perfect, they can leave and find a job that does reflect their values. They should've quitted right when they realized their values weren't aligned but I guess they valued a severance package more. Still, win-win.