[in_cahoots]

Companies proudly proclaim that employees should bring their ‘whole selves’ to work. They sponsor resource groups for parents, women, minorities, gay/lesbian/trans, Christian/Muslim/Jewish, and vet employees. But when employees want to actually talk about the issues rather than watch ‘empowering’ motivational speakers, then bringing your whole self to work is suddenly a distraction.

They can’t have it both ways.

[collegeburner]

Just as importantly they are very toxic to a set of political viewpoints. In some industries (O&G) that is liberal ones. In some industries (tech) that is conservative ones. In some industries (finance) that is most things outside centrist (Romney Republican, Manchin Democrat).

When the "activist" types push politics into workplaces they are not doing it so they can talk about what they feel. They are doing it so they can find the people who disagree and damage their careers. Maybe I am cynical here but I have seen careers be seriously damaged this way.

[ungamedplayer]

> They are doing it so they can find the people who disagree and damage their careers.

This leads to some people actively avoiding working with and for any kind of activist, or anyone related to activists. If you can see middle ground in any non extreme argument, one must be a bigot.

[zer01]

> When the "activist" types push politics into workplaces they are not doing it so they can talk about what they feel. They are doing it so they can find the people who disagree and damage their careers.

This sounds like your position is that anyone who advocates for anything (esp. when it's directly impacting them, but unrelated to work) only has one singular goal of weeding out disagreement and getting rid of it, which I think is ridiculous.

Humans are social creatures and we largely shape our perspectives by iterating with new data and communication. People can be (and IMO largely are) advocates for things that are important to them, have opinions on things, and don't have a singular focus of destroying anyone with different viewpoints.

On the other side, all humans have their limits to cooperation. As you have social interactions with anyone your viewpoint of them change, and realistically if I find out something about a co-worker through discussion like they believe that the 2020 election was stolen because Trump told them so it does inevitably make me scrutinize this person harder. What if you found out that a co-worker thought black people were genetically inferior or that women don't deserve to vote? At that point it's hard to work with someone with such a fundamentally different view of the world.

Is it "cancel culture" to say "we don't want nazis to work here"?

[panaceaeaea]

> Is it "cancel culture" to say "we don't want nazis to work here"?

I find people throwing around the word "nazi" in this way incredibly offensive. Every time I hear a non-Jewish person throw this word around as a political accusation it makes me sick to my stomach

and why does it make me sick to my stomach? Because it shows how people have become so detached from the atrocities of the 20th century that they have the audacity to throw around that word and use it as a political tool. Please find a different word to describe people you disagree with

[zer01]

This I think is where a lot of the "leave your politics at home" falls apart. People's identities are basically a collection of the things they believe in and advocate for.

People work much better when they're happy and can be themselves with like-minded individuals. Companies like Google realized this in the 90s and ensured that they proactively have what they need to be happy (feeding employees, paying for healthcare premiums, etc) to great success. You see this continue with things like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31871581 IMO.

It's really easy to say that you as a business care about gay rights in order to have gay employees come work for you, but if you then contribute political donations to a politician who sees gay people as an abomination you can't seriously be surprise when people go "hey what the fuck".

[landemva]

>> Companies proudly proclaim that employees should bring their ‘whole selves’ to work.

I have never encountered that with an employer. Is that a California thing?

[tbrownaw]

It's a DEI thing.