[throwaway202351]

> no rainbow emojis

So it's not possible to be openly gay and hire-able?

I mean, sure, that must be true for some companies but I wouldn't want to work at those anyway.

edit: on second read, this might come off as more aggressive than I wanted, and the rest of the post is pretty good, but this part just stood out to me

[itqwertz]

No, the point is to look like a good candidate who won’t start a Slack pronoun campaign while delivering garbage code. For some companies, that outward presentation of identity and politics will be a deterrent. Do that stuff on your own time.

My advice is how to get a job when you need one.

[EatingWithForks]

How do you be gay "on your own time"? How do you be a they/them nonbinary "on your own time"? My co-workers sometimes have a picture of them with their opposite-gender life partner in their profile pictures... they are clearly bringing that heterosexuality to work. One of my most productive team-mates is a man who keeps an image of his wife and kids on his desk, even!

Why did you bring up the garbage code thing? The poster and the original poster said nothing about your actual capacities as an engineer.

[Solvency]

People bringing any aspect of their weird home lives, hetero or not, on LinkedIn is just embarrassingly unnecessary at best. The idea of me declaring my heterosexuality while postering my CV with a photo of my wife and I embracing on the beach would never cross my mind, but inexplicably it happens all of the time.

This has nothing to do with your individual sexuality. Everyone looks ridiculous being overtly personal on LinkedIn.

[DaftTomatoes]

I hear what you're saying, and the issue is that the photo you're describing would not be considered controversial for most people, even on LinkedIn. Lots of people have wedding photos, or photos with them and their spouses, and people don't bat an eye.

But, for someone who is gay, by mearly showing a picture of themselves with their husband they'd be "declaring their sexuality", and being "overt"; They don't have to say anything more. Their _existence_ is politicized, and that's the problem.

And when we say "don't show rainbows", or don't show anything that can be linked to LGBTQIA, we're really saying,

"You can't do these otherwise non-political things, because just being who you are is still politically charged". We're better than that HN.

[Solvency]

Believe me when I say a middle aged white conservative guy posting Jersey shore photos of his third marriage on LinkedIn is precisely an example of what I deem to be outrageously ridiculous on LinkedIn.

[learplant]

I feel like you're giving away your stance here with the "weird home lives" comment in relation to being openly gay. And I don't mean that I want even more personal stories to LinkedIn, but posting vacation pictures is hardly equatable with posting a hardship story about being gay in the workplace.

Being heterosexual is a privilege since it's the norm, so you don't have to worry about it. Being gay on the other hand can be dangerous, even life threatening depending on the country.

[Solvency]

What? Weird home lives are LinkedinLunatics posting themselves working from pools and their backyard writing pseudo motivational blogspam. And countless other acts of WTF.

You're projecting on to me right now.

[learplant]

You specifically said this which I maybe latched on to a bit hard.

> The idea of me declaring my heterosexuality while postering my CV...

But based on your answer you are also making a delineation between "blogspam" and for example someone posting a story about discrimination for being gay (for example).

[EatingWithForks]

But the thing is that the original poster did not say not to put a picture of your spouse up on LinkedIn. It explicitly says nothing rainbow i.e. gay. It reads very "there are only two sexes, male and political".

Also, a photo of yourself during your wedding is not a "weird home life". That's like the maximally normal home life thing. I think it would be flagrantly out of bounds for someone to tell a co-worker that their wedding photo is "weird home life" stuff and to keep it at home.

Edited to add: I don't really have anything against the advice of not putting your personal life at work. i.e. photos of kids, spouse, vacation pictures on linkedin, etc. I'm just confused why apparently only gay people can't do it according to OP. That's so bizarre to me.

[Solvency]

I agree with you no one should be singled out specifically. I extend the idea to all people!

[lelanthran]

Bring it to work, not to the interview.

Once you're hired feel free to do whatever, but leave anything controversial off the interview.

And yes, your linked in profile is part of the interview.

[EatingWithForks]

Again: what do you mean by "leave anything controversial off the interview"? Why is gay the controversial thing? I'm 100% fine with saying "leave all your personal stuff out of your linkedin", i.e. wedding photos, vacations with spouse, pictures of your children, etc. But why ONLY the gay people?

[lelanthran]

Not "being gay", but "being a campaigner".

None of my multiple gay friends have ever displayed a rainbow on their profiles.

They are, however, openly gay on their profile.

No hiring manager wants to deal with drama, so it's not just rainbows, it's literally anything that that has a campaign and political force behind it, like Trump pictures, BLM links, climate change, conservation, nuclear power...

You reading the word 'ONLY' when one example is proffered is a problem in your end.

[EatingWithForks]

Have you actually asked your gay friends if having a rainbow on your profile makes you a campaigner for the gays? If they've felt personally campaigned by people with rainbows in their profile?

I literally don't understand affiliating rainbow emoji with pictures of actual political candidates or an actual explicitly political activist name.

I also don't understand saying climate change, conservation, or nuclear power has campaign/political force behind it. If someone had something to do with nuclear power in their profile I would just assume they worked in energy??? I am not reading politics into this at all dude...

[mikrl]

You:

>a good candidate doesn’t care about that LGBT stuff

Me:

>a good candidate cares about that LGBT stuff

Call it a different worldview or whatever, but I don’t mind making my profile/timeline suboptimal for anti-LGBT people.

Otherwise it’s just the LGBT folks in my network engaging all by themselves, and it’s a lot harder to ‘other’ and exclude people with vocal allies.

And yes, it’s 100% about engineering. I can engineer under awful heat/noise etc conditions, but if I was being dehumanized and excluded, my performance would suffer a lot more.

[underlipton]

> For some companies, that outward presentation of identity and politics will be a deterrent.

This is correct, if unfortunate.

>A good candidate who won’t start a Slack pronoun campaign while delivering garbage code

This is vile and slanderous.

[DaftTomatoes]

> who won’t start a Slack pronoun campaign

Are people on HN getting railed at work with pronoun campaigns? We had one and it was honestly _the easiest thing in the world_

"Hey Daft, can you add pronouns"

*15 seconds later

"Done!"

What's the honest holdup with making the work environment more inclusive to non-binary or fluid people, there are a _lot_ of them. We already call people by their preferred titles, preferred nicknames, why the hangup on pronouns?

[lelanthran]

Nothing wrong with it, but why would a manager prefer to interview a campaigner for FOO over someone else, all else being equal.

The advice is how to get a salary when you need it. Take off anything even slightly controversial.

[DaftTomatoes]

What do people on HN mean when they say

> Campaigner for pronouns?

Specifically, in a concrete day to day sense? Asking for the smallest of efforts, the most minimal of inclusive actions, in the form of "putting a pronoun on your slack profile" doesn't really feel like a _campaign_ to me. We've spent more time here talking about it then it takes to add it to the profile during the "campaign"!

[lelanthran]

> Asking for the smallest of efforts, the most minimal of inclusive actions, in the form of "putting a pronoun on your slack profile" doesn't really feel like a _campaign_ to me.

Do you disagree with the statements:

    The advice is how to get a salary when you need it.
    Take off anything even slightly controversial. 

???

Anyone campaigning, or proud of campaigning, on their CV will get fewer callbacks. It's unfortunate but true.

[bequanna]

Openly gay != in everyone’s face writing preachy DEI memos and forcing pronoun campaigns

Essentially, don’t advertise that you might bring drama to the workplace.

Some people are always looking to pick fights and create drama (they can be gay, straight, whatever) and employers screen for this personality type.

[DaftTomatoes]

I feel like you skipped a couple steps between "showing a rainbow", and "bringing drama to the workplace", there's nothing wrong with having a rainbow on your profile, and certainly nothing to suggest that the person would be insufferable, unless you're implying that by the _nature of being gay_, they're more likey to be insufferable? Which, honestly, is bigoted.

Edit for no half measures on calling out bigotry

[bequanna]

> _nature of being gay_, they're more likey to be insufferable? Which, honestly, is bigoted.

Ha, wow.

Please reread my comment. I’m discussing how an excessive virtue signaler may be viewed by potential employers as someone who creates drama.

Unfortunately for all of us and because of people who are so trigger happy with them, words like “racist”, “bigot”, “transphobe” etc no longer have much meaning at all.

[DaftTomatoes]

You're correct in that you didn't use those words, and it's fair to state that; I do however stand by my comment. What underlies my rephrasing of it into that form is this:

> Openly gay != in everyone’s face writing preachy DEI memos and forcing pronoun campaigns Essentially, don’t advertise that you might bring drama to the workplace.

The points you're listing (DEI, pronouns) are efforts to _address_ people who _are bigoted, but you word it in a way that makes it seem _bad_, using words like "preachy", "force" to describe what's really pretty low effort asks on the part of businesses towards it's employees to be more inclusive.

To put it bluntly, how is asking to _not misgender_ someone "a campaign" or "virtue signaling"? How is asking to reduce biases against people of color "a campaign" or "virtue signaling"? You're right in that you're not saying things like "insufferable", but you're specifically choosing to callout certain items, with certain phrasing, and the common denominator in all those are _minorities_.

Now you might make a rebuttal referring to something of the affect, "It's not about the content, it's about the _fact I have to participate in these activities_", and that very well may be a genuine response. But why, of all the things we _have_ to do at work, which are so much more insufferable and draining, are these the ones you take issue with?

[EatingWithForks]

Literally if the OP didn't bring up not putting rainbows it would've caused 0 drama, but now you have a bunch of people asking wait why are we calling gay people political.

[itqwertz]

I certainly wouldn't hire anyone that creates drama like this.

You could replace "rainbow" with "Ukraine flag" or "Russian flag" or NY Yankees logo and it would still hold to be true. Someone will find an issue with anything about you, so why even post it?

Be a cog in the machine and be employed, or be an unemployed individual that whines on LinkedIn.

[DaftTomatoes]

> You could replace "rainbow" with "Ukraine flag" or "Russian flag" or NY Yankees logo and it would still hold to be true

This _is_ the issue, making these "equivalent". Here we're drawing equivalencies between posting "the flag of a country interlocked in an international proxy war" with posting a "rainbow flag which LGBTQ people use to create solidarity, to feel normal, and not have their existence deemed controversial in the same breath as, amongst other things..." an international proxy war!

[spidersouris]

I don't think the point is to be found in one's sexual orientation. The thing is the rainbow emoji can communicate much more than that due to how it's used by conservatives, unfortunately. Some people may turn your application down simply because you have a rainbow emoji in your bio and they've heard conservative bullshit about some inexistent LGBTQ+ lobby that wants to chemically castrate every single child on this planet.

People are dumb. Better be safe than sorry.

[malfist]

I'd rather not work for companies that consider being gay a red flag....especially since I'm gay.

[DaftTomatoes]

Yeah, I gotta agree with the other poster here. If the person is interpreting "rainbow emoji" as a signal for "gay people bad", that seems like a company you definitely wouldn't want to work for, considering they _wouldn't recognize your basic humanity_.

What's most wild to me is that here, on hackernews, people are saying "Don't give _any signal_ that you're gay", and making that seem comparable to other actual controversial things on your profile.