[stingraycharles]

Depends. We’re a small, very international startup and have a super strict “no politics” policy. Politics and work are not a good combination when you’re employing people from all over the world.

But I would not consider it a political statement to adopt this policy.

[orwin]

I think it exists two different general ideas of what politic mean.

For some (including me), politics are, following the oldest definition: 'how do I and fellow humans organize ourselves to live together' this often leads to a belief that everything is politics (for me it's true, but it's a belief, not a fact).

For other, I think that when they say politics, they think of geopolitics and partisanship, which is fair, because it's how politicians and political journalists themselves define politics. For this group, hopefully, not everything is politics.

So to me, this disagreement about wether or not all is political is often semantic rather than ideologic.

[pseudalopex]

The disagreement is semantic and irrelevant in the sense the question at hand usually is which topics and opinions are forbidden at work.

The disagreement is semantic and relevant in the sense people who say no politics at work believe their categories of politics and not politics are obvious.

The disagreement is ideological in the sense ethical concerns about products or customers are designated political often.

Politicians, political journalists, and people who say no politics at work do not define politics as geopolitics and partisanship.

[noelwelsh]

Your statements are incoherent. Politics is decision making and power relationships within groups of people. It is 100% a political statement to adopt this policy as it exercises power over a group. You cannot function as a group without politics. "Where do y'all want to go for lunch" is also politics, as it involves group decision making and power relationships (Do you go to the vegetarian place? Do you avoid the spicy place?) It's a completely banal decision but it is still politics.

If what you want is a "don't piss off your coworkers by discussing topics unrelated to work that you know will annoy people" policy, that is fine, but don't pretend you are not engaging in politics.

[def13]

The politics of saying "no politics" is that you are drawing some line that separates some political issues into "politics" and others into "not politics". Because to truly avoid all politics is impossible; even if you believe banal, purely intra-personal politics are not political so much of the basic organization of a business & capitalism are politics. "Should we allow remote work" for example is a deeply political question that ties deeply into discussions about the rights/value of neurodivergent & disabled people in the workplace. To say 'I don't believe in God' is a deeply political and dangerous statement in some parts of the world, but fairly banal where I live. To contrast, in Indonesia, it is technically _unconstitutional_ to not believe in a "one and almighty God"

I wish people were at least honest about "no politics" to mean "lets avoid to unsafe, potentially divisive issues relative to our geographic location, and take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed". And yeah, that is a more than reasonable policy. Its a difficult policy in international spaces, because its very hard to not trespass that line when political contexts differ so strongly across the globe

[DrillShopper]

> The politics of saying "no politics" is that you are drawing some line that separates some political issues into "politics" and others into "not politics".

I find someone's heuristics for deciding which category a statement falls into chiefly turns on if they agree with the statement. If they agree with the statement then it is not political, and if they disagree, it's political.

[lou1306]

> take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed

Well, then any discussion about an illiberal oclocratic executive (such as 47's) should be fair game...

[concordDance]

"Politics" is a stupid word because everyone has a different idea about what it means and so they all talk past each other.

[strogonoff]

The word “politics” is vague, and that only makes banning political discussions worse if it only becomes political when the higher-ups don’t like it.

Say your company has a possibility of working with some client company who is directly or indirectly involved with cause X. If it is “political” to talk about not working with them because of X, but it is “not political” to talk about working with them, then you see what I mean.

It doesn’t have to be a destructive conversation: one employee might say we should avoid them, but you might say we need to work with them because we need the money now and can drop them later when we are in a better place. Other employees could talk how cause X is not that unethical for reasons. If someone balks at a point of view incompatible with theirs and is incapable of expressing a viewpoint in a way that respects other views, maybe that someone is not mature enough and next time your HR can avoid that type.

[pixl97]

Many people that ban political discussions miss the irony that it's a political decision.

[gedy]

Yeah exactly, the same people who shout the loudest about "everything is politics" and want to talk about it at work would go apeshit if someone at work said "I'm not comfortable with abortion", etc. HR would quickly be called and shut them down.

[strogonoff]

First, “no politics” is not a political statement to me, more of an implicitly adopted political position.

Personally, if I have a personal political position and my colleague has an opposite one, I don’t see why we can’t talk about it. If you have a workplace rule about no politics during working hours, you better have this rule for all non-work discussions at work, or I personally would feel uncomfortable.

— If politics talk happens at work too much and affects productivity, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any non-work topic.

— If it causes heated debate, ruins morale, and makes people dislike each other, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any topic that causes heated debate. For some people it’s golf, for some philosophy, for some music. How many topics should be banned?

[dcow]

Are you from the US? In the last 15 years it has become impossible for two people to reasonably disagree over political positions because of how much vitriol is thrown around on the attention markets—even if both individuals themselves are rather tame. When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost, no, you can’t just talk politics at work and have a cohesive team. Someone will feel oppressed.

Work is about making money. Politics is a distraction unless there’s an issue that directly affects the business. Then it’s fair game. Like this one. Many teams of individuals will have to figure out how to navigate this situation so discussing it in context is apropos and can be done objectively.

[strogonoff]

> When having an otherwise normal political opinion makes you a racist bigot or a beta cuck because the opposition is so determined to get their way at any cost

If someone calls me a racist bigot or a beta cuck, that is a problem. That problem also has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with someone not being emotionally mature enough or equipped to handle a discussion with someone who has different views, or someone having a mental breakdown.

I am not from the US, but I had enjoyed some reasonable conversations with people from the US (among other countries) with very different views, and I was never called names. There are awkward moments when you have to hear something you don’t agree with, but that is most of life if you ever interact with people.

The key is to be like an HTTP server: liberal in terms of what you can accept, but strict with what you put out there.

> Work is about making money.

You have just thrown another political position into the mix, I hope you realize that?

[AlexandrB]

> It has to do with someone not being emotionally mature enough or equipped to handle a discussion with someone who has different views, or someone having a mental breakdown.

Any moderately sized company is practically guaranteed to have a few people like this. So getting into these discussions has a high risk of becoming an HR issue as tempers flare and conversations become vitriolic.

There's also the issue that the company founders and leadership have political opinions of their own that might inform company policy and any political opinion to the contrary may be perceived as pushback from a "troublemaker".

[strogonoff]

> getting into these discussions has a high risk of becoming an HR issue as tempers flare and conversations become vitriolic.

Here we can forget that IRL face to face people are much less likely to be offensive to each other. If they get to literal name calling and aggression, sure, that’s an HR issue, HR gets paid to sort this out, doesn’t it? I don’t see how politics is different from any other topic on which people can have strong opinions.

> There's also the issue that the company founders and leadership have political opinions of their own that might inform company policy and any political opinion to the contrary may be perceived as pushback from a "troublemaker".

That is why “no politics” is somewhat dishonest. In my view, either blanket forbid all off-topic talks, or don’t censor by topic and handle fights if they arise. There can also be softer guidelines about how to behave at work without an actual ban of any topic.

[pseudalopex]

Or censor by topic specifically and honestly.

[dcow]

I agree with your ideal. I used to be one of those people who would just talk about whatever in any context assuming everyone was mature enough to have academic discussions and not get personal. Political viewpoint is a protected class in the US. But we all saw what happened to James Dramore. Real consequences for holding a political opinion that allegedly made him “unemployable at Google” where his politics were so threatening to the established order that Google just couldn’t operate with him in the mix. You’d think G has the most mature employees… and either they do but humans are just toxically unable to hold differing opinions, or they don’t and therefore have to maintain a safe space for the comfort of their sensitive workers.

The silliest part: what was his thesis? Well that using race and gender based quotas during hiring and leveling made Google less competitive. Certainly not a privileged white male tech bro just barreling through the company on a racist bigoted spree leaving tears in his wake. There is more interesting discussion to be had here about how the Civil Rights Act has been weaponized in the US and companies feel they have a legal obligation now to prove that their systems don’t yield “unfair distribution of protected classes”, or whatever the actual wording is. And how that is at odds with a world where you can openly discuss politics at a company without fear of falling afoul of the Chief Diversity Officer (ffs, there are executives installed to maintain the order now). And related: just look at how pockets of people respond to Trump’s second term insisting that he’s a fascist dictator and anybody who doesn’t see it is a de facto fascist. But I digress.

Nobody wants to bet their job on being on the losing end of a kafka traps and thought terminating clichés.

[rini17]

I am torn.com player which is a MMORPG as far removed from politics as can be. But when large part of dev team are ukrainians that were suddenly unable to work from clearly political reasons you can't ignore it.

[tobr]

How do you define politics? For example, are employees allowed to be LGBTQ? Are they allowed to mention their relationships to colleagues?

[pxoe]

Being straight is also pretty much political at this point. With the way it's being slipped into the culture (all that trad stuff, images of lifestyle to aspire to, etc.) and has become (has always been perhaps) a part of political messaging and campaigning, heterosexuality is political. Even within the heterosexuality itself and its expressions, there's still politics - "what's the right way to do it" and such. (not saying this like 'oh those poor straight people' but just that, it is all, all political)

[tobr]

For what it’s worth, I completely agree, I just thought LGBTQ was a clearer example because of how different it is seen in different parts of the world, and how it is at the same time an inescapable part of many people’s identity.

[criddell]

For a lot of people on HN, a ban on politics discussions in the office is impossible because we have to deal with software licenses.

[squigz]

One might argue that it's even more important to discuss international politics these days, considering how interconnected the world is and how so many countries seem to be facing many of the same issues.

[ksec]

You would have been cancelled if you said this between 2014 - 2019 at the peak of it all.

At least now you can say it out now without being downvoted into oblivion.