Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
The bigots are generally discussing things that the liberals are also discussing, but the liberals are discussing the plight of veterans as one among many issues, giving validity to other plights such as refugees, trans people, etc. Bigots only care about the one sole issue that applies to them.
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
The bigots are generally discussing things that the liberals are also discussing, but the liberals are discussing the plight of veterans as one among many issues, giving validity to other plights such as refugees, trans people, etc. Bigots only care about the one sole issue that applies to them.
Certainly not my experience of people. Oppressed people tend to be MORE inclusive, but not perfectly so. Being massively prejudiced against other races is certainly not something unique to say, white people, and women (even those active advocating in their own diversity group) are certainly not say, always accepting of Trans people.
Then, conversely I've seen people who have been HORRIBLE on trans or gender issues, but are perfectly happily in the middle of the road on race or religion. Or vice versa.
The powerful are simply unique in their ability to convert their worst impulses into harm to those unlike them, not in having those impulses.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
I don't want bigots to feel comfortable to speak their bigotry, because it makes other people feel uncomfortable and unable to engage. You can have a very wide and open range of discussion while also saying that no, bigots aren't welcome. And the argument that bigotry is the price of free speech is why we keep seeing all sorts of organizations dealing with these tire fires online because they refuse to push back on bigotry out of a misguided notion.
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
And the problem with putting the line there is? As I said, we should put a very high bar on any discussion where the worth of someone's identity is the topic for discussion. The fact that we have so much evidence showing the value of advocacy and diversity means that bar is nigh unreachable.
Or to put it simply, bigotry doesn't become acceptable because it's "civil" or "polite".
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
The bigots are generally discussing things that the liberals are also discussing, but the liberals are discussing the plight of veterans as one among many issues, giving validity to other plights such as refugees, trans people, etc. Bigots only care about the one sole issue that applies to them.
Certainly not my experience of people. Oppressed people tend to be MORE inclusive, but not perfectly so. Being massively prejudiced against other races is certainly not something unique to say, white people, and women (even those active advocating in their own diversity group) are certainly not say, always accepting of Trans people.
Then, conversely I've seen people who have been HORRIBLE on trans or gender issues, but are perfectly happily in the middle of the road on race or religion. Or vice versa.
The powerful are simply unique in their ability to convert their worst impulses into harm to those unlike them, not in having those impulses.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
You are talking about bigots, not liberals. A bigot cares only about their own particular issue - whether they be disabled, a veteran, a minority, poor etc. All the other problems in the world can go hang for all they care.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
I don't want bigots to feel comfortable to speak their bigotry, because it makes other people feel uncomfortable and unable to engage. You can have a very wide and open range of discussion while also saying that no, bigots aren't welcome. And the argument that bigotry is the price of free speech is why we keep seeing all sorts of organizations dealing with these tire fires online because they refuse to push back on bigotry out of a misguided notion.
I just don't think saying "I'll know it when I see it" is a particularly workable corporate guideline on managing speech. You and I are clearly both liberals, but it seems that if either one of us set up a 'company discussion forum' you'd end up with a very different threshold for 'posts which are not OK'.
Which would mean that while it might seem to be obvious to you, it's not actually obvious.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
You are talking about bigots, not liberals. A bigot cares only about their own particular issue - whether they be disabled, a veteran, a minority, poor etc. All the other problems in the world can go hang for all they care.
Again, in the real world, these sorts of groups are often working together, and support one another. Your gedanken comment is a bad faith argument, and should be seen as such.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
Depends. If the company lacks those groups and needs them, advocating for them seems perfectly reasonable. And I don't see anything good coming out of employees arguing against such things.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
You are talking about bigots, not liberals. A bigot cares only about their own particular issue - whether they be disabled, a veteran, a minority, poor etc. All the other problems in the world can go hang for all they care.
Again, in the real world, these sorts of groups are often working together, and support one another. Your gedanken comment is a bad faith argument, and should be seen as such.
I don't know what you mean by this. I'm not trolling. I don't know what "gedanken" means.
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
And the problem with putting the line there is? As I said, we should put a very high bar on any discussion where the worth of someone's identity is the topic for discussion. The fact that we have so much evidence showing the value of advocacy and diversity means that bar is nigh unreachable.
Or to put it simply, bigotry doesn't become acceptable because it's "civil" or "polite".
I didn't say that it was a fundamental problem to put the line there, but you can see from your own posts that your 'clear and easy to establish line' is already on the move. In one post we've moved from "willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion" as the line, to "noone can say if they think advocacy groups are a bad idea".
The first I'll agree on 100%, I'm just not so sure about the second.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
You are talking about bigots, not liberals. A bigot cares only about their own particular issue - whether they be disabled, a veteran, a minority, poor etc. All the other problems in the world can go hang for all they care.
Again, in the real world, these sorts of groups are often working together, and support one another. Your gedanken comment is a bad faith argument, and should be seen as such.
I don't know what you mean by this. I'm not trolling. I don't know what "gedanken" means.
I was referring to the theoretical comment tbloxham had put up that you responded to. And it means "thought experiment", roughly.
Which is why most business go out of their way to avoid "discourse" on the workplace as much as possible. Because IS EASIER and makes sure that everybody just gets their damn paycheck without issue.
To which the counterpoint would be that there are issues which we need to actually discuss and fix, but it's certainly not as easy as just saying "Tech companies are infested with Bigots and should fire them all!"
Tech companies tend to encourage discussion on these issues and attempt to 'have a corporate philosophy'. But this causes the bigots to speak up too, which is a challenge, because if you are going to let people speak up at work then you have to at least let the bigots speak a little bit.
Other companies 'seem' better, because their corporate philosophy is "Shut up, we donate to everyone on every side. Keep your politics at home"
Right wing companies also sometimes 'seem better', because while they have a corporate policy, their employees are told to shut their mouths if they don't agree 100% with it. Which silences left wing dissenters who might say, "Maybe our receptionists shouldn't all be hired because of their bra size", but also silences far right folks who might say, "The fact that any of our receptionists are non white is an outrage!"
No, you don't. The problem with your argument is that you're applying a false equivalence to the viewpoints, and in so doing argue that we have to be tolerant of intolerance. But that's not how we should be viewing tolerance, and as such we are not obligated to let bigots spew bigotry.
And again, notice how this forum functions. Right wing thought is not silenced by the mods as the 'thought police' as you are proposing a company should do. Instead, people are prevented from spouting ideas which cannot be supported by argument.
For example, the level of 'counter argument' that I would say you have to tolerate is...
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
whereas
"Women are incapable of doing engineering work. We should get rid of every woman on an engineering team"
would be grounds for dismissal. And yes, some people who would like to say the latter, will just dance around it by saying the former, but that's just the price you have to pay to actually have a discussion.
Except that it's not you paying the price. It's all the people who get targeted by that sort of comment. In the original thread on the screed, a few female posters talked about how dealing with the atmosphere that these comments create is draining on them, making them feel like they have to justify their position, over and over. So no, giving bigots cover is not the price to pay, because the starting point is that everybody here has worth.
Now, you'll say that means that certain discussions are off the table. To which my response is simply "Yes, and why should they be on it?" We should have a very high bar for allowing any sort of discussion which puts someone's worth on the table because of their race, gender, creed, or any other aspect of their identity.
But having a discussion is the whole purpose of this. If you don't want to have a discussion then fine. Tell everyone to shut up and follow the corporate law, just like all of the 'big old companies' used to.
Having a discussion doesn't mean tossing people up as a sacrifice to the deity of Freeze Peach. Bigots playing the "just asking questions" card is such and old, bad chestnut that it has a name - JAQing off. And if excluding the bigoted arguments means that the argument vanishes, then there never was one in the first place.
So what if someone wants to make the argument that...
"Women in Engineering gets too many resources compared to the group which helps me, Veterans in Engineering. We should get the same access to the main conference room and be allowed to send reps to recruit more Veterans even though there are 4 times as many women"
I just don't see how you can have a discussion when discussion is banned. How do you decide what is banned? Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
The world doesn't break neatly into liberals on one side with perfect truth and agreement and bigots on the other with nothing to add to any discussion ever.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
And the problem with putting the line there is? As I said, we should put a very high bar on any discussion where the worth of someone's identity is the topic for discussion. The fact that we have so much evidence showing the value of advocacy and diversity means that bar is nigh unreachable.
Or to put it simply, bigotry doesn't become acceptable because it's "civil" or "polite".
I didn't say that it was a fundamental problem to put the line there, but you can see from your own posts that your 'clear and easy to establish line' is already on the move. In one post we've moved from "willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion" as the line, to "noone can say if they think advocacy groups are a bad idea".
The first I'll agree on 100%, I'm just not so sure about the second.
Because the two are linked. These arguments don't happen in a vacuum - as @The Sauce pointed out, in the real world arguments against advocacy very quickly devolve into arguments about identity.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
Depends. If the company lacks those groups and needs them, advocating for them seems perfectly reasonable. And I don't see anything good coming out of employees arguing against such things.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
So your line The Sauce would be that someone COULD say "Women in Engineering isn't being structured and run properly, they spend all their money going to conferences to try and do university recruitment, they should be spending their resources on the employees we already have"
or
"Women in Engineering is overwhelmingly catering to the concerns of young women, when they should be focusing on the salary path of women who have been here longer. Their concerns are parental in nature, and affect me too?"
And to be clear, I don't believe that there is any way to structure a 'discussion' where we only let men say one thing or women say another. So can either a man or a woman say those things?
edit - And yes, I have heard multiple people, men and women, say these exact things at my company. So I'm not proposing a pure thought experiment.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
Depends. If the company lacks those groups and needs them, advocating for them seems perfectly reasonable. And I don't see anything good coming out of employees arguing against such things.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
So your line The Sauce would be that someone COULD say "Women in Engineering isn't being structured and run properly, they spend all their money going to conferences to try and do university recruitment, they should be spending their resources on the employees we already have"
or
"Women in Engineering is overwhelmingly catering to the concerns of young women, when they should be focusing on the salary path of women who have been here longer. Their concerns are parental in nature, and affect me too?"
And to be clear, I don't believe that there is any way to structure a 'discussion' where we only let men say one thing or women say another. So can either a man or a woman say those things?
edit - And yes, I have heard multiple people, men and women, say these exact things at my company. So I'm not proposing a pure thought experiment.
That's where you're wrong! Your white male privilege is showing, you might want to tuck that back in...
PS: sorry about genderheteronormalizing you, I shouldn't have said that!
I guess I don't want to come across as saying "Corporate culture is great, and advocacy groups are awful!"
I just think that changing Corporate culture in such a way as voices can be heard is not as trivial as many seem to think. Especially if you want to also listen to say, workers who have concerns about factory line staff conditions, or the hours of the janitorial team.
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
Depends. If the company lacks those groups and needs them, advocating for them seems perfectly reasonable. And I don't see anything good coming out of employees arguing against such things.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
So your line The Sauce would be that someone COULD say "Women in Engineering isn't being structured and run properly, they spend all their money going to conferences to try and do university recruitment, they should be spending their resources on the employees we already have"
or
"Women in Engineering is overwhelmingly catering to the concerns of young women, when they should be focusing on the salary path of women who have been here longer. Their concerns are parental in nature, and affect me too?"
And to be clear, I don't believe that there is any way to structure a 'discussion' where we only let men say one thing or women say another. So can either a man or a woman say those things?
edit - And yes, I have heard multiple people, men and women, say these exact things at my company. So I'm not proposing a pure thought experiment.
That's where you're wrong! Your white male privilege is showing, you might want to tuck that back in...
PS: sorry about genderheteronormalizing you, I shouldn't have said that!
So your perspective is that only Women can talk about the effectiveness of the Women in Engineering advocacy team? And that any man who attempts to do so on the corporate discussion board should be disciplined?
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
Depends. If the company lacks those groups and needs them, advocating for them seems perfectly reasonable. And I don't see anything good coming out of employees arguing against such things.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
So your line The Sauce would be that someone COULD say "Women in Engineering isn't being structured and run properly, they spend all their money going to conferences to try and do university recruitment, they should be spending their resources on the employees we already have"
or
"Women in Engineering is overwhelmingly catering to the concerns of young women, when they should be focusing on the salary path of women who have been here longer. Their concerns are parental in nature, and affect me too?"
And to be clear, I don't believe that there is any way to structure a 'discussion' where we only let men say one thing or women say another. So can either a man or a woman say those things?
edit - And yes, I have heard multiple people, men and women, say these exact things at my company. So I'm not proposing a pure thought experiment.
That's where you're wrong! Your white male privilege is showing, you might want to tuck that back in...
PS: sorry about genderheteronormalizing you, I shouldn't have said that!
So your perspective is that only Women can talk about the effectiveness of the Women in Engineering advocacy team? And that any man who attempts to do so on the corporate discussion board should be disciplined?
I was trying to engage in argument ad absurdum. Clearly I failed and the fact that that statement can be taken at face value is depressing. More realistically I think what you just said is corresponds to the current climate and dissenting opinion on the subject of effectiveness of affirmative action in hiring is "nazi-speak"
0
Options
MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
0
Options
MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
Not saying its solved in the least, we have tons of work to do to get somewhere decent, but the tech folk in this case aren't disrupting labor laws here through new paradigms of inter-office communication, they're a stunning reminder of how much worse things were when you let open bigots into the culture of your workplace.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
Frankly i don't see the problem with the outlined solution. If people spend long enough airing their mental laundry everyone will find something to dislike about each other. Even if everyone's a liberal, someone's gonna be not liberal enough.
+2
Options
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
And there are plenty of places where you can still find that solution hard at work. Just not the tech companies, who are trying to encourage their workers to discuss things and thus seem like they are riddled with awful and horrible bigots. When in fact, their level of bigot is exactly the same as every other workplace. They are just stuck with the impossible job of trying to find a way of answering the 'who can say what' question without having that answer be, "NOONE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS NONSENSE"
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
My career in tech is literally about having opinions on things and pointing out stuff that will concern people. You can't divorce tech from the sociopolitical scene.
+1
Options
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
My career in tech is literally about having opinions on things and pointing out stuff that will concern people. You can't divorce tech from the sociopolitical scene.
Depends on the tech but yeah, you absolutely can.
I don't need to worry about sociopolitical crap when I'm plowing through DNS logs or scripting in python.
Tech doesn't want to divorce itself, but it absolutely can.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever all have leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever has leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
I wasn't really advocating for anything, I was just trying to illustrate the downsides of the "shut the hell up" policy. If you have to rely on a union or political organization to effect change, then you are going to have to wait until the number of people affected is larger (and sometimes significantly larger) than the people who aren't, otherwise the union won't care and the political organization will have no power. If however, there is a place to voice opinions/concerns then it's possible for a small group of individuals to change the minds of the leaders and enact policy changes much sooner.
To take a step back, I am basically arguing that the free flow of ideas usually (but not always) leads better outcomes, at a faster rate, for the disenfranchised. It's unlikely that people will change their minds about something if they never talk about it.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever has leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
I wasn't really advocating for anything, I was just trying to illustrate the downsides of the "shut the hell up" policy. If you have to rely on a union or political organization to effect change, then you are going to have to wait until the number of people affected is larger (and sometimes significantly larger) than the people who aren't, otherwise the union won't care and the political organization will have no power. If however, there is a place to voice opinions/concerns then it's possible for a small group of individuals to change the minds of the leaders and enact policy changes much sooner.
To take a step back, I am basically arguing that the free flow of ideas usually (but not always) leads better outcomes, at a faster rate, for the disenfranchised. It's unlikely that people will change their minds about something if they never talk about it.
With which I certainly agree. I just think that its impossible to have a free flow of ideas without tolerating at least some bigots coming into the pool. I think that, just like here on the forums, you can't have a useful discussion with new ideas without encountering some ideas that you really really don't like. Anything else, is just always going to turn into 'shut the hell up'
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever all have leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
That's impossible, because politics enmeshes everything. (Case in point: Today, the lieutenant governor of Georgia has threatened Delta Airlines with revoking the company's tax credits over Delta cutting ties with the NRA.) Given that it is impossible for companies to be apolitical, we must then push them in the direction we want them to go.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
My career in tech is literally about having opinions on things and pointing out stuff that will concern people. You can't divorce tech from the sociopolitical scene.
Depends on the tech but yeah, you absolutely can.
I don't need to worry about sociopolitical crap when I'm plowing through DNS logs or scripting in python.
Tech doesn't want to divorce itself, but it absolutely can.
My entire career has been sociopolitically agnostic. There aren't really any implications to writing and interfacing with drivers and implementing protocols
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever has leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
I wasn't really advocating for anything, I was just trying to illustrate the downsides of the "shut the hell up" policy. If you have to rely on a union or political organization to effect change, then you are going to have to wait until the number of people affected is larger (and sometimes significantly larger) than the people who aren't, otherwise the union won't care and the political organization will have no power. If however, there is a place to voice opinions/concerns then it's possible for a small group of individuals to change the minds of the leaders and enact policy changes much sooner.
To take a step back, I am basically arguing that the free flow of ideas usually (but not always) leads better outcomes, at a faster rate, for the disenfranchised. It's unlikely that people will change their minds about something if they never talk about it.
I see, i would counter that change isn't always for the better, the ability of a vocal minority steering corporate policy to cause unintended damage isn't to be underestimated. The free flow of ideas in the social and political spheres is fundamentally different from the workplace. No company (that i know of) operates as direct democracy for a reason.
If companies can get away with being apolitical, they should. But there's money to be had in politics so they can't
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Are you going to write some titanic corporate handbook saying what people can and can't say?
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever all have leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
That's impossible, because politics enmeshes everything. (Case in point: Today, the lieutenant governor of Georgia has threatened Delta Airlines with revoking the company's tax credits over Delta cutting ties with the NRA.) Given that it is impossible for companies to be apolitical, we must then push them in the direction we want them to go.
If companies can get away with being apolitical, they should. But there's money to be had in politics so they can't
There is no such thing as "apolitical".
And, a lot of these issues aren't classically political issues. Gender etc. You can make a solid argument that companies shouldn't have 'party affiliation' but its hard to say that companies shouldn't have a position on, "Should we give women paid maternity leave" or "Is it OK to hire your secretary because you think she's hot"
And, a lot of these issues aren't classically political issues. Gender etc.
... When was that ever not political?
(Note that "the default system doesn't care about this thing" or "I'm comfortable with the default re: this thing" doesn't mean "this thing isn't political.")
And, a lot of these issues aren't classically political issues. Gender etc.
... When was that ever not political?
(Note that "the default system doesn't care about this thing" or "I'm comfortable with the default re: this thing" doesn't mean "this thing isn't political.")
Not during the Roman Empire! (Wikipedia quotation.)
The question of Elagabalus' sexual orientation is confused, owing to salacious and unreliable sources. Elagabalus married and divorced five women,[47] three of whom are known. His first wife was Julia Cornelia Paula;[45] the second was the Vestal Virgin Julia Aquilia Severa.[45][50]
Within a year, he abandoned her and married Annia Aurelia Faustina,[45] a descendant of Marcus Aurelius and the widow of a man he had recently had executed. He had returned to his second wife Severa by the end of the year.[47] According to Cassius Dio, his most stable relationship seems to have been with his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, whom he referred to as his husband.[38]
The Augustan History claims that he also married a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, in a public ceremony at Rome.[51] Cassius Dio reported that Elagabalus would paint his eyes, depilate his body hair and wear wigs before prostituting himself in taverns, brothels,[52] and even in the imperial palace:
Finally, he set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by. There were, of course, men who had been specially instructed to play their part. For, as in other matters, so in this business, too, he had numerous agents who sought out those who could best please him by their foulness. He would collect money from his patrons and give himself airs over his gains; he would also dispute with his associates in this shameful occupation, claiming that he had more lovers than they and took in more money.[53]
Herodian commented that Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the regular application of cosmetics.[45] He was described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocles" and was reported to have offered vast sums of money to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia.[39] Elagabalus has been characterized by some modern writers as transgender or transsexual.[54][55][56]
Posts
The bigots are generally discussing things that the liberals are also discussing, but the liberals are discussing the plight of veterans as one among many issues, giving validity to other plights such as refugees, trans people, etc. Bigots only care about the one sole issue that applies to them.
Stop looking for bright lines. This really isn't as difficult as you're trying to make it out to be, and no, you don't need some massive tome of Officially Authorized Discussion Topics - you just need some awareness of good and bad faith arguments, and the willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion. Bad faith actors don't have to be tolerated.
By the way, many major corporations have various groups for diversity recruitment of veterans, minorities, women, LGBTQ individuals, etc., and I have never heard of such groups treating support as zero-sum. Which is an indication of bad faith argumentation.
Certainly not my experience of people. Oppressed people tend to be MORE inclusive, but not perfectly so. Being massively prejudiced against other races is certainly not something unique to say, white people, and women (even those active advocating in their own diversity group) are certainly not say, always accepting of Trans people.
Then, conversely I've seen people who have been HORRIBLE on trans or gender issues, but are perfectly happily in the middle of the road on race or religion. Or vice versa.
The powerful are simply unique in their ability to convert their worst impulses into harm to those unlike them, not in having those impulses.
I just don't see how "Lets facilitate a free flow of ideas where everyone feels comfortable to speak" is compatible with "All ideas other than these ones are wrong, and any criticism of these ideas is wrong"
Your line here is literally exactly what I proposed before. And I don't see how the clear statement "You can't discuss somebodies worth" strictly rules out the statement
"Women in Engineering is a distraction from the work we need to get done here at this company. They shouldn't need special groups to isolate them from the rest of the group and get special benefits"
It seems to me that ruling out that is placing the line at...
"You can't discuss whether advocacy and diversity groups are useful in the workplace"
I don't want bigots to feel comfortable to speak their bigotry, because it makes other people feel uncomfortable and unable to engage. You can have a very wide and open range of discussion while also saying that no, bigots aren't welcome. And the argument that bigotry is the price of free speech is why we keep seeing all sorts of organizations dealing with these tire fires online because they refuse to push back on bigotry out of a misguided notion.
And the problem with putting the line there is? As I said, we should put a very high bar on any discussion where the worth of someone's identity is the topic for discussion. The fact that we have so much evidence showing the value of advocacy and diversity means that bar is nigh unreachable.
Or to put it simply, bigotry doesn't become acceptable because it's "civil" or "polite".
You are talking about bigots, not liberals. A bigot cares only about their own particular issue - whether they be disabled, a veteran, a minority, poor etc. All the other problems in the world can go hang for all they care.
I just don't think saying "I'll know it when I see it" is a particularly workable corporate guideline on managing speech. You and I are clearly both liberals, but it seems that if either one of us set up a 'company discussion forum' you'd end up with a very different threshold for 'posts which are not OK'.
Which would mean that while it might seem to be obvious to you, it's not actually obvious.
Again, in the real world, these sorts of groups are often working together, and support one another. Your gedanken comment is a bad faith argument, and should be seen as such.
Obviously administration / management would have to discuss it at some level to decide if & how to implement it. One would hope it would be done cautiously.
If a company has those groups already? No, you don't get to argue that they're useless or harmful, because that'll hardly go down any road but a bigoted one. One could argue that they aren't being administered properly to achieve their purpose, I suppose, but no you can't argue against their existence.
The statement you're proposing should be considered okay is one that can only come from a bigoted view of the world, one that denies the existence of privilege and institutionalized bigotry in favor of a status quo that, generally speaking, personally benefits the person making the statement. It is not a valid view; rather, it is an ignorant one at best, and an intentionally oppressive one at worst.
People can be ignorant and oppressive all they want at home. But they don't get to bring that nonsense to work and infest the working culture and make everyone around them uncomfortable in the process.
I don't know what you mean by this. I'm not trolling. I don't know what "gedanken" means.
I didn't say that it was a fundamental problem to put the line there, but you can see from your own posts that your 'clear and easy to establish line' is already on the move. In one post we've moved from "willingness to say that nobody's worth is up for discussion" as the line, to "noone can say if they think advocacy groups are a bad idea".
The first I'll agree on 100%, I'm just not so sure about the second.
I was referring to the theoretical comment tbloxham had put up that you responded to. And it means "thought experiment", roughly.
Because the two are linked. These arguments don't happen in a vacuum - as @The Sauce pointed out, in the real world arguments against advocacy very quickly devolve into arguments about identity.
So your line The Sauce would be that someone COULD say "Women in Engineering isn't being structured and run properly, they spend all their money going to conferences to try and do university recruitment, they should be spending their resources on the employees we already have"
or
"Women in Engineering is overwhelmingly catering to the concerns of young women, when they should be focusing on the salary path of women who have been here longer. Their concerns are parental in nature, and affect me too?"
And to be clear, I don't believe that there is any way to structure a 'discussion' where we only let men say one thing or women say another. So can either a man or a woman say those things?
edit - And yes, I have heard multiple people, men and women, say these exact things at my company. So I'm not proposing a pure thought experiment.
That's where you're wrong! Your white male privilege is showing, you might want to tuck that back in...
PS: sorry about genderheteronormalizing you, I shouldn't have said that!
I just think that changing Corporate culture in such a way as voices can be heard is not as trivial as many seem to think. Especially if you want to also listen to say, workers who have concerns about factory line staff conditions, or the hours of the janitorial team.
So your perspective is that only Women can talk about the effectiveness of the Women in Engineering advocacy team? And that any man who attempts to do so on the corporate discussion board should be disciplined?
I was trying to engage in argument ad absurdum. Clearly I failed and the fact that that statement can be taken at face value is depressing. More realistically I think what you just said is corresponds to the current climate and dissenting opinion on the subject of effectiveness of affirmative action in hiring is "nazi-speak"
Um... yes? Every corporate job I've ever been at had a HUGE employee handbook. Its such a common staple of such jobs that its been the butt of jokes for decades. And you have to have one to make sure that employees know what the rules are, because if employees/management break employment laws the company can be held legally liable! This isn't just a matter of what works/doesn't work in terms of managing the culture at a job, its a matter of legal compliance, because guess what! Doing things that are racist/sexist to your employees/coworkers is frequently illegal!
This entire conversation about what companies can and should do is incomplete with talking about the legal protections put in place during the civil rights era, almost all of which that I know have been upheld repeatedly in court. Its not just wrong to be bigoted on a job site, its frequently illegal. The words hostile work environment are the things that haunt HR and Legal's nightmares.
Oh come on now, lets not pretend this is some 'solved problem' from the past where only foolish young tech folk have an issue. Here is the solution that existed in that weighty old 1950's handbook you joked about..
1) Welcome aboard
2) Tacitly, shut the hell up, don't talk about your views. We've done our best to hire people who all think the same, but if you've slipped through the cracks, then shut the hell up.
3) What if someone asks me about my views? Shut the hell up
4) What if I want to express my views? Shut the hell up
5) What if the company does something I don't like? Quit
Not saying its solved in the least, we have tons of work to do to get somewhere decent, but the tech folk in this case aren't disrupting labor laws here through new paradigms of inter-office communication, they're a stunning reminder of how much worse things were when you let open bigots into the culture of your workplace.
Frankly i don't see the problem with the outlined solution. If people spend long enough airing their mental laundry everyone will find something to dislike about each other. Even if everyone's a liberal, someone's gonna be not liberal enough.
And?
Nobody is paying you to air your opinions out everywhere.
If anything this sounds freaking great.
And there are plenty of places where you can still find that solution hard at work. Just not the tech companies, who are trying to encourage their workers to discuss things and thus seem like they are riddled with awful and horrible bigots. When in fact, their level of bigot is exactly the same as every other workplace. They are just stuck with the impossible job of trying to find a way of answering the 'who can say what' question without having that answer be, "NOONE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THIS NONSENSE"
My career in tech is literally about having opinions on things and pointing out stuff that will concern people. You can't divorce tech from the sociopolitical scene.
Depends on the tech but yeah, you absolutely can.
I don't need to worry about sociopolitical crap when I'm plowing through DNS logs or scripting in python.
Tech doesn't want to divorce itself, but it absolutely can.
The problem is that it inherently supports the status quo. If there is a tacit understanding amongst upper management that women are inferior and shouldn't hold management positions, there is no where for the masses to voice their disagreement. Now way for the company to organically change it's viewpoints. You are basically left with workers quitting in protest (not likely to work since people are rarely organized enough), or top down directives from high enough executives with pet ideals.
Your argument is confusing, isn't top down directives from executives with pet ideals exactly what you're advocating? "Voice of the masses" is a nice thought, but unions, political organizations, and any collection of people whatsoever all have leaders. I think we'd all be better off if companies didn't have political viewpoints.
I wasn't really advocating for anything, I was just trying to illustrate the downsides of the "shut the hell up" policy. If you have to rely on a union or political organization to effect change, then you are going to have to wait until the number of people affected is larger (and sometimes significantly larger) than the people who aren't, otherwise the union won't care and the political organization will have no power. If however, there is a place to voice opinions/concerns then it's possible for a small group of individuals to change the minds of the leaders and enact policy changes much sooner.
To take a step back, I am basically arguing that the free flow of ideas usually (but not always) leads better outcomes, at a faster rate, for the disenfranchised. It's unlikely that people will change their minds about something if they never talk about it.
With which I certainly agree. I just think that its impossible to have a free flow of ideas without tolerating at least some bigots coming into the pool. I think that, just like here on the forums, you can't have a useful discussion with new ideas without encountering some ideas that you really really don't like. Anything else, is just always going to turn into 'shut the hell up'
That's impossible, because politics enmeshes everything. (Case in point: Today, the lieutenant governor of Georgia has threatened Delta Airlines with revoking the company's tax credits over Delta cutting ties with the NRA.) Given that it is impossible for companies to be apolitical, we must then push them in the direction we want them to go.
My entire career has been sociopolitically agnostic. There aren't really any implications to writing and interfacing with drivers and implementing protocols
I see, i would counter that change isn't always for the better, the ability of a vocal minority steering corporate policy to cause unintended damage isn't to be underestimated. The free flow of ideas in the social and political spheres is fundamentally different from the workplace. No company (that i know of) operates as direct democracy for a reason.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
There is no such thing as "apolitical".
So the solution to the problem of corporate intervention in politics is further increase of corporate intervention in politics?
And, a lot of these issues aren't classically political issues. Gender etc. You can make a solid argument that companies shouldn't have 'party affiliation' but its hard to say that companies shouldn't have a position on, "Should we give women paid maternity leave" or "Is it OK to hire your secretary because you think she's hot"
... When was that ever not political?
(Note that "the default system doesn't care about this thing" or "I'm comfortable with the default re: this thing" doesn't mean "this thing isn't political.")
Not during the Roman Empire! (Wikipedia quotation.)