Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money.

They may tolerate (and even enjoy) your personal quirks and causes, but they are paying you to get things done that they don't have the time or skill to do themselves.

[Edit: Accidentally left ou a letter]

This is the kind of insanely exaggerated catastrophizing I never want to debate in the workplace.

I have work to do!

Wow. Most businesses are started with neither. But with the sweat off the back of the founders.

When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??

Although my immediate reaction to the Pyramid of Hate [1] was a similar jump to, “is this saying jokes will lead to genocide?!”, ultimately I don’t think that was the intent. People seemed to have interpreted it in different ways, specifically “You’re telling me I support genocide if I think someone’s name is funny?”

I think the people who brought the pyramid into the equation were pointing out how individual behaviors, in aggregate, lead to greater possibilities of increased oppression. I think it’s a simplification to say that they lead to genocide, because those sorts of results are dependent on many other factors (ie economic problems, political instability, etc). When combined, these factors result in greater oppression.

More apropos to the conversation regarding workplaces, I would consider them evolving into institutions where certain cultural norms are upheld. The more institutions within which a certain cultural norm is respected by individuals, the more other people/institutions in power have leeway to move in certain directions.

[1] https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/pyramid-of...

This is a really disingenuous false equivalency.

First, you're implying that all opinions are equally valid. That is... I'll be polite and simply call it nonsense. "Gay people should have rights" and "gay people shouldn't have rights" are not opinions of equal value, and it's not "eating your cake and having it too" to say that the latter opinion is unwelcome.

Second, there's a very clear relationship between the "left" topics you mentioned and the workplace; not so for the "right" topics. You can make an argument that abortion/contraceptives are work-related because of employer-sponsored healthcare (I think it's clear that employees should keep their noses out of each other's private medical matters, but... okay), but the rest are totally ancillary. If you want a "no politics at work" rule, then you wouldn't have conversations about guns (unless it's to advocate that your employer allow guns at work), you wouldn't have conversations about immigration policy (unless it's to advocate that your employer stop sponsoring visas), and you wouldn't have conversations about furries (unless it's to advocate that your employer ban furry sex in the workplace... which I don't think is a problem that anyone has). You know what you would still have? Conversations about discrimination in the workplace. Conversations about whether your employer's political dollars are funding violence. Conversations about whether your recruitment policies are unconsciously biased.

> To some people (I am not one of them at all, but I understand the argument) any abortion is literally murder, and it as a sincerely held belief as the recent movements like BLM and #metoo were.

This as well as other parts of your comment seem to imply that you believe the sincerity or intensity with which one holds a particular belief is one of the most important factors in the merits of that belief. I personally do not think this is the case.

Isn’t ending workplace sexism/racism a net benefit to the workplace? How are divisive, hate driven policies related?

Well.

You obviously have the freedom to not air your views.

You have at-will employment in a lot of the US, so employers can fire you for any reason (except for some exceptions), or without a reason . I don't think this is a good thing, but there you are. This is a freedom for the employer.

If you have a right to a platform (i.e to not be deplatformed), that obviously limits the freedom of the ones supplying the platform.

So all of those points are actually freedoms, just not for the one being fired or deplatformed (the first point, freedom to be quiet, is obviously a freedom for the one keeping quiet. Maybe you meant something else?).

I think on an individual level we should be “blind” to race but when it comes to solving some of the big problems of society we have to recognize the role that racism plays in those problems and

"Blind to race" claims often go along with smugly ignoring systemic racism in society and acting like it's a solved problem because a black man was elected President.

It's surely a firable offense, but part of me is so tempted to give a dark-skin-tone thumbs up in Slack as a white guy.

It literally isn’t. The phrase “protected class” has a specific legal definition in the United States. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group#United_State...

Here's the best I could find... I was a little bewildered by this, TBH. I thought, as long as your political beliefs didn't cause a distraction at work to yourself or others, you were safe from being fired. Guess I was wrong. At least on a federal level. Different states have different rules:

https://sanfordheisler.com/can-you-be-fired-for-your-politic...

What if they have extreme political views? Are you allowed to wear KKK robes to work?