> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without complete agreement.

Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage women in STEM. There are hundreds of Women in Tech meetups, scholarships, Womens only courses... yet the numbers have barely budged in more than 10 years. Personally, it looks like in aggregate it will be difficult to get 50/50 representation of women and men in tech. To make it clear, we should definitely support everyone who is in tech, and make it an inclusive environment, but the continued push for 50/50 isn't going to happen so perhaps its not worth the huge money sink it is.

At the last place I worked that opinion was flat out branded "sexist", and if you didn't vocally agree with every women in tech initiative people asked why.

So I would say the ability to speak openly about politics was shut down long ago, and not by the people you think.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice

- Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]

— lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality because it’s too political.

— Women in tech: Nope, let’s not go there, too political.

— Underrepresented minorities in tech: Sorry it’s a pipeline problem, don’t bring politics into this.

In my experience in tech (though only Silicon Valley tech companies, so that's a narrow sample) this the opposite of what is true. Companies are very eager to display how much they support LGBT movements and announce how they'll increase diversity by offering larger hiring bonuses for diverse hires and institute systems of reservations for women and non-Asian PoC. Both the private and public companies I've worked with have been very active in pursuing these goals. And we're not alone Microsoft offers larger bonuses for hiring managers that hire diverse candidates [1], and Intel withholds portions of bonuses unless diversity quotas are not met [2].

1. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di...

2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-hits-a-novel-diversity-ta...

> it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

The reason they are so divisive is because the loud people fall into two categories: 1) people who loudly and constantly complain about these issues and for whom no amount of improvement is enough, and 2) people who think all these problems are greatly exaggerated, part of the liberal culture wars, and find it extremely annoying that anyone would bring it up.

The "silent majority" in these issues are people who say "yeah, sure, it seems fair to allow gay marriage, why not" and "let's see what we can do to improve female and minority representation but let's not jump to the conclusion that anyone in particular is to blame".

The hallmarks of being in this silent majority are:

- being generally well-intentioned

- supportive of incremental, common-sense solutions that are not zero-sum

- dislikes intense conflict and blame games

- does not take a view of the issue that makes one group of people the "heroes/victims" and another the "villains"

So, if you hear the proposal "let's allow politics at work", who do you think is actually going to speak up? That's right, the loud and annoying people that you can hear anytime by turning on the news. Ideologues for whom compromise and assuming good faith in your opponents is anathema. No thanks.

Others made good general and specific arguments for avoiding such discussions at a workplace, but I'd like to offer a thought experiment that can help understand it better.

Imagine yourself noticing that people around you start to reveal themselves as strongly religious - and not in your religion, if you subscribe to any - and very much into proselytizing. Not a day goes by without someone approaching you to convince you to believe in their god. Even when not explicitly preaching, they keep invalidating everything you worry about. "You fret about your 401k as if you were to use it. Armageddon is coming soon, and if you believe in God, you'll get the best 401k there is!". "I wonder how can you spend so much time on that hobby, when so many people still haven't heard the Good News." "Yes, this disease is a tragedy, but God's Kingdom will soon cure it, and all others too. These doctors are wasting their time." "You're depressed because of climate change? Don't be! God won't let anything happen to Earth!"

At some point you would really start to prefer people to stop talking any and all religion at workplace.

This isn't an arbitrary example. As a teenager, I've been that preacher. People who do that believe strongly in what they talk about - it's literally the most important issue in their lives. The conflict stems from failure to understand that just because they care about an issue, doesn't mean everyone else does too. Failing to recognize that, doubling down on efforts to make others pay attention, breeds contempt, resentment, and otherwise achieves the exact opposite of what's intended.

I've seen both sides of this, and the way the topics you mention are approached today very much reminds me of such religious groups. There's a time and place for all discussions, but they need to happen in contexts where all parties are at least a little receptive, and not by performing DDOS on someone's attention, or invalidating everything they care about that's not related to the important issue.

> I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work.

Having a discussion is hard. While you come to this well-intended, participants bring their own life experiences and hardships. They may not agree on the starting point of the conversation:

How is "marginalized' and "privileged" is defined? Some may not take that perspective on the above issues, and people with these characteristics may not consider themselves part of the "group", they may believe overcoming hardship by the way of grit and merit being the ideal.

People with these characteristics who don't consider themselves part of the "groups" may find the rhetoric being used patronizing, they don't want to be treated special or different, they want to be recognized for their contribution to the collective. That's where role models come from, to some.

They may disagree on what "empathy" means. Casting a group as marginalized draws broad strokes about others, because who isn't marginalized? How could someone know how someone else feels or what they have faced in life? If you don't like having your hardship belittled, why potentially do the same thing to others? We all have feelings and bring our unique stories and experiences to the table.

The definition of "inclusiveness". To some, the qualm isn't the subject, it's how some people who cite these groups disregard the larger collective or group they're apart of (e.g. their team, their workplace).

The definition of "discussion". There are stories of people being fired for merely citing agreed upon academic social/psychological research. Some sense viewpoint discrimination - fear of being sanctioned for stating their perspective - or to even say they're hurt by the topic's inferences.

Why do you think LGBT rights (first item on your list) is something that should be discussed at work? There are laws against discrimination and companies have to comply, but I don't see a good reason why this kind of topic should be addressed at the workplace. Some employees are uncomfortable with discussing politics at work as it may create unnecessary tensions.

Those who like debating about politics can always gather after work.

I don't see what it has to with a level of privileges.

That being said, I also don't like being told what type of conversations I'm allowed to have.

>> Underrepresented minorities in tech

>> If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.

I'm a underrepresented minority in just about everywhere but tech, yet you draw the line "at tech" for some arbitrary reason (as if my place of work or work opportunities defines who I am).

This is why I disagree. Someone is making arbitrary groups of underrepresentation and/or minority harm who have no real claim over said power.

Also:

>> I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege...

I am one of said underrepresented minorities "not in tech" (I also don't work in tech anymore, so I guess I'm in the clear now) who have no interest or desire to talk politics at work. Not when I was poor and drawing on EBT/SNAP/WIC and not when I've been well off, or anywhere in between.

There is no absolute reason you have to be privileged to not want to talk about politics at work. This is a majorly false assumption.

Take underrepresented minorities in tech (presuming yours is a tech workplace): You can work on that in a "nonpolitical" way. (It is, as you say, still politics, in a way, but it's not being done like it's politics.) You say, "You know that Android developer position that's been open for four months, that we can't find anyone for? I wonder if there might be some non-traditional candidates that would fit that role. How could we go about finding them?" That's done in a non-political way. The emphasis is on "this could help the organization".

Or, you could address the same issue by saying "We need to pressure HR to require them to present at least one under-represented minority candidate for each open position." That's a much more political approach to the same problem.

On a more general level:

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

Sure. But don't do the discussing at work. That's not what work is for. (The exception is when the problem does affect work. If the workplace is trans-hostile, say, you need to address that at work, and there's probably not a non-political way to do it.)

Because tech culture has skewed so insanely towards the authoritarian left that any challenge to the orthodoxy your post suggests is immediately weaponized. There is simply no way to honestly discuss the points you bring up without putting one's reputation and eventually career in danger. The Damore memo is a perfect example of this. The only safe thing to do in our culture right now is virtue signal and nod along with the rest of the mob. Perhaps one day the madness will pass and we will be able to again ask hard questions in public and try, together, to get to the bottom of things. Until then, lets just not talk about these things, so that a great many of us are not forced to wallow in hypocrisy for the majority of our waking hours.

I don't understand how any of these conversations(besides the first one, in perhaps an HR meeting), could possibly be topical at work? The company isn't paying me to preach my political agenda.

Have you also considered that while a "marginalized" person might be keenly aware, researched and emotionally invested in discussing these things, a "privileged" person may feel ambushed and distracted by these questions while they are trying to focus on work? The language and obvious expectation in many of these "discussions" is a with-us-or-against-us recruitment for the agenda, often backed up with moral blackmail(e.g. "we're fighting for our lives here and you won't even help us"). At work we try to afford each other respect, politeness and professional courtesy, but from what I've seen, these "discussions" are anything but.

I don't think imposing oneself onto other people like these "discussions" do is effective. Surely you've seen the hyperbole, the aggression and vitriol that goes with them and can imagine how it seems to someone who isn't invested in the agendas? After all you ask to not be downvoted even in your meta-discussion about the topics, what about when discussing the topics themselves?

I agree with the progressive arguments - that you can't just say "no politics in X", that politics are inherent to what you do. What I absolutely disagree with is the tactics employed, and I think they are not just ineffective, they have a negative effect on engagement. People may want to help, but they don't want to feel like they're being coerced to. People may want to discuss, but they want to do it on their terms. People may want to listen, but they don't want to be lectured.

I think this is why there is such a strong push to disengage and ignore these problems - and I agree that they are problems that need discussion and need solutions. The in-your-face unapologetic advocacy, the constant motte-and-bailey argumentation, the extreme emotional reactions to any dissention, the preaching from a perceived moral high ground - these are not a conductive environment for changing minds.

So I agree with you. I'll go even further. It's bullshit to say "no politics at work", and it's hypocritical. I will keep supporting that policy, because it's the lesser of two evils, because I think progressive strategy is counter-productive and a recipe for disaster. I'm happy to have any of these discussions, on a neutral, preferrably anonymous forum, where there is enough distance that perhaps we could have a productive argument. Work is none of those things.

As a wealthy white male, I couldn't agree more. For people like me, politics is a choice. But as my female friends of color often remind me, politics is not a choice for them.

I absolutely agree that politics is everywhere and picking and choosing which type of political discussion is allowed is itself political, (I’ve also never been convinced that URMs in tech isn’t primarily a pipeline problem but ofc wouldn’t want to shut off debate on that)

I guess the difference in what is allowed is between “positive” vs “negative” politics. By that I don’t mean positive politics is absolutely the best whereas negative is stuff I disagree with, but saying “We want to empower marginalized groups” is positive and doesn’t bother that much people who.. don’t think it’s necessary, because it’s not a political position you can disagreee with per se. But negative politics might be something like “we are going to ban X because we find it abhorrent” whether X is racist stuff, antivaxx stuff, or LGBTQ stuff you are directly prohibiting beliefs.

Note that I don’t necessarily agree that positive vs negative (or, un-disagreeable vs actively disagreeing) is exactly where you should draw the line where politics is allowed, but I’m just trying to rationalize and say maybe it’s not inherently hypocritical.

Have you seen problems with people in any of these groups unable to talk about these issues? I had a project owner once who had a manager not get along with her at all.

"Is it because you're a woman," I asked her. She said, "No, I don't think that's it." .. and he did get along with another woman; one of our Functional Analysis.

Sometimes person x doesn't like person y because .. they don't like person y. They don't think person y is effective or useful or good at his or her job, not because y is an Asian, or woman, or trans or Mexican. ... or it could be and the person is a victim of bigotry and doesn't know it.

I know it's anecdotal, but I've worked in a lot of different places, in 3 different countries, and in my experience, I think it's the opposite. I think people are afraid to say anything remotely non-left or criticize any minority employee or say anything that could remotely be inferred as problematic.

By "discussing" do you mean a bunch of people getting together to agree with each other on these topics? I ask that because I can't see a socially well-adjusted person openly opposing any of these ideas. This is the curse of political correctness. The topics you list carry the weight of such moral certainty in most peoples' minds that opposing someone's opinion on the topic will immediately trigger a negative reaction. This makes it "political"

For example, if someone at an office in downtown SF openly announced they didn't want to work with an lgbt person, would their coworkers look at that person and be like "Aww, poor thing, lets discuss this with him or her so I can understand his way of thinking" or would they just think "bigot! I knew something was off about him"

Btw, I think these are all important topics and I agree that we should be trying to educate people via discussion and empathy.

Here's my 2c.

Why do you need to discuss anything at all? Work is where I work. I'm being paid for my time and professional expertise, not my opinion on anything else. I don't get why would I be allowed to spend that time on conversations not related to work.

Being allowed to have some short talk, maybe discuss something quickly, like a game last night or something, is and should be more of a nicety. Nobody gonna stop me from doing this. But I don't see why we should be allowed spending long periods of time discussing other important issues.

There are meetups, we can get together after work, go for a beer etc... And have those conversations in our personal time if we deem it important. But not during business hours.

Work is for work. So banning conversations is reasonable imo, and not only political.

The problem is getting hooked on politics that doesn't actually affect you personally, other people on your team, or how you do your job. Just like we do on Hacker News, you can have employees reading about stuff happening elsewhere in the world, commenting on it, and getting upset over it.

At large companies, this can include things going on in different parts of the company. You don't know them or how they work, but you start taking it personally because it affects the company's reputation.

I'm retired, but if I went back to work, I would want to pay more attention to helping my co-workers and accomplishing the team's mission (which of course involves some politics) and pay a lot less attention to other, less relevant politics.

You can say it's privileged to want to shut out the world and concentrate on improving one thing, but I prefer to think of this as an aspirational goal.

Absolutely right. Saying “don’t talk politics at work” seems to assume that politics is something that goes on on the outside. A stream of news on divisive topics.

In reality, politics happens everywhere and you can’t really avoid talking about it.

“Don’t talk about politics not relevant for the workplace” could be reasonable (most poltics is after all not related).

If it were the case that these things were never mentioned, and anytime they were brought up, people were silenced, I'd totally agree with your point here.

But we're getting wall-to-wall coverage of basically those exact issues, all the time, with only one point of view endorsed. It's uninclusive to anybody who thinks differently in terms of methods or priorities.

Preach. Politics being silenced in a work place is so short sighted and dumb. We should strive for a world where disagreement is not the end of a good working relationship, not one where crypto-politics is the new normal in the workplace. Because if you genuinely belief people want try to identify who is and isn't racist in a "conforming" way then you're delusional.

These are the _only_ kinds of politics that are acceptable in many workplaces. We have diversity departments and minority groups and women's groups and consultancies and recruiting agencies advertise their ability to find minority candidates. People are afraid to publicly question these policies.

> Education: Too political to discuss the fact that schools are trying to balance their admissions in the face of very uneven opportunities amongst their applicants. Never mind the fact that school admissions were never fair to begin with.

Women outnumber men in universities and pretty much throughout the pipeline (EDIT: to clarify, I mean the broader education pipeline, not the tech subset thereof). This whole post is so disconnected from my experience and any experience I've heard about that it feels like it's from inverse universe.

In your "neutral" comment, you're already taking a stance on the topics and automatically defining marginalized and privileged. People are far more complicated than that.

That's why these discussions aren't a good idea. Companies are paying you for productivity and ensuring a calm environment is important. You have plenty of opportunity to discuss and create all the change you want elsewhere.

It seems to me what you want is not to discuss politics at work but dictate politics are work. Unless you are perfectly okay with your co worker coming in with a MAGA hat every day and explaining to you why they think LGTB people don't deserve the right to marry.

I’ll take a shot at it, with the caveat that I too would like to not be downvoted into oblivion xD.

So discussion for the sake of discussion is not exactly what I would see as a high need for the workplace. If you are trying to address these types of issues in a way that has business impacts, I think you’re outside of what I would term as “discussing politics”. From that list — discussing inclusivity initiatives has clear workplace benefits. Discussing a highly charged political event involving lgbt issues is adjacent to that, and has a highly likelihood of being inflammatory, and isn’t directly correlated to anything actually going on with the business.

I think that framework would also help everyone stay on point. You don’t go to work to solve the worlds ills. But you can address some of the ills where it’s actually impacting your life at work. Further, it should prevent backlashes from other groups, and help humanize by getting out of ephemeral arguments and getting into discussions about building a collective environment where the business thrives and everyone is equally entitled to feel safe at work. Making work a better place — good. Making work look like Crossfire — bad.

Well, the problem is that practically anything can be "politics", I don't think it's a useful way to frame thinking around what you can or can't say at work.

Generally though, when people say something is "politics" what it means is it comes down to a value judgement, rather than there being a middle solution, or the issue is too complicated for there to be a general consensus. As an example that probably wouldn't come up at work, consider the abortion question. If you're of the fundamentalist religious sort, your values practically demand you believe that aborting a baby is wrong. If you're not, then it's a lot more grey. Something like that is a value issue, there isn't really a compromise that doesn't involve one side changing fundamental beliefs about the world and the universe.

To answer your specific issues though:

- lgbt: not relevant. It's illegal to discriminate on that, so... either your company is following the law or it's not. Also: nobody needs to know. It doesn't need to be discussed, it just either needs to be litigated or not litigated. But no smart company wants their employees talking about their personal views on that because that could be a huge liability if someone has intolerant personal views (even if they don't apply them professionally).

- Women in tech & underrepresented minorities: ... well it IS a pipeline problem. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of companies would love to have more diversity, but you can only hire the people that apply. I see a lot of the SJ types make offices miserable hammering on this stuff that frequently can't be fixed locally. I mean yeah, if someone is scaring away people, then address that behavior, but that's more of a "having respectful competent management" issue.

- Education - Never really heard of this being an issue that isn't allowed to be talked about. I don't think anyone would really get upset about this though.

Also, as others have mentioned... a lot of times when people say these issues should be "discussed" they don't really mean that. The far left generally hates "discussion" on their pet issues if there's even a hint of not towing the party line, and it quickly escalates into people being called racist. So frequently, avoiding "politics" is just saying, "please pick your fight somewhere else"

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.

Around 40% of voters support Donald Trump in some way. Are you sure you really want to discuss politics at work? Do you want someone wearing a MAGA hat explaining to everyone why immigration is too high?

Because that is what real political discussion will involve. In fact, I suspect many people who are advocating for politics at work, actually only want people whom they agree with to be able discuss policies that they generally agree with.

So for me, as long as the company does not prevent political activity outside of work, I am happy to have work be a neutral zone where people from opposite ends of the political spectrum can just work together on how to make money for the business.

I don't mean to be inflammatory but you are subjectively biasing the subject of "political discussions at work" out of concern for marginalized groups. In my experience this bias often has the opposite of intended result by providing what might be a marginalized group into a specialized class deserving extra-special care instead of equality, which eventually results in entitlement and possibly resentment.

If you want to protect marginalized groups write and enforce policies that focus on inclusion, equality, and anti-discrimination regardless of politics or preference. In other words: when nobody is special everybody is equally special.

To me "don't discuss politics at work" would apply to management as well and imply that people should only be hired or fired for performance based reasons and not because of their sexuality, race, or gender.

Nobody is saying "don't get involved in politics", just "don't bring it to work".

To me, there is a big difference between discussing politics and preaching politics. I do want my company to tell me not to discuss politics with coworkers who are willing to discuss it. Not dicussing politics, especially with people who have a difference of opinion, is what leads to rage filled echochambers that are so common now. However, I do not want people preaching politics unsolicited at work though.

I think politics being a taboo topic is an attempt to keep workers in order and ignore any political or environmental impact that their own company might have.

I would think the most influential voice in these cases would be managers/leadership adding a provision to company guidelines and the like, in order to attempt to cultivate and safeguard a productive day to day culture.

But this particular perspective isn't necessarily a function of their 'privilege' in the sense of cultural capital and an advantageous background etc, but just of their own self-interest in this exact moment.

> I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work.

My counterpoint would be that it takes a certain level of privilege to be able to discuss politics at work. Or, to be more specific, anything other than the job you are working. (And, of course, the things your employer can't legally stop you from talking about.)

Or, to put my point more specifically: Almost all of the discussion I have seen ignores that most of these problems are, at their root, class based problems. I suppose what is more saddening from a humanist standpoint is the way the extremists on both sides wish to eventually put the other under their heel.

That said, touching specifically on my personal experiences in Education, the issue is that any Metric based solution will likely run up against Goodhart's law sooner or later. While what I witnessed in Academia was probably far from the norm, I doubt it was rare.

I suspect very strongly that each of your 'marginalised' groups would have much greater luck discussing politics at works than its opposite. I can't imagine any tech company these days allowing folks to use work time to support the traditional view of marriage, traditional gender roles or old-fashioned racial views (that last, in particular, is completely unimaginable — and that's a really good thing!).

I think the privilege right now belongs to those in those 'marginalised' groups, who have the privilege to advocate for their views.

"I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work." Can you clarify the meaning? As it reads to me, if one belongs to a marginalized group, one would suffer disproportionately from making such a statement. I'm not quite clear on the semantics I suppose.

On another note, anecdotally, how many people have had a work relationship or project suffer due to discussion of politics at work, or alternatively, improve? (This being a reason not to discuss, it would be beneficial to sample for how likely it is to occur negatively.)

Yeah, taken in the most widely possible way, politics is anything that you say or do outside of your family - so it becomes the absurd injunction of "no communication or work allowed at work"...

These kinds of policy always scare me because people don't realize how prevalent politics are in our daily lives, even as devs. Dark patterns? Ad tracking? Hell, even something as simple as a dropdown for sex/gender is political. With these kinds of policies, you're forced not to think, just execute.

Completely agree. Besides which it's a hopelessly medieval master-slave attitude to employment - the notion that they're not paying for time, expertise or work, but rather taking temporary ownership of subjects. I would have nothing to do with Gitlab knowing this, as employee or customer.

In all of your example topics (and others), there are clear sets of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" opinions, and if you share an unacceptable one, you face all kinds of potential work-impacting repercussions ranging from "sad faces" to getting fired.

In the spirit of imagining you're in the out group: Imagine you're a Trump supporter and work in a big-name SV tech company. Someone asks you at work "Boy, Trump is a bonehead, isn't he?" Well, now you're put in a no-win situation: You have to either lie about your beliefs to keep everyone happy, share your beliefs and risk getting fired or some other type of discipline. Or, you'll need to dodge by saying "I don't think it's appropriate to talk about politics at work," leaving it to the asker to speculate about your views.

Remember "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" At the end where most people are aliens and the few real humans have to put on a fake persona in order to walk around freely? If you slipped up and dropped the persona for an instant they'd all point at you and make that alien noise, and you're done for! That must be what it feels like to hold unorthodox political views working in a Silicon Valley tech company these days.

Let's not forget office politics. In that case, you basically can't discuss anything at work.

> If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.

I don't disagree, but I'm "privileged" and want to keep it that way for me and my posterity. Not ashamed in the least because its not bad to be privileged.

It takes a huge amount of privilege to be able to talk about politics at work. The despised minorities, like zoophiles, would not only be fired but arrested with the whole office cheering that on.

Something I find pretty odd given that fucking a cow is a lot better for the cow than eating it.

I'll openly admit that I don't have an answer for the deeper issue here (Gitlab selling software to evil customers), in terms of specifically politics:

I don't think politics should be discussed at workplaces that do not participate in political systems in an official capacity (lobbying, PACs etc.). If your employer engages in politics, then that should be an allowed topic and/or other accommodations should be made for employees who regard their employer as morally reprehensible.

> LGBTQ+, women in tech, underrepresented minorities in tech, education

I don't consider these political in any way. Employees should be able to talk about how the company can improve its own diversity policies, irrespective of what the government decides what to do. The line of thinking here is similar to "separating church and state," and also that it's easier to change company policy: changing company policy provides quick and "easy" improvements to social progress, while the longer and more difficult fights at the political level occur.