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370 points sillypuddy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 1.285s | source
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twblalock ◴[] No.16408620[source]
I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views.

Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than liberals are in other parts of the country.

It seems to me, from personal experience, that the people who feel alienated are the ones who bring politics to work in an overbearing contrarian way, seeking to cause offense under the guise of "debate," and then pretend to be shocked when people don't want to put up with their shit. Work is for working; it's not a debating society, and especially not when the debating is done in bad faith.

Peter Thiel has been more politically vocal than most, and he is vocal about things he knows to be unpopular. He can't be surprised that people who disagree with him are also vocal. If he can't take the heat he should stay out of the kitchen.

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shard972 ◴[] No.16409302[source]
I notice you didn't include Alt-right in there which at the moment seem to be political ideology on a big rise and in my personal opinion, I think it's generally less radical than communism.

Consider though that one thing the alt-right will never accept is that racial diversity in the workplace is a net positive in itself. Whether it's true or false, it's just apart of the parcel.

Now how would someone like that feel comfortable in a workplace that tells you that being against racial diversity is racist? You don't even have to bring up your opinions, it's beamed to you on a regular basis through meetings, announcements and slack conversations.

I personally had a similar experience recently at my job in Australia in relation to the vote on gay marriage. Even though I am myself gay and have a boyfriend, I was in favour of a plebiscite.

This was in complete opposition to rest of the company, who went so far as to joint write a letter with other companies demanding the government not allow a plebiscite and to instead just pass gay marriage without a public vote.

There was alot of implication around that anyone who disagreed wanted the vote for a chance to vote no and more importantly, to allow for an advertising campaign against gays to intimidate the community as a whole.

People made the claim around myself that obvious the reason people want the plebecide is because they are homophobic racist rednecks.

I don't know maybe i'm just rambling at this point but It's just not nice to work in an environment where you have to listen to people trash your character based on your beliefs and you can't say anything otherwise your "discussing politics" and "rocking the boat".

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andybak ◴[] No.16409411[source]
> being against racial diversity is racist

That made me stop and think. I'm trying to imagine a picture of someone who is against racial diversity but isn't remotely racist and whilst I agree there's no logical contradiction inherent in that position I do struggle to think of a realistic portrait of such an individual.

I might be missing something here but can you spell out this position for me in a bit more detail? I'm genuinely interested as I wonder if my definition of "racist" or my definition of "against racial diversity" might be different to yours.

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1. csense ◴[] No.16409744[source]
> someone who is against racial diversity but isn't remotely racist

One way I see this working is a person who believes in individualistic meritocracy with libertarian leanings. In this post I'll try to lay out the point of view of hypothetical person (so not everything I say here represents my own personal beliefs or something I personally agree with).

First, the meritocracy part: Such a person would say that all workplace decisions should be made on a totally race-blind basis: "I don't care what race the people at my startup are, what matters is if they can code (if that's what their job title entails)." If it so happens that our society has relatively few people of X race who can code at the required skill level, then as an inevitable consequence on average startups will employ few people of race X, because there simply aren't enough skilled programmers of race X to go around.

Second, the libertarian part: Sure, it's indisputable that there are a ton of social and economic issues that people of race X encounter at home, in their communities, in school, that end up causing fewer young adults of race X to be coders. But it's certainly not this startup's job to try to fix the upbringing of employees that has resulted in their inadequacy to supply the needed labor. This startup's job is more along the lines of, if a person can't do the work the company needs them to do, they shouldn't be working here.

It's not even the government's job to fix this. When it tries, it only succeeds at wasting resources, turning the people it's trying to help into permanent dependents of the taxpayers, and poisoning the reputation of the actual high achievers of race X because everyone who sees them now assumes "Oh, he/she can't possibly actually be able to do his/her job, the only reason he/she's in that position is there's a quota of minorities to fill so the company doesn't get called out / boycotted / sued for insufficient diversity..."

Third, the individualistic part: Do we really want a society based on the group identities of different races? That seems like a recipe for perpetuating our race problems, not fixing them. If you enshrine "racial diversity" into any kind of official or quasi-official policy, then by definition the policy is treating under-represented races favorably and over-represented races unfavorably.