GitLab Won't Exclude Customers On Moral Grounds, Says That Employees Should Not Discuss Politics At Work (theregister.co.uk) 175
GitLab, a San-Francisco provider of hosted git software, recently changed its company handbook to declare that it won't ban potential customers on "moral/value grounds," and that employees should not discuss politics at work. The Register reports: The policy addition, created by co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij and implemented as a git pull request, was merged (with no approval required) about two weeks ago. It was proposed to clarify that GitLab is committed to doing business with "customers with values that are incompatible with our own values." Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some circumstances. While workers have no constitutional speech protection in the context of their employment, federal labor law requires that employees be allowed to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment and possible unlawful conduct like harassment, discrimination, and safety violations.
But it's perhaps understandable given how, over the past few years, workers in the tech industry have become more vocal in objecting to business deals with entities deemed to be immoral or work that conflicts with declared or presumed values. Sijbrandij amended his company's handbook to state: "We do not discuss politics in the workplace and decisions about what customer to serve might get political." And what reason does Sijbrandij's pull request provide to support this position? It says, "Efficiency is one of our values and vetting customers is time consuming and potentially distracting."
But it's perhaps understandable given how, over the past few years, workers in the tech industry have become more vocal in objecting to business deals with entities deemed to be immoral or work that conflicts with declared or presumed values. Sijbrandij amended his company's handbook to state: "We do not discuss politics in the workplace and decisions about what customer to serve might get political." And what reason does Sijbrandij's pull request provide to support this position? It says, "Efficiency is one of our values and vetting customers is time consuming and potentially distracting."
Wedding cakes (Score:3, Interesting)
The outrage Thomas Claburn expresses in this article reminds me of the business that refused to sell wedding cakes to homosexuals because it conflicted with their values.
Isn't this the opposite? (Score:5, Interesting)
In that case, a small business opted to not sell to some people works of art for subjects they did not agree with. In the end they won, for who can say someone should be compelled by others to perform art?
In this case the business is saying the opposite - they are saying, we choose to do business with anyone, even if employees or other customers disagree with them. So this is a case where others might seek to STOP the business from performing work, instead of the business being allowed to choose who to work with.
Re:Isn't this the opposite? (Score:4, Insightful)
So they choose to behave exactly the way lawyers are required to behave, as are judges and even the jury. The list goes on, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers (do we trust them the most because by law they are required to behaver properly on the job).
News at 11 a company is behaving in a professional manner and not a socio-political manner, that is for the professional SJWs out there, those freaks who profit by faking activism, they don't give a fuck about the policy, it is all about them, their publicity, their pseudo celebrity, their access to control and manipulate and abuse and abandon potential sex partners and of course about their income generating power, as they idle and party at the expense and suffering of others (now funded by corporate main stream media, the deep state and the shadow government).
This idiotic stuff is nonsense in your face insanity, so much so, LOOK PROOF, a company behaves PROFESSIONALLY and it is seen as fucking unusual, what the fuck is wrong with you people (talk about victims of modern psychologically manipulative marketing).
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Only a few goods and services have that restrictions, basically things that are generic and publicly available.
Buying a burger is generic. Buying lumber is generic. Buying twelve dozen buns for an event is generic. Creating a custom peice of artwork as a custom designed and custom decorated cake is not, it is protected. Creating new music arrangements with new words is not generic, it is protected.
Providing data warehousing is usually generic. GitLab services probably must be available to all, up until clie
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Re:Isn't this the opposite? (Score:5, Insightful)
>"News at 11 a company is behaving in a professional manner and not a socio-political manner,"
Exactly. This has always been the NORM for anywhere I have ever worked. At work, we may not wear any clothing or anything that has any type of political, religious, or organizational logo or message or symbol or post anything of such. We are not supposed to discuss politics or such on company time, we are completely neutral about who we hire and who we serve, and the company has no political or "activist" stance on anything. This is the way business is supposed to be run.
What a concept. It is, indeed, called being PROFESSIONAL.
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>"What are you are describing are cases where ONE set of politics is acceptable, and everyone else has to be quiet otherwise they are 'disruptive'."
That is nonsense. Ours is not a monoculture at all. We have over 400 employees from every walk of life, every religion, every political affiliation, both sexes, all races, people for whom English is not their native language, all incomes. We hire people based on what they can do and how they work, not who they are or what personal beliefs they hold. When
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Has no company you ever worked for supported a charity?
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The fucking topic is not as black and white as you make it out to be.
I don't think employee's has any fucking right to tell a business how to conduct themselves. Get another job if they don't like how the company they work for does business. But WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU to say what a business can and can not do. Unless people are physically harmed or restricted by regulations. Your opinion me
Re: Isn't this the opposite? (Score:2)
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The problem is the definition of "morals". It's such an elastic term nowadays that it lost all meaning.
No matter what one does, their action could and will be interpreted as "immoral" by that or another nutjob out there.
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Different morals != no morals (Score:5, Insightful)
A company that doesn't consider morals has no morals.
What if their morals are that they should not refuse to serve people who think differently from them? It seems to be based on the same moral principle that it is better to have freedom of speech, with the risk that people use it for immoral purposes, than it is to allow governments to have the power to restrict what we can say because that can lead to tyranny. That might be a different moral stance to what you would prefer but that does not mean it is without morals.
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Thoughts are not actions, so you have just changed the entire subject.
No, I have not changed the subject I am making a very relevant point that just because you disagree with someone else's moral code does not mean that they have no moral code.
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Wrong. A company that doesn't consider morals hasno morals.
That's fine, you can believe what you want, so just don't do business with them. But I beg you, take your activism elsewhere and let the professionals actually get shit done. OK? Companies don't make the rules. Repeat after me. Companies. Do. Not. Make. The. Rules.
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Repeat after me. I am floating on a cloud above a beautiful mountain stream. I am floating on a cloud above a beautiful mountain stream. Repeat that several more times then look down. Did you fall and get soaked?
You must not live in the US, or you lack an understanding of how it works here. It's called a corporatocracy (sic?) for a reason.
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True professionals don't do what they do solely for the money. They do what they are good at and enjoy doing. They do what lets them go home at the end of the day and sleep soundly knowing they added value to the business domain and to society. If you go to a job every day where they violate your core ethics but you get paid well then you aren't a ""professional", you are a fool.
I'm sorry, you don't get to take your feelings then define the world as such. The very definition of a professional is to make money through your profession:
adjective
1.
relating to or connected with a profession.
"young professional people"
Similar:
white-collar
executive
nonmanual
Opposite:
manual
2.
engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
"a professional boxer"
Similar:
paid
salaried
nonamateur
full-time
Opposite:
amateur
noun
a person engaged or qualified in a profession.
"professionals such as lawyers and surveyors"
Similar:
white-collar worker
professional worker
office worker
*Your* definition may be different, but don't be surprised when I laugh at you for trying to impose it on me.
For the record, no I don't live in the US; I'm north of you. And companies don't make the rules, period. You get that impression because politicians are bought up and push laws that favor corporations, but at the end of the day, the politicians a
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This, just imagine GitLab's statements coming from iBM in the '30s.
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You suggest a false dichotomy between mechanistic amorality and oppression by cultural hegemony in business. We know from history that it's not true, and that mechanistic amorality is a recipe for helping the Nazis organize the holocaust with IBM computers.
It's not OK to help people to do terrible things just because you're being paid.
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This is a bit of revisionism, IBM was part of a minority of companies willing to sell to the Nazis while most participated in a boycott, in fact the machines were not technically sold but leased, and IBM's subsidiary provided service, parts and supplies throughout the war, while the death camps were operating, sometimes even on-site at the death camps. And it really shouldn't come as a surprise that a nasty fascist regime of white nationalists might engage in genocide.
Re:Isn't this the opposite? (Score:5, Informative)
Let's be clear on that wedding cake incident. The business did not refuse to do business with them. They refused to make a custom "gay" wedding cake, but would sell them a generic wedding cake. They also offered to refer them to bakeries that would not have issues with the custom request.
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But... but... simplification and outrage! What about those two!
Re:Isn't this the opposite? (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine is an artist for, let's call it, erotic art. And he's fairly good at it. But he doesn't draw you any weird fetish you may have, and frankly, some of them are pretty ... weird.
The reason isn't even that he thinks it's "gross" or "indecent" but simply that he doesn't get what's erotic about it and that he rejects work of that kind because he's pretty sure he could not capture the idea in a way that pleases the client. Simply because he does not understand the eroticism about it.
Not always is refusal to do something based on "yuck". Sometimes it's just that you can't do it properly.
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Not always is refusal to do something based on "yuck". Sometimes it's just that you can't do it properly.
Who cares if it is based on "yuck"?
I'm a sculptor, and I don't want to sculpt something out of dog feces, not even if I have dandy work gloves available. Because yuck. So what? Why should I have to?
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The baker in question did not refuse to do business with gays. He refused to be complicit in a gay wedding.
Re:Wedding cakes (Score:5, Informative)
A Jewish baker being forced to decorate a cake with Nazi symbols or messages.
An African American baker being forced to decorate a cake with Klan symbols or messages.
A Muslim baker being forced to decorate a cake with a picture of Allah.
My guess is that most people would reasonably agree that these people shouldn't be forced to decorate a cake with such messages. Personally I don't think anyone should be forced to do business with anyone if they don't want to, regardless of reason, but at the same time if I were a shareholder in a business I'd want them to sell to everyone. If some other business wants to turn away paying customers, that's their own foolish choice.
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History makes a difference. People will be upset if you go to a party in blackface, and they'll be upset if you go to a party dressed as a Nazi, but they won't be upset for the same reason. Nobody is going to object to your Nazi costume on the basis that it's offensive to Nazis.
The objection to the Nazi costume is different from the objection to blackface because the history of Nazis is different from the history of slaves. You can always find some abstract parallel between two groups which makes them
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Re: Wedding cakes (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m fine either way - force all to serve all, or none to serve any. Donâ(TM)t hire my openly gay ass, and donâ(TM)t expect me to hire your openly Christian one.
Re:Wedding cakes (Score:4, Insightful)
These things aren't equivalent. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the decision here's why:
If you don't think there is, ask yourself if you're comfortable with the following similar situations:
Thing is, political views aren't a protected category. Skin colour, sexual orientation, heritage are not voluntary choices and they aren't in any sense extreme. Your politics are your choice. Plus as you pointed out they can include some very extreme choices (hey you brought up the Nazis not me everyone who mentions Godwins law can shut up).
Further to that most people are not going to fall into the continuum fallacy. There is always a contimuum between two extremes (one extreme being festooning a cake with Nazi symbols), and drawing a hard line will always land near things that could easily be on the other side. That doesn't however mean that some things aren't way far to the side of the line and that the line can't be drawn. This is ultimately the case with almost all rules.
So, society decided to draw some lines, because without them we had things like segregation and companies refusing to serve black people and that does not make for a functioning society. Making people festoon cakes with Nazi symbols on the other hand is not considered necessary for a functioning society.
That's the continuum and there is a line drawn somewhere. You've found something you consider to show that the line is in the wrong place. Thing is whereever you move it too you'll find plenty of people who consider it to be in the wrong place.
If I was on Reddit, I'd probably rate it as ESH.
Further to that, we're talking about a company. companies receive a lot of protections and benefits from the government and that comes with or should come with a restriction in what they can do as a company. My personal view is that if you want to be a dickhead on your own time and dime, then so be it. That shouldn't be illegal. However, corporations with their limited liability protection etc should have restrictions on their behaviour. If there's something you find you cannot do then hire someone who can as a contractor. But restricting the company as a legal entity's actions is entirely reasonable.
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Thing is, political views aren't a protected category. Skin colour, sexual orientation, heritage are not voluntary choices and they aren't in any sense extreme. Your politics are your choice. Plus as you pointed out they can include some very extreme choices (hey you brought up the Nazis not me everyone who mentions Godwins law can shut up).
Funnily enough, religion is a choice too, and quite similar a choice to politics. You tend to have the [religion|politics] you were raised with unless/until something happens to change that, and it's ultimately a voluntary choice of views. Yet religion is a protected category.
I'm not sure if that means religion shouldn't be protected, or if politics should be.
That aside, it think the comparison was more that those things all involve the interaction of a potentially-protected category with a right (free spe
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And I stuffed up the quoting there, even after previewing.
Ah well, hopefully that all makes sense still.
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Funnily enough, religion is a choice too, and quite similar a choice to politics. You tend to have the [religion|politics] you were raised with unless/until something happens to change that, and it's ultimately a voluntary choice of views. Yet religion is a protected category.
I'm not sure if that means religion shouldn't be protected, or if politics should be.
Yes, that's true. The other option is that it's OK as it is. It's all a continuum after all and anywhere you draw the line sucks. But it'll suck more
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If some other business wants to turn away paying customers, that's their own foolish choice.
Hammer on the nail my friend. You can always do the work and say what you have to say in private if it bothers you *THAT* much.
However, some people are not in business for the money. I can't speak for this specific gay cake situation, as I simply don't care enough to find out more about the story.
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wow, you're equating homosexuality with beastiality
Maybe it got lumped in with the plus. You didn't think they could keep adding letters forever without consequences did you?
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Re: Wedding cakes (Score:2)
âoe business that refused to sell wedding cakes to homosexualsâ
I seem to recall that they were not willing to create a custom artistic cake for said folks.
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Wow, this is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a sad era, when a decision like this — perfectly rational, which should've been mundane — makes news.
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Re:Wow, this is news? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perfectly rational, and yet the "news" article is clearly written in an overtly biased manner designed to malign the decision and potentially the decisionmaker and company.
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You are demanding exactly the wrong thing.
Customers should be a moral judges of the companies they do business with. Companies should not be moral judges of their customers.
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You are demanding exactly the wrong thing.
Customers should be a moral judges of the companies they do business with. Companies should not be moral judges of their customers.
Both companies and customers are exactly the same thing, both of them are humans, none of them should be exempt from the law and for the reprecussions of how they hurt other people.
Re: Wow, this is news? (Score:2)
Are you at all aware of the purpose of companies?
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Companies have been judging their customers forever. If you get drunk at the bar expect to be cut off. If you tell the assistant that you are buying that knife because your girlfriend is a bitch they have a legal obligation not to sell it to you in many jurisdictions.
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Those are legal obligations, not moral judgements.
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With the way the political split is going all around the world, the end result you're asking for is that any given store can choose that YOU have the wrong political views to be a customer. Including supermarkets.
Imagine how nice it'll be to be a Democrat in Alabama or Republican in California. Sure, you have the freedom to have whatever political beliefs you want, you just can't buy food anywhere. Or a phone line. Or electricity.
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That's why Round-Up Crop Decay, plastic ocean islands, and global weather change can just be freaking ignored
These are completely different totally unrelated issues and problems, and ultimately for these problems our regulators and elected officials carry much blame.
The point is its not proper for random companies to start trying to assume a role of "regulator" for themself and throw around their power by blacklisting customers whose opinions, political views, or actions they deem immoral.
That does Not
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In my estimation, regulators are after the fact, not before.
Morality is before the fact, as we're each responsible for our own actions, including actions we make corporations, organizations, NGOs, LLCs, etc etc do. If you need a regulator, it's because you're pushing a boundary. Responsibility to each other, the environment, sustainability-- these should be a given.
Not-- hey it's the cops, let's get out of here (or this product line, course of action, etc.).
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Not-- hey it's the cops, let's get out of here
Regulation's got to be put in place BEFORE the fact; otherwise the cops arrive, and say. "Oh look... No rules have been broken here: looks like its a civil matter -- have a nice day, then, k. bye"
Its straight up dereliction of their job for the government to not address matters of importance first.
Companies should not be allowed to externalize any significant number of dollars on some other person or group of people unfairly -- especially if that other pers
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good (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
good, this is how Businesses should operate.
I disagree. The thread is already Godwin'd to hell but that's because there's are some actual examples which are genuinely relevant from that era.
No one is asking them to condone or agree with customers or for their employees to agree with them. Businesses should simply be acting within the laws and being financially responsible.
And that's how you get IBM selling machines to the Nazis to help them organise the holocaust.
I despise the idea of any business using their clout to push a moral agenda of their owners or staff.
I despise the idea that it's OK to help people do inexcusable things but only because you did it for money.
Not so good (Score:4, Interesting)
You might disagree that IBM sold machines to Germany in the 1930ies, you might disagree that Dow Chemicals sold Agent Orange to the US Military in the 1970ies.
But would you still disagree if your favourite Fast-Food joint refuses to serve you because you own a gun or drive a car?
Would you still disagree if GitHub refuses your business because you don't pray 5 times a day on a colourful rug?
These kinds of policies are best evaluated by making you the victim because of something you care about. If they still feel right even in those cases, they might be a good idea.
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Hi, meet the continuum fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
You can make a continuum pretty much between any two points. Anywhere you draw the line WILL suck and you'll find some things on the wrong side of the line. But you know what's worse? Saying that because you can't figure out where the line should be you'll help out actual literal genocide (for money! as if that makes it better). That sucks much, much more.
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However, it's up to the business to decide where to draw the line, not up to the employees. If you don't like what your employer does, you're working in the wrong place. They pay you for doing your job, not to object to business.
Would I want to work for a telemarketing company, a televangelist or a social game developer like Zynga? Never, I find their business model disgusting. I even quit a job once when the company was moving in a direction I disapproved strongly. I won't lie for them, I won't do things I
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However, it's up to the business to decide where to draw the line, not up to the employees. If you don't like what your employer does, you're working in the wrong place. They pay you for doing your job, not to object to business.
That's not actually true: in certain professions like engineering and medicine there are professional codes of ethics which go above and beyond whatever your employer is paying you to do.
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What genocides? Where? In China? In Africa?
Eh if you can't be bothered to read the thread for context I'm not sure why I should take you seriously.
There is a bit of a moral difference between the "cancel culture"
Funny that freedom-lovers don't like freedom to vote with your wallet when people en masse vote the "wrong" way.
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Best single post refuting the libertarian argument for mechanistic amorality in business so far!
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Re:good (Score:4)
I'm just going to talk about the first. In my opinion, this is a really tough question. Obviously we don't want businesses to do business with people who are actively engaged in abhorrent behavior like genocide, but "abhorrent behavior" covers a wide array of behaviors, some of which are obviously abhorrent to almost everyone (genocide), some of which are much less simple (violent protests, revolution), and some of which are only abhorrent to a very small number of powerful people with an agenda (speaking out against said people or revealing their dirty laundry).
Who determines what is abhorrent? There are a lot of unethical people who run businesses and many times the worst of them run the most successful businesses. Moreover, what happens when the majority endorses abhorrent behavior? You bring up the example of IBM helping the Nazis, but support for the Nazis was not uncommon in the US in the years before the US entered the war. What IBM was doing wasn't really considered evil at the time by most people.
If it's all right for companies to selectively do business with people on moral grounds, they are able to leverage collective power against individuals who are much less able to fight it. If they're the sole business available to an individual, that can be a major problem for the individual. Businesses will often abuse this power to do things like (a) refuse to do business with people who criticize them, (b) refuse to do business with people who hurt their prospects (e.g. someone supporting the Hong Kong protests), or (c) refusing to do business with people who the majority of people think they shouldn't do business with (e.g. blacks in the early to mid 20th century).
So yeah, I think this is a difficult problem. Is there a way we can make sure businesses aren't enabling evil people when our own conception of evil is often deeply flawed? How do we prevent this power from being abused? Without at minimum an answer to those questions, I think having a policy that they won't make those judgments to begin with makes sense and is ethically tenable.
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I don't think most people would want to work for a business who happily services swastika wearing NAZIs or hood wearing klansmen. That's the extreme, but when we let businesses become as large as they are, they need to have some moral bar.
I'm good with the no shirt/no shoes policy most businesses have.
Desperate times (Score:2)
Ideally people should be able to talk like adults and respect right of founders to decide on business value while others decide to stay or leave. But our education system is cranking out maladjusted individuals more interested in standing with signs and shouting slogans than listening and compromising. So I guess the only way to get work done is to tell everyone to completely shut up. I wish there was a way to build a no-psycho workspace with great intellectual conversations on all subjects.
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Bullies are bad. Peace is good. (Score:2)
Bullies are bad. Inquisitions are bad. Blacklists are bad. Totalitarianism is bad. War is bad.
Peace is good. Peace requires tolerance.
Congrats to GitLab for choosing tolerance and peace.
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Too bad the US didn't tolerate the Nazis. We wouldn't have had WW2.
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There is not one standard (Score:2)
If you want people to be able to discuss politics at work, and it's your business, that's your prerogative. If you don't, so is that. If you want your business to take a moral or ethical stance, that's your prerogative, etc etc. If you plan to take the company public and want your company to take moral stances, make sure to put that in your mission statement over "enhancing shareholder value". Customers will be free to decide who they want to do business with. Some of them want a business to take a stand, s
Reporter wants to force his opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
It was proposed to clarify that GitLab is committed to doing business with "customers with values that are incompatible with our own values." Such a declaration could run afoul of legal boundaries in some circumstances. While workers have no constitutional speech protection in the context of their employment, federal labor law requires that employees be allowed to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment and possible unlawful conduct like harassment, discrimination, and safety violations.
The entire conclusion is an outright lie. GitLabs say they won't kick customers based on values, and the idiot reporter tries to conflate values with laws. GitLabs will still not allow illegal content, they haven't the authority to do so. Terms and conditions of employment isn't an issue of values either, it is an issue of (surprise) terms and conditions for employment. Harassment, discrimination, and safety violations aren't an issue of values, they are outright unlawful behavior. Trying to associate GitLabs behavior with supporting the Nazis (in TFA) is also downright pathetic.
This whole thing sounds like an angry attempt to create a Twitter hatemob aimed at GitLabs. I'm guessing it's because the reporter thinks GitLabs should kick out ICE and all customers that voted for Trump.
Ambiguity (Score:2)
By "not discuss politics at work", do they mean not discuss any of the "politics" at work to anyone outside of work, or do they mean to more generally not talk about politics at all *while* they are at work?
There is a difference there... and I don't actually see a problem with the restriction if they mean the 2nd one. One is at work to do a job, after all... and making getting into political discussions can easily be distracting from that. It's even one of the three main taboos for polite conversation
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Employees Should Not Discuss Politics At Work (Score:2)
This isn't really different than political correctness, just another form of censorship and obsessive control.
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Why would I want to discuss politics at work in the first place? Ain't I there to do, ya know, work?
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I'm there to get paid, not work. Work is required to get paid, but if it wasn't I wouldn't.
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True, of course, but if I don't work, it's highly unlikely that they'll continue paying me. I'm not the CEO, ya know?
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Let's face it, they were never moral objections. (Score:2)
It goes beyond discussions... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems we're seeing go beyond merely introducing politics into work with discussion. Mere chit chat or conversation should not lead to trouble nor be allowed to lead to trouble. It is good advise however not to indulge too much in off topic discussion in the work place.
Gitlab in their action is highlighting the real problem, people imposing their morality most often in the form of abuse of authority, that is corruption.
This problem has become extremely pervasive. If today I want to go to a developer conference, for example, about embedded systems then I'll likely be confronted with a new code of conduct.
Starting out code of conducts used to be fairly reasonable. Don't do bad things, be professional, have fun, follow the law of the land (goes without saying) and small things relevant to the situation.
What I read now are crazy statements from sources such as the kind of feminists that get angry when a male sits with their legs parted to avoid crushing their reproductive organs.
These don't tell you what not to do but also what to do, things that are not only beyond their station, treating people like slaves that must obey or privates in the army but that conform to their own ideology. It is like telling people they have to say amen after certain statements or that they have to pray four times a day even if they're not theists. This is nothing short of oppression and persecution.
Some of these codes of conducts are racist, sexist and illegal under the law in many countries that have equality laws. These new rules discriminate against the individual and those with neurological differences counting as disabilities that can't socially conform when the criteria grows ever more demanding and strict. Why when I go to a conference is there a code of conduct entitling one specific protected characteristic to be insulted, damned and slandered but not another when the conference is nothing to do with race, sex, ethnicity or anything like that but embedded systems?
Many of these people talk about the "safety" of "marginalised" groups of people overlooking that collectively assigning properties to groups of people and deciding to favour certain groups over others is prejudice and is bigotry. What happened to the time of common sense when people were aware that the minority is the individual? Where has this collectivism come from?
These codes of conducts are saturated with hate and hysterical paranoia that make out normal situations in life as though they are incredibly dangerous. You would think a "minority" being beaten up in the corner was a regular sight at conferences which for anyone that has stepped outside their front door is absurd.
I'm a member of one of the groups under attacked and being collectively punished under these regimes. I can tell you the reality, I'm the minority and the only groups being marginalised are the ones I'm in. My people have been displaced or replaced. In my homeland where ever I go I am always an ethic native minority. It's rare to in any situation for me to represent more than 5% to 10% of native language speakers. This is a proportion that is plummeting. Within the next decade I expect it to be unusual to represent even 5% of the population in terms of various protected characteristics. I question reality when I'm surrounded by an imposing majority of many successful people given many opportunities and positions that talk about being an oppressed minority.
It seems I'm surrounded by people with absolutely no notion of what reality truly looks like.
It's funny... (Score:2)
... to watch the right-wingers who seem to have taken over slashdot applaud Gitlab here. When not too long ago, they were cheering on that bakery that went all the way to the Supreme Court (Which, itself, flip-flopped... and only a few years after Obergefell v. Hodges... and threw us under the bus.), to establish its "right" to refuse to sell its products to the LGBT community.
Where was the obligation for a corporation to do business with anyone then, eh?
Professional Code of Conduct (Score:2)
As a member of the British Computer Society [bcs.org], I have a code of conduct [bcs.org] to follow.
It basically comes with 4 sections. In order of what may or may not be be importance...
1. Public Interest
2. Professional Competence and Integrity
3. Duty to Relevant Authority
3. Duty to the Profession
Any company that does not allow consideration of those matters, does not deserve to remain in business.
The answers you get when considering them may not be the same as my answers but I don't think that is a problem.People di
Sounds like they want to do business with... (Score:2)
Which is fine. Do business with who you want to do business with.
Some customers will vote with their wallets. Some DGAF.
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At least there's Iceland!
On second thought, they gave us Bjork, so maybe they should be on your list, too...
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Disallowing discussing of politics at a place of business is stating outright: "We do not want any discussion of whether our behavior is acceptable."
No. It is stating outright that we are paying you to do the work assigned, not to use company time to pontificate on whether or not we should accept business from customers that you don't personally like. Your particular opinion of what is lawful but not acceptable is irrelevant.
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In some parts of the US — maybe. But they'll pick up business in China, so it might be worth it, from a purely accounting point of view. But the athletes' past "heroism" fighting the fake outrages (like Michael Brown and Treyvon Martin) was, supposedly, not for financial gain, so why should they suddenly worry about losing money? The best things in life are free anyway, aren't they?
Wow! So