<story><title>Gitlab: don&apos;t discuss politics at work</title><url>https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/16/gitlab_employees_gagged/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unscrupulous_sw</author><text>Just to chime in, I also unknowingly got myself labeled sexist when the topic came up during a random lunch with &amp;quot;friends&amp;quot; (company provided lunch so it had random people from HR and recruiting).&lt;p&gt;Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50&amp;#x2F;50 will &amp;quot;lower the bar&amp;quot;. So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipeline and all. The more I said I am leaning towards that it will lower the bar, the more uncomfortable people around me looked.&lt;p&gt;I was too socially ignorant to realize we aren&amp;#x27;t talking about math problem here and that they don&amp;#x27;t want anything said that might weaken their cause, good faith argument or not.&lt;p&gt;After that I got no more women in my interview pipeline and a &amp;quot;talk&amp;quot; from my manager.</text></item><item><author>legostormtroopr</author><text>&amp;gt; We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.&lt;p&gt;Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can&amp;#x27;t be discussed without complete agreement.&lt;p&gt;Take for example, &amp;quot;Women in Tech&amp;quot;, personally I don&amp;#x27;t see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be &amp;#x27;solved&amp;#x27;. 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&amp;#x2F;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&amp;#x2F;50 isn&amp;#x27;t going to happen so perhaps its not worth the huge money sink it is.&lt;p&gt;At the last place I worked that opinion was flat out branded &amp;quot;sexist&amp;quot;, and if you didn&amp;#x27;t vocally agree with every women in tech initiative people asked why.&lt;p&gt;So I would say the ability to speak openly about politics was shut down long ago, and not by the people you think.</text></item><item><author>ProfessorLayton</author><text>Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work.&lt;p&gt;If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being downvoted to oblivion.&lt;p&gt;Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the marginalized groups:&lt;p&gt;— lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality because it’s too political.&lt;p&gt;— Women in tech: Nope, let’s not go there, too political.&lt;p&gt;— Underrepresented minorities in tech: Sorry it’s a pipeline problem, don’t bring politics into this.&lt;p&gt;— 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.&lt;p&gt;We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.&lt;p&gt;Again, If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wonnage</author><text>You can&amp;#x27;t use statistics without a model. The problem is that you have a shitty model and it&amp;#x27;s annoying when you keep parroting it like you&amp;#x27;re so logical. Your model as inferred from this comment is that there&amp;#x27;s some way to quantify the current applicants, and that applicants below a certain value are always rejected. The remaining applicants are &amp;quot;above the bar&amp;quot; and could be hired. The current &amp;quot;above the bar&amp;quot; group is not 50&amp;#x2F;50, therefore changing it means accepting people below the bar.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that none of your assumptions hold water. Technical interviews are about as accurate as flipping a coin. Mundane factors like whether or not the interview is after lunch have a major impact on pass rates. Performance on the interview has little to no predictive value for future job performance.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t brush this off as social ignorance, this is simply ignorance of the facts.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gitlab: don&apos;t discuss politics at work</title><url>https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/16/gitlab_employees_gagged/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unscrupulous_sw</author><text>Just to chime in, I also unknowingly got myself labeled sexist when the topic came up during a random lunch with &amp;quot;friends&amp;quot; (company provided lunch so it had random people from HR and recruiting).&lt;p&gt;Somehow or another the topic of whether going for 50&amp;#x2F;50 will &amp;quot;lower the bar&amp;quot;. So I started thinking about the problem mathematically like any engineer would, with statistical distributions and estimates of the existing pipeline and all. The more I said I am leaning towards that it will lower the bar, the more uncomfortable people around me looked.&lt;p&gt;I was too socially ignorant to realize we aren&amp;#x27;t talking about math problem here and that they don&amp;#x27;t want anything said that might weaken their cause, good faith argument or not.&lt;p&gt;After that I got no more women in my interview pipeline and a &amp;quot;talk&amp;quot; from my manager.</text></item><item><author>legostormtroopr</author><text>&amp;gt; We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.&lt;p&gt;Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can&amp;#x27;t be discussed without complete agreement.&lt;p&gt;Take for example, &amp;quot;Women in Tech&amp;quot;, personally I don&amp;#x27;t see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be &amp;#x27;solved&amp;#x27;. 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&amp;#x2F;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&amp;#x2F;50 isn&amp;#x27;t going to happen so perhaps its not worth the huge money sink it is.&lt;p&gt;At the last place I worked that opinion was flat out branded &amp;quot;sexist&amp;quot;, and if you didn&amp;#x27;t vocally agree with every women in tech initiative people asked why.&lt;p&gt;So I would say the ability to speak openly about politics was shut down long ago, and not by the people you think.</text></item><item><author>ProfessorLayton</author><text>Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work.&lt;p&gt;If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being downvoted to oblivion.&lt;p&gt;Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the marginalized groups:&lt;p&gt;— lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality because it’s too political.&lt;p&gt;— Women in tech: Nope, let’s not go there, too political.&lt;p&gt;— Underrepresented minorities in tech: Sorry it’s a pipeline problem, don’t bring politics into this.&lt;p&gt;— 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.&lt;p&gt;We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive.&lt;p&gt;Again, If you disagree I’d love to understand your viewpoint as to why.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manfredo</author><text>This parallels my experience. I have repeatedly feigned support for denying employment to white and Asian men to increase our proportional representation of demographics categorized as diverse. The company has set an outcome based goal to have 33% women in tech roles. When the  industry is only 20-25% female, such a target is effectively impossible without discrimination. But no one who wants to succeed dares bring that up.</text></comment>