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Comment by Sleeep | Hacker News Reader

Um, so? I censor myself at work every single day. If I routinely said some of the not so polite things that I sometimes think about my colleagues and (especially) customers I'd be fired. This is called "playing nice with others" and I learned it as a child.

I also sometimes think about topics that would be inappropriate in an office environment (such as sex) and I censor myself by not saying what I am thinking. We even have an Internetism for that concept - NSFW.

None of this is new - we are expected to conduct ourselves appropriately for the current situation. It's just how society works.

I didn't even read the document in question, I just have a very hard time with people getting riled up about being "censored" at work. It's work, what exactly do you expect?

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I agree. It's a job, you're there to work. A workplace isn't a venue to stand on your personal soapbox and air your opinions, be disruptive and waste company time.

I swear I read exactly that in a job posting for diversity director...

Diversity is good for companies. Diverse companies are more profitable.

Regardless, your clever analogy doesn't apply. Companies are welcome to be political in their own environment. They own it. Employees are not. They're employed at-will.

Maybe, but that doesn't immunize them from criticism, especially when they purport to value diversity and free speech but silence critics.

Anyway, the financial benefits of diversity are almost certainly overstated. I don't know why we can't just say, "we're hiring diverse people because we think it's the right thing to do".

In a thousand years archaeologists will write papers on our civilisation and the god we worshipped called Market. About how we obeyed the laws of Market, appeased the Market when it was unhappy, and how we had faith that Market could solve all problems.

As a society we've been trained or perhaps tricked to suppress our sense of justice and fairness In Gabor of money.

Seriously, what does this have to do with anything?

People are hesitant to publicly say that the right thing to do is the thing that should be done so they bring financial arguments into it.

Hence the studies promoting the idea that diverse companies are more profitable, as if that should make any difference. It's a sick obsession with viewing just about everything through a financial lens even when money shouldn't come into it.

I agree. It is a venue for the personal soapbox and airing of opinions of the CEO.

Corporations are people, too.

I agree.

However, I sympathize with younger people because it's a double-edged sword at places like Google, where your work and your life are very intentionally blurred. You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at work. You go out and socialize with your friends from work. You do laundry at work (I'm not sure if Google still does this or not). It's not like the 1980s where people check in at 9am and leave at 5pm.

>I didn't even read the document in question

Then why are you assuming you know what it said?

I am not. I am replying strictly to "this is pure censorship." So fucking what? At work we are absolutely expected and required to censor ourselves, that's practically the definition of "work."

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I did skim it and it seemed like the pseudo intellectual mumbo jumbo people who think they are being really smart but really are just being obnoxious write; since I read way to much of that sort of thing already I didn't care to read further.

So you still haven't read it, then? And you still think it prudent to label it dismissively?

This is the kind of behavior that woke me up (in my early teens) to the dangers of adopting my values from my religious background/peers. I never thought I'd have to deal with witch hunts for wrongthink in tech.

I am not dismissing it because it is "wrongthink" I am dismissing it because it's incredibly boring, uninteresting, and extremely tiring. I went into it expecting to read something worth reading but stopped when I realized it simply wasn't worth my time.

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