Hacker News Reader

Comment by tester34 | Hacker News Reader

>Employees’ desire to work for organizations whose values align with their own has been growing for some time.

Weird.

I or We, here in Eastern Europe do not talk about politics in work "seriously", just sometimes more or less random thoughts, it'd be viewed as unprofessional to talk about stuff like this unless you're very close with your co-workers who are very fine with some banter.

Our lives are already full of politix I don't want it at my job.

You may argue that politics is still there, indirectly at big companies, but it's still indirectly.

> The gender-wage gap will continue to increase as employees return to the office.

We aren't going back, at least fully.

Office decreases speed of communication

View on HN

> Office decreases speed of communication

Does it though? I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to. Now I ping them on Teams and they might not respond for hours.

> I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to. Now I ping them on Teams and they might not respond for hours.

I've found that team members who did that were actually interrupting those coworkers. It takes time to digest questions and comments. Now those coworkers have an opportunity to respond with a fully reasoned discussion instead of being obligated, by a verbal conversation, to respond immediately without fully thinking.

...unless they just don't monitor their work communication channels when they should be available to that. But that's a different kind of problem.

> I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to.

I have different experience - I had people sitting at the next door who were always on the phone with $important_customer and I needed to wait 15mins meanwhile they can answer me <1min on _chat_

Much of Eastern Europe is ruled by dictatorships or a very homogeneous culture and political views. Wouldn't surprise me if one only talks about social issues with close co-workers out of fear of workplace retaliation than due to professionalism.

That said, almost all the Russians and Ukrainians I work with are very happy to discuss politics among one another and even with me and they have very strong opinions about the political situation where they emigrated from.

>Wouldn't surprise me if one only talks about social issues with close co-workers out of fear of workplace retaliation than due to professionalism.

Not really, I never felt like I'd be kicked for talking about politics, but it's just not productive, very often relies on emotions, full of difficult to verify informations and causes biases.

So, don't force* people to do politics, being proficent in politics & tricks requires a lot of effort.

* You'll finally have to pick the ""right"" side.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't exactly believe that someone who advocates for fair hiring practices in terms of racial, gender, religion and sexual orientation won't face workplace retaliation in a region of the world that still has a relatively poor human rights record on such issues.

It's easy to not discuss politics when most people in the workplace have a very homogenous view of said politics, and when anyone who might disagree with company policy that could adversely affect people on the basis of social issues are kept out of the office.

Then again, Eastern Europe is fairly big and it's not fair for me to paint the entire region with a single brush stroke. Where specifically in Eastern Europe do you have most experience with?

>Where specifically in Eastern Europe do you have most experience with?

Poland

In most of Europe you can't just fire someone for no reason, and their political views is not a valid reason to fire someone no matter if it is right wing or left wing.

> almost all the Russians and Ukrainians I work with are very happy to discuss politics among one another and even with me

Are they discussing politics at work with their peers, or do they also feel comfortable when their bosses are present?

For me, this would be a huge difference. With some colleagues, I am comfortable discussing politics. With others, I am not (either because their opinions seem to crazy to me, or because they seem too obsessed). But debating politics with a boss... I probably wouldn't feel safe to express my opinions at all.

And "companies will adopt stances on current societal and political debates" seems like not only bosses will be involved, but essentially the company will tell you what is the correct opinion, end of debate. Thank you, people above 40 in Eastern Europe already had an experience with this, and probably didn't like it.

I am their boss and they don't really give a damn whether I'm there or not. There is a rift between the older guys and the younger guys, the younger generation hates Putin but the older generation admires him, even though they acknowledge his flaws.

I am fairly certain that in many parts of Eastern Europe, you'd be lucky if the worst thing that happened to you was you lost your job for speaking the way these guys do.

As an outside observer it seems that workplace retaliation is very much a part of companies that vocalize their politics. In other words, only right-think is approved lest you be on the wrong side of history.

Yep, the Americans aren't going to like this.

I also live in Europe, this view is becoming more common but it is totally incomprehensible to me. I don't need to know about the political views of people I work with, it isn't important. I don't need my employer to agree with my values. It just isn't relevant. Americans always discuss politics, it is divisive.

Politics is inherently divise, that is why we have a political system to mediate it. Very old organisations (the Freemasons is one) have rules about not discussing politics. It will utterly tear society apart. Be blunt: we are saying that companies should declare themselves Democrat or Republican, and then only hire people who are idelogically pure. It is amazing, although not surprising historically, that people view more bias as the solution to bias.

Btw, Europeans understand this is the wrong road because we went down it. The archetypal society governed entirely by politics was Germany pre-Hitler. It doesn't end well.

There is also an irony in someone saying that it must be because Eastern Europe has so many "dictatorships"...my days, this is why people don't want to hear it (most of Eastern Europe is in the EU ffs).

The change that’s being described here is going FROM what you’re saying TO the realization that “politics” is not some separate thing that you can choose not to talk about, but actual issues that affect the lives of employees. People are tired of trying to ignore things that shouldn’t be ignored.

You have your whole rest of the day to commit it to the politics and make the difference.

Politics at job will sooner or later lead to biases unless all people involved are _actually_ mature (don't think >18 yrs old)

So, unless you're working at Facebook or Google where you have direct impact on politics, then no, we don't want politics at job.

Conversations about politics in the workplace only seems to be acceptable if you share nearly identical political views with those around you in the office. There is no true desire for diversity of thought. To me it feels like a way to reinforce groupthink.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com