Hacker News Reader

Comment by wildrhythms | Hacker News Reader

The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades. Corporations have vast, measurable influence in peoples lives, both good and bad. Why are the workers, to you, not permitted the agency to bring politics to work?

View on HN

Because you’re being paid to come to work and work. That’s why they call it “work”, not “debate club”. The idea that young, affluent tech workers like those at Google expect to come to work and argue over the plight of black lives in between writing code for serving ads all while making $300k a year and complaining about other peoples’ privilege is just gross (and a little funny).

> The workplace is inherently political; it consumes the vast majority of workers' waking hours for years, and decades.

Where are people working where the vast majority of their waking hours, for decades, are spent at work? At least be honest, these articles about bringing politics to work are talking about people in comfy tech jobs working 8 hours a day, not wage slaves in coal mines and factories working 12 hour days.

"Vast majority" might be an overstatement, but if you work an 8-hour day, commute for an hour each way, and take an hour for lunch (which, let's face it, is often with co-workers and involves work talk), that's 11 hours doing things that you probably wouldn't be doing if you didn't have to work. If we assume 8 hours of sleep, that's only 5 waking, non-work-related hours.

It's... pretty lame, honestly. All these modern conveniences and we're working more than ever these days (in the US, at least).

Also not really sure where all these "comfy tech jobs" are; every tech job I've worked in the past 15+ years often has people working ~10 hour days. I'm not aware of many people in tech who work 9-5 and that's it.

To be fair, these jobs do exist in a sizable amount. I’ve almost never worked more than 40hrs/week and have short commute times. (Lunch is included in my working hours) I’ve seen many places where people work potentially less hours than I do during certain seasons.

I’m a pretty productive employee (when I want to be and feel incentivized) and am paid well enough to be in the 1%.

I still agree with what you said. Just want to say that these jobs exist. It’s up to the employee to fight for it though more than anything. Many employees in tech are a bit of pushovers though. (Or are afraid of losing their visa)

What is the relevance of your comment? A comfortable job still robs me of my life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com