Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the right thing to do is to "quietly" announce your company's political views in the "subtext" of all your marketing materials, social media posts, company culture, and job descriptions.

People really do seem to forget how crazy the natural social separation is between the red and blue tribes is in the US. The CEO didn't really have to send an email for me to who they were voting for.

If you're okay with companies really obviously announcing their political affiliations in literally everything they do but not okay with companies being explicit about what everyone already knows then I think that says more about you than the company. Expensify is straight up not at all politically neutral, never has been, and doesn't really even pretend to. This wasn't a rogue CEO -- the employees voted on and helped write the email.

View on HN

Its political prosthelytizing.

What you're ignoring is that 99% of our employees don't have the ability to cease doing business with these holier than thou assholes. They're forced to get these emails they don't want and they all spent time being being mad, annoyed, confused or upset, many spent hours crafting internal emails and following the very public discussion, many were annoyed by the eventual decision to stick with them. Many still bring this up when related issues arise. It's a collective waste of time and it isn't ok.

Would you be happy about a company that sent religious recruitment emails to all your employees?

Would you be happy about a company that distracted over half your employees for the better part of a day in some cases for no fucking reason other than to push their own personal agenda?

I get recruiters from companies big and small spamming my inbox, my voicemails, and even sending me SMS messages multiple times a week (if not multiple times a day). It's really not a big deal that a company CEO sent out one email which accurately warned people that Trump was a danger to democracy.

Whataboutism and condescension, nice.

I watched the discussion, people were obviously distracted and upset. Reading a 5 minute email wasn't the issue, the fallout was.

Random recruiters aren't causing confusion many wide outrage and distraction.

Let me put it very simply. Trump is a dangerous despot. Anyone who opened their eyes for a day between his inauguration and now can see that. And if you believe as I do that the most powerful country in the world shouldn’t have a despot at the head of its military and federal police, then you should do everything in your power to persuade people that he is who you know him to be.

If you’re not persuaded by democracy then how about free markets? Trump has gone after multiple companies for political reasons. I mean, the guy told everyone to boycott Goodyear Tire while he was President ffs. It is absolutely reasonable to assume your company is better off when they dont have to kiss the ass of a despot in order to keep your comapny’s stock price level.

It’s so incredibly sad how quickly we normalized that man’s politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com