zlacker

>>Xordev+(OP)
What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it.

I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).

But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.

We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.

But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.

EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.

>>rattra+Rh
I think it's great that employees can direct this kind of business decision.

It's also unfortunate (I am assuming) that the employees have much less of a stake collectively than other shareholders.

There's a good chance they would make more informed decisions if they were to fail or be successful based on those decisions.

For what it's worth, I think the employees would still make these demands, it would just be nice to be able to show that it was also the right business decision.

>>codeze+cn
Why does it matter if it's the right business decision? Don't moral considerations have precedence over business considerations? It should be expected of a company to take a profit hit if it is the only way to uphold a moral standard. Regular people do it all the time, why should corporations be held to lower standards?

>>tsimio+zt
That's a fair point, but it's often hard to find a single agreed upon moral compass at an entire company.

Also, I would bet that a review of this from a business point of view might make a moral stance moot. If that's the case, it seems like an easier way to avoid a minefield.