Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; even suggesting you can be politically neutral is a political stance that comes from a place of privilege, because only the privileged can avoid experiencing negative political consequences inside their bubble.
Collaboration with ICE is collaboration with ICE, whether it’s “just hosting code” or actually contracted by them to develop their systems. It’s the same deal with Amazon or Facebook or whoever. If you work for them you need to admit to yourself that you are an enabler. Most people can’t admit that to themselves, so they maintain an unhealthy cognitive dissonance to keep going.
And it hurts when that dissonance is shattered.
Comparing supporting ICE to a marriage is nonsense, and thinking you can somehow help them be better by keeping them as a customer? A totally naive concept that has been shown not to work in practice since the US 2016 election. (In fact, supporting the monster makes them stronger; if it made them weaker, why would they keep using your product?)
The reckoning we are seeing in tech is long overdue. As developers we are no longer seeing our actions as “politically neutral” and are starting to understand the power we yield collectively to make positive change to our industry.
Nat Friedman is on the wrong side of history here. These empty words are no longer sufficient. Hopefully he figures that out before his tenure at GitHub comes to an end.
> Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them;
But I do choose to avoid them in my personal life. A private company can do whatever the hell they want, whether I approve or not, it's their right. I also believe it is my right to not care about politics and continue moving forward with my own life. For me, politics just end up making me upset. I can't think of a single situation that becomes political that ends up making me happy in the long run. As an individual, _most_ politics doesn't affect me and spending my time on it just ends up making my life less enjoyable.
That said, there are some political issues we all care about more so, and we may pay attention to that more. But in a way, I do choose to avoid them (as an individual).
Again, I don't mean this as an attack on your comment, just my adjacent thoughts.
Edit: I do understand how fortunate I am to be in the situation I'm in. I didn't mean (but I see that it came off this way) that everyone should do this, and I didn't mean (again, I understand that I didn't explain myself above) that I'm applying those ideas to this situation (my mind immediately went to the previous flood of COVID stories).
Perhaps consider that most people are aware:
- that ICE exists
- that ICE enforces migration law
- that having ICE as a customer helps the US enforce migration laws
Perhaps also consider that supporting the US having migration laws is a mainstream opinion outside a very small cadre of people in a few US cities, so very few people mind that companies serve them.
If libertarians were running things, you'd be left not entirely but largely alone.
Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money. Companies can't exist without workers. Once a company finds itself in a position of conflict of interest between political views of workers and point of existence of the company - where contracts bring money... we're going to see interesting things.
I wonder, who will break first?
The company will decide it's better to bend to political opinions of employees and end the contract == pay a lot of $money$ for breaking the contract early without delivery and set another precedent where employees decide how and with whom company makes money = uncertain company. Who will make future contracts with such company? Would you outsource your project delivery to a company where employees decide whether your project/office/political stand is good or bad?
Or maybe employees will decide they don't want to work for a company and risk unemployment? Who will risk employing a person who rebels against board members of a company and causes financial damages over broken contract?
I would like to see 100s of GitHub employees leaving GitHub and MS to prove their point, rather than working on the contract, being paid 10x salary of their immigrant desk cleaners and shouting how bad it is the contract exists.
What is so bad about employees at a company having a say in what type of work the company does?
IMO it's foolish for a company to wade into these waters at all unless activism is part of their brand. If you signal you're going to take a stand it ends up having to be around everything and people are going to have a lot of conflicting agendas. Or you could just sell software tools to people who pay for them.
No, this is a misconception. Companies are a part of society and exists for several other reasons.
Some people will get affected by "politics" and, thus, must either be silent and suffer or start to care about politics.
I could be wrong and politics do impact you negatively and...you just don't care. That's a fair stance I guess, as long as you understand that by doing nothing you're essentially accepting that negative impact.
The parent comment touched on this, but wanted to add on - just hoping you're conscious of this truth
Yeah... no. I’m politically active, I support a variety of causes. But I can’t support every cause - I’m not privileged enough to be a full-time “activist” of which there seem to be a surprising number these days - and sometimes I just want to write some damn code and focus on that and put food on the table and donate what I can after.
I'd gladly prefer to contract with a company that's not known for supporting agencies running concentration camps. This political moment will pass, but twenty years from now after this history chapters have been written on ICE, we still have to live with the choices we made.
> Who will risk employing a person who rebels against board members of a company and causes financial damages over broken contract?
Plenty of companies. Our skill set is very much in demand.
It's no different than those who claim everything is "political", which of course all too clearly betrays their steadfast belief in "historical materialism". If you make everything political, refuse to see anything except through a political lens, then yes - everything is political.
I must say, the man of aesthetics was much more interesting to talk to.
But not just affirmative actions: not cancelling a contract with an organization that builds concentration camps is making a strong political statement in itself.
They “waded into the waters” the moment they accepted the contract with ICE. What they are seeing now is that their actions have consequences. And while you don’t necessarily intend the consequences of your actions, you must accept them.
Only children have trouble doing so.
I have attempted on numerous occasions to reason with this community over basic sociological concepts and have repeatedly failed. I have given up on convincing people in SV the truths of the lives of people outside of their bubble. I recommend you do the same and engage in activism. It's more productive. Godspeed.
There are well-known historical analogues for many of the people now attempting to refrain from making political statements. Namely, there were those Germans in the Nazi era who were neither pro-Nazi nor openly anti-Nazi and who underwent so-called "internal emigration". And there were those Soviet dissidents who didn’t want to have any part in that decades-long fight between the West ("You Communist countries don't respect individual liberty and free markets!") and the Socialist Bloc ("You capitalist nations don’t respect workers, lynch black people and engage in colonialist oppression!").
Neither of those groups were "privileged", indeed these particular analogues were living in oppressive regimes that were suspicious of lack of enthusiasm and these people often suffered for that. But now, from our modern vantage point, we can have a lot of sympathy for them. They made a decision that was right for their own lives, and some of what these groups’ artists created may not have been fashionable at the time among all the polemic, but now it is seen to be very moving and have great staying power.
Of course, a big corporation with large government contracts is quite different from individuals choosing to refrain from being involved, or a small circle of people thereof that constructs its own shared private world to retreat into, separated from contemporary debates. But still, I think that we should refrain from condemning cases where one group of people has not joined its peers in adopting political statements or actions, even if we strongly sympathize with those political movements and believe them just.
I see another commenter has suffered downvotes for blankly replying "false" to this, so I'll try to be more substantive.
This is confusing symptom and cause. We have evolved a system where companies are defined as having profit as being their "raison d'être" but that's not the same as saying that's why they exist in the first place.
Companies were created to solve problems, those problems required resources and those resources required finance. Economic systems evolved to place individuals with capital in the position of being providers of such finance, who demanded profit as a return, and as such redefined the impetus of companies as existing to provide them with that return.
But it is not the reason they exist.
> Nat Friedman is on the wrong side of history here. These empty words are no longer sufficient. Hopefully he figures that out before his tenure at GitHub comes to an end.
These statements seem at odds. If privileged people are insulated from negative political consequences, then why is he at risk of losing his job for taking the wrong political stance?
No, I don't think there is anything wrong with it, that's how we can change direction of the company and produce good. I think that's a very problematic path filled with mine-lands where employees decide how company makes money. GitHub can just outsource this project to Russia, Australia or India, still make money and deliver the project. Silencing voiced of those who speak, but still, being on a path of conflict of interests between board members and workers.
Yes, that’s one of the (political) options.
The example that pops in my head first is COVID. I knew what was going on with COVID and how to keep myself and others safe. My issue was that it was circulating everything 24/7, while not offering new information the vast majority of the time. It became very anxiety inducing to see a ton of articles every day that end up just being filler with tangential evidence of nothing new.
But you're completely correct, I'm very fortunate, and I should have clarified more on where and when I choose to ignore certain things.
It comes down to “Control what you can control.”
So much of politics comes down to trying to control other people, whether it be their thoughts, actions, view points, money or rights. It’s an unhealthy topic that tends to leave everyone involved angry.
Choosing to ignore it is an acknowledgement that you don’t want the anger and that the benefit of your anger is rarely, if ever, worth it.
Your comment — and subtle trailing insult — is not constructive and non-sequitur.
As a minority, who has repeatedly faced discrimination; at various jobs, airports, in restaurants, and at social events, I cannot ignore it.
Also I believe it is a moral obligation to stand up for weak. So even if you are privileged enough to be not affected by politics, you should participate in it for your weaker friends and family.
Companies make "political" decisions every single day, in literally everything they do. Just as Apple and Nike make the _decision_ to employ the questionable overseas labour practices, providing services to them is also a _decision_. The whole point of the corporate executive branch is to make decisions for the company, it's the difference between McDonalds and a bunch of random stores making hamburgers. You can't hand-wave your way out of accountability with statements like this whenever you start having to face hard decisions like this.
The only thing it changes in the industry is who gets a contract.
Companies exist because society, represented by elected governments, considers them a useful concept. Their activity is assumed to be beneficial to society without any explicit requirements to that effect, because they operate in a free market where Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand generally applies.
It is strange how this is always being used to justify any and all morally reprehensible behavior by companies. If you expect people to, on occasion, go above and beyond the minimum required by law, there is no reason to hold companies to a lesser standard.
There are infinite examples where society noticed some less-than-ideal behavior in the pursuit of profits and acted on it, by, for example, legislating environmental, labor, or consumer safety standards.
At the other end of the spectrum, companies do regularly consider ethics in their decisions. This happens so often in fact, most any American CXO would be in jail if the crowd that keeps repeating that any consideration but shareholder value is prohibited by law were right. Google left China at some point for ethical reasons. Apple has invested earlier and more than competitors into environmental improvements. On labor issues, they have often done the right thing where a company like Nike, faced with very similar questions, has not.
Almost tautologically, any publicly known selfless act I could give as an example can be dismissed as still being done solely in the pursuit of money, by being PR exercises. But that just points at how easy it is to get around this fictional requirement to be amoral caricatures of capitalists: do as much good as you want, and call it PR!
Or, in Github’s case, point out how reliant you are on attracting talent. And ditch ICE in the name of recruitment, and, therefore, future profits.
The only people who consider that "not taking a stand" are the people who don't suffer as a result of that choice. Thus, as the parent poster said, this is a support of the status quo (or an escalation of it) by privileged people who will never suffer the consequences of that choice. Saying "the abuse of police power and the imprisonment of asylum seekers has nothing to do with me or my company" is saying "I'm okay with all of this because it doesn't affect me directly".
As we've seen with Facebook, trying to "not take a stand" is actually taking a stand, and saying "we won't fact check obvious lies or take down calls for violence by the military against our own citizens" is saying "we're okay with our platform being used to erode democracy and threaten people's lives". We're seeing now that Zuckerberg, then, is completely okay with the effective dissolution of everything that the US claims to stand for, as long as it means that Facebook won't be broken up as a result of their unethical and illegal business practices.
In this way, Facebook isn't "not taking a stand", they're specifically taking a stand against corporate and social accountability. Because of their position in the market that means that they can directly and indirectly affect what news people see, what groups people are recommended, and what politics people have, and they don't want to give up that power, so they'll implicitly support a government which will let them keep it, no matter what the consequences to anyone else.
There's no such thing as not "wading into these waters"; only following your ethics vs. signing another contract and making a few million bucks from it.
Please don’t insult me and then call me “friend”. It’s passive-aggressive and not suitable for this site.
Unhappy employees is not good for business over long term. That is why you see in news that racist, sexiest, or other bad actors getting fired even when they were top performers.
There are many ways how his tenure can come to an end. I am expressing a hope that he figures it out while he is still in a position to change things with his power as CEO.
As for people who lose their job for doing the wrong thing, the media is currently awash in those stories.
Even he if loses his job, he’ll still be quite privileged given his wealth and status.
That's incorrect.
The vast majority of companies are small and medium sized enterprises who just try to make it through. Does the launderette in the high street make political decisions? The car dealership? The scrap metal yard?
That seems to be based on an invalid definition:
Politics: (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities')
If this was really about strong political will they would just change companies.
If we follow their own logic, they are enabling ICE by continuing to work for GitHub and are thus complicit.