Democracy bestows upon you, certain responsibilities. Earlier, you did not have to worry about political stuff because someone else (the lord of the land, the king or an emperor by divine right) took care of the things for you. You just work the fields or smith around.

Since the concept of democracy, the rule of the people, politics is also one of the unwritten (or written) responsibility of the people. If you do not want to do it, then you are actively running from your responsibilities, which might make you a bad citizen in other people's eyes.

Fact: In ancient Athens, if you were a free citizen and you did not participate in politics, you would have been considered a non ideal / bad citizen

no ones talking about forcing you to talk about it, question is, if you wanted to talk about the ethics / poltical impact of what you are doing with coworkers, shouldn't you be allowed to?

I come to work for one reason -- to get a paycheck. If you want to talk about politics to your friends/coworkers, do it after work. If you don't like your company's ethics-- change companies.

I'm on board with this right up until the end.

I'm a security guy and have been a privacy person. My job is often to advocate for the customer over the immediate desires of my employer. There's no pretending that doesn't have a moral or ethical dimension. So, how am I supposed to do my job without trying to change-- steer, guide, develop, choose another word if you prefer-- my company's ethics?

Advocating for your customer is different than ranting about geo political conflict.

A lot of the time I agree. I don't think I've ever had a need to opine on the merits or demerits of the filibuster at work.

But "should we deploy in China, knowing we will have to hand over data on possible dissidents?" is something I've had to deal with repeatedly. I see no way of having that discussion without getting into politics.

Of course, you can rightly say that some people just sit down and write code without becoming embroiled in the great conflicts of our time. That's true.

But the struggle for diversity in tech and equality more broadly is one of the great struggles of our time, and I know of very few engineers who do not recruit, interview, or hire. Should those people just cash their paycheck, or should they take the time to discuss an issue that nearly all employers claim to take seriously?

I think you can continue with this line of reasoning to include things like compensation (especially health insurance, m/paternal leave, and sick leave policy). And nearly everybody has a stake in the compensation discussion.

So, while I get the desire to just do the work and go home, I don't think it's so easy to separate politics from work without doing grievous harm to both. Which suggests to me the obvious thing: that the real goal of these efforts is not to foster inclusiveness or provide a better working environment, but rather to prevent a dialogue about how to do just that.

Every moral system I can think of would prescribe that, everything else being equal, you should attempt to change the behavior of the company you find unethical while you have at least some power over it, rather than removing yourself from a position of power to affect more ethical behavior. It strikes me as very strange to advocate that folks remove themselves from positions of power to effect moral progress.

GitLab ≠ GitHub.

Look at Google and Maven. Individually, not that much. Collectively? More than you think.

So nobody should ever advocate for the fictional person to whom their work is assigned, whose existence is granted by the society at large only because of the theory that its existence improves and betters that society, should be a better citizen of that society?

That's not super dystopic and antisocial at all.

That has worked great at countless workplaces /s

Is this an opinion strictly about politics? Or does it apply to other topics? Sports? Art? Entertainment?

Sometimes others look for more than just a paycheque at work.

If you come to my desk while I am working and start ranting about you don’t believe how bad your sports team is, I don’t care about that either.

I have friends. I even have made friends at work (very cautiously). But we shoot the shit after work.

> If you don't like your company's ethics-- change companies

Why is that the only recourse? Attempting to change your company's mind is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You may find that you're unable, and then would prefer to quit, but quitting in protest should always be the option of last resort.

I would go as far to say: aren't you morally obligated to? There are jobs that are inherently in political/philosophical/moral bounds. And they should be treated as such.

I didn't say anything about forcing me to talk about it, I said I shouldn't have to listen to it.