Sorry, but I beg to differ. I can say with confidence that I would get fired if I openly exposed my political views at my job, whereas my Liberal counterparts freely discourse their ideas and opinions on a daily-basis without any consequence.
The Tech industry is wildly leftist, with zero tolerance for the conservative ideology.
Do most of your coworkers self-apply the term 'leftist'? If not, why would you call them that? Seems impolite. Especially if they're actually a mix of neoliberal and libertarian technocrats.
Maybe it's just zero tolerance for inaccurate name calling.
If you are talking about your views on tax policy, healthcare, etc, all I can say is that I've never worked anywhere that somebody would be fired or ostracized or anything for their position.
If you are talking about race or gender than yeah, the "conservative" position is terrible and you would rightly face consequences for your awful beliefs.
If you're talking about telling your coworkers that you voted for Trump, well, I don't think that's something that ought to be taboo but he did explicitly embrace the terrible beliefs I mentioned so I think that explicitly renouncing them wouldn't be a bad idea.
If conservatives talk about illegal immigration, they would get ostracized and harassed at tech companies even if their position is not "terrible". Its mainly because liberals/democrats/leftists are very vocal about that issue and drown out sensible discussions which do not toe their ideology.
As a liberal Republican, I completely disagree with your conflation of those terms. I would suggest picking up a dictionary or reading about Adam Smith, the original liberal.
It's true that Eich resigned, under extreme pressure. Is that a good thing? It just underscores my point - that even with legal protections, there still needs to be a cultural shift towards acceptance (or at least tolerance) of people with heterodox views.
Why didn't you search for the phrase I gave and read up? Suits get settled exactly that way, and also get headed off that way before filing. I'm writing in general of course. I am not commenting on my particular situation, note well. Suits also often get settled with various strictures on talking about the details. HTH.
Sorry if I hit a nerve. I can see why it would be difficult.
I'm on the outside, so my the reading I did probably doesn't represent the full situation. I asked that question because I was genuinely curious - the resources I found seemed to indicate that constructive termination could still constitute wrongful termination in CA.
By the way, if you have a specific resource you want me to read, I'd love to have the link.
I'm answering in generalities for legal reasons. It's not a matter of "[hitting] a nerve" so much as negotiated contracts. You should not assume in general (again, not specifying facts about my case) that "wrongful" cannot be negotiated to a settlement, including with terms governing statements parties can make. Labor law != criminal law: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Private_Law_vs_Public_Law
Therefore (again generalizing) if (likely net benefit of winning, adjusted for risk of losing) - (cost of suit) <= (benefit of settlement - lower cost of counsel to get to a settlement), and a similar relation for employer that takes into account PR risk-adusted costs as well, rational-actor parties tend to settle, with money flowing to the exiting employee and conditions binding the parties. This happens often, and is cloaked by non-disclosure terms almost always.
Why do you feel that you need to discuss politics at work? Based on the responses your comment got , it would be a disaster. "think as you like but behave like others"
* Healthcare isn't a right. It's the product of someone's hardwork and as such, you have no "right" to it.
* Making college education free for US citizens is a terrible idea.
* We've taken the idea of "sanctuary cities" way too far.
* Gun control is a bad idea
These are a few conservative ideas that I think plenty of people would be afraid to express in a workplace that is disproportionately filled with ardent "liberals".
Yeah, I mean those aren't necessarily popular opinions. So if you express them you might find a bunch of people who will vigorously argue against you. If that's upsetting to you, I don't know what to say.
I really, really doubt you're going to get fired. Unless you're expressing these opinions in very inappropriate ways. It's a workplace, after all.
I agree with all of those assertions except the one about sanctuary cities because I am an actual liberal (now known in the US as a classical liberal).
because they would get fired or because they would face a unified front of "you're wrong"?
Cause the former is a problem. The latter, meh. If you can't figure out how censor yourself at work that's your problem. I felt like calling out a coworker for recent conduct I think was incredibly petty, immature, and damaging to a relationship with another team. I think he deserves to be called out, but it's just not worth it.
I do think you should be able to say some of this stuff in a casual conversation at lunch, or whatever. You have to be aware of your audience though.
Sure, but discussing any of those wouldn't get you fired out of any reasonable job -- at most it might make your coworkers think less of you, but I don't really see why holding an opinion _should_ protect you from the social (i.e. not job security) consequences of holding it.
However, saying that the idea of sanctuary cities has been taken too far "because immigrants are rapists", as a random example, _should_ perhaps get you fired, especially since it's likely that some of your colleagues are in fact immigrants and saying something like that is a direct insult to them.
I think the state of politics in the US today is such that many (though certainly not all, as you've outlined) "conservative" ideas have strong ties to xenophobia and racism, whereas "liberal" ideas can be more freely discussed because they are about inclusion, rather than exclusion. And that's the way it _should_ be. Saying "I support giving more rights to group X" is not in general harmful to other groups, and is not the moral equivalent of saying "I support taking away rights from group X", which is actively harmful to group X.
> However, saying that the idea of sanctuary cities has been taken too far "because immigrants are rapists", as a random example,
Nice strawman there! I think that the idea of sanctuary cities has been taken too far, that the illegal immigration should be curbed and that democrats are just exploiting this for their political gains. I am also a non-white immigrant myself. But discussing my views openly would definitely get me in a few discussions with HR, if not outright fired.
Not intended as a straw man, but rather as an illustration that the same general opinion ("the idea of sanctuary cities has been taken too far") should be a perfectly fine (even if unpopular) thing to discuss in the workplace if your opinion and reasoning behind it are not derogatory, but not at all fine to discuss if they are.
But thats the problem. Nowadays, saying "the idea of sanctuary cities has been taken too far; nations should have full control over their borders; immigration laws should be enforced" would not be a safe thing to say at my workplace.
Then I think your workplace is in the wrong in this situation. Reasoned discussions not based in bigotry/xenophobia/etc, where both sides are respectful, should definitely be acceptable at work -- they definitely are at mine.
That God created this universe.
That marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.
That the right to own and carry a gun is guaranteed by the 2nd amendment.
These and other fundamental Christian world views are very 'unwelcome' in IT on both coasts of the US.
As an atheist I do think there is too many people in tech who have a tendency to shit on religion, without considering anyone else around. I agree, there is no god. Lets not go around calling anyone who believes in it idiots, because no good comes of that.
But I also won't put up with some religious lecture. You're the jerk in that situation.
> That marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.
You're expressing beliefs that others should have their rights taken away. That's unacceptable.
Do you find your rights to be impeded when you aren't allowed to own or carry a bomb, either? don't pretend everything is equivalent.
The right of two people to have rights and protections under state/federal law regardless of their genders is in no way similar to the right of someone to own a weapon.
> You're expressing beliefs that others should have their rights taken away. That's unacceptable.
I don't agree with his viewpoint, but consider it from the other side.
There's two parts to marriage for a lot of people, and this gets overlooked. In the eyes of the law, marriage is a property arrangement, more or less. You get married, you merge assets, and you use your merged assets to fund your collective livelihoods and hopefully have some children. In the past, you could even take it as a given that across the middle class you would have a mother there to tend to the household economy (gardening, sewing, shopping, etc.) and tend to the children. The father would work a fairly predictable 9-5 job and basically, bring home the bacon. Sure this wasn't the case for everyone, but it was true enough across a vast swathe of the population for long enough that it came to shape the default expectations of our society. Probably it was really only the case for a few generations at most. Familial, social, and even religious ties held people together in a productive fashion.
Then things changed. Never mind why, the real reason why whatever it is doesn't even matter for this discussion, but things changed. Society isn't as stable as it seems, the middle class is shrinking, both parents tend to work now, etc. So the portion of society that could take for granted that their familial, social and religious ties would hold the very fabric of society, or at least their own county together worried that would no longer be the case. Everyone wants what is best for their kids and country, right?
So let's come back around to the second part of marriage: religious ceremony.
Atheists like you and I can freely dismiss that part of marriage, but for a long time, at least in Christian nations as I won't comment on other beliefs, the default view was that when you got married, you were bound in the eyes of God. There are a lot of people that still take that seriously, and it is easy to miss because atheists don't have to care about religious ceremony. Marriage is almost an artifact of the past other than the fact that a lot of our laws concerning property and tax codes are written with the assumption of marriage. Maybe we continue to get married simply because we as people are still so collectively locked in our ways that we still strive to make some kind of ceremony out of it.
Is it irrational that people still hold to that view so seriously though? I wouldn't argue, I mean, I don't have a religion for several reasons but those are besides the point. I think it's irrational, yet so many of the people that make up our society, really the foundation of our nation, hold to their beliefs so strongly, sincerely believe them that simply arguing that it is irrational is entirely besides the point. They have faith, traditions, a moral code, and beliefs that marriage is between One Man and One Woman and while the benefits and tax advantages bestowed upon husband and wife are nice, it is the civil portion, the property arrangement that is almost besides the point. They'll take it rather than leave it, but it isn't the foundation of their marriage.
Rewind a few years ago, and marriage wasn't a civil right that two gender conforming homosexual people had with each other. It was a right granted to them by either statute, constitutional amendment or in the end, a court order from on high from SCOTUS itself. A civil institution.
A civil, material institution treading upon matters spiritual. You don't have to agree, I don't have to agree, but the world I want to live in is one where people can express their viewpoints regardless of whether I agree or you agree or the masses agree. If social liberalism means anything anymore, I would want it to mean that. It is still important to understand that is only a civil rights issue for one side of this debate.
We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle. We also ban throwaway accounts when people create them routinely, as opposed for some specific purpose. Since you've been doing both of these, I've banned this account.
If you said that at work I'd think you had your facts mixed up, but unless you're in the medical profession I have a very hard time believing you'd get fired over it.
(Unless you acted on that belief in a way that hurt a coworker.)
That's because this view is actively harmful to your colleague who does not consider their gender to be binary. This isn't the equivalent of a colleague telling you they believe gender is non-binary, it's equivalent to someone telling you "I know you think you're a man, but my opinion is that in fact you are not a man". Adding "that's just my 2 cents though, and I believe in your right to (wrongly) believe you're a man!" doesn't help -- you've still just told someone that you don't respect them or how they think of themselves, and that your political stance is that they shouldn't have the right to make that decision.
No one is arguing that the OP shouldn't be allowed to _hold_ this opinion, privately and in his own head. I do argue that the _act_ of sharing the opinion with a colleague at work is harmful, since by doing that the OP is revealing that he does not respect the identity of his colleagues, and further strongly implies the OP will do whatever is in his power (by way of voting for political candidates, for example) to limit the ability of his colleagues to have rights based on these identities.
I don't think you have to physically attack someone to be actively harmful to them and their existence.
Which views from 'conservative ideology' would get your fired? I am sure you won't be fired for arguing for fiscal conservatism, lower taxes, or for strong national defense. Gun rights might get you some pushback, but I doubt you would be fired for it. I know so many people in the tech industry who are very pro gun-rights.
Anti-abortion views might get you some pushback, but you probably won't be fired unless you are harassing coworkers about their abortions.
It gets a bit tricky when you get into some other traditional conservative views. The problem is that there are positions shared by conservatives and racists, and while you can certainly hold some of the views without being actually racist, it is tricky.
Anti-immigration stances might get you into trouble if you express them in terms that appear racist. If you say you don't want muslim or mexican immigrants, you are going to find yourself in trouble.
If you are against gay rights, you are going to get into trouble. You can say it is unfair, but if your political views involve wanting to deny rights to your coworkers, you are going to have a problem.
Bottom line, there are certain political views that are just wrong. If you are against rights for some of your coworkers or if you have racist beliefs, you can't expect to not have consequences.
