To accommodate the apparent desire for sports analogies, my intention was to play the ball, not the man from the parent into it's own very deliberately planted goal posts.
WRT the discussion above the parent, I'd say that the two opposing posts are are actually in agreement:
> "Not being political" in the workplace is a political stance in itself - it's taking the position that the current state of politics is perfectly agreeable to you.
> ... not being political in the workplace means someone values their stable income more than they value the need to talk about their opinions.
If you accept that we have power to impact the real world in our professional lives as technologists, then these are perfectly compatible descriptions of the same stance.
I should say, I myself am at least partially in this camp. I firmly re-orient many discussions at work when I deem them to be unproductive, and pretty often this is because they drift into partisan 'badge-flashing'.
But, I'm not shy about speaking up about things at work where the actions of the company affect the balance of power out there in the real world and real people's lives. These decisions are important, if if they're going to be made, the impact of them should be discussed explicitly. This often means breaking the (political!) spell that user and investor interests are inherently aligned, for example.
Admittedly, this may be something which is probably felt more by people at large consumer Internet companies, as opposed to the technology/software industry as a whole.
WRT the discussion above the parent, I'd say that the two opposing posts are are actually in agreement:
> "Not being political" in the workplace is a political stance in itself - it's taking the position that the current state of politics is perfectly agreeable to you.
> ... not being political in the workplace means someone values their stable income more than they value the need to talk about their opinions.
If you accept that we have power to impact the real world in our professional lives as technologists, then these are perfectly compatible descriptions of the same stance.
I should say, I myself am at least partially in this camp. I firmly re-orient many discussions at work when I deem them to be unproductive, and pretty often this is because they drift into partisan 'badge-flashing'.
But, I'm not shy about speaking up about things at work where the actions of the company affect the balance of power out there in the real world and real people's lives. These decisions are important, if if they're going to be made, the impact of them should be discussed explicitly. This often means breaking the (political!) spell that user and investor interests are inherently aligned, for example.
Admittedly, this may be something which is probably felt more by people at large consumer Internet companies, as opposed to the technology/software industry as a whole.