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DoctorOWlast Tuesday at 3:01 PM4 repliesview on HN

Queer people aren't causes, they're people. Imagine I worked on the Brave browser, and in my personal time maintained a website aimed at discouraging personal relationships with him. This would probably make me difficult to work with, despite my personal views not impacting the quality of my work. You might say these examples aren't one-to-one, and you're right. My example doesn't actually push any legislation forbidding him from having a relationship with a consenting person, and it costs a hell of a lot less than $1000.


Replies

losvedirlast Tuesday at 4:45 PM

I dunno. Public Defenders (and defense attorneys in general, but PDs don't get oodles of cash) have to work with some pretty reprehensible people sometimes.

I used to live in Bahrain while my wife worked in oil and gas, and a lot of her colleagues had some... pretty different... views from us but we still got along. Hell, the country itself has a pretty significant Sunni / Shia divide, with employees being one or the other and they managed to work with each other just fine.

I think in general people should be able to work with others that they have significant differences in opinion with. Now, in tech, we've been privileged to be in a seller's (of labor) market, where we can exercise some selectivity in where we work, so it's certainly a headwind in hiring if the CEO is undesirable (for whatever reason), but plenty of people still will for the cause or the pay or whatever. You just have to balance whether the hiring problems the CEO may or may not cause are worth whatever else they bring to the table.

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kbelderlast Tuesday at 6:07 PM

If you were on a hiring committee, and your otherwise-qualified-candidate had a political opinion you objected to in this way, perhaps with a similar donation, would you refuse to hire them?

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account42yesterday at 9:58 AM

Marriages aren't people. And you probably unknowingly depend on a lot of people that despise many things you consider part of your identity. Touch grass and let people have opinions different from your own.