There’s a big fuss over a potential mayor of New York that has the right losing their minds. To the point where people are quitting over other peoples opinions. Truly bizarro world stuff.
> To the point where people are quitting over other peoples opinions.
Isn't that rational? If you found that a colleague had views you found personally abhorrent AND you had the luxury of being able to walk away from the job, wouldn't you?
The tragedy of modern work life (and the current job market!) is that the vast majority of people do not have that luxury, and hence are stuck in the jobs they hate. But I expect the COO of a large VC probably has several lifetimes' worth of that luxury stashed away.
> Isn't that rational? If you found that a colleague had views you found personally abhorrent AND you had the luxury of being able to walk away from the job, wouldn't you?
I consider that to be immature and highly unprofessional.
It used to be that professionalism considered the realm of private opinion to have no bearing on whether you could work with someone. It also used to be that we might abhor your opinion but defend your right to say it. Now we cannot even work with someone who has impure opinions. Nor do we have any barrier between our private lives and work now, apparently.
It is entirely consistent to defend somebody's freedom of speech but then wish to dissociate from that person if their speech offends your sensibilities. This is just a variation on the old "freedom of speech" vs "freedom from consequences" / "freedom of reach" dichotomies.
Maybe the best option is, as you indicate, to use discretion when breaking the barrier between your private and work lives. However, airing your opinions on a public forum with your public identity largely precludes having such barriers.
I do not see why "has the right to say something" and "everybody has to refuse to change their behavior towards this person in any way" are supposed to be the same thing.
I didn't say you had to treat the person the same way; you might not like the guy and might not hang out with him. But part of professionalism is being able to work productively with people you strongly disagree with.
Like seven or eight years ago I was at lunch at work with a sister team of ours. They had an intern who decided at lunch to announce that he was a fascist and that gay people were degenerates who were ruining society. Should the team have just said "huh that's quirky" and moved on? What of the gay people on the team who'd now be needing to work with somebody who openly thought that they were filth and expressed this at work?
Now instead of an intern, imagine that this was somebody's boss. Or the CEO. Is it really unprofessional to leave rather than choosing to work for and enrich somebody like that?
I agree with this up to a point. If their shenanigans is making dealing with them even professionally unbearable, you owe it to yourself to determine whether that environment is worth staying in.
People should either keep their opinions to themselves or not allow it to be tied to their corporation. If my employer was tied to shitbird comments like Sequoia is now, I'd quit also.
The opinion in this case is that Muslims are fundamentally bad people. They aren't disagreeing over tax policy or what to do with rent stabilized apartments in NYC.
Yeah, I'd prefer not to work with somebody with these bigoted beliefs.
There’s a big fuss over a potential mayor of New York that has the right losing their minds. To the point where people are quitting over other peoples opinions. Truly bizarro world stuff.