Stickers themselves can be fun and quirky, but I for the life of me can't figure out why people would put such extremely divisive and workplace-unnecessary messaging on their MAIN WORK DEVICE as many of these have.
The kind of lack to integrate to a team having your pride flags, literal death threats to perceived enemies, furries, loli anime, etc on a thing you intend to bring to the workplace to do all your work on isn't good for your career and sure as hell won't not be noticed by people whose responsibility is to judge risk and liabilities for example.
Well, for a start, you don't know that these are MAIN WORK DEVICEs. Some of them may be personal devices seen at cons and so on.
That said, I'm not _that_ worried about people noticing that the scary gay has a rainbow sticker on his laptop. If someone at work has an issue with me being gay, well, they'll probably have that issue with me regardless of what is on my laptop, and that is very much their problem. You can't spend your whole life pandering to bigots.
It's a reasonable assumption and surely true for a lot of cases, the stickers have a history of signaling tech stacks and other actually professional things and people are more attached to these customized devices which strengthens my that point. Don't be arrogant.
>You can't spend your whole life pandering
Don't be arrogant again. Obviously with that kind of language you have more chance of being the source of problems than solutions.
>issue with me being gay
Don't try to slide. Supporting extremely politicized movements is not in any way comparable to just _being_ oneself. The kind of language "if you don't support my extreme signaling you're against me and human rights and and and ..." is truly a scourge against intellectual society today.
Thanks for the reminder to put a pride flag on my new work computer. Can't for the life of me figure out why it'd be divisive though.
Also, why do you assume these aren't people's personal computers? Many people surely own computers personally, and of course people can express themselves on personal property.
It's all in the same direction. The kind of ignorance a question like "What’s divisive about a pride flag?", even if sincere really highlights this. There are a lot of people and thoughts in the world, and there is a lot of effort trying to forcefully suppress some to then trying to make other things appear "non-divisive". This hegemony that is in effect in a lot of places has way too much similarity to authoritarian regimes where there is no visible criticism of Dear Leader, because if any is spotted, off to the gulag you go. See, Dear Leader is loved by everyone!
In the end, people that tend to say things like "kill/punch/etc [group]" just because of their own inhumanity and need to say such things because they feel some groups are "fine as targets", while trying at their best to put said labels on anyone they disagree with (with almost no one actually truly belonging under those labels!), tend to be the same crowd that go in the direction of the less extreme political signaling. This is why the common solution of just banning stickers altogether is the norm when a solution is put in place. Sadly legit relevant signaling like showing one's knowledge of specific technologies with stickers suffers as collateral damage, but is not comparable to the damage of losing team spirit in a team that could otherwise pool their resources and knowledge on a task they CAN work together with.
And I say this as someone who has been in a leadership position in teams where I knew there was a lot of potential for such things to ruin everything. If I didn't witness things being kept professional in said teams, especially in one of them, I wouldn't have believed it could ever even have worked as well as it did, and it did so well. Better than other parts of the company even, given there was genuine effort put in to stay kosher and people ended up being more mindful of each other.
>but you don’t seem to have the courage to respond.
What? I wrote my comment literally yesterday lol. Now looking at the replies, most of them either don't seem to have much sincerity to them or have little chance of furthering anyone's understanding if engaged. I've learnt that it's better to minimize time wasted on trolls when there's little benefit to arguing with them even for the public representation when I can instead use my time working on my projects.
I struggle to believe you don't understand what they mean. There is many a homophobe in the world. GP isn't saying homophobia is good, simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people. Maybe they deserve to be upset, but that doesn't change that it may become your problem.
> simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people.
Y'know, I'm pretty much fine with upsetting bigots. I'd assume that people inclined to be upset by a scary pride flag are also upset by my _existence_, so, y'know, I don't see a strong reason to moderate my stickers to protect the delicate feelings of idiots. If they're a homophobe they'll have a problem with me _anyway_.
Sincere or not, the obvious should be stated here that distain for extremely politicized gender movements has little to do with outstanding opinions for said actual sexualities. I've personally voted for (several!) gay political candidates and attended a gay wedding, among other similar things.
The current day form of the lgbt(...) movement has done more damage to their representation than the natural, mostly not strong but dismissive opinions of the common folk could ever have. The screaming intentional ignorance of criticism of its increasingly radical extensions and effects sometimes makes me think we're not just living in the world of Idiocracy, but in the version of the world that comes after it ...
People can become upset for a great variety of reasons. I think it's better to accept to some extent that it happens than to design your life around not upsetting anyone.
What's wrong with a pride flag? People commonly display their hetero marriages etc. at workplaces too. If either of those cause division in a workplace, that's a matter for HR or legal to resolve (if it is indeed a disruption).
Anyway it's unclear which of these are brought into offices.
Showing a pride flag at work isn't bringing an issue (just like having a photo of a husband and wife on a desk is not). Someone else having a problem with that and causing a disruption over it, is sowing discord and bringing an issue to work.
I'm stealing this thread because I wanted to describe my feelings, it's not related to laptops or work
When I lived in Russia I respected the rare people I saw wearing lgbt flags/pins. Because it's really a statement, it's a middle finger to the government. People knew the police can waste their time or even jail them.
Now that I live in a european country and I see more people wearing lgbt stuff, I don't feel such respect. I'm a little puzzled what's the point, you are wearing it in a country where you can hold hands, where government protects people from discrimination... It's not that you shouldn't do it, I just don't understand. Is it like a friend-or-foe id system?
Worst of all (now I'm switching from people to companies) when a company post a pride flag it feels 100% insincere. Because I know companies are motivated by profit so they only do things which don't hurt profit, they don't hold any principles.
The kind of lack to integrate to a team having your pride flags, literal death threats to perceived enemies, furries, loli anime, etc on a thing you intend to bring to the workplace to do all your work on isn't good for your career and sure as hell won't not be noticed by people whose responsibility is to judge risk and liabilities for example.
Tech stacks, not party flags.