Core Values vs. Politics in the Workplace
How did we get here?
I’m angry that I need to write this. I shouldn’t have to. For most of my professional life, I’ve never known the politics of my employees or coworkers because it simply didn’t matter. Yet now, I feeling it totally matters.
I so badly want to be proven wrong.
Please, prove me wrong.
For the last decade or more I’ve worked for or owned small companies with only a handful of employees. We didn’t need written corporate guidelines for “core values” and we certainly didn’t do “culture fit” reviews during the interview process for the rare times we actually needed to hire. I hear that’s a thing these days in the hipster startups.
But now I’m a founder in a new startup that has the potential to be much larger than my previous ventures, and suddenly I’ve got all these strange and horrible thoughts going through my head about how easily things can go terribly awry by hiring the wrong people.
But what makes them the wrong people?
Emily Chang recently wrote Brotopia. Besides being a great read and enlightening me about how diverse development teams build better products, it showed me how naive I was with regard to some of the things going on at a few of the Valley’s hottest startups. Certainly, we’ve all heard by now about what was going on at Uber.
Seriously, how was that situation able to get past the first incident? But more importantly, how is it that they had so many managers turning a blind eye? If Uber can’t hire well and filter out these people with all of their experience, how does a small guy like me have a chance at keeping these people out?
I’ve worked from home for many years. My teams are remote as well. The scenes from Chang’s book seemed almost implausible from my sheltered perspective; yet, of course, they were all so real.
Is the frat-boy culture in the Valley such a given for youthful dev teams that all you can really do is tone it down? If I said I refuse to believe that would I be naive? Am I naive for thinking better of people?
Laszlo Bock’s book, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, made the excellent point that you need to get diversity worked out in your first ten hires or you’ll have trouble ever getting it right afterward because candidates will shy away from environments where everyone is all the same, and not like them. The moment I read that I started thinking of all the companies that could have used that advise years ago because they innocently fell into that trap without even realizing it — especially when your first hires are your buddies from school.
So between Chang and Bock, I thought I had properly educated myself enough to understand how to hire and foster a team of exceptional people on a larger scale than my previous experiences. I really am trying to do this right. But then, they don’t get into politics.
Given our current polarized political environment, it seems we have the potential for a whole pile of problems at work that ranks right up there with sexual harassment and diversity. Emily and Laszlo — please update your books!
Of course, I know full well that politics has no place at work. But then I started thinking, is there a correlation between politics and core values — at least, the values of people I would hope to be working with.
Forgetting for a moment about Democrats and Republicans, because I really don’t care what color hat you wear; but would I be wrong for not wanting to work with people who feel that:
- there are good people on both sides in the Charlottesville incident
- Muslims should be flatly denied entry
- it’s okay to separate babies from their parents at the border and not even bother to keep track of them
- anything Judge Kavanaugh does is okay as long as he gets confirmed
- it’s okay to suppress voters in ways that are blatantly transparent
- it’s okay for the president to call people names like he’s in grade school
- Obama wasn’t born in the United States
- the news is the enemy of the people
- climate change is fake news
- Jamal Khashoggi’s murder is an unfortunate “incident” that shouldn’t get in the way of selling arms to Saudi Arabia; after all, it was a “rogue killer”
More added November 2022:
- The 2020 election was stolen
- January 6 was a peaceful protest
This is not just a matter of politics. This is about good judgment, human decency and what’s right and what’s wrong. When does it stop being political and start being core values?
I simply want to work with decent people.
I don’t want my communications director to believe that the media is the enemy of the people.
I don’t want my VP of engineering to think that climate change is fake news.
I don’t want my customer service people calling elected officials snarky names.
How am I to trust the judgment of a key manager or board member who still believes Barack Obama isn’t a US citizen?
I need to trust my C-suite execs to give me sound guidance. If they still think the world is flat, why would I trust them to help me make important decisions?
Is that too much to ask?
Am I in violation of the law for not wanting people who agree with my list from working with me, representing my company to the world; or worse, doing the hiring and exacerbating the problem?
Recall, Uber’s problems were perpetuated because their HR department kept hiring frat boys, failed to act on reports of harassment and even punished people who spoke up. I don’t want that in my company!
If you believe the polls, it seems that 40% of Americans have no real problem with the above list. And that’s what scares me to death.
I’m not allowed to ask any questions about “politics” and yet apparently there’s a 40% chance I’m going to hire somebody in this problematic cohort. What if I have the bad luck of making a key hire who agrees with the list— may be a person on the recruiting team?
I’ve only started to feel this way in the last couple of years. Let’s not be naive as to why. Am I a bad person for feeling this way? Or, would I be a bad person for not feeling this way?
Seriously, what’s the answer?
Am I the only one thinking this?
Please understand — I’m not some left-wing fanatic. Honestly, I’ve been right down the middle on politics for most of my life. I’ve often voted on both sides.
I truly want to get this right in my new company. I want a diverse workplace. I want my biggest problems to be sales, traction and staying one step ahead of my competitors.
So please tell me — how do I get this right? What can I do to minimize my chances of hiring somebody who thinks there are “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville; because I will not tolerate racism.
How do I protect myself from being sued for wanting to work with decent people? Or on the flip side, from being sued for mistakenly hiring somebody who isn’t so decent — because I felt I couldn’t ask the right questions?
Don’t say I’m crazy. It happened at Uber.
What can you tell me to reduce the odds from 40% to something significantly less? Because I just don’t like the odds at 40%.
And where did I come up with this “40%” number? I think we all know that’s the percentage of Americans who represent Trump’s core base who pretty much go along with everything on my list.
I honestly don’t care who you voted for or what party you belong to if any. But if you’ve doubled-down on some of these “values” issues I’ve raised, I don’t know how I could trust you to help me build a great company. Does that make me an asshole? I hope not.
I opened this post by saying that I hope I’m wrong about these feelings and I welcome helpful advise. If you choose to respond, I hope you’ll be professional and helpful — Thank you!
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