It's disturbing to me how many people here seem to be okay with executives and higher-ups expressing grief over the results of an election, in the office.
I don't think that stuff has any place at work. It's a red-flag to me if that kind of thing is commonplace in the office. Not only is it distracting, but it's insulting to employees who may have an opposite position politically.
If you're emotionally affected by something to the point where you're unable to hide it, then you shouldn't come into work.
Companies are often intensely political; artificially pretending neutrality internally while actively working externally to influence the political landscape to me is more bizarre than being open about politics in the office.
If a corporation actually is solidly neutral and inactive politically in it's external actions, then, sure, the internal environment should reflect that.
> it's insulting to employees who may have an opposite position politically.
I don't see how that's any less true of a company's external political activism.
If we accept that, should we not also accept religious views in the internal environment? Many religions view unbelievers in a very negative way, and active missionary behavior inside a company would feel very oppressive to those who don't share the same religion as the one being promoted.
Personally I would not work at a place which did so, and would consider reporting it to the anti-discrimination department in my country.
> If we accept that, should we not also accept religious views in the internal environment?
We (in the US), rather emphatically, do.
(There are some protections against religious discrimination in employment that apply to most employers, but those protections do not extend to prohibiting employers from all internal expression of religious views, or even substantive policy based on religious views. And, in fact, writing additional affirmative protection for employers’ internal expressiom of religious views, even to the extent of making that a basis for exempting them from generally-applicable legal requirements, is a popular trend in the US right now.)
'Corporation' isn't exactly a living thing that it will have sentiments of its own. People essentially make up the company, and those people have emotions based on how the profit needle and their stake in it moves.
Most Silicon valley companies depend heavily on immigrant talent and resource pool to keep the perpetual billion dollar start ups coming every year.
If your political sentiments are in deep opposition to what brings in your salary, you already have a very broken view of your life in general. And a company executive expressing any sentiment isn't going matter much, if at all.
That's really something that surprised me a lot after moving to the US. In my culture, politics is very much like religion, it is unthinkable to talk about it openly in a place of work.
When I worked in the South, but in a liberal area, you might talk about it with coworkers you trust, privately, but no one of any authority would get up and say anything.
The 100+ person company I worked at during the last election, there were statements by the senior executives as well as emails. Yes, the office had people openly crying, or absent, and the mood was like a funeral but I also don't think it's the place for especially C-level people to make those type of statements even if 99% of the office felt the same way.
There was also much hubbub around the (one) Women's March, solicitations, emails, etc. I'm happy for the women and men that marched for themselves but I wonder if they might've done some actual justice by asking the higher ups if internally women and men were being treated the same in terms of pay and opportunities, a conversation that I had with more than one female colleague in private.
I think Silicon Valley is particularly egregious because there's an unspoken assumption that everyone is left-leaning. The only outliers are a smattering of libertarians and maybe a few conservatives who keep their mouths shut because they like having friends.
Working in NYC nobody ever mentions politics. I haven't even heard so much as an unkind word about Trump.
With the possible exception of the case of an election of someone who may do direct harm to your business, it's way better to leave politics at the polls.
I don't think that stuff has any place at work. It's a red-flag to me if that kind of thing is commonplace in the office. Not only is it distracting, but it's insulting to employees who may have an opposite position politically.
If you're emotionally affected by something to the point where you're unable to hide it, then you shouldn't come into work.