I found the Internet got a lot more valuable for me when I decided to deliberately take the most charitable interpretation of what I read.
> > If someone is really really good would you hire their wife? How about their friends?
> What!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the possibility of institutionalized nepotism?
It's a thought experiment. You likely spend the majority of your waking day at work. It seems like if you're trying to optimize your total quality of life, it would be great to have that time also include some of your close friends or partners.
Now, if you're trying to entice a particular person to work at your company, is this a perk you would put on the table? Probably not. But I find it interesting to consider what ideas are just unthinkable (as in we don't even think to think it, not that we morally object to thinking it) because of a deeply ingrained notion of work/life separation.
My father and his wife own a business together. That experience is clearly profoundly valuable to both of them. Perhaps the nepotism makes this a negative experience for some of their own employees. But maybe not. There are plenty of other famous examples of partners working together. Should we deny people like my dad and stepmom even the possibility of this kind of life? What do we lose by having a black and white approach to nepotism?
> Why do friendship and professional life have to overlap at all?
Because the minutes of our life are finite. If we can spend some of those minutes at work and with close friends, we've enriched our lives and increased the number of experiences we can put in it.
Why do we assume that we should spend most of our waking lives with people we don't particularly care about? That goes against the way humans have lived for almost the entirety of our evolutionary history.
> This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy take, and it has no place in the professional world. You should not have "enemies" at work.
The article isn't clear about this, but it's not necessary to strictly interpret all of these questions about the workplace.
> On the other hand, there are people literally advocating for genocide in the world.
Do any of those people know what you oppose them? You aren't their enemy if they don't know who you are.
Should they? What does it say about the causes you support if the people directly opposed to them don't even know you exist? Should they at least know about groups you support that oppose them?
> > If someone is really really good would you hire their wife? How about their friends?
> What!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the possibility of institutionalized nepotism?
It's a thought experiment. You likely spend the majority of your waking day at work. It seems like if you're trying to optimize your total quality of life, it would be great to have that time also include some of your close friends or partners.
Now, if you're trying to entice a particular person to work at your company, is this a perk you would put on the table? Probably not. But I find it interesting to consider what ideas are just unthinkable (as in we don't even think to think it, not that we morally object to thinking it) because of a deeply ingrained notion of work/life separation.
My father and his wife own a business together. That experience is clearly profoundly valuable to both of them. Perhaps the nepotism makes this a negative experience for some of their own employees. But maybe not. There are plenty of other famous examples of partners working together. Should we deny people like my dad and stepmom even the possibility of this kind of life? What do we lose by having a black and white approach to nepotism?
> Why do friendship and professional life have to overlap at all?
Because the minutes of our life are finite. If we can spend some of those minutes at work and with close friends, we've enriched our lives and increased the number of experiences we can put in it.
Why do we assume that we should spend most of our waking lives with people we don't particularly care about? That goes against the way humans have lived for almost the entirety of our evolutionary history.
> This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy take, and it has no place in the professional world. You should not have "enemies" at work.
The article isn't clear about this, but it's not necessary to strictly interpret all of these questions about the workplace.
> On the other hand, there are people literally advocating for genocide in the world.
Do any of those people know what you oppose them? You aren't their enemy if they don't know who you are.
Should they? What does it say about the causes you support if the people directly opposed to them don't even know you exist? Should they at least know about groups you support that oppose them?