Our Values and Code of Conduct
Projects
Slack
Document History

Our Values and Code of Conduct

The Tech Workers Coalition seeks to redefine the relationship between tech workers and Bay Area communities. Through activism, civic engagement, direct action, and education, we work in solidarity with existing movements towards social justice and economic inclusion.

Membership

We are open to all workers in the tech industry, friends and allies. We believe in respect, compassion, understanding and inclusion. We expect all community members to act in accordance with these values.

We reserve the right to reject membership based on the following:

• Being employed in a management role (i.e. with firing power)
• Employed in a role that is in support of the prison-industrial complex (police, prosecutors, prison industry, etc)
• Your desire to be part of TWC is compromised by a business interest. For example, you want access to our members to promote your product, or to do user testing
• You work as a journalist

If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out via email.

Values of Participation

• Show up. We value all forms of participation, but the most important way to participate is through in-person participation in events, actions, and meetings, as possible. We get things done by people showing up.
• Expect best intentions. Aspire to acting in friendship—make TWC comfortable, welcoming, supportive, respectful, sincere, and open.
• When giving feedback, keep it constructive. We value honesty, but only for the purpose of improvement, not for the sake of cruelty. On the opposite side of the spectrum, sugar-coating feedback in order to spare someone’s feelings is not necessarily constructive either. The goal is to be supportive, honest, and thoughtful.
• Relevance. Our Slack is a workspace and we hope to keep it unobtrusive and accessible. Work to stay on-topic and take digressing conversations into other spaces—new channels, private groups, other platforms, etc.

Harassment and Abuse

We believe disagreement and differences of opinion are a natural part of community and are important to work through when building community, strategizing, and learning from one another, but we do not tolerate harassment in any form. Participants who engage in harassment or abuse may be removed from the group at the discretion of the organizers.

Harassment includes, but is not limited to

• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices
• Deliberate intimidation or antagonism
• Exclusionary jokes or comments
• Unwelcome sexual attention or physical contact
• Sustained disruption of meetings, events, or online discussion
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
• Comments that reinforce social structures of domination (related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion)
• Threats of violence

Abuse includes, but is not limited to

• Trolling, misdirection, and disrespectful use of resources and access

If you have been harassed or have witnessed abuse, please bring this to the attention of the group organizers (in meetings).

While in practice most actions from moderators and administrators will be friendly reminders, they should act on complaints/reports quickly and involve other team members if necessary. They should take appropriate, usually private, action if they see any abuse or harassment. They must be sensitive to cultural differences, time zones, etc., but take prompt action when necessary.

Be Mindful of What You Say and Write

TWC participants should be mindful of what they write and say in public TWC meetings and in pseudo-public channels like Slack. Be aware that Slack maintains records of our conversations indefinitely. Do not say anything in a non-private channel that you do not want becoming public. Participants should also be aware that members of the press may be present or in Slack channels. While we ask them to keep what they read and hear off the record, we cannot control what they publish.

Projects

We organize much of our efforts and organization in projects. Projects are organized by one or two individuals who are responsible for being a point of contact to the broader organization, and reporting back to the larger group during our organizational meetings.

Projects are a touchstone for new members who want to participate, and we encourage project teams to reach out to new participants.

Projects should form their own topics within Slack. Many start with the prefix #proj-. See Project/Discussion Channels.

Slack

Etiquette

• Manage your notifications. TWC Slack can become quickly overwhelming without proper notification management. We recommend turning off notifications for all but your own name and any specific words or terms of interest to you. (To do this, open Slack, click on the team name, then ‘Preferences’ and ‘Manage.’). Only join channels you wish to follow—have no shame in leaving or muting a channel that you don’t have the desire or time to participate in.
• Use direct messages. Members of this Slack range in expertise, talent, and experience. Feel free to reach out to folks with specific questions or needs.This is also a good space to take tangential conversations—no need to do everything in public.
• Avoid @channel or @here in #general or high traffic channels unless your message is important to everyone in that channel

Channel Guide

Channels come and go on Slack, but here are some long-living channels:

• #articles: interesting reads
• #calendar: TWC events calendar items
• #events: things going on that you might want to know about (not limited to TWC events)
• #general: general announcements
• #meetings: conversation about our org-wide meetings
• #workplace-conditions: conversations about working conditions and experiences in the tech industry

Document History

• 2019-12-11: Removal of defunct steering committee as per consensus between several locals
• 2019-11-04: Clarification regarding membership requirements
• 2018-07-22: Deleted old and out-of-date information, RK
• 2017-02-26: Initial draft, Steering committee

Thank you to those we extrapolated from: codes of conduct and community guidelines from Learning Gardens, Fog City Ruby, Techqueria, and GoBridge