
In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Campaigns - Flemlord
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/in-silicon-valley-technology-talent-gap-threatens-g-o-p-campaigns/?gwh=E7100236372E50E253AE9363846E4F36
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nhashem
In my opinion, this technology gap will exist as long as the Republican party
embraces social conservatism to the point of scientific ignorance.

Consider Todd Akin’s comment: "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has
ways to just shut that whole thing down." While "legitimate rape" ended up
being the colloquial reference that got hammered, what was so utterly
offensive was the second part of the sentence. Implying the female body had
some sort of magical spermicide. It's not just insensitive, it's
scientifically ignorant. There are a lot of reasons why almost 2/3 of college
students and recent college grads voted for Obama, and one of them is because
of this complete idiocy that Republicans spew.

At the "Family Values Summit" earlier this year, Rick Santorum said, "We're
never going to be the party of smart people." If you’re not the smart party,
what are you? The party that claims the HPV vaccine causes retardation? The
party that considers evolution a myth? Sure, but then you won't be the party
with constituents that embrace science and technology.

Sure, they can throw money at the problem. Even if they intellectually
objected with the platform, lots of engineers would work for the Republican
party if they paid enough. But successful political campaigns are all about
connecting a widespread media message to the individual visceral feelings of
voters. If your staff has no idea who that voter is because they aren't
actually one of them, then you're not going to have the same quality of
campaign.

I don't think all is lost for the Republican party. For an example off the top
of my head, it would be very easy to philosophically adjust their stances on
"economic freedom" to support reforms to copyright and patent law. But until
then, Rick Santorum is right. They won't be the party of smart people. Which
means they won't be the party that has smart technology talent helping them
run campaigns.

~~~
sneak
Republicans don't believe in evolution, Democrats don't believe in the danger
of the NDAA.

Toss a coin.

~~~
dlitwak
Republicans and Democrats voted almost in equal measure for the NDAA, and I
agree, I don't like it one bit. I remember a few people from each party stood
up, and being honest here the only notable person I remember was Rand Paul, so
I give a little credit there, but very very little since most of his party
still voted for it as I remember.

~~~
sneak
It was the democratic candidate in this election who signed it into law.

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/ndaa-biggest-election-issue-
no-o...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/ndaa-biggest-election-issue-no-ones-
talking-about/)

------
pav3l
Geeks tend to come in two forms - libertarians and equality oriented. Current
GOP doesn't really appeal to either.

~~~
temphn
Yes. The real title fight would have been between Ron Paul and Obama's tech
teams. That would have been Google vs. Facebook. Romney vs. Obama in tech was
like Myspace vs. Facebook.

~~~
r00fus
And there was rampant speculation that the GOP fixed the Maine 2012 caucus as
well to prevent Ron Paul from winning there:

<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2847234/posts>

[http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Governor/Massachus...](http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Governor/Massachusetts/Mitt_Romney/Scandals/Maine_GOP_Caucus_Fraud/)

------
nasalgoat
It is less the individuals they used and more the methods - the GOP leveraged
old-boy contracts to IBM-style, tie-wearing consultant shops, and the Dems
went for cloud infrastructure and open source.

It really highlights the old-world vs. new you see between the two parties.

~~~
maratd
> It really highlights the old-world vs. new you see between the two parties.

That's a bit much. Somebody made the right call infrastructure-wise and
somebody made the wrong one. That's it.

If anything, Republicans are more "new-world" regarding tech policy in
general, ie copyright/intellectual property.

~~~
dlitwak
bullshit. They are the establishment, the old white guys, whose model is not
the most efficient way of getting things done.

yes, someone made the wrong call infrastructure wise, but you have to ask: why
did they make this call? It's because, in their world, this is how you do it.

The Dems were more open to a different type of campaign that brought tech in
house etc.

Writing it off as an infrastructure choice with no relation to how they think
is disingenuous.

~~~
maratd
> They are the establishment

Isn't Obama the establishment now? I think he's a Democrat.

> the old white guys

Most Republicans aren't old. Some are white, but not all. I'm not. Some aren't
even guys ...

If I said something similar about Democrats, like how they're all black or
something equally moronic and false ... you'd be jumping up and down, calling
me a racist.

> The Dems were more open to a different type of campaign that brought tech in
> house etc.

[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-
Ck3...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-
Ck3-VwZB7fqpUFXbffoObg)

~~~
dlitwak
I think the whole point of conservative is not changing, keeping things the
way they are, as opposed to "progressive" ideas, which advocate change. I'm
not interested in debating you about who is actually "establishment" etc. in
that way, my point was conservatives have an "establishment" way of thinking:
the tried and the true, the way things worked before, not necessarily the way
they will work in the future.

I think you understand what I'm talking about.

Re the old white comment, look at the demographics: that was the only
demographic republicans won. If you said democrats were just a bunch of black
guys, then yes I would be offended. If you said the truth, that democrats were
a coalition of young people, single women, and minorities, I would not. I'm a
white male, and voted for Obama, so I understand that it is a generalization.

That link is irrelevant, I don't care if Obama doesn't like Xboxs and iphones,
doesn't mean his campaign wasn't technologically proficient: whose campaign's
tech broke down on election day and outsourced their development to
contractors? Romney.

Who had a dedicated team of coders in house and everything worked well? Obama.
Most startup guys will tell you that outsourcing their main product never ends
well.

------
prostoalex
>>> Among employees who work for Google, Mr. Obama raised about $720,000 in
itemized contributions this year, against only $25,000 for Mr. Romney. That
means that Mr. Obama took almost 97 percent of the money between the two major
candidates.

I'm not sure that's indicative of anything, Ron Paul's visit to Google, from
what I recall, was a standing room event. I personally just abhor donating
money to political causes. It results in negative ads, trivialization of deep
issues, omission of important discussion topics, and doesn't benefit Internet
industry much - most political spending goes towards TV ads.

~~~
w1ntermute
As mentioned at the end of the post:

> Perhaps a different type of Republican candidate, one whose views on social
> policy are more in line with the tolerant and multicultural values of the
> Bay Area, and the youthful cultures of the leading companies here, could
> gather more support among information technology professionals.

> Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican, raised about $42,000 from
> Google employees, considerably more than Mr. Romney did.

So Ron Paul getting money is very different from the rest of the GOP getting
money.

------
eshvk
Is this really that big a problem though? I mean irrespective of how many
people in SV disagree with the candidate, eventually if he/she throws enough
money at the problem, he should be able to sort it out? After all, Porn is the
canonical example for something that not a lot of engineering people would
work on but still manages to attract enough talent to work on some really hard
problems.

~~~
scrumper
> Porn is the canonical example

It's the same with weapons design and scientists, or battlefield medicine and
doctors. At some point the challenge overcomes the ethical qualms. Or, in some
cases, the need to eat becomes pretty overwhelming. Morally dirty but
technically difficult jobs often pay really rather well, partly because many
talented people are turned off by the field.

Real example: a good friend of mine was in my physics class at university. He
was a pretty peace-loving, anti-establishment, idealist type like all of us at
that age, yet he's now a government employee spending his days inventing ways
to make ICBM warheads invulnerable to anti-missile systems. It's cutting-edge
materials science stuff, and he loves it. (As a cold war kid myself I'm
slightly ashamed to say that I found the whole thing deeply cool and I'm quite
jealous of his job.)

~~~
eshvk
Exactly. I went to school and did research hoping to have a career in
robotics/Unmanned air vehicles and I had resigned myself to having to work in
defense because unless you are in Europe, the number of companies that work on
robotics that is not defense related is very small (Single digits, I would
say). While, I would have serious problems with the whole idea of actively
participating in war, the fact of the matter is that the kind of problems that
I would get to hack on while working on there would have been tremendous fun.

------
moocow01
I lean Democrat but the GOP just took the wrong strategy this time around...
they'll learn. If they can't find any good technologists that support their
cause, pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an
instant.

Believe me they'll unfortunately adapt.

From my perspective they have many more issues they need to sort out before
this one to get themselves back together.

~~~
alxp
> pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant

A team of dedicated startup employees who really believe in what they're
working on vs. throwing money at consultants 9-to-5er programmers? Pardon me
while I place a few long bets.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
You'd lose that bet. I live in the Bay Area, favor Obama over Romney, and have
historically shown plenty of dedication to the startups which I founded or at
which I have worked. If Romney's campaign came to me and said "please work
80-hour weeks at $200/hr to build us the most kick-ass infrastructure you can
so that we can win" you can be damn sure I'd be moving to Boston the next day.
I know plenty others who would as well.

~~~
redthrowaway
And if the Obama campaign were making the same offer, which would you choose?

The campaign may have relied mostly on volunteers, but it would be foolish to
think they wouldn't hire a small team of engineers to do the same work if they
had to. The benefits to fundraising alone are substantial enough to warrant
the cost.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
I would probably work for Obama, and even at a cheaper rate that I would for
Romney, but like misterbwong and eshvk said, the point is that if Obama has
already hired his whole staff, Romney can offer a certain price where I am
willing to ignore my political affiliations and be fully professional (read:
not sabotage the effort because I dislike the candidate)

------
jtchang
This article makes a lot of assumptions but it is hard to deny that silicon
valley is a magnet for people who love technology.

It can be difficult to get a gauge on just how well the two parties are
leveraging technology. My guess is they are both data mining their voter
databases as well as doing some advanced machine learning. If that is the case
I would guess recruiting people would be much easier out in the Bay Area.

------
bernardom
What percentage of "job creators" does this cover?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that computer and mathematical jobs are
2.7% of ALL jobs and 5.5% of jobs in SF.[1] I can't find the percentage of NEW
jobs that are tech-related.

[1] <http://www.bls.gov/ro9/oessanf.htm>

------
olog-hai
That _?gwh=_ parameter should be removed from the URL. It will trigger the
paywall for some people.

~~~
tomjen3
It did for me, but no biggie -- just open the link in porn mode and everything
is fixed.

------
noname123
If GOP pays top-dollar which should be their philosophy, I'll def. work for
them. It's about monies.

------
dlitwak
To everyone saying all Republicans need to do is throw money at it:
Missionaries beat Mercenaries every time.

And the point of the article is that Democrats have ~5 times more potential to
find missionaries than Republicans do.

Anyone who has tried to hire will realize that it is difficult, and a pool of
5x gives you a huge advantage.

------
hkmurakami
If it were just about SW talent, I'd suspect that the G.O.P. could find plenty
of willing and capable engineers in the finance sector to lead the way
(assuming that the IT teams in the finance sector are aligned with the G.O.P.
along with the more outward facing facets of the industry).

~~~
larsberg
While I can only speak for Chicago, the traders/finance people certainly lean
right, but the developers seem to generally lean left, at least given the last
few GOP candidates. Most that I know are in finance because you can stay in
Chicago and make substantially more than working at Google/MSFT/Facebook while
working 7.5 hour days with no overtime (with a few exceptions, e.g., Citadel).

------
pvdm
Read some Chomsky. It doesn't matter.

~~~
mkross
Care to elaborate?

~~~
pvdm
Did not mean to be curt. But when I read articles like this I put up my
shields. The article seems to describe how one side is winning but it's only
part of the illusion that there is real debate about real issues being
discussed in presidential elections. It's like professional wrestling,
everyone know it's fake but nevertheless feverishly take sides. Noam Chomsky
and Ed Herman wrote about this in their book, Manufacturing Consent.

