
The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley - joubert
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/technology/the-culture-wars-have-come-to-silicon-valley.html
======
anewhnaccount2
> But for the right, it became a potent symbol of the tech industry’s
> intolerance of ideological diversity.

To me, totally missing the point. Not _just_ "for the right". To many who
would consider themselves mostly aligned with left wing politics, myself
included, this is just the latest in a long line of media (social and news)
driven forced punishment for people guilty of expressing a viewpoint or just
generally doing something a bit poor taste in public. It doesn't really matter
if they've done wrong. It's not a considered or proportional type of response.

Sure, there are far bigger injustices in the world than someone losing their
job, but this sort of thing is wrong _because it 's for the wrong reason_.
It's headlines driven HR.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I'm sorry, if you spend your time at work writing manifestos that ignite
culture wars instead of working - you should be fired. Wanna write a
manifesto? Create a blog post. I would be fired if I wrote a manifesto like
this at my job - without any publicity

~~~
FTA
Not that I agree with the statement, but it could easily be the case he wrote
it on his own time and shared it at work on their internal Google+. Unless you
have a source for your accusation, in which case I stand corrected.

~~~
DiNovi
Even if you wrote it on your own time, sharing it with internally with your
coworkers is toxic.

~~~
jabv
Serious: do you see that your response is exactly what the memo was about?
He's claiming that the pre-judgment that the topic is toxic is harmful. To
argue against him by re-asserting that which he questions will not be
persuasive.

~~~
DiNovi
Are you saying my argument - that sharing a 10 page personal essay, or
whatever to all your coworkers is toxic - is invalid, because in it, he asks
not to be prejudged?

That's ludicrous. You don't do things that make potentially thousands of your
coworkers uncomfortable _internally_ just because you want to make a point.
Human Resources is a thing for a reason.

Put it on medium and be done with it.

~~~
jabv
I think you may have raised a good point - was this the appropriate
forum/channel/whatever to offer his observations, questions, and criticisms?

He suggests that Google has a culture of sharing pretty openly and of offering
criticism and even commentary on important issues. It would be good to have
additional evidence of this to evaluate whether his statement was indeed
matched to the appropriate environment.

(I am not and have not been a Google employee, so IDK for sure. I know that at
my company, there are indeed particular fora in which this sort of thing could
be raised. I can imagine at some companies this would not be possible, so you
raise a great question. Thanks!)

~~~
jamesrcole
It was a memo about a matter that's internal to Google, so I don't think
publicly publishing it would have been appropriate. And doing so would have
surely created an even larger furore.

------
austenallred
I don't like Donald Trump any more than the next person (and I would never
vote for him), but watching people line up actively encouraging punishing (or
firing) people based on who they voted for is crazy, especially because _about
half the country voted for the guy_.

I come from a small town where Trump dominated Clinton, and most people I know
voted for Trump holding their noses. They considered him to be a less-bad
option, and Thiel even said as much in interviews. Yet folks are being smeared
for being "complicit" and dragged as if they _are_ Trump, or agree with
everything he stands for.

I don't think that's ever happened before, at least publicly. Every candidate
I've ever seen has major flaws, and people that lack those flaws and even
despise those flaws voted for them anyway. I get that Trump is particularly
incompetent, but if voting for a candidate that _wins the election_ is a
punishable offense maybe we should rethink our political activism.

~~~
shanev
Correction: half the country didn't vote for Trump. Half the country didn't
vote. About quarter of the country voted for him.

~~~
xienze
Because surely the half that didn't vote wouldn't have voted for him either.
So really, when you think about it, 75% of the country voted for Clinton.

~~~
kazagistar
... wat? You cant just count nonvoters for your candidate. They chose not to
vote as a way to say your candidate sucks.

~~~
xienze
Well you obviously missed the sarcasm. I was making fun of the stupidity of
the "ACKSHUALLY only 25% of the country voted for him" argument, which is
needless pedantry and ignores that we can infer how the rest of the country
_likely_ would have voted since we have such a large sample size.

~~~
danharaj
You realize that {people who voted} is no where near an independent random
sample and has far less power than its size suggests?

------
d0100
It's unfortunate how both political extremes are just the same:

The right uses the state to censure.

The left uses people and popularity to censure.

To fight the dictators I can simply join a militia and fight a civil war.

But how to I fight people? I'm not popular, I'm not cool, I'm not socially
connected. I am no one. How do I maintain my rights when those depriving me of
them are everyone else?

If I'm targeted by the populist mass, where is my recourse?

I'm lucky that I live in a country where I could just study and pass a test to
be a public servant, where I'm guaranteed a job and won't be fired based on
public outrage. But what about others?

~~~
boobsbr
How is the right using the state to censure? Are you referring to the US, or
in a global context?

~~~
creaghpatr
If anything, the state censures any speech that goes against hand-picked
'protected groups'

~~~
and0
The state doesn't censor speech. Hate speech laws (in the US, anyway) aren't
very strong, for example the Supreme Court in the USA didn't rule against the
Westboro Baptist Church or even people burning crosses on black family's
property.

(All these people whining about "facts" being censored and none of them are
using facts of their own..)

------
boobsbr
> Netflix’s Mr. Hastings warned Mr. Thiel last August, a few weeks after Mr.
> Trump had accepted the Republican nomination for president, that he would
> face consequences for backing Mr. Trump.

> In contrast, Mr. Hastings, a supporter of Hillary Clinton ...

From my PoV, the fact that Hastings has received no backlash for supporting
Clinton after Trump won, is a sign that right-wingers/conservatives/Trump
supporters are more tolerant of the opinions of left-
wingers/liberals/progressives/Clinton supporters than the other way around.

~~~
marcoperaza
Right-leaning professionals who live in major urban areas are completely
surrounded by left-leaning people: almost all of their colleagues, friends,
bosses, etc. I know many conservatives in these environments who would never
admit it outside of a very trusted circle. They would _never_ think of making
their job a platform for their views, like left-leaning people routinely do
(often at the _encouragement_ of management and HR). They fear precisely what
happened to this Google engineer: a smear campaign, weaponized outrage, and a
ruined career.

I'm sure there's challenges to being a left-leaning person in rural Georgia.
But moving to rural Georgia isn't necessary, or really even an option, for
people seeking economic mobility.

~~~
cableshaft
Weaponized outrage online has become a real problem, no matter your leanings.
Or I prefer to call it the "Outrage of the Day" or even the daily "Two Minutes
Hate" since people only seem to be outraged at that issue for about a day
before finding some new shiny thing to be outraged about.

But it can really screw up people's lives in that short period of time, and
scares everyone into not sharing any potentially controversial views in public
nowadays, which I find disconcerting living in a country that's supposed to
hold Freedom of Speech as one of its highest values (yes, I know freedom of
speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, but the consequences have
gotten extremely severe, career ending in a lot of cases, for statements that
are sometimes taken out of context).

I'd rather people see these statements they dislike as an opportunity to
engage in discourse and try to change these people's minds, instead of swift
retribution, often without examination of how guilty the people in question
actually are, just being told they're guilty by some random person they like
on the internet is often enough to get them to jump on board.

It's especially concerning considering a lot of these people turning their
shame button up to 11 consider themselves to be religious people, and most
religions tend to espouse not letting yourself get swept up in hatred and
casting stones at others. I'm not particularly religious, but I still don't
think it's a healthy mentality to have, and I've had to ignore and heavily
filter my social media in order to not see this presented to me every day, and
even then I still get a lot of it shoved in my face (I can only imagine what
all a person who actively looks for these things must see).

The Two Minutes Hate seems more and more appropriate the more I reflect on it.
Here's a quote about it from 1984:

 _" The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged
to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty
seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and
vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge
hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric
current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming
lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion
which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a
blowlamp."_

~~~
jansho
Outrage is addictive and social media only makes this easier: commenting is
quick and there's always the urgency to jump on a bandwagon before it
disappears.

"Outrage of the Day" is appropriate because what else can fill the mundanity
of your life? The trouble is they accumulate and you inevitable form
judgements, courtesy to the echo chambers (I'd like to see a new word
_echosystem!_ ) This also makes it harder to introduce new ideas because the
'right' opinions and argument trees are already set.

I don't see social media as good/bad, but my observation of it is making me
wonder if I'm turning into a reluctant Luddite.

~~~
kthejoker2
Megan McArdle had a good piece on the social value of shame and how the
Internet subverts that:

[https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-17/how-the-
in...](https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-17/how-the-internet-
became-a-shame-storm)

------
Tasboo
Pro tip: unless it's part of your job, don't talk about politics at work. It's
your place of work, it isn't /r/politics. If there is a specific policy that
you'd like addressed, bring it up without a bunch of political baggage.

On a side note: The article mentions alt right people complaining that a lot
of SV companies' cultures are left leaning, which I think bizarre. There are
plenty of industries that lean far right, in fact, unless the company is a
non-profit or is in the public sector, in my experience the typical company
culture is more right leaning than left. In most companies outside of SV,
diversity programs are almost non-existent or just something that is briefly
mentioned on the careers page.

The fact that Google or other SV companies have robust diversity programs and
have cultures that lean left is an anomaly and freaking out that you aren't
included in these companies' diversity programs or that you feel on the
outside of the company culture screams of entitlement and ignorance of the
actual reality that minorities and women face in the rest of the job market.

------
docdeek
>Mr. Hastings, the chairman of a committee that evaluates Facebook’s board
members, told Mr. Thiel in an email dated Aug. 14 that the advocacy would
reflect badly on Mr. Thiel during a review of Facebook directors scheduled for
the next day… "I’m so mystified by your endorsement of Trump for our
President, that for me it moves from ‘different judgment’ to ‘bad judgment.’
Some diversity in views is healthy, but catastrophically bad judgment (in my
view) is not what anyone wants in a fellow board member.”

Is it legal in the US for someone to judge a person’s political beliefs or a
declared support for a candidate in a performance review? I can imagine that
even if the answer is ‘no’ that things might be different on a public board
where it is less ‘performance review’ and more ‘public face of the company’,
but the idea of judging someone professionally on the basis of their personal
politics at the ballot box seems a little disturbing to me.

~~~
gnicholas
The article claims, and as a (former) lawyer this seems plausible, that in
California this would be illegal as it pertains to employees.

But you're right that executives are often treated differently, and board
members even more so (since they're not just management - they're not
employees at all). But I believe that under federal law political views are
not currently a protected status, so it would not necessarily be illegal to
fire someone for their political beliefs. Though this might seem odd, it is
perhaps a behavior that is sufficiently deterred by the fact that it would be
very bad for business in many cases. Remaining employees could be upset by it,
customers and potential customers could be alienated, and legal challenges
could be mounted under various theories.

Another reason that this could be less common that might expect, given that
it's legal under federal law, is that some states are not at-will employment
states (like California is), so it's generally harder to fire employees in
general.

------
mbillie1
"Silicon Valley’s politics have long skewed left, with a free-markets
philosophy and a dash of libertarianism."

This is not in any modern sense "left" (please don't bother pedantically
bringing up "classical liberalism").

~~~
leereeves
I suspect the author meant "left, except for a free-markets philosophy and a
dash of libertarianism".

In many other ways SV is clearly skewed left.

~~~
mbillie1
In what sense could that possibly be "left" then?

~~~
leereeves
The American sense.

Europeans might disagree and say that all Americans are on the right.

~~~
mbillie1
> The American sense.

With no economic components I'm genuinely curious what you consider the
"American sense" of the left, in the sense of actual policy. Pro-choice, I
guess?

~~~
leereeves
Well, look at Hillary's platform:

[https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/](https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/)

The economic components were maybe 1/3 of her platform, and not all of her
economic positions were incompatible with free markets.

~~~
mbillie1
I would dispute that Hillary is a left candidate whatsoever - she is a
centrist, hawkish free-market neoliberal.

~~~
leereeves
Opinions differ on the meaning of left/right. Europeans would probably
consider her centrist or right-wing. Californians too, perhaps.

But by American standards, her platform was well left of the average
politician.

(Though I suspect, had she been elected, she would have ignored the platform
and governed as a corporatist.)

~~~
mbillie1
> But by American standards, her platform was well left of the average
> politician.

Again, only if you entirely discount her economic positions, which are the
core positions of any "left" figure.

You're free to paint with however wide a brush you wish, and your other
comments in this thread leave little doubt that you'll retain your opinion
regardless of how this exchange turns out. But simply because the Democratic
party is the "more PC" corporate capitalist party, and the Republican party is
the "less PC", does not mean that either of them represents anything remotely
resembling economic left interests.

~~~
leereeves
I think you have a skewed idea of the American political spectrum, but
everyone is free to define left/right however they wish, so we'll have to
agree that we disagree about their meanings.

------
balance_factor
One of the ironic things about this is the right has fought for years to
empower corporations, and disempower workers, then goes apoplectic when Google
Inc sees him as a liability and disposes of him like a used tissue. Damore
sees the left as the problem, then files an NLRB complaint to try to protect
himself. The biologically IQ-superior Damore might be surprised to find that
the worker protections of the NLRB have been systematically hollowed out over
the preceding decades by his conservative pals.

Conservatives and Republicans fought decades to enshrine the power of
corporations and the 1%, and to undermine any worker autonomy. I have to roll
my eyes at all this. I guess Damore found out the hard way that he's not part
of the biologically IQ superior clique he thought he was part of.

~~~
supremesaboteur
The Right is not fighting for the rights of corporations. They believe that a
free society best protects the rights of the little guy

~~~
matt4077
It's just terribly convenient to believe that everything that's good for large
corporations is also good for "the little guy".

Considering the balancing of these interests (which most people consider to at
least sometimes conflict) is the core issue of politics, such a belief would
actually render politics useless. You could just appoint the top 10 CEOs and
wait for the trickle-down wealth to wash over the masses.

------
rm_-rf_slash
At this point everybody's made up their minds, assigned heros and villains and
victims, and now flood every comment board on the internet to repeat their own
existing beliefs.

Has anybody's mind been changed at all through this whole ordeal? Or are we
just going to sail through another historic moment of cultural reckoning with
our comfortable beliefs firmly intact and affirmed the whole way through?

~~~
DiNovi
did you read the document? Did you think it was an appropriate workplace
share?

~~~
Chris2048
> Did you think it was an appropriate workplace share

Depends on the workplace, doesn't it?

~~~
DiNovi
This answer is a dodge.

Why would that matter? Every workplace has an expectation for you to get along
with your colleagues.

~~~
Chris2048
Some places actively encourage it, and provide forums for discussing such
topics. Google, for example..

------
pmurT
Non-white and grew up with a very religious background - even lived in a
religious commune-like environment for a few years. The current environment in
the bay reminds me of those days in many ways - the incredible pressure to
visibly signal virtue through study, fasting, public displays of humility,
etc. It's easy to trick yourself in thinking you actually believe and this is
the only way, but it quickly fades once you're out of the environment

------
Clubber
I believe it's illegal in the US to fire someone for their political leanings,
but not if you say something outrageous like women aren't built for tech jobs
(or whatever he said).

That being said, it's never a good idea to get on a soapbox about politics at
work (or anywhere really). It doesn't make a difference in your listeners
opinions and only gets people with opposing views aggravated. Best to just
think about the issues and vote come election.

~~~
boobsbr
> I believe it's illegal in the US to fire someone for their political
> leanings, but not if you say something outrageous like women aren't built
> for tech jobs (or whatever he said).

It's easy to circumvent the legal issue, just have a vague code of conduct and
claim the employee broke said code of conduct.

~~~
ForRealsies
"You really need to read it again. He never brings of the topic of
suitability. His section about biological differences only discusses why
genders tend to choose certain professions."

~~~
Chris2048
Quotes?

------
almonj
"Supporters of women in tech praised Google." .. total lockdown of discourse
is helpful to women? Outright firing anybody who dares to ask for open
discussion is creating a more woman friendly working environment? This is
pretty sexist. They are openly saying that in order for women to succeed we
need authoritarian thought policing, and that if you are a woman you
automatically agree with their agenda. Something strange is going on here.

------
at-fates-hands
Welcome to 2017 where we're currently in the throes of an ideological civil
war.

Politics used to be a gentleman's game. Sure, you argue and huff and puff over
bills, and the opposing parties viewpoints, but at the end of the day - you
found compromise. The last decade or so? No such thing. Politics is now a
bloodsport. Total victory is the only option.

\- Different viewpoints? Not allowed.

\- Compromise? Not allowed.

\- Rational discourse? Not allowed.

\- Don't believe what I believe? Your're a racist, bigot, homophobe,
xenophobe, misogynist.

The Liberal ideology that has dominated politics for the last decade is now
eroding, the Republicans own Washington DC right now and its rather off
putting to the people who used to be in power. The whole Google issue just
highlights that this isn't going to end anytime soon - but it sure didn't
start with Trump, and it sure didn't just "land on Silicon valley's doorstep"
this past week.

I think the larger question is when is rational discourse going to return?
Google had an incredible opportunity to create a forum to discuss the issues
the author brought up. Instead, they had a knee jerk reaction, based on the
current environment, and fired the guy. They would rather deal with a lawsuit,
a ton of backlash and a social media furor I haven't seen in a while, instead
of having an open dialogue on what happened and why this guy believes what he
believes. Can him, put him the box and label him an evil person and let's move
on.

Nobody wins, and nothing is gained.

Another wasted opportunity.

Sad and depressing this is where we are as a country.

~~~
heurist
I'd hesitate to say liberal politics dominated DC. In the last decade there
were only two years where Democrats were able to pass liberal legislation at
the federal level: 2008-2010. Even then it was a slog. Republican powers keep
pushing the Overton window further and further right and liberals are supposed
to just accept it? No, they're going to draw a line and learn to fight back.
Only "The Party of No" bears the burden of compromise at this point.

------
kushti
Silicon Valley is like USSR in 70s-80s: you can say anything, but for saying
things not in the party's line you would be expelled from a higher social
class.

~~~
matt4077
> Silicon Valley is like USSR in 70s-80s:

Totally, except for the economic stagnation, widespread malnutrition, common
alcoholism, kleptocratic gerontocracy, almost every way, and the actual
arrests of dissidents.

Oh, and losing a war in Afghanistan also doesn't seem to be in Twitter's
immediate future.

~~~
kushti
You dont' get the comparison at all. And btw, Bay Area is full of drugsters,
not to say that the country is losing the war in Afghanistan, as well as
couple of other wars.

------
leemailll
It feels like those guys in Silicon Valley are trying their _best ways_ to
homogenize their minds

------
DiNovi
Comments in here show that silicon valley still has a lot to reckon with their
engineers

------
ryanmarsh
_“What does it do to somebody when they feel like they literally can’t express
themselves?” said Mr. Andreessen, a Facebook board member who backed Mrs.
Clinton last year._

Nailed it.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Immediately down voted. LOL bring it on.

~~~
kazagistar
No one cares about your politics, you just totally failed to add anything
constructive to the discussion.

~~~
Chris2048
I think people _do_ care about his politics, _but_ he failed to add anything
constructive to the discussion.

