
Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’ - sillypuddy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/like-peter-thiel-others-feel-alienated-by-silicon-valley-groupthink-1518962400
======
twblalock
I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many
other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to
libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds
and religious views.

Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their
political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far
more welcome here than liberals are in other parts of the country.

It seems to me, from personal experience, that the people who feel alienated
are the ones who bring politics to work in an overbearing contrarian way,
seeking to cause offense under the guise of "debate," and then pretend to be
shocked when people don't want to put up with their shit. Work is for working;
it's not a debating society, and especially not when the debating is done in
bad faith.

Peter Thiel has been more politically vocal than most, and he is vocal about
things he knows to be unpopular. He can't be surprised that people who
disagree with him are also vocal. If he can't take the heat he should stay out
of the kitchen.

~~~
manfredo
I work in the Bay Area and I have personally worked with (as in, on the same
team with and working directly in cooperation. CEOs, founders, etc. are not
included in this count), exactly one person who discussed their conservative
views. This is in comparison to hundreds of liberals. Sure, you may be able to
identify at least one person on variety of ends of the political spectrum, but
I don't think anyone can sanely deny a vast under representation of
conservatives in Silicon Valley. Granted, Silicon Valley itself is politically
imbalanced. But even in San Francisco 9% [1] of voters voted Republican in
2016.Despite that, I haven't witnessed anything close to that share of
conservatives in my tech jobs - even in my jobs lower in the Peninsula and in
South Bay.

Adding this as an edit: Also, do you work in the Bay Area currently (you
mentioned you grew up there)? There is a pretty substantial discrepancy
between voicing political views in high school and college vs. when people
actually start working. I have met more than an order of magnitude more
conservatives and non-liberals in 4 years of university in the Bay Area as
compared working in tech there - 25 to 30 in unviersity vs. exactly 1 in
industry. Also edited in the fact that I work in the Bay Area in the first
sentence, so I realized I didn't mention it until the last.

~~~
s73v3r_
When the topic of underrepresented groups comes up regarding women and
minorities, the reason given a lot is that “they’re not interested” or
something along those lines. Why would that not be the same reason here?

~~~
manfredo
Is it? I've never witnessed a Bay Area tech company state that their under
representation of women and minorities is due to a different distribution of
preferences in these groups as compared to men and whites & Asians. On the
contrary, in some tech companies doing this appears to be a fireable offense.

Also, the point is not that less conservatives are in tech companies is the
issue. I am under no illusion that probably no more than 10-15% of SV tech
workers are going to be conservative. This is well within my personal estimate
judging from people I met in university (during which they were more open
about their political leanings) who went on to go into tech. It's that the
conservatives that are (and even centrists and less-extreme liberals) feel the
need to put on a facade while at work and that the political environment has
become isolated to the extent that even mainstream conservative and even
centrist views are considered abjectly racist or wrong.

I'd consider an office with 5% conservatives where those conservatives feel
empowered to share their opinion to be a better working environment, as
compared to an office with 25% conservatives where all those conservatives put
on a facade of liberalism out of fear of repercussion.

~~~
s73v3r_
I don’t hear the tech companies saying it, but go into the comment section
here on any story related to those things, and it will definitely come up as a
very popular opinion.

And not too long ago, hell, even currently in some places, it was considered a
mainstream conservative view that gays should not have the same rights to
marry. If a person holding that view were to work at, say, Grindr, I would
absolutely expect them to receive push back on it.

~~~
manfredo
This isn't contradicting anything I claimed. If anything, it's reinforcing it.
Pointing out the disparity between the prevalence of conservative views (or at
least, views that go against the majority in big Bay Area tech companies) on
HN vs. in real life reinforces the notion that many tech workers are having to
censor themselves and lie to their co-workers to fit in at work.

Marc Andressen said something similar in an interview, I'm going to dig it up
and post it here as an edit. Here it is, the relevant bits are around 28
minutes: [https://a16z.com/2017/05/15/andreessen-primack-dc-tech-
polic...](https://a16z.com/2017/05/15/andreessen-primack-dc-tech-policy-
summit-2017/)

~~~
s73v3r_
My point is, if your political stance is that certain groups should be denied
fundamental rights, for instance, then yes, you will feel awkward around those
people, and with good reason.

~~~
manfredo
And who gets to decide what is and isn't a fundamental right? Remember, the
majority of Californian voters voted to ban same sex marriage in 2008. That
would make us (people who think same sex marriage should be a right) the
minority. If your boss declared the right to firearms a fundamental right,
should it empower him or her to fire anyone who donates to politicians that
support gun control (in other words, almost all Democrats)?

~~~
eclipxe
The Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

------
titzer
I'm 37 and, God, people treat me like I'm a dinosaur. I've been programming C
for 25 years and it's hard to relate to young people who don't know what a
machine register is. We can argue about it, I can get downvoted, whatever.

I moved out of the Bay Area after 5 years, and to be honest, the divide
between where I am and where the ideological center of Silicon Valley has
drifted just continues to get wider.

It has little to do with politics, and it has more to do with the role of
technology in human life and the future.

Silicon Valley is overrun by techno-utopians.

I used to be into that, believing that software was this wonderful force that
is going to turn man from the ape he is into some kind of artificially-
intelligent hyper-being. It's a fail, it's a fantasy. It's just not going to
happen, and it's time to wake up from the dream. We're not going to be living
on Mars or visit Jupiter or become immortal, not in the next 10 years or in
the lifetime of anyone reading this. With high probability you're going to
live out your life and die somewhere between 70 and 100. Just like the
billions of humans before you. Get used to it! It's OK, even.

I moved away to get out of the shouting match, to get away from so many young
bright software developers like me straight out of college, who just want to
disrupt everything for no reason, and to get out of that echo chamber.
Everyone's a unicorn. Everyone's gonna change the world. FFS your stupid chat
apps are not going to change the world.

Moving out of the Bay Area is not about being disillusioned, it's about
focusing on things that actually matter, instead of the silly bubble.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Silicon Valley is overrun by techno-utopians.

That's what it sounds like to me too. I find it particularly hard to reconcile
claims of liberalism, or even libertarianism, with an industry led by Google,
Amazon and Facebook, companies that basically make money by running roughshod
over their users' privacy.

~~~
telchar
As a geographical outsider, it seems to me that this is more indicative that
Silicon Valley runs on a deep amoral cynicism that uses hypocritical marketing
messages to appeal to a segment of left-leaning youthful technological
tastemakers.

I feel this is more of an indictment of the cynicism and hypocrisy of the
gargantuan power players in SV than of the alleged political beliefs (techno-
utopianism, liberalism) being discussed. The line of discussion that this
thread represents, which seems common on HN these days, seems to disparage
liberalism as if it is to blame for being used as cover by powerful
corporations that seem to me to be more anarcho-capitalist than anything else.

Are there really very many techno-utopians in SV, or are they mostly people
and companies who use the language of making the world a better place as a
cover for consuming it economically?

------
sho
What is crazy about the the situation in SF is that even 5 or so years ago if
you asked me what the "echo chamber" there was echoing I would have said
libertarianism and some kind of techno-utopianism. The takeover by the
proscriptive far-left has been astonishingly rapid, and it is absolutely real.
I also know people who have left, and many more who absolutely keep their
political and even philosophical views to themselves, especially after Damore.

It's been an extraordinarily fast takeover and I'd really like to know exactly
what happened those 5 or so years ago to precipitate this seismic shift.

~~~
gameswithgo
I have no idea what SF is like, so in these discussions I never can tell if
there really is an influx of insane, insufferable far left crazies, or if
people who insist on remaining racist and keeping gays in the closet are mad
that nobody is having that anymore. The latter is what I see in my own circle
of humans but I live in Texas.

I can say though that I've moved further to the left as I've gotten older,
from a libertarian tech-stereotype when I was younger, and in large part it
has been from seeing the conservative half of american slide slowly further
into insanity and horribleness, seemingly driven by fox news, at least among
family.

~~~
sho
> insane, insufferable far left crazies

Definitely this option.

And by the way, I've been increasingly wondering lately whether our blind
insistence on labelling absolutely everything "left/right" or "red/blue" isn't
doing our society real damage. I've never voted conservative my entire life
but I have _nothing_ in common with the far left and indeed fear them a lot
more than the far right. We need a new vocabulary.

~~~
walshemj
Yes but there are no far left parties in the USA to vote for.

~~~
manofstick
As non-american, living outside of america (but having lived there for a year
and a half starting January 2000), I concur. I still follow american politics
quite a bit (too much for me to remain healthy actually) and I'm constantly
bamboozled trying to comprehend what people mean by the "far left".

To me it seems like any one is considered "far left" if they believe in:

\- treating all people, regardless of race, gender, gender-identity or age
equally (*) \- believing in the science of climate change \- believing that
guns are the main reason for mass murders \- believing that the more you earn,
the more tax you should pay

Which, for the rest of the world, are pretty centralist positions...

~~~
jerkstate
I don't think those beliefs are far-left, I believe what makes beliefs far-
left is the conclusions that are drawn from them are typically to reduce the
freedom of the governed to achieve those objectives:

\- Treat all people equally, and legislate that outcomes are the same for all
groups of people

\- Believe in the science of climate change and legislate reductions programs
which incentivize offshoring manufacturing (but don't put any constraints on
global trade)

\- Mass murders are caused by guns and that outweighs all advantages of
civilian gun ownership, and there's no other way to solve the problem, so it
should be banned

\- The more you earn, the more tax you should pay, so if your economic output
is really high you should hide your money in other countries and signal your
virtue on other fronts so people forgive you for being a tax cheat

~~~
andybak
"Far-left" used to mean "Revolutionary Marxist" \- and still does in most
parts of the world. You're talking about left-liberal here by my
understanding.

------
wpietri
> they feel people there are resistant to different social values and
> political ideologies

This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found
stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political
ideologies (not to mention backgrounds and interests) here than pretty much
any place I've lived. The main hostility I see is to intolerance, but that's
hardly surprising given SF's long, welcoming history and the paradox of
tolerance. [1]

If I were to worry about any sort of uniformity, it wouldn't be political, but
in startup culture. 20 years of success has created some very well-greased
rails into which most innovation has to fit: bright young founders, seed round
followed quickly by A and B rounds. That can be fine as far as it goes, but it
has become so orthodox that I think we're not a great place for doing anything
other than a plausible Next Big Thing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

~~~
friedman23
> This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found
> stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political
> ideologies

Really? Because the only values I've heard expressed have been standard
democratic talking points and once in a while far left ideologies.

~~~
refurb
Precisely! Not what OP's political views are but I would guess if he found the
Midwest "stifling" and SF "a breath of fresh air", it's because he's aligned
with the politics in SF.

Having also lived in the mid-West and SF, I would agree the mid-West leans
more conservative, but in any decent sized city you'll find both view points
(election resulted confirm it).

I would say SF is just the opposite of a hardcore conservative town. There is
almost no consideration for having a different viewpoint. And if you happen to
express one, you're certainly made to feel their is something wrong with you.

~~~
prawn
(Not American and don't live in either place you describe.)

Is that feeling of pushback to an (assumed) different viewpoint just that in
the midwest, a conservative is in the majority, and in SF they're not? So, in
one place you'd encounter almost no confident opposition, and in the other you
would? I assume it might stand out and feel like suppression if you weren't at
all used to it.

~~~
wpietri
I suspect that's part of it for sure. A lot of what conservatives have been
getting upset about over the last few decades is diffusion of power away from
well-off, white, straight men to everybody else. Loss of power still feels
like a personal loss, even if systemically it's a move toward a more equal
structure.

------
shruubi
As someone who is an outsider looking in on this whole situation (someone who
both does not live in Silicon Valley and does not live in America), I honestly
think the whole place and everyone there is f __king insane.

Both sides are seemingly entirely incapable of accepting that people, with all
their complexities can have differing view points and not just assuming they
are the devil incarnate.

I used to think that I was pretty far-left leaning, but recently, with the
attitudes of the so-called progressives, I honestly want nothing to do with
these people. How is it that more people aren't terrified that the left has
turned themselves into an echo-chamber so against even slightly differing
ideals that those who do even slightly go against the norm will have a social-
media storm come down upon them to ruin their career and life.

And don't think conservatives are any better. Here is a hot tip for all the
conservatives out there - white supremacy and neo-nazi's are not the types of
people you want to associate yourselves with. The fact that it's been over 70
years since the end of WW2 and you haven't quite figured that out yet is
almost as baffling as the idea that conservatives cannot accept that gun-
control does not mean people want to take your guns away, but simply want to
make sure that people who would abuse guns can not get them.

Honestly, if the lot of you could start acting like mature adults who can have
a reasonable discussion of actual issues without resorting to calling each
other names and organizing mobs, the rest of the world that still follow
America's example would be thankful.

~~~
telchar
I wonder if you read as much online news about your country of residence as
you do about SV, would you think they're fking insane too? Remember that the
news distorts, there are trolls all over the internet intent on (and some paid
to) stoke outrage and division, and controversy sells. And SV punches way
above its weight in newspaper coverage.

I don't like in the valley but I suspect that you and many others are being
drawn into an image of the place and of politics in general that is very
distorted.

------
tempz
There is a linguistic sleight of hand at work here: 'libertarian' and 'left'
is not what is happening in SV. These terms have been hijacked by the identity
politics cartel.

The SV political and ideological climate is all about pidgeonholing you into
0.01-0.3% segment ('left-handed bisexual javascript expert'), then maintaining
these segments and manipulating the fractured society into neoliberal
directions.

It is obvious that there is nothing that can be named as a common interest in
SV: there is no such discourse. The commonality is restricted to your
0.01-0.3% segment.

~~~
adventured
That's not quite correct. There are very obvious, very large common
intellectual & political interests in Silicon Valley:

Equal representation of women and minorities in tech. Wage gap as a result of
discrimination. Unlimited low skill immigration; immigration amnesty.
Environmentalism, global climate change. Gay rights. Drug legalization, ending
policies of mass incarceration.

Those topics all have overwhelming support in SV.

~~~
tempz
These topics all have overwhelming support in local media, PR and marketing
copy, in other words in the official ideology.

The actual people are not much different than anywhere else in the US. But
they quickly learn to provide lip service to the official ideology, especially
when seeking employment or acceptance in social media-mediated groups (and
there are very few that are not.)

The real problem with computer techies is that they tend to be more
sycophantic to the prevailing power than other profesions.

------
majormajor
Lotta comments here about anti-Trump stuff.

Do we really think Trump's candidacy and presidency would've been well
received by the west coast in 2012/2013 instead of 2016/2017?

I don't think so. Just about everything he said that's been treated as wildly
offensive and uninformed the last couple of years would've been no more well-
received four years earlier.

Heck, you don't even have to be on the left to believe that _rejecting white
nationalism is why California turned blue in the first place_ :
[https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-
california-...](https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-california-
blue)

I think those on the right who don't reject Trump should reflect on how he's
changed the Republican party.

------
idlewords
None of the three people profiled in this article are tech workers. They are
investors, or whatever it is that Tim Ferriss is.

To the extent tech workers are leaving Silicon Valley, I'm willing to bet the
dominant factor is the cost of housing.

~~~
attaboyjon
This should be the top comment. You can tell from the article that the WSJ is
trying really, really hard to push the 'intolerant liberals' angle. From what
I can tell, the only person cited who really left due to politics was Thiel.

------
drovo9
I'm an immigrant. After 20 years in the Bay Area, I'm calling it quits. There
are practical reasons, like the high taxes, high cost of living, and
widespread social dysfunction and conflicts. But the biggest problem with the
Bay Area isn't a left-right issue, it's that it is filled with techies who
went from college to being very well off without the usual decades of
struggle, without a lot of life experience, and without much knowledge beyond
technology. These people will never grow up, because they have enough wealth
and power that nothing will ever force them to grow up. Quite apart from
running the Bay Area into the ground, those are simply not the kind of people
I want to work with or socialize with.

------
cromwellian
I wonder how alienated employees of Murdoch owned companies feel in their
“echo chamber”

The victim card being played here is quite pathetic. A religous conservative
who is told they can’t discriminate against gay people claims you need
tolerate and respect his intolerance and disrespect because of religious
freedom.

Someone who benefitted from privilege, or born into an upper middle class
household, claims discrimination if they write a screed on merit against their
coworkers and suffer from it because of efforts to reach out and broaden the
applicant base.

The “echo chamber” being complained about are broadly shared cultural values
we expect Americans to hold, beliefs in All Men Are Created Equal, that really
aren’t normal subjects of debate. The only issue debatable is the best
policies to maintain them.

Many of the complaints don’t argue for how to achieve it, rather they take a
rather extremist view of meritocracy and hyperindividualism like they just
graduated from Ayn Rand University and try to apply it to the very messy real
world.

Is it too much to ask to just do your work and if you don’t like policies
against sexual harassment or racial or queer harassment at your company to go
work somewhere that tolerates it?

------
andrewjl
I find the recent uptick in progressivism in SV refreshing, and sorely needed.
Then again, I've lived my entire life in liberal enclaves and do not
personally identify with conservative / "family values" viewpoints.

~~~
freyir
San Francisco’s “progressivism” is undermined by how terribly the city
operates. Dirty streets, aging infrastructure, crime, homelessness, laissez
faire law enforcement, conservative housing policies, and extreme wealth
inequality everywhere. If the progressives can’t get their own house in order,
good luck selling their vision to the rest of the country.

~~~
heurist
The entire country has awful city planning, SF just happens to be a highly
visible example with some unique problems.

Conservatives have plenty of issues as well - look at Kansas or Alabama. Don't
see those being discussed at a national level, though the politics that drove
them into the ground as now steering the federal government.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _SF just happens to be a highly visible example with some unique problems_

Coming in from New York, San Francisco’s lack of attention to its homeless
population is self inflicted. It’s also a problem that nobody in the city
seems very much to care about.

~~~
heurist
I haven't been to San Francisco in 10ish years or NYC in 5 so I can't compare
directly, but Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all have tons of
homeless people as well and they seem to get very little attention.

~~~
adventured
The point is that supposedly San Francisco's ideology would be extremely
favorable to taking superior care of the homeless vs more conservative cities.
The actual results, are that SF does an extraordinarily mediocre job at it.

SF is an affluent city, with a homeless problem consisting of 5,000 people,
and they're unwilling to fix it financially. They can afford to, and they
refuse to. It's disgusting.

~~~
refurb
That's what gets me. In SF you have a huge liberal majority and is a wealthy
city. This is in a state with a liberal majority.

Yet the social problems in SF are probably some of the worst in the US.

It's pretty shocking.

~~~
masterleep
Your observation is consistent with the belief that progressive policies are
not the answer.

~~~
heurist
If politicians only pay lip service to the ideology when their major
supporters are NIMBY property owners, is it really an application of
progressive policies?

------
bobbytherobot
This last election was not normal. (Or it was more normal than we want to
admit.) In my first-hand experience, I saw Republicans in the Bay Area
spending money and time trying to stop Trump from being elected. These are not
Republicans in name only, these are people who serve in the local GOP, people
who worked in the George W Bush White House, people who believe in free
markets with all their soul, people who want to drastically change the
government. They hated Trump.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
This is what so many people just refuse to see. The GOP did EVERYTHING they
could to try and stop Trump. We know Hillary asked the media to cover Trump as
a pied-piper she “knew” she could beat. The GOP never wanted Trump, not for
one second.

So the irony is that because of people’s GOP hate they feel need to hate Trump
because he ran as a Republican without actually looking to see what’s
happening here.

If someone truly hated the Republican Party, they should at least recognize
that Trump is their enemy’s enemy.

------
scottlocklin
It has nothing to do with the content of Silicon Valley beliefs. As far as I
can tell, Silicon Valley/Bay Area beliefs are mercurial and change by the
month.

It has to do with the moral panic over intelligent people dissenting from The
Narrative. This is a new and extremely illiberal phenomenon, and it's probably
going to get much worse before it gets better.

------
jccalhoun
I don't live in SF and I don't work in tech so I would like to hear what
specific conservative opinions people in tech in SF feel like they can't say.
Are they economic? international relations? or is it more identity politics
based?

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/Rb1Jf](http://archive.is/Rb1Jf) works for me.

------
nodesocket
I recently moved (fled) from downtown San Francisco to Nashville TN and
couldn't be happier. I lived in SF for over 5 years, and there is absolutely a
mass exodus of people and engineers leaving the bay area because of extreme
ideology, hypocrisy, constant outrage, and the echo chamber that engulfs
everything. Downtown San Francisco is a great place to visit for a few days
but no place to start and raise a family.

~~~
davidf18
SV is very liberal, yet typically engineers (eg. EE, Mechanical, Civil, Aero,
Industrial, Chemical, ...) are conservative. I wonder how many people with
real engineering degrees (disclosure my BS is EE with CS minor from top
school) are SV liberal.

~~~
davidf18
Unable to edit my comment so adding this:
[http://www.machinedesign.com/news/politics-
engineers](http://www.machinedesign.com/news/politics-engineers)

"Engineers tend to view themselves as much less liberal and slightly more
conservative than the general public, according to a recent survey of over
1,200 readers of MACHINE DESIGN and Electronic Design magazines. The same
survey also found that engineers say they are more likely to be Republican
(42.1%) or Independent (33.7%) voters, as opposed to Democrats (14.5%)."

~~~
jakecopp
I imagine this correlation could be explained by engineers having a high
average salary, and I think high salaries (on average) correlate with being
conservative.

I don't have references though.

------
fullshark
I agree with the premise of this piece. I have lunch with some people that
lean right, all of us keep our mouths shut for fear of reprisal whenever
politics comes up or a progressive work program is discussed. No one actually
cares what we think, no reason to suggest anything at odds with echo chamber.

------
wsy
Conservative people always emphasize that equal opportunity is all a society
needs, and there is no need to worry about the actual outcome. And now they
find themselves in a minority position in one area of the US, and ask for
affirmative action for themselves? Funny!

------
kkhire
Peter Thiel knows what the best city in california is!!

------
mrgordon
I feel alienated by the awful beliefs and behavior of Peter Thiel and his
portfolio companies. Now many people can breathe a sigh of relief that someone
who wields billions to support Palantir, Trump, and spurious lawsuits will
finally leave us alone.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _will finally leave us alone_

He’s not even leaving the state. Branding his move as political exodus is
marketing for his China-oriented fundraising, a capital source better serviced
from Los Angeles than San Francisco.

~~~
mrgordon
Yeah I was referring to him leaving Silicon Valley / SF as the headline
mentions but I agree it’s a self serving move and won’t really change his
agenda much. He did buy citizenship in New Zealand so he can flee there if he
messes our country up too much.

------
Tasboo
Who ever said that cities are supposed represent all values equally? Move to a
different area of the country if you don't like a particular city's political
leanings. There are plenty of Republican leaning areas of the country.

------
dreamfactored
If Hacker News and Reddit comments roughly approximate SV attitudes, SV would
be very right-wing compared to mainstream Europe on the whole.

In any case, this sounds more like other people's distaste is slowly grinding
Thiel down and he's just trying to rationalise it to himself with talk of echo
chambers and whatnot. You'd think he'd have more sympathy for minorities who
have had to put up with that from birth but he does come across as someone who
is frustrated when others don't subscribe to his exceptionalist view of
himself.

It's not SV, it's Coventry he doesn't like, and he'll be sent there wherever
he goes.

------
gdilla
Intellectually honest 'conservatives' who identify as republicans who aren't
actively trying to reform their party and are aligning with the current anti
LEGAL immigration, anti gay, white-christian identity politics of the modern
GOP shouldn't be shocked that they feel alienated in a place that is largely
enlightened on all these things decades ago. Even if you put the social issues
asside, the GOP sure loves their deficits and big government. That's been true
since the W years. What the hell is conservatism now?

------
anjc
"This is probably media hyperbole"

> reads comments ITT

...

------
muratk
For anyone caring to get out of the echo chamber and near, unfortunately not
onto the beach, join us at engageSPARK in Cebu, Philippines. :)
[https://www.engagespark.com/careers](https://www.engagespark.com/careers)
Might get a different perspective on the stuff inside this bubble. (Obviously,
I'm still interested in the echo, since I'm here.)

------
kristianp
Sidestep the paywall here:
[https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...](https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Flike-
peter-thiel-others-feel-alienated-by-silicon-valley-groupthink-1518962400)

------
dontcare25
Most silicon valley employees don't really care about any of this. If anything
most have extremely conservative opinions, they'll be all for Trump if they
could vote on H1

~~~
breakyerself
Anti-net neutrality, anti-legal pot, draconian immigration policies, erosion
of the social safety net, deregulation of the environment, kneecapping solar,
climate denial. Are these really things most educated people in silicon valley
are on board with? I have no connection to silicon valley, but most tech
workers I know wouldn't support Trump at the very least because his climate
denial is anti scientific and destructive.

~~~
axau
The H1Bs I know that support Trump do so mostly because of economic reasons,
and because of the immigration policies, like fixing H1B abuse, and making
legal immigrants take priority over illegal ones (Democrats are perceived to
do the opposite).

~~~
dominotw
Can confirm this. Indians in SV are big trump supporters.

~~~
oriolid
India with all of its poverty, inequality and bigotism is more or less Trump's
ideal country.

~~~
thanatropism
Wow.

Given that the discussion was about the tendency of Indians to support Trump
(at least in SV tech)...

... that's just over-the-top outrageous racist, man.

------
purplezooey
No, it's mainly just housing and traffic that are SV's main problems right
now. It is completely unpassable here. And the area can't seem to fix its
problems.

------
fzss_
Silicon Valley has more college-educated, younger and more diverse work force
than average, so it doesn’t surprise me that this work force is more liberal.

------
alexnewman
I have seen the far left and far right discriminate in nearly every job I've
been in since the mid two thousands. It was worse on the right in the finance
industry, but recently someone provided me with a blacklist of right wing
individuals in which my name was on it. I found this funny as I am basically a
socialist who dedicated a huge portion of my spare time to helping minorities
in tech. The world is polarized, just make sure to call it out when you see
people being stupid.

------
throwaway5752
What is it that Peter Thiel said previously about women voting? What did he do
to Gawker?

~~~
rpmcmurphy
Just a friendly reminder, Gawker did not out Thiel. He had a public profile on
Friendster that clearly described him as interested in men. Gawker's editor at
the time remarked that people like him thought the web was this super ultra
secret bat cave, and that if you posted something there it wasn't really
public.

~~~
refurb
You see no difference between someone sharing something on a social platform
versus having that information plastered across the nation?

~~~
moonka
Social platforms are largely ways for people to plaster information across the
nation. Just look at how Twitter is used these days.

------
svbill
# Analyze article posts, sort by hostility and bias # Compare to points from
article # begin

------
dmh2000
what would be the reception to someone who just doesn't care about politics,
doesn't care about who does what, who likes who, who eats what, who drives
what? Libertarian but without the politics, I suppose.

------
plessthanpt05
Escaping liberal Silicon Valley for super conservative Los Angeles huh? If it
were Orange county I might buy it, but moving to Hollywood Hills...come'on.

Seems like a PR stunt.

------
andybak
Rather worryingly this got flagged and killed. Hopefully we're still at the
point where we can sensibly discuss a WSJ article.

~~~
oriolid
Flagged and killed? I just got here through front page. I know you like being
a victim, but you are not.

~~~
dang
This comment breaks the site guideline which asks: "Please respond to the
strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
that's easier to criticize." At the time the parent was posted, it was flagged
off the front page.

Worse, of course, is the personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, so
please don't do it again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
andybak
Thanks. I was slightly taken aback by that response. Especially because I'm
probably not the straw man that the comment was directed at.

------
puppetmaster40
I agree with people that say that SV is an echo chamber. I'm software eng.,
and found it very hard for a year before election to work there. Happy to
explain if someone cares to know. It is a bit hard when people on left were
told: 'you are smart to vote left' \- they just talk down to me. I'll give you
one example, on TV, they had a right wing person getting egged - I'm sure most
here saw the news/video. And I had friends I knew for years call me racists.
Scary. Etc. After the election - it got worse. So I left SV for NY. I
understand if right wing leaves, I know now what it is to be hated. I think
you should ashamed - there is no way right wing would treat you that way. (ex:
See x-TYT video of Red Pill Black - let me know if you can't find it )

~~~
kelukelugames
You don't think conservatives treat liberals poorly? Go on r/atheism and see
all the complaints about living in a red state.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Yea... sorry, I don’t think a bunch of sheltered evenagelical-atheist kids
should really be your go to metric. I can only think of a few worse online
communities.

------
jstewartmobile
I hate to have sympathy for the devil here, but I see their point.

Hackernews is living proof. Pre-election, you could voice a contrary opinion
here and have a discussion. Post-election, even the faintest wrongthink
shibboleth gets silently downvoted into oblivion.

~~~
chappi42
It's the same in Germany. You voice that the many refugees (with often very
conservative religious and patriarchal views) pose problems and, päng, you are
a nazi.

A balanced discourse is (was) no longer possible. (It's getting a bit better
again after some ramnifications became plain to see in some every-day
situations).

~~~
didibus
Aren't there prerequisite to a discourse? Like all parties coming together
with open minds. Having the intent to seek the truth, not an agenda to win.
Using reason and rational thinking over your emotions.

I think lately we're not meeting those qualifications, so maybe it is best not
to engage, since discourse would not be productive.

~~~
muninn_
Which could be a fine solution, except one or more groups still are making
rules which affect the lives of all of the other groups. So disengaging means
letting other groups you may disagree with dictate parts of your life.

~~~
XorNot
Welcome to civil society. Learn to play ball and compromise since the
alternative is from what those refugees are escaping.

------
dmfdmf
To understand what is going on here please read Rand's article "Anatomy of
Comprise" in her anthology "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and her article
"The Establishing of an Establishment" in her anthology "Philosophy: Who Needs
It."

Rand wrote; "It is precisely those ends ([sacrifice]-collectivism-statism)
that ought to be rejected. But if neither party chooses to do it, the logic of
events created by their common basic principles will keep dragging them both
further and further to the left. If and when the "conservatives" are kicked
out of the game altogether, the same conflict will continue between the
"liberals" and the avowed socialists; when the socialists win, the conflict
will continue between the socialists and the communists; when the communists
win, the ultimate goal of [sacrifice] will be achieved; universal immolation."

In short we are witnessing the end of the Rep party as they are kicked off the
social/political stage because they stand for nothing except watered-down
ideas/goals of the Dems/Left. Who needs them?

Trump was never a Rep and used the Rep party for a self-aggrandizement, and
big FU "Ill show you" to the NY Dems who rebuffed Trump in the '90s when he
wanted leadership positions for all the money he was donating.

What Thiel, et. al. don't understand is that they are objecting to the
left/liberal Establishment propagated by Academia and based on
collectivism/sacrifice as political and moral ideals shared by both parties.
The only way to end this process is for Thiel or the Reps to stand up for
individualism and selfishness or their protests will be a footnote in history.

~~~
dmfdmf
Should be "Anatomy of Compromise", sorry for the error.

------
almost_usual
Then leave, you can drop a pin on pretty much 95% of America and end up in a
conservative place where people will share your values.

Don’t like being conservative in the Bay Area because you feel ostracized and
judged? Cool, now you know what it feels like to be gay in 95% of America.

Get over it.

~~~
yters
Doesn't Peter Thiel know what it's like to be gay in 95% of America?

------
jimjimjim
well probably lots of vampires find civilized society alienating.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Probably moving to greener (redder?) pastures with younger, fresher blood.

------
stevebmark
Off topic: I am legit interested to know how paywall sites get to the front
page of HN. I wouldn't have guessed that the WSJ has a team of people to
upvote their content to the front page, but now I'm second guessing that
assumption. Or, does HN have some hidden allegiance with certain news agencies
that lets paywall content through? Obviously TechCrunch gets in free, since
it's used for YCombinator startup advertising, but the WSJ surprises me.

~~~
grzm
There’s plenty of discusssion elsewhere on HN: you can use search to find
references (I’d start out with author:dang paywall). Short short version:
they’re (e.g., NYT, WSJ, WaPo) big publications with a history of quality
journalism that a lot of people are aware of and exposed to. That contributes
both to increased submissions and upvotes.

------
makewavesnotwar
Likening people to Thiel is ridiculous. He is personally facing the backlash
from openly supporting Trump and being a speaker at his rallies. Nobody else
in the valley did anything as absurd or unnecessary. And if he thinks he'll
fair better in LA, I think he's sorely mistaken once people start recognizing
him en masse. But to my point, this article seems to be generalizing an
outlier to make its point. Everyone is being alienated everywhere because the
country has a leader who is actively polarizing the populous by demonizing
every side that he's not on as an enemy to his agenda, even going so far now
as to suggest people who disagree should be labeled as traitors - which coming
from the President, is technically a death threat as that is the punishment
for treason. Peter Thiel seems to be actively trying to paint a more dystopian
portrait of the situation to make himself out to be a victim when in reality
people on both sides have been alienated by the dissolution of the "moderate"
common ground where we all worked together in favor of a Monday Night
Football-esque team based society (or crime drama - good v. bad). More
generalizations like this that skew reality aren't going to help anything.

~~~
superquest
"openly supporting" the winning presidential candidate isn't "absurd".

~~~
askafriend
Yes it is. When you support Trump, you support his vile brand of leadership.
The majority in this the country do not support this man or his ideas. They
simply don't. The base that supported him and made this presidency possible is
collapsing by all reported metrics (as in they are literally dying off, and
younger people neither support Trump's ideas nor are they as religious). So
while Trump's base may have squeezed out a win last time, their chances of a
repeat decrease significantly as time goes on.

Time is not on their side, and I suspect History is not on their side either.

~~~
refurb
Let me guess, you don't know any Trump supporters?

~~~
askafriend
I've lived in the east coast, the west coast, the midwest, and the south all
for extended periods in my life. I've lived in so many states in this country
that I know intimately the diverse viewpoints and diverse culture that exists
across America.

------
Tasboo
*Right leaning tech workers who have never experienced working outside of their bubble.

News flash: not every place aligns with your political ideology. Try being a
liberal in the Midwest or the South.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Most big cities even in the south and especially in the Midwest tilt liberal.
Most college educated people are also liberal, in tech especially so. Unless
you are working in Salt Lake City or somewhere special, you are probably
surrounded by liberals.

------
ebbv
I'm supposed to feel bad for Peter Thiel? The guy is a billionaire. He can go
wherever he wants and do whatever he wants.

He thinks it's hard to be a conservative in California? Try being a liberal in
most of the red state parts of the country who actually has to work for a
living.

Give me a break.

~~~
kokoshnik
I don't think he wants you to feel bad for him, I think he's just underscoring
it's an echo chamber, which is true.

------
bsder
So we should all take a lesson from how people in the Bible belt treat those
who are agnostic or atheist, right? <rolls eyes>

If the Valley is such a "liberal echo chamber", why is it that women,
homosexual, transsexuals, etc. are the ones still receiving the death threats.

When I see rich, conservative, white men shivering in fear from getting _death
threats_ for expressing their religious or political beliefs, I'll worry about
your "echo chamber" my precious fragile little snowflakes.

~~~
Fins
Didn't Damore receive threats of physical violence? And he's no Thiel by any
stretch of imagination.

~~~
bsder
I don't see anything obvious with a quick Google search, and anybody
complaining about that seems to start throwing around words like "antifa" so
my skepticism and troll alerts are on maximum.

 _HOWEVER_ , Damore is a _REALLY_ good example of the kind nitwit snowflake
that deserves all the approbation he is receiving.

If you are sitting in a corporation and are about to do something that is
going to cause political shockwaves, you need to make sure that your position
and stance is absolutely rock solid and airtight.

This is true whether you are talking about technology or social behavior. If
you're going to political war, you had better have incontrovertible facts and
arguments and they had best be overwhelming. You need to run your presentation
past a couple of friends and colleagues to solidify it. If you half-ass it,
you're going to get your head handed to you on a platter.

Well, guess what? He half-assed it with a bunch of unsupported conjecture and
weak arguments that people destroyed almost immediately with real evidence and
research and then whined about the fact that people handed him his head.

Which probably _STILL_ would have been okay if he actually admitted to being
wrong and put his head back down. But, no, nitwits like him feel that not
simply accepting everything he says as correct is terribly, horribly unfair.
As such, he _doubled down_ on stuff that everybody already showed was wrong
and basically just tried to shout louder.

And then was _shocked_ when he got canned.

The worst part is, there _ARE_ lots of outstanding questions and issues about
diversity programs and initiatives. What should that actual goal of such a
program be? How do you measure whether it is succeeding? Is success for the
company the same as success for the group? Is success for the group the same
as success for the individual? What are the downsides of such programs?

~~~
Fins
Evidence in Damore's lawsuit has some rather interesting tidbits about antifa,
but while they are not very nice people at all, they are not really relevant
to this discussion, I think. It also has evidence of physicasl threats. Those
made it to the recently dropped/dismissed NLRB complaint, and it seems (was
mentioned in a thread on HM, for sure) that peple involved had received very
stern slaps on their wrists.

Now, Damore may not be a very nice person himself (he did go to work for
Google of his own free will, after all), but he did a) what Google asked him
to do -- provided feedback on some corporate training that he was forced to
attend. He backed it with some arguments that while not necessarily water-
tight and incontroversible, were stronger than any debunkings of his memo that
I have seen, which mostly amounted to calling it "pathetic bleatings" and
claiming that it is wrong because it could not possibly be right.

Saying "you are a terrible person and I will hound you until one of us gets
fired" or somesuch is not quite "handing him his head". If anything, it
conmfirms that Damore is probably more right than his detractors. So while it
certainly might have made sense for him to shut up, make a Cultural
Revoluition style confession and keep his job. But faulting him for being
fireed over a memo that he didn't leak and that is, if anything, far more
reasonable than many an action that seems to be accepted at Google (viz. the
story of Corey Altheide).

I just don't see how _he_ is a big snowflake here.

~~~
bsder
> It also has evidence of physicasl threats. Those made it to the recently
> dropped/dismissed NLRB complaint, and it seems (was mentioned in a thread on
> HM, for sure) that peple involved had received very stern slaps on their
> wrists.

Please do put a link if you can find it easily. Wading through the history on
HN is non-trivial. I will certainly accept legally filed complaints as
evidence.

And, they damn sure should have gotten more than slaps on the wrist for
threats of physical violence.

> he did a) what Google asked him to do -- provided feedback

And even if I were doing this on a _technical_ issue, I'm going to make sure
my arguments are solid before I send it into the ether if the issue is going
to cause political grief. That's just common sense.

> stronger than any debunkings of his memo

This one from the Economist is a good general start (I chose the Economist
because it doesn't really fall in the "liberal rag" category that most people
would place things like Salon, Wired, etc.)
[https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726276-last-w...](https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726276-last-
week-newspaper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal)

There are lots of other problems with his memo that the whole "social science"
field that he is quoting has come under strong dispute in the last decade or
so.

The most significant point is that Damore ignores any evidence that doesn't
support his point. If you're going to be controversial, you have to explain
the stuff that _doesn 't_ agree with you as well.

> But faulting him for being fired over a memo that he didn't leak

I thought he explicitly posted it to internal Google circulation. I really
hate how it moved to the press (people who did _THAT_ should be fired as
well), but I do not believe that he simply gave a confidential memo to HR and
then it got leaked. Please do correct me if I am wrong.

Should Damore have lost his job? In my opinion, no.

However, only an idiot goes looking for bear without a really big gun and
being surprised when he gets mauled.

~~~
Fins
There is some discussion here.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554)

You won't actually find an argument from me that Damore didn't behave
stupidly, assuming he wanted to keep his job. However, whatever debunkings
might there be to Damore's memo, neither Google, nor rags like Verge, nor even
Economist provided any. Economist went as low as referencing Zunger's
"pathetic bleatings" that make Damore's memo look like a Nobel material. And
"social science"s wounds are mostly self-inflicted -- those few arguments that
were presented against The Memo came mostly from departments of "womyn's
studies" where results are determined long before research starts. Just look
at what happens to Peterson (his scientific bona fides seem to be beyond
reproach) when he tries to speak.

Google's internal discussion groups are quite weird, but apparently inciting
street violence is perfectly fine. I think it would have been reasonable for
Damore to expect that a memo that at least pretends to be objective, and does
not call for any illegal activity would be acceptable as well.

Shold Google have a right to fire anyone over anything? I believe so. But if
they fire Damore for reasons they give, which really are complete bunk, and do
not fire the "I'll punch you in the face" crowd, they are hypocrites, and
might get mauled themselves in the end.

------
svbill
Everyone here knows SV company environments are hostile working environments
for conservatives. Even multi-billion dollar companies espouse far left
populous views. You learn to keep your opinions to yourself especially when
the office discussion reaches ridiculous levels. Since my views are
conservative/libertarian, I won't bother replying to LinkedIn invites from
Google/Levi's/The Gap/Facebook or other far left companies. Particularly
companies whos' marketing departments are extensions of San
Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley extremists.

------
jacques_chester
The thing is, if you like private property and private contract, this is what
can happen to you. If you think any company is within its rights to police
speech, then you agree that it's fine for Google to exclude conservative or
libertarian speech.

Nobody owes you space for your views. Your place, your rules. Their place,
their rules. That's the deal.

~~~
Sniffnoy
I think you're drawing a false binary choice here. There is such a thing as
"thick libertarianism", for instance. There's nothing inconsistent with the
view that sure one is within one's _rights_ to do such a thing but that it is
still _bad_ , and that one might, to the extent that one can within one's own
rights, take measures to discourage such a thing rather than just accepting it
as "Well it's within their rights so it must be OK".

Edit: Or, to put it another way, if one wants to take the philosophy of
enforcing norms primarily through private action, let us not forget that that
applies not just to the company that owns the building, but also to everyone
that company might deal with! And complaining doesn't seem like a bad start.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _There 's nothing inconsistent with the view that sure one is within one's
> rights to do such a thing but that it is still bad, and that one might, to
> the extent that one can within one's own rights, take measures to discourage
> such a thing rather than just accepting it as "Well it's within their rights
> so it must be OK"._

Sure, but ultimately, if the other party to the discussion refuses to agree,
you need a decision rule.

If your views are largely _about that decision rule_ then you look silly for
not accepting it.

