7 ms·

Brendan Eich's donation of $1000 in support of Prop 8 ended his career at Mozilla, making a tech employee donating to Trump an obvious potential career-ending m

by _yosefk 10y ago

Brendan Eich's donation of $1000 in support of Prop 8 ended his career at Mozilla, making a tech employee donating to Trump an obvious potential career-ending move. It's not very surprising that they didn't. An interesting question is whether their family members donated to Trump what was actually the tech employee's money.

cderwin 10y ago
Part of me wonders if the whole deal with Brendan Eich is a problem with tech or a problem with California. Would the same thing have happened if Mozilla operated out of New York or Seattle (let alone Denver or Austin)? And if not, at what point do the particular nuances of SV (such as political intolerance) become a burden not worth tolerating within the tech community?
- guildwriter 10y ago
  I can't speak to other states in the nation, but I don't think this is a problem that is isolated to tech specifically within CA. One of the things I learned from my time in an ultra-liberal high school in the Bay Area was to keep my mouth shut and my head down if I had a differing opinion. To set the background, my high school invited prominent speakers from time to time to speak about various issues. Not a single conservative voice ever came to talk to us. When the case for the Iraq War was being debated in public, the school invited a panel of speakers to debate the topic in front of us. They didn't invite a single person in favor of the War. When they invited Daniel Ellsberg to speak, he went into a long profanity punctuated rant about GWB which ended with the entire auditorium (including all the teachers and administrators) standing on their feet to applaud him for minutes. This is just a small sampling. It was around that time that I began to realize how bad the indoctrination was and started reading other points of view. When I began expressing those views to share what I had learned, I started getting a lot of funny looks or outright hostility. I remember as a member of student government, I was part of a meeting to discuss changing or adding anything to the student handbook. I mentioned that rather than a focus on racial diversity, that perhaps we should readjust the focus to include a diversity of views as well. The dismissive reaction from everyone including the chairman of the school cemented in my mind where everyone truly stood. It is hard to express how frustrating it is to be surrounded by people who claim to be inclusive and open minded, yet are utterly unwilling to seriously entertain any point of view that comes in conflict with theirs. The totality of their certainty and the violence with which they express it is right on par with the kind of fanaticism you see in deeply Christian communities.
  - yks 10y ago
    I was not living in the US during the Iraq War debates but wasn't that the situation that the mainstream media projected pro-war views? In that sense the debate panels were arguing with the state propaganda basically, weren't they?
    - guildwriter 10y ago
      My opinion on that time was that it was a mixed bag as far as the mainstream media was concerned. I definitely do not recall coverage being one sided at all.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    As an immigrant to the US who's childhood path went from poor rural Texas, to poor urban Houston, to poor Oakland and then to SF, I share many of your sentiments. As an atheist in Texas, I often felt at odds with my peers and subsequently learned from an early age to not voice my opinions too loudly. While this isn't exactly the best way to grow up, I more or less accepted it as the price to pay for having very different world views. Interestingly enough, while I actually shared many of the same political views as my SF peers, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the open hostility that anyone challenging those views would face. In many ways, I found it harder to be an open minded left leaning atheist in SF than a left leaning atheist in Texas. The hypocrisy I saw on display was very disillusioning. For all the talk about SF being progressive and tolerant, I found it among the most provincial and closed minded places I've ever lived.
pseudalopex 10y ago
Eich's career at Mozilla ended when he resigned as CEO and declined to remain as CTO. He resigned because he let a predictable PR problem get away from him and couldn't effectively lead. He had marginal support to begin with; three board members resigned when he was appointed for reasons that had nothing to do with his political activities. Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Trump. Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Clinton. Eich donated to curtail civil rights and kept his job as CTO until he gave it up.
- _yosefk 10y ago
  I understand your opposition to Eich's donation, but I think that what you said strengthens my point rather than weakens it; my only point was that most tech employees would see an Eich-like quiet, private donation to Trump as a "predictable PR problem that might get away from them and prevent them from effectively leading", and that as a result they would avoid creating such a "PR problem", and therefore we cannot learn much about support for Trump in tech circles by looking at donations. As to someone somewhere... Show me someone, somewhere on HN attacked by thousands of commenters for supporting some liberal cause in the US the way Eich was attacked by thousands of commenters (who keep mentioning it every time say Brave is brought up) for supporting a conservative cause. (I'm not saying you SHOULD be able to find this example, whatever "should" means; I'm only saying that you CAN'T, and that "someone somewhere" doesn't cut both ways the way you implied. If it were that symmetrical, then it would have invalidated my point.)
  - pseudalopex 10y ago
    My only point is that Eich doesn't demonstrate your point. It took four years for people to notice the donation, and when they did, nothing of consequence happened. Two years later, he got promoted. The donation only became an issue after he was named CEO. Mozilla is a prominent company and puts unusual emphasis on its social mission. The CEO is the public face of a company and ultimately responsible for ensuring that workers are treated fairly. A donation for a specific issue says something a donation to a candidate doesn't. And Eich/Mozilla handled the situation badly. (You misquoted me, by the way.) I see Eich mentioned as a martyr on HN more often than I see a word against him. I threw in "someone somewhere" because we actually agree that fear of retribution can keep people from donating to political campaigns. I just don't think Eich is a good example.

by _yosefk 10y ago

cderwin 10y ago

Part of me wonders if the whole deal with Brendan Eich is a problem with tech or a problem with California. Would the same thing have happened if Mozilla operated out of New York or Seattle (let alone Denver or Austin)? And if not, at what point do the particular nuances of SV (such as political intolerance) become a burden not worth tolerating within the tech community?

guildwriter 10y ago
I can't speak to other states in the nation, but I don't think this is a problem that is isolated to tech specifically within CA. One of the things I learned from my time in an ultra-liberal high school in the Bay Area was to keep my mouth shut and my head down if I had a differing opinion. To set the background, my high school invited prominent speakers from time to time to speak about various issues. Not a single conservative voice ever came to talk to us. When the case for the Iraq War was being debated in public, the school invited a panel of speakers to debate the topic in front of us. They didn't invite a single person in favor of the War. When they invited Daniel Ellsberg to speak, he went into a long profanity punctuated rant about GWB which ended with the entire auditorium (including all the teachers and administrators) standing on their feet to applaud him for minutes. This is just a small sampling. It was around that time that I began to realize how bad the indoctrination was and started reading other points of view. When I began expressing those views to share what I had learned, I started getting a lot of funny looks or outright hostility. I remember as a member of student government, I was part of a meeting to discuss changing or adding anything to the student handbook. I mentioned that rather than a focus on racial diversity, that perhaps we should readjust the focus to include a diversity of views as well. The dismissive reaction from everyone including the chairman of the school cemented in my mind where everyone truly stood. It is hard to express how frustrating it is to be surrounded by people who claim to be inclusive and open minded, yet are utterly unwilling to seriously entertain any point of view that comes in conflict with theirs. The totality of their certainty and the violence with which they express it is right on par with the kind of fanaticism you see in deeply Christian communities.
- yks 10y ago
  I was not living in the US during the Iraq War debates but wasn't that the situation that the mainstream media projected pro-war views? In that sense the debate panels were arguing with the state propaganda basically, weren't they?
  - guildwriter 10y ago
    My opinion on that time was that it was a mixed bag as far as the mainstream media was concerned. I definitely do not recall coverage being one sided at all.
- Inconel 10y ago
  As an immigrant to the US who's childhood path went from poor rural Texas, to poor urban Houston, to poor Oakland and then to SF, I share many of your sentiments. As an atheist in Texas, I often felt at odds with my peers and subsequently learned from an early age to not voice my opinions too loudly. While this isn't exactly the best way to grow up, I more or less accepted it as the price to pay for having very different world views. Interestingly enough, while I actually shared many of the same political views as my SF peers, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the open hostility that anyone challenging those views would face. In many ways, I found it harder to be an open minded left leaning atheist in SF than a left leaning atheist in Texas. The hypocrisy I saw on display was very disillusioning. For all the talk about SF being progressive and tolerant, I found it among the most provincial and closed minded places I've ever lived.

pseudalopex 10y ago

Eich's career at Mozilla ended when he resigned as CEO and declined to remain as CTO. He resigned because he let a predictable PR problem get away from him and couldn't effectively lead. He had marginal support to begin with; three board members resigned when he was appointed for reasons that had nothing to do with his political activities. Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Trump. Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Clinton. Eich donated to curtail civil rights and kept his job as CTO until he gave it up.

_yosefk 10y ago
I understand your opposition to Eich's donation, but I think that what you said strengthens my point rather than weakens it; my only point was that most tech employees would see an Eich-like quiet, private donation to Trump as a "predictable PR problem that might get away from them and prevent them from effectively leading", and that as a result they would avoid creating such a "PR problem", and therefore we cannot learn much about support for Trump in tech circles by looking at donations. As to someone somewhere... Show me someone, somewhere on HN attacked by thousands of commenters for supporting some liberal cause in the US the way Eich was attacked by thousands of commenters (who keep mentioning it every time say Brave is brought up) for supporting a conservative cause. (I'm not saying you SHOULD be able to find this example, whatever "should" means; I'm only saying that you CAN'T, and that "someone somewhere" doesn't cut both ways the way you implied. If it were that symmetrical, then it would have invalidated my point.)
- pseudalopex 10y ago
  My only point is that Eich doesn't demonstrate your point. It took four years for people to notice the donation, and when they did, nothing of consequence happened. Two years later, he got promoted. The donation only became an issue after he was named CEO. Mozilla is a prominent company and puts unusual emphasis on its social mission. The CEO is the public face of a company and ultimately responsible for ensuring that workers are treated fairly. A donation for a specific issue says something a donation to a candidate doesn't. And Eich/Mozilla handled the situation badly. (You misquoted me, by the way.) I see Eich mentioned as a martyr on HN more often than I see a word against him. I threw in "someone somewhere" because we actually agree that fear of retribution can keep people from donating to political campaigns. I just don't think Eich is a good example.