4 ms·

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually ha

by jrs95 9y ago

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.

tetraca 9y ago
From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.
- jrs95 9y ago
  It's definitely not universal. But in my opinion, it's more like there are people who think they're better than us that are upset that we're as successful as we are. And being predominantly white men doesn't help, even if we do tend to lean left. That shitty documentary Nancy Pelosi's daughter made is probably a good example of that. The premise is basically that tech workers are terrible and are destroying San Francisco. I'm sure there's similar sentiments on the right as well, but theirs seem to be more of "these rich tech liberals want to tell us how to live" or something along those lines.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    Do software engineers predominantly lean left? I think the left / right debate is quite outdated, with both sides having equally good (but also bad) ideas about certain subjects. Why can't you lean left on healthcare and LGBT rights, yet more right on certain economic policies and tax issues?
    - jrs95 9y ago
      I think both are true. Software engineers tend to vote Democrat, but they're also much more likely to be libertarians than the average person. Or even "alt-right" to be honest. Outside of a general leftward bias, I think we seem to be more prone to exploring ideological extremes.
      - jhawk28 9y ago
        It depends more on the industry. Software Engineers for Google and Facebook are probably more left leaning. Software engineers for a defense contractor are probably more right leaning.
      - cmurf 9y ago
        Alt-right is white nationalism. So you've gone from libertarian which is not really left or right (depends on issue but revolves mainly around a weak central government except as it relates to protecting civil liberties and national defense), completely skipped moderate conservatives, conservatives, and right wing, and even hard right, and landed on a blatantly racist movement that has no f'n idea how the economy even works which is why they keep thinking tax cuts for people who make over $10 million a year creates jobs, but bank deregulation is good, but the banks f'd them over in 20008, but for sure stop importing brown people, legal and illegal, and especially if they're Muslim. Most alt-right are just deeply ignorant people. But some are malevolent. The base ideology requires people believe vicious things about "the other" who happen to be merely different. They refer to liberals as libtards, and prefer strong leaders like Putin, Kim, Duerte, Erdogan, and even weaker autocrats, as compared to "vile libtards" like say Clinton (who is something like a cross between Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Thatcher). No doubt they'd prefer Putin as president of the United States than a Clinton.
        yellowapple 9y ago
        "The base ideology requires people believe vicious things about 'the other' who happen to be merely different." The "alt-right" are not the only ones who are guilty of this, unfortunately. This is a characteristic of the extremes of pretty much every political position or ideology. Personally, the whole "if you're not with us you're against us" mentality of both of the mainstream political parties is what drove me to vote Libertarian last election. Johnson's campaign seemed a lot more focused on welcoming folks with differing political views (which is unsurprising, given the rather long range of libertarianism from libertarian socialism to anarcho-capitalism, and given the fact that the Libertarian Party is in no position to be alienating voters), which was very refreshing amid both Clinton and Trump basing their campaigns on how bad the other candidate is (and further on how bad the other candidate's supporters are).
  - fundabulousrIII 9y ago
    Recently run into this in uni. God save me from the highly educated minority who are always right and love to argue (with tenure). Basic fact: You don't know anything except what you are told by what I design.
jrochkind1 9y ago
I think there's hostility to the rich in general on the left. Not all people who work in tech are rich, but many of the, oh, top 10% of income earners, especially those someone else might come into contact with regularly, are in tech. And human nature to express more ire towards those you come into contact with regularly than those you never do.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I think that's partially true, but I also think it's because of negative stereotypes of people in tech being "nerds" who are to be looked down upon. It's more of a mismatch between what they think our social and economic class ought to be and what it actually is.
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    I dunno, there are a lot of nerdy leftists.
KirinDave 9y ago
Maybe, but be careful here though. It's possible for both the parent post and the article to be on the right track. Wealth enables action and technology obviously enables and creates wealth. It's also difficult to assign this to "Clintonian types" when in general the centrist side of the Democrats has been such an ardent supporter of the growth of the tech industry. They're eager to own the eneconic growth.
- jrs95 9y ago
  From what I've seen, they have been more than capable to support the industry and take credit for it's successes and simultaneously demonize tech workers as unempathetic racists, sexists, and gentrifiers. A specific examples being Alexandra Pelosi's documentary San Francisco 2.0. Bill Maher has also made similar anti "tech bro" statements from time to time. While he's not the perfect centrist, he was pretty much behind the Obama administration 100%, and I would definitely consider him to be part of the Democratic establishment.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > they have been more than capable to support the industry and take credit for it's successes Well let's face it, we're all getting a huge break from the government right now in a ton of different ways, so they do get some credit for making the laws incredibly lax around here. Even Trump's government gets credit until it screws up this sweet deal we're on. And if you wanna see how sweet it really gets, go into fintech. All your opponents with lots of cash on hand are basically operating blindfolded with both hands tied behind their back. Regulators literally have no idea what to make of us in that space. They largely leave us alone so long as you have even semi-competent legal advice. If you have good legal advice? Well you end up recreating financial institutions in all but name and without any regulation (e.g., Digit). > simultaneously demonize tech workers as unempathetic racists, sexists, and gentrifiers I wanna get to the rest of your post, but I just can't leave this alone. I'm sorry to shift the focus here, but we really don't need any external help on this though, do we? The racist part of the story has legs because folks like the "unnamed" google engineer writing screeds about how no, actually, it's the rich conservatives in the majority who are unsafe. Because tech conferences argue they're a safe space for men who's primary ideological focus for their publications is proving black people thrive under slavery. Because a constant dribble of stories like Kixeye exist to support population statistics that are... statistically unlikely by pure chance.. The sexist part of the story? Gosh maybe if our industry stopped doing so many things that enable abuse of women, the narrative might not be that we enable the abuse of women. Similarly, if we paid women more or less equally within rank and gave them equal opportunity in the workforce... This problem might exist to a much lesser degree. Uber's ripping itself apart not because some women choose to speak out; it's because the public is discovering obviously unethical and probably illegal behavior. Tech gets special attention, I grant. It's outsized, growing fast, and is consuming and reformatting other INDUSTRIES as its primary fuel source rather than more traditional business models. > I would definitely consider him to be part of the Democratic establishment. This is an excellent example of a perception gap. See, I've always seen him as fringe because of his views on transgenderism, his decision that racial slurs are free speech he should exercise, etc. Unlike, say, Clinton or Obama who've obviously changed their opinions on this subject (or decided to portray an image largely indistinguishable from someone having changed their image) Maher has continue to expand upon it. Maybe he was center-left when he started, but it's difficult to say he's on the left side of the cultural equation these days.

by jrs95 9y ago

tetraca 9y ago

From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.

jrs95 9y ago
It's definitely not universal. But in my opinion, it's more like there are people who think they're better than us that are upset that we're as successful as we are. And being predominantly white men doesn't help, even if we do tend to lean left. That shitty documentary Nancy Pelosi's daughter made is probably a good example of that. The premise is basically that tech workers are terrible and are destroying San Francisco. I'm sure there's similar sentiments on the right as well, but theirs seem to be more of "these rich tech liberals want to tell us how to live" or something along those lines.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Do software engineers predominantly lean left? I think the left / right debate is quite outdated, with both sides having equally good (but also bad) ideas about certain subjects. Why can't you lean left on healthcare and LGBT rights, yet more right on certain economic policies and tax issues?
  - jrs95 9y ago
    I think both are true. Software engineers tend to vote Democrat, but they're also much more likely to be libertarians than the average person. Or even "alt-right" to be honest. Outside of a general leftward bias, I think we seem to be more prone to exploring ideological extremes.
    - jhawk28 9y ago
      It depends more on the industry. Software Engineers for Google and Facebook are probably more left leaning. Software engineers for a defense contractor are probably more right leaning.
    - cmurf 9y ago
      Alt-right is white nationalism. So you've gone from libertarian which is not really left or right (depends on issue but revolves mainly around a weak central government except as it relates to protecting civil liberties and national defense), completely skipped moderate conservatives, conservatives, and right wing, and even hard right, and landed on a blatantly racist movement that has no f'n idea how the economy even works which is why they keep thinking tax cuts for people who make over $10 million a year creates jobs, but bank deregulation is good, but the banks f'd them over in 20008, but for sure stop importing brown people, legal and illegal, and especially if they're Muslim. Most alt-right are just deeply ignorant people. But some are malevolent. The base ideology requires people believe vicious things about "the other" who happen to be merely different. They refer to liberals as libtards, and prefer strong leaders like Putin, Kim, Duerte, Erdogan, and even weaker autocrats, as compared to "vile libtards" like say Clinton (who is something like a cross between Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Thatcher). No doubt they'd prefer Putin as president of the United States than a Clinton.
      - yellowapple 9y ago
        "The base ideology requires people believe vicious things about 'the other' who happen to be merely different." The "alt-right" are not the only ones who are guilty of this, unfortunately. This is a characteristic of the extremes of pretty much every political position or ideology. Personally, the whole "if you're not with us you're against us" mentality of both of the mainstream political parties is what drove me to vote Libertarian last election. Johnson's campaign seemed a lot more focused on welcoming folks with differing political views (which is unsurprising, given the rather long range of libertarianism from libertarian socialism to anarcho-capitalism, and given the fact that the Libertarian Party is in no position to be alienating voters), which was very refreshing amid both Clinton and Trump basing their campaigns on how bad the other candidate is (and further on how bad the other candidate's supporters are).
- fundabulousrIII 9y ago
  Recently run into this in uni. God save me from the highly educated minority who are always right and love to argue (with tenure). Basic fact: You don't know anything except what you are told by what I design.

jrochkind1 9y ago

I think there's hostility to the rich in general on the left. Not all people who work in tech are rich, but many of the, oh, top 10% of income earners, especially those someone else might come into contact with regularly, are in tech. And human nature to express more ire towards those you come into contact with regularly than those you never do.

jrs95 9y ago
I think that's partially true, but I also think it's because of negative stereotypes of people in tech being "nerds" who are to be looked down upon. It's more of a mismatch between what they think our social and economic class ought to be and what it actually is.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  I dunno, there are a lot of nerdy leftists.

KirinDave 9y ago

Maybe, but be careful here though. It's possible for both the parent post and the article to be on the right track. Wealth enables action and technology obviously enables and creates wealth. It's also difficult to assign this to "Clintonian types" when in general the centrist side of the Democrats has been such an ardent supporter of the growth of the tech industry. They're eager to own the eneconic growth.

jrs95 9y ago
From what I've seen, they have been more than capable to support the industry and take credit for it's successes and simultaneously demonize tech workers as unempathetic racists, sexists, and gentrifiers. A specific examples being Alexandra Pelosi's documentary San Francisco 2.0. Bill Maher has also made similar anti "tech bro" statements from time to time. While he's not the perfect centrist, he was pretty much behind the Obama administration 100%, and I would definitely consider him to be part of the Democratic establishment.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > they have been more than capable to support the industry and take credit for it's successes Well let's face it, we're all getting a huge break from the government right now in a ton of different ways, so they do get some credit for making the laws incredibly lax around here. Even Trump's government gets credit until it screws up this sweet deal we're on. And if you wanna see how sweet it really gets, go into fintech. All your opponents with lots of cash on hand are basically operating blindfolded with both hands tied behind their back. Regulators literally have no idea what to make of us in that space. They largely leave us alone so long as you have even semi-competent legal advice. If you have good legal advice? Well you end up recreating financial institutions in all but name and without any regulation (e.g., Digit). > simultaneously demonize tech workers as unempathetic racists, sexists, and gentrifiers I wanna get to the rest of your post, but I just can't leave this alone. I'm sorry to shift the focus here, but we really don't need any external help on this though, do we? The racist part of the story has legs because folks like the "unnamed" google engineer writing screeds about how no, actually, it's the rich conservatives in the majority who are unsafe. Because tech conferences argue they're a safe space for men who's primary ideological focus for their publications is proving black people thrive under slavery. Because a constant dribble of stories like Kixeye exist to support population statistics that are... statistically unlikely by pure chance.. The sexist part of the story? Gosh maybe if our industry stopped doing so many things that enable abuse of women, the narrative might not be that we enable the abuse of women. Similarly, if we paid women more or less equally within rank and gave them equal opportunity in the workforce... This problem might exist to a much lesser degree. Uber's ripping itself apart not because some women choose to speak out; it's because the public is discovering obviously unethical and probably illegal behavior. Tech gets special attention, I grant. It's outsized, growing fast, and is consuming and reformatting other INDUSTRIES as its primary fuel source rather than more traditional business models. > I would definitely consider him to be part of the Democratic establishment. This is an excellent example of a perception gap. See, I've always seen him as fringe because of his views on transgenderism, his decision that racial slurs are free speech he should exercise, etc. Unlike, say, Clinton or Obama who've obviously changed their opinions on this subject (or decided to portray an image largely indistinguishable from someone having changed their image) Maher has continue to expand upon it. Maybe he was center-left when he started, but it's difficult to say he's on the left side of the cultural equation these days.