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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
- jstewartmobile 9y agoI 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.
- wavefunction 9y agoI don't agree with your pre/post-election divide. I've voiced my opposition to what I consider unrestrained capitalism and ideological free-marketerism and been downvoted many times over the years preceding the election. I've had dang come down on me for expressing my views (it's his and the moderators' prerogative but I'm not stopping either). It doesn't bother me because that's who I am. I'd rather folks offer their disagreements than downvote my comments because that's what I'm here for: discussion and synthesis with the ideas and arguments put forth by folks who share some or none of my interests. Even you mention "sympathy for the devil." I don't know if that's recognition that some viewpoints are truly toxic and unworthy of even basic respect and consideration or an merely an allusion to the down-voting of un-conventional views and thoughts. For me, there is nothing interesting to discuss about ideas or views espousing racism or gender-bigotry, but those are different than discussing the factual situations of ethnicity and gender in our society as determined by historical legacies and cultural forces. I will respect the right of an individual to hold bigoted views but that doesn't mean I must respect the individual, either.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago"sympathy for the devil" would be "poor little billionaire" in Peter Thiel's case. As though there aren't hundreds of media outlets that wouldn't jump at the chance to hand him the megaphone for whatever he felt like saying at the time.
- chappi42 9y agoIt'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 9y agoAren'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_ 9y agoWhich 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 9y agoWelcome to civil society. Learn to play ball and compromise since the alternative is from what those refugees are escaping.
- praulv 9y agoShall we start with the harassment and domestic violence problem? Or do you want me to pull out the statistics on "native" European populations. At least they don't go shoot up schools....
- blattimwind 9y agoFrom my PoV it seems like this has mostly been sorted out by now. While up to a ~year ago the position of "we must never ever put limits on immigration!" was hugely overrepresented in the media and by politicians. It became quite apparent that the majority of the populus does not support this stance, and that it's neither wise nor a good move to attempt the Nazikeule whenever anyone says something ever-so-slightly different from "we must never ever put limits on immigration!".
- door3 9y agoI was shadowbanned for getting downvoted too much for saying James Damore had terrible sexist opinions and should have been fired. Hackernews is predominantly right wing & conservative.
- gameswithgo 9y agoYou probably just weren't civil enough? I've been shadowbanned but it is because I lost my shit and became rude. I mean it is understandable to lose one's shit here sometimes but also understandable to not allow it.
- door3 9y agoMaybe, but really the point isn't about me. The point is the dominant opinion on Hackernews is "James Damore was right!" or at least "James Damore made some good points", which, whether you believe it or not, is absolutely a right-wing, conservative opinion, not the kind of "liberal SV PC culture" that is supposedly dominant and oppressive.
- dang 9y agoEvery side thinks HN is dominated by the opposite side. This is as reliable as clockwork. But the truth is boringly tautological: on divisive issues, the community is divided, like any sufficient sample of society at large would be. People with strong views simply notice the comments they dislike much more strongly. And sometimes they pass around links to their friends to 'prove' it—which proves nothing, of course, but does strongly reinforce their perception. Once reinforced, these perceptions seem not to change. On HN the divisions are exacerbated by this being so international a community. Only a third, last I checked, is in the US, and only a small minority in SV. So what we're all encountering here is not just polarization in the US, but much disagreement across national and cultural divides. p.s. Unless I'm mistaken about the account, we didn't ban you. Nor have we shadowbanned accounts for years (except new accounts that appear to be trolling or spamming). When an account has been around for a while, we tell people we banned them. --- Edit: while I'm thinking about this... Subtler factors exacerbate these perceptions too. HN isn't siloed—we have no subreddits, no following/blocking—just one big place where everyone sees the same things. Because of that, we're all more likely on HN to encounter comments from people we don't normally mix with, except perhaps on the battlefield. Reading what the 'other side' posts is not fun; it's painful. It gets right in your face and feels like being attacked. It seems to take only a few cases of this before it overflows into one's image of the site itself. That association makes sense emotionally: I come to this place, I feel pain and anger, therefore this is a hateful place. But it's also just what one would expect from the numbers, which is why the reaction is so clockwork-reliable, as I said above. The people with opposite views to yours are feeling just the same anger and pain. We see this not only about politics, but about programming languages, large companies, one's own work, and everything else people feel strongly about. We're all in one of those tricky spots where human feelings and statistics don't go well together, and for the most part don't realize it.
- dang 9y agoOnly a small minority of HN users are in Silicon Valley, so your argument wouldn't apply here even if it were true. When I see complaints like this I always look at the history. Usually the account in question has a pattern of posting flamebait and/or snark. In that case you needn't reach for political bias or 'wrongthink' to explain why the community downvotes such comments. They get downvoted simply because they break the site rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jstewartmobile 9y agoPerhaps not valley-centric, but definitely metro-area-centric, which tends to lean agnostic/globalist/liberal/capitalist/etc. That, and wrongthink need not limit itself to politics. On HN we have it for technologies as well!
- kelukelugames 9y agoAre there user statistics? Would love to see them.
- dang 9y agoYou mean geographically? We're probably going to look at that again this week. If you email hn@ycombinator.com in a week or two we could send you the info. I might write a post about it.
- kelukelugames 9y agoMaybe with even more detail. Can we do a survey like Stack OVerflow? If not officially then can I do one?
- nova22033 9y agoYou seem to think you have some sort of constitutional right to NOT be downvoted..
- jstewartmobile 9y agoRe-read original comment. Criticism wasn't downvoting, but silent downvoting. Also intended it as a general observation rather than a personal complaint.
- andybak 9y agoRather worryingly this got flagged and killed. Hopefully we're still at the point where we can sensibly discuss a WSJ article.
- tadasv 9y agoAgreed. This is so ridiculous. I saw the link on the front page. Now it's gone. At least it exists in search results.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- oriolid 9y agoFlagged and killed? I just got here through front page. I know you like being a victim, but you are not.
- dang 9y agoThis 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 9y agoThanks. I was slightly taken aback by that response. Especially because I'm probably not the straw man that the comment was directed at.
- city41 9y agoI'm unable to sensibly discuss a WSJ article because I am not willing to pay to read it. Where does HN stand on pay to read articles? I didn't flag it btw.
- sehugg 9y ago
- dontcare25 9y agoMost 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 9y agoAnti-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.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoI think most folks in SF and SV are against Trump on these issues. There are however many people who see the homeless situation on the streets of SF and think that the Democratic government is broken on at least that issue. Not to mention that there are folks who support the contrarian standpoint on every one of those issues but are anti gun control.
- axau 9y agoThe 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).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- makewavesnotwar 9y agoLikening 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 9y ago"openly supporting" the winning presidential candidate isn't "absurd".
- dabbledash 9y agoWell, normally it isn’t.
- breakyerself 9y agoNormally I'd agree with you, but Trump is a special case.
- catdograbbit 9y agoNo, he isn't. Democrats said the same thing about Bush, and they're saying the same thing about Pence. Anybody with an R next to their name would get the same backlash if they were president.
- throwaway5752 9y agoWhat is it that Peter Thiel said previously about women voting? What did he do to Gawker?
- rpmcmurphy 9y agoJust 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 9y agoYou see no difference between someone sharing something on a social platform versus having that information plastered across the nation?
- moonka 9y agoSocial platforms are largely ways for people to plaster information across the nation. Just look at how Twitter is used these days.
- hateduser2 9y agoYou admit in your own writing that this is a new way to use twitter. And this wasn't twitter anyways. Most social media platforms have support for blasting things across the nation and support for more private info. You'd have to be insane to actually argue (and it seems thats what you're doing) that Peter Thiel was trying to tell the nation he was gay.
- moonka 9y ago>You'd have to be insane to actually argue (and it seems thats what you're doing) I think it's unlikely we'll be able to have a productive conversation. Have a good day!
- nodesocket 9y agoI 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.
- exogeny 9y agoSo, because you and a couple of people who share similar viewpoints left, that constitutes a "exodius" (sic)? I'd like for you to read up on confirmation biases, and then post again.
- nodesocket 9y agoA couple people. :-) Go do a quick Google search. https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2018/02/12/mass-exodus-from-blue-states-to-red-states-n2447683 https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2018/02/12/m...
- dastbe 9y agoDo you not think that linked article has even a bit of a bias and agenda? Even then, the link to atlas van lines they use conflicts with several of the claims they made about largest outbound and largest inbound. So maybe check your article's sources first :-).
- dang 9y agoPlease don't do internet flame tropes on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- davidf18 9y agoSV 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.
- jacques_chester 9y agoThe 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 9y agoI 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 9y ago> 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.
- rhapsodic 9y ago>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. Then why do people go on so about the so-called "Hollywood Blacklist" whereby private entities refused to hire people who supported Communism?
- andrewjl 9y agoI 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 9y agoSan 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 9y agoThe 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 9y ago> 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.
- friedman23 9y ago> It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
- sho 9y agoWhat 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 9y agoI 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 9y ago> 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.
- cinquemb 9y ago>…indeed fear… For someone like Thiel, as it pertains to their life and continued living in this world, what is there to fear? You have multiple generations of people uploading (metadata) in real-time to a multitude of platforms they own/control to some large degree, that they continue to profit off of, and if needed could easily funneled to a tasking queue for metadata drone strikes if they so happen to go abroad (or legalized for domestic usage in the future, possibly with the aid of PMC's). If anything the fear people are increasingly acting on in "public" will only make such future realities more certain as people feel that they need to go to extremes to address any actual or perceived injustice done to them.
- almost_usual 9y agoThen 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 9y agoNone 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.
- adamnemecek 9y ago"thoughtleaders"
- kelukelugames 9y agoThis really should be the top comment. Tim Ferris makes money by staying relevant. And Peter Thiel qualifies as a political figure.
- tanilama 9y agoWell, this is indeed the biggest factor, no doubt. But it is just too obvious and far less interesting to debate than left/right flame war, which is an escapist fest.
- attaboyjon 9y agoThis 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.
- haxney 9y agoI'm the Dan Hackney profiled in the article. I was a software engineer at Google for three and a half years.
- wpietri 9y ago> 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 9y ago> 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 9y agoPrecisely! 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 9y ago(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.
- wcr3 9y agoBeing a multi-millionaire is just... really tough. People don't understand - nobody listens to you. You become... alienated.
- kkhire 9y agoPeter Thiel knows what the best city in california is!!
- plessthanpt05 9y agoEscaping 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.
- neonate 9y agohttp://archive.is/Rb1Jf http://archive.is/Rb1Jf works for me.
- mnm1 9y agoGreat. He should get the fuck out then if he doesn't feel welcome. While some people might tolerate the kind of scum like Thiel, I think it's good that SV doesn't tolerate. There's plenty of other places Thiel and people who feel like him can move to. The area will be better off with people like him gone, IMO. Most open minded liberal people with half a brain aren't going to move to bumblefuck, usa for the same reason Thiel and others like him shouldn't move to liberal cities. There's a place for everyone in our divided society and are the very least, people like Thiel can afford to move, unlike so many others that would like to but can't.
- malvosenior 9y ago> Most open minded liberal people with half a brain aren't going to move to bumblefuck, usa How can you label yourself open minded, then brand anywhere other than SV "bumblefuck, usa"? Surely you see the hypocrisy?
- sebastos 9y agoYour vision for the future of America sounds incredible, how can I sign up? Seriously, I had never thought about it before but just dividing everybody up into high-school cliques that openly loathe each other, with no pretense of a common societal fabric... you should give speeches. This is a message people need to hear. Can I find any more of your writing on this topic? I, and I'm sure many others, want to hear more.
- mrgordon 9y agoI 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 9y ago> 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 9y agoYeah 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.
- jimjimjim 9y agowell probably lots of vampires find civilized society alienating.
- cycrutchfield 9y agoProbably moving to greener (redder?) pastures with younger, fresher blood.
- anjc 9y ago"This is probably media hyperbole" > reads comments ITT ...
- twblalock 9y agoI 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.
- tomsthumb 9y agoOn the other hand, I have seen a coworker strongly imply that someone is a white nationalist for suggesting that it’s possible to be a non-racist republican.
- cagenut 9y agoit is not
- enraged_camel 9y agoOne can be a non-racist conservative, in the sense of wanting a smaller government and less regulation. However, today’s Republican Party is undeniably racist, and supporting them also makes one racist in my opinion. This is especially true since today’s Republican Party is not actually conservative. One cannot want smaller government while simultaneously supporting a drastic increase in immigration and border security and a whopping $25 billion for a 2000-mile long wall.
- Pxtl 9y ago
- tempz 9y agoThere 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.
- Pixeleen 9y agoYou're telling me! We transsexuals are a great example, having been co-opted in recent years to make liberals/postmodernists look good. We are just too convenient of a packaged identity now that gays are not a big deal any more. I feel for Thiel, he may be a "public person" with his commentary, but his sex life is private. Everybody knows that you are not supposed to pry (most of us just want to move on with our life), but somehow there is an exception if you are "supportive", "accepting", or "progressive", and it becomes acceptable to gossip about. They all want to feel smug about having the one token tranny friend. You would not believe how fast I have gone from being treated like a darling to being torn to pieces by liberal ideologues, when it comes to light that I hold unapproved political views, that I do not snarkily put down people who believe in God, or that I had supported Trump.
- mlloyd 9y agoCompletely aside from this, how can you support Trump while knowing that he doesn't support you and his VP actively fights against LGBT rights?
- tomp 9y agoYou do realize that (1) politics is multi-dimensional, (2) trans-issues are far too unimportant for Trump to actually care about and (3) US has good enough legal system that there's approximately 0 chance that Trump can actually do anything agains trans people (I mean he can't even manage to ban foreign Muslims).
- scottlocklin 9y agoIt 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.
- alexnewman 9y agoI 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ebbv 9y agoI'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 9y agoI 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.
- kristianp 9y agoSidestep the paywall here: 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 https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...
- bobbytherobot 9y agoThis 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 9y agoThis 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.
- shruubi 9y agoAs 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 fking 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 9y agoI 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.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoRemember that you're looking through the lens of the media. Controversy and strong opinions generate clicks and make money. Most people aren't strongly on one side or the other. It is possible to vote for the Republican Party and still decry the white supremacists and neo-Nazis. It is possible to be a Democrat supporter and not believe that all Republicans are white supremacists. In reality, most people simply don't care one way or another. I don't talk to my friends about politics, not because it's controversial, but because none of my friends give a shit. I'm not American, but I think exactly the same thing applies there.
- fullshark 9y agoI 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.
- titzer 9y agoI'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.
- freyir 9y ago> I'm 37 and, God, people treat me like I'm a dinosaur. I've been programming C for 25 years Exit out of vim, fire up Visual Studio Code, and start writing some Javascript. At this point, the 20-somethings will hoist your chair atop their shoulders and carry you around the office chanting your name.
- stevebmark 9y agoOff 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 9y agoThere’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.
- jccalhoun 9y agoI 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?
- Tasboo 9y agoWho 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.
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- Tasboo 9y ago*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 9y agoMost 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.
- puppetmaster40 9y agoI 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 9y agoYou don't think conservatives treat liberals poorly? Go on r/atheism and see all the complaints about living in a red state.
- puppetmaster40 9y agoOn the web everyone is treated bad. I was referring to away from keyboard, more real life.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoYea... 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.
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- majormajor 9y agoLotta 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-blue https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-california-... I think those on the right who don't reject Trump should reflect on how he's changed the Republican party.
- dmh2000 9y agowhat 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.
- viburnum 9y agoGood luck, LA doesn't like bigots any more than SF does.
- dmfdmf 9y agoTo 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 9y agoShould be "Anatomy of Compromise", sorry for the error.
- cromwellian 9y agoI 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?
- dreamfactored 9y agoIf 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.
- bsder 9y agoSo 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 9y agoDidn't Damore receive threats of physical violence? And he's no Thiel by any stretch of imagination.
- bsder 9y agoI 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?
- muratk 9y agoFor 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.)
- drovo9 9y agoI'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.
- purplezooey 9y agoNo, 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.
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- fzss_ 9y agoSilicon 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.
- wsy 9y agoConservative 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!
- gdilla 9y agoIntellectually 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?
- svbill 9y agoEveryone 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.
- rapedangnow 9y agoDang you fucking cunt, I hope your rape is fucking painful. I hope it leads you to suicide you fucking cunt
- svbill 9y ago# Analyze article posts, sort by hostility and bias # Compare to points from article # begin