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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 include

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.

birken 9y ago
Just to counter this anecdata, the startup I used to work at was founded by 4 conservatives, 2 of whom met working in the George W Bush White House. We used to discuss and debate all sorts of politic topics, and in fact I was quite often in the minority (a position that didn't bother me... it was a good way to learn different perspective on some key issues). They were then and I'm sure still now are quite openly conservative and happy to debate politics (in appropriate settings). They didn't hide it publicly either, for example in the early days of the 2016 presidential election they had Jeb Bush come over and give a talk. Jeb was made fun of quite a bit for the manner in which he put on the company swag [1]. The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and has hundreds of employees. In my experience I didn't notice a single situation in which their conservative views had negative impacts on the company. In fact I think their conservative background helped the company raise money from VCs, who I'd wager are more conservative than average. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBg6hU5zXDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBg6hU5zXDA
- rsp1984 9y ago
  Can you share the name of the company? Jeb mentions something like "dub tag" but that's apparently not it.
  - germinalphrase 9y ago
    Looks like Thumbtack(?) www.thumbtack.com/
- scarface74 9y ago
  There are different types of people that call themselves conservative. The Bush's were both pro-business conservatives, but never really expoused the type of populism that Trump does. You could admit in polite company that you supported the Bushes, or Romney. You really can't admit that you support Trump in polite company without being judged harshly.
  - eschaton 9y ago
    Maybe it’s worth reflecting on just why that might be.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      I agree, it's worth reflecting on. I see Trump's rise as a response to people on the left who celebrate "the end of men", expel men without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, unapologetically depict men and white people (and white men most of all) as evil, demand white people "absent themselves", and offer jobs for which white people need not apply. Not "far-left crazies", but major media outlets and universities. When the media and academic culture is so toxic to any white men who speak up for their own interests, only someone who has no filter, like Trump, dares to speak at all.
      - abusoufiyan 9y ago
        >When the media and academic culture is so toxic to any white men who speak up for their own interests, only someone who has no filter, like Trump, dares to speak at all. Do you live anywhere near a University? Get your butt there and count how many white men there are in Professor's chairs. Then count how many of the tenured Professors are white men. Then count how many of the head administrators are white men. Absolute delusion.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
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?
- andybak 9y ago
  I like this line of argument. Conservatives have learnt to use the language of social justice as a strategic weapon against liberals. So the same strategy should work in reverse. The endgame hopefully is that intellectually dishonest strategies from all sides become discredited.
  - abusoufiyan 9y ago
    It's silly that they never used this language before that. Social Justice is a prime teaching from Christianity (in fact in all the Abrahamic religions). Seeing how religious the conservatives are, you'd think they'd have been the ones starting this trend.
  - kelukelugames 9y ago
    hahaha I can't wait for some Valley employee to write a paper on how biological differences between democrats and republicans...sorry, "average biological differences" causes different distributions.
- manfredo 9y ago
  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.
manfredo 9y ago
Realized I didn't actually post the end-note: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california-president-clinton-trump https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california-preside...
ScottBurson 9y ago
I agree with you that the numbers are very skewed, but I agree with the parent in that, of the few outspoken conservatives I've worked with, I have not seen anyone's career suffer for their politics.
- bsbechtel 9y ago
  Brendan Eich, James Damore?
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    OP is clearly talking about people he personally knows. I have to say I concur with OP, but that’s just anecdote. Looking at 2016 voting habits in the Bay Area, Donald Trump got double digit election returns in every county. That’s not even factoring "never Trump" conservatives who voted 3rd party or stayed home. So there are a fair amount of conservatives here. For comparison there are more Trump voters in San Francisco than African Americans.
    - avmich 9y ago
      Did you include those who didn't vote, but would vote for Democrats? In other words, double digit election returns are from those who voted, or "votes for Trump as percent of eligible voters"?
      - jdavis703 9y ago
        The latter, "votes for Trump as percent of eligible voter." One of your sibling comments comes with more data.
    - somecontext 9y ago
      In case anyone was curious, Wikipedia says Trump received 37,688 votes in (the city and county of) San Francisco, which was 9.3% of the votes counted. The 2010 Census counted 48,870 African Americans in San Francisco, which was 6.1% of the population.
  - 9y ago
Balgair 9y ago
Aside: Voting Republican != Conservative, and vice-versa. Despite your voting record, you can still be conservative. See NIMBYism.
abusoufiyan 9y ago
> I don't think anyone can sanely deny a vast under representation of conservatives in Silicon Valley. There is no such thing. If you want to join and meet up with other conservatives, you totally can. There are Republican party offices all over. Hell, in the middle of Silicon Valley there is the huge conservative Hoover Institution think tank. But if you want to come to work and say a bunch of obviously unpopular things and expect that it's all just going to be cool, it's not. Work is work, everyone thinks before they say things. No workplace is different in this regard. Like the previous commenter said, work is not a debating society, it's really common for people to put up with their coworkers, grin and take it, etc. because that's how teamwork happens. It's not something only conservatives have to deal with.

birken 9y ago

Just to counter this anecdata, the startup I used to work at was founded by 4 conservatives, 2 of whom met working in the George W Bush White House. We used to discuss and debate all sorts of politic topics, and in fact I was quite often in the minority (a position that didn't bother me... it was a good way to learn different perspective on some key issues). They were then and I'm sure still now are quite openly conservative and happy to debate politics (in appropriate settings). They didn't hide it publicly either, for example in the early days of the 2016 presidential election they had Jeb Bush come over and give a talk. Jeb was made fun of quite a bit for the manner in which he put on the company swag [1]. The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and has hundreds of employees. In my experience I didn't notice a single situation in which their conservative views had negative impacts on the company. In fact I think their conservative background helped the company raise money from VCs, who I'd wager are more conservative than average. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBg6hU5zXDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBg6hU5zXDA

rsp1984 9y ago
Can you share the name of the company? Jeb mentions something like "dub tag" but that's apparently not it.
- germinalphrase 9y ago
  Looks like Thumbtack(?) www.thumbtack.com/
scarface74 9y ago
There are different types of people that call themselves conservative. The Bush's were both pro-business conservatives, but never really expoused the type of populism that Trump does. You could admit in polite company that you supported the Bushes, or Romney. You really can't admit that you support Trump in polite company without being judged harshly.
- eschaton 9y ago
  Maybe it’s worth reflecting on just why that might be.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    I agree, it's worth reflecting on. I see Trump's rise as a response to people on the left who celebrate "the end of men", expel men without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, unapologetically depict men and white people (and white men most of all) as evil, demand white people "absent themselves", and offer jobs for which white people need not apply. Not "far-left crazies", but major media outlets and universities. When the media and academic culture is so toxic to any white men who speak up for their own interests, only someone who has no filter, like Trump, dares to speak at all.
    - abusoufiyan 9y ago
      >When the media and academic culture is so toxic to any white men who speak up for their own interests, only someone who has no filter, like Trump, dares to speak at all. Do you live anywhere near a University? Get your butt there and count how many white men there are in Professor's chairs. Then count how many of the tenured Professors are white men. Then count how many of the head administrators are white men. Absolute delusion.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

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?

andybak 9y ago
I like this line of argument. Conservatives have learnt to use the language of social justice as a strategic weapon against liberals. So the same strategy should work in reverse. The endgame hopefully is that intellectually dishonest strategies from all sides become discredited.
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  It's silly that they never used this language before that. Social Justice is a prime teaching from Christianity (in fact in all the Abrahamic religions). Seeing how religious the conservatives are, you'd think they'd have been the ones starting this trend.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  hahaha I can't wait for some Valley employee to write a paper on how biological differences between democrats and republicans...sorry, "average biological differences" causes different distributions.
manfredo 9y ago
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.

manfredo 9y ago

Realized I didn't actually post the end-note: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california-president-clinton-trump https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california-preside...

ScottBurson 9y ago

I agree with you that the numbers are very skewed, but I agree with the parent in that, of the few outspoken conservatives I've worked with, I have not seen anyone's career suffer for their politics.

bsbechtel 9y ago
Brendan Eich, James Damore?
- jdavis703 9y ago
  OP is clearly talking about people he personally knows. I have to say I concur with OP, but that’s just anecdote. Looking at 2016 voting habits in the Bay Area, Donald Trump got double digit election returns in every county. That’s not even factoring "never Trump" conservatives who voted 3rd party or stayed home. So there are a fair amount of conservatives here. For comparison there are more Trump voters in San Francisco than African Americans.
  - avmich 9y ago
    Did you include those who didn't vote, but would vote for Democrats? In other words, double digit election returns are from those who voted, or "votes for Trump as percent of eligible voters"?
    - jdavis703 9y ago
      The latter, "votes for Trump as percent of eligible voter." One of your sibling comments comes with more data.
  - somecontext 9y ago
    In case anyone was curious, Wikipedia says Trump received 37,688 votes in (the city and county of) San Francisco, which was 9.3% of the votes counted. The 2010 Census counted 48,870 African Americans in San Francisco, which was 6.1% of the population.
- 9y ago

Balgair 9y ago

Aside: Voting Republican != Conservative, and vice-versa. Despite your voting record, you can still be conservative. See NIMBYism.

abusoufiyan 9y ago

> I don't think anyone can sanely deny a vast under representation of conservatives in Silicon Valley. There is no such thing. If you want to join and meet up with other conservatives, you totally can. There are Republican party offices all over. Hell, in the middle of Silicon Valley there is the huge conservative Hoover Institution think tank. But if you want to come to work and say a bunch of obviously unpopular things and expect that it's all just going to be cool, it's not. Work is work, everyone thinks before they say things. No workplace is different in this regard. Like the previous commenter said, work is not a debating society, it's really common for people to put up with their coworkers, grin and take it, etc. because that's how teamwork happens. It's not something only conservatives have to deal with.