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Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Or hell, even start a personal blog usi

Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers. Watch your callback rate dramatically decline. I grew up in a suburb of a conservative state, and I learned early on when to show "who I am and what I really believe" and when to be low-key about it. Others like me who did not learn that skill were bullied relentlessly. I got along pretty well. If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well.

deleted 7y ago
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LyndsySimon 7y ago
> Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all, but I do pretty much that now. My name is unique - look me up. For what that's worth, a good portion of my posts even here on HN have something to do with guns. I try to be more "informative" than "confrontational", but that's because of the nature of the site more than anything else. I'm here to discuss, share, and learn, not to argue. I'm definitely a "card-carrying gun owner". I literally put guns in the hands of children on a regular basis (I'm a 4-H youth firearms instructor), a past board member of a state gun rights organization, and an outspoken advocate for the recognition of individuals' rights to both defend themselves and to own and carry the most effective tools possible to that end. It would be fair to say that I'm anti-abortion as well, with the caveat that I'm much more anti-government. I believe abortion is a terrible thing, but I also believe that giving government the power to prevent it would be much, much worse. > Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers. I need to redesign my blog, and post more often, but hey - it's still in my real name: http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html > If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well. Did you read my last paragraph? I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people. [edited for spelling]
- magashna 7y ago
  >I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." Paying the government a premium to say you don't believe in it, that's rich.
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    The delicious irony did not escape me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/i_paid_the_state_again_for_the_privilege_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/...
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      It's massively OT for this thread, but it's interesting that you consider anarchy the natural state. Aren't humans absolutely hardwired to form hierarchies and seek leaders? It seems that we're just as compelled to create presidents, kings, and gods for ourselves as pack animals are to follow their alphas. The lone wolf is the vanishingly-rare exception in the animal kingdom, just as the anarchist is in the realm of human politics. NTTAWWT as far as having a lone-wolf personality type is concerned, but any model of human interaction that seeks to exalt the lone-wolf nature in each of us seems bound to fail. (Small-scale egalitarianism is just a separate case of that, since the same hierarchies will inevitably emerge between groups.) If this condition isn't "natural," then why do things always -- virtually without exception and never sustainably so -- turn out that way?
      - pequalsnp 7y ago
        Not GP, but I stumbled across this website in college[1] that had a lot of interesting articles on anarchy and “the worker’s collective.” I don’t agree with the viewpoints but I learned a lot from it! Really cool material. [1] - https://crimethinc.com/ https://crimethinc.com/
      - LyndsySimon 7y ago
        I don't think I disagree with anything you said here, I just sorta see it from a different perspective. I didn't mean "natural" as "default" or "as found in nature" - I meant it in the sense of a "natural right". Anarchy is the social and political system we start with, and government is a distortion placed upon it. Further, government's nature is to grow in scope and power over time. This growth leads to tyranny, and eventually, to rebellion. Honestly, I'm not sure that a truly anarchic society is either possible or stable. I see it as an ideal, not something that I think is reasonable to see in my lifetime. To put it another way - I don't want to destroy the government, I want to shrink it to the point that people question the need for it and eventually just decide to stop pretending we have one.
kmonsen 7y ago
I work for a big tech company and I can guarantee you that it will not count against you. Some of my very successful friends and people I look up to come from conservative backgrounds and are outspoken about it. That being said you need to be respectful of everyone, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, gender identification etc. I think it is very possible to do that and still be a strong conservative.
- drevil-v2 7y ago
  Bullshit. You can be as conservative as you want as long as you remain silent and not protest anything at all that the diversity and inclusivity mob proposes. One word against that crowd in a SV tech company and you are dead in every sense of the word except physically. That is the power dynamic of our times and hence why the need for dual personas.
scarface74 7y ago
Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Even if someone did put something on their resume that I personally agreed with, I still wouldn’t hire them. In the context of work, I only want someone who comes to work to do the best job they can at the company, collect a check and go home. I don’t want to talk about politics at work. Sort of related, my wife and I are Black in a mostly White part of the city. We rode an Uber and the driver who was also Black immediately started talking politics because he assumed we “would relate to each other”. I agreed with most of his political points but that’s not what we wanted to hear when we are just wanting to have a relaxing night on the town, and have a few too many drinks.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

LyndsySimon 7y ago

> Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all, but I do pretty much that now. My name is unique - look me up. For what that's worth, a good portion of my posts even here on HN have something to do with guns. I try to be more "informative" than "confrontational", but that's because of the nature of the site more than anything else. I'm here to discuss, share, and learn, not to argue. I'm definitely a "card-carrying gun owner". I literally put guns in the hands of children on a regular basis (I'm a 4-H youth firearms instructor), a past board member of a state gun rights organization, and an outspoken advocate for the recognition of individuals' rights to both defend themselves and to own and carry the most effective tools possible to that end. It would be fair to say that I'm anti-abortion as well, with the caveat that I'm much more anti-government. I believe abortion is a terrible thing, but I also believe that giving government the power to prevent it would be much, much worse. > Or hell, even start a personal blog using your real name talking about opinions that are anathema to coastal dwellers. I need to redesign my blog, and post more often, but hey - it's still in my real name: http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html http://www.lyndsysimon.com/category/politics.html > If you actually had opinions many people disagreed with strongly, you'd be bullied and held back as well. Did you read my last paragraph? I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." I'm actually not sure I could name a political position that's more strongly opposed by more people. [edited for spelling]

magashna 7y ago
>I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." Paying the government a premium to say you don't believe in it, that's rich.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  The delicious irony did not escape me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/i_paid_the_state_again_for_the_privilege_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/...
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    It's massively OT for this thread, but it's interesting that you consider anarchy the natural state. Aren't humans absolutely hardwired to form hierarchies and seek leaders? It seems that we're just as compelled to create presidents, kings, and gods for ourselves as pack animals are to follow their alphas. The lone wolf is the vanishingly-rare exception in the animal kingdom, just as the anarchist is in the realm of human politics. NTTAWWT as far as having a lone-wolf personality type is concerned, but any model of human interaction that seeks to exalt the lone-wolf nature in each of us seems bound to fail. (Small-scale egalitarianism is just a separate case of that, since the same hierarchies will inevitably emerge between groups.) If this condition isn't "natural," then why do things always -- virtually without exception and never sustainably so -- turn out that way?
    - pequalsnp 7y ago
      Not GP, but I stumbled across this website in college[1] that had a lot of interesting articles on anarchy and “the worker’s collective.” I don’t agree with the viewpoints but I learned a lot from it! Really cool material. [1] - https://crimethinc.com/ https://crimethinc.com/
    - LyndsySimon 7y ago
      I don't think I disagree with anything you said here, I just sorta see it from a different perspective. I didn't mean "natural" as "default" or "as found in nature" - I meant it in the sense of a "natural right". Anarchy is the social and political system we start with, and government is a distortion placed upon it. Further, government's nature is to grow in scope and power over time. This growth leads to tyranny, and eventually, to rebellion. Honestly, I'm not sure that a truly anarchic society is either possible or stable. I see it as an ideal, not something that I think is reasonable to see in my lifetime. To put it another way - I don't want to destroy the government, I want to shrink it to the point that people question the need for it and eventually just decide to stop pretending we have one.

kmonsen 7y ago

I work for a big tech company and I can guarantee you that it will not count against you. Some of my very successful friends and people I look up to come from conservative backgrounds and are outspoken about it. That being said you need to be respectful of everyone, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, gender identification etc. I think it is very possible to do that and still be a strong conservative.

drevil-v2 7y ago
Bullshit. You can be as conservative as you want as long as you remain silent and not protest anything at all that the diversity and inclusivity mob proposes. One word against that crowd in a SV tech company and you are dead in every sense of the word except physically. That is the power dynamic of our times and hence why the need for dual personas.

scarface74 7y ago

Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Even if someone did put something on their resume that I personally agreed with, I still wouldn’t hire them. In the context of work, I only want someone who comes to work to do the best job they can at the company, collect a check and go home. I don’t want to talk about politics at work. Sort of related, my wife and I are Black in a mostly White part of the city. We rode an Uber and the driver who was also Black immediately started talking politics because he assumed we “would relate to each other”. I agreed with most of his political points but that’s not what we wanted to hear when we are just wanting to have a relaxing night on the town, and have a few too many drinks.