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In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Campaigns
- olog-hai 14y agoThat ?gwh= parameter should be removed from the URL. It will trigger the paywall for some people.
- tomjen3 14y agoIt did for me, but no biggie -- just open the link in porn mode and everything is fixed.
- nasalgoat 14y agoIt is less the individuals they used and more the methods - the GOP leveraged old-boy contracts to IBM-style, tie-wearing consultant shops, and the Dems went for cloud infrastructure and open source. It really highlights the old-world vs. new you see between the two parties.
- maratd 14y ago> It really highlights the old-world vs. new you see between the two parties. That's a bit much. Somebody made the right call infrastructure-wise and somebody made the wrong one. That's it. If anything, Republicans are more "new-world" regarding tech policy in general, ie copyright/intellectual property.
- krickle 14y agoBoth choices are crap, but I think most technical people would still rather have the restrictive patents over policies drafted with the expectation of Jesus's return.
- dlitwak 14y agobullshit. They are the establishment, the old white guys, whose model is not the most efficient way of getting things done. yes, someone made the wrong call infrastructure wise, but you have to ask: why did they make this call? It's because, in their world, this is how you do it. The Dems were more open to a different type of campaign that brought tech in house etc. Writing it off as an infrastructure choice with no relation to how they think is disingenuous.
- maratd 14y ago> They are the establishment Isn't Obama the establishment now? I think he's a Democrat. > the old white guys Most Republicans aren't old. Some are white, but not all. I'm not. Some aren't even guys ... If I said something similar about Democrats, like how they're all black or something equally moronic and false ... you'd be jumping up and down, calling me a racist. > The Dems were more open to a different type of campaign that brought tech in house etc. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-Ck3-VwZB7fqpUFXbffoObg http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcoyG-Ck3...
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- dlitwak 14y agoI think the whole point of conservative is not changing, keeping things the way they are, as opposed to "progressive" ideas, which advocate change. I'm not interested in debating you about who is actually "establishment" etc. in that way, my point was conservatives have an "establishment" way of thinking: the tried and the true, the way things worked before, not necessarily the way they will work in the future. I think you understand what I'm talking about. Re the old white comment, look at the demographics: that was the only demographic republicans won. If you said democrats were just a bunch of black guys, then yes I would be offended. If you said the truth, that democrats were a coalition of young people, single women, and minorities, I would not. I'm a white male, and voted for Obama, so I understand that it is a generalization. That link is irrelevant, I don't care if Obama doesn't like Xboxs and iphones, doesn't mean his campaign wasn't technologically proficient: whose campaign's tech broke down on election day and outsourced their development to contractors? Romney. Who had a dedicated team of coders in house and everything worked well? Obama. Most startup guys will tell you that outsourcing their main product never ends well.
- njharman 14y agoExactly. Comparing the two's info sys I can't help but draw a lot of similarities between old vs new, "enterprise"/top down/"consultant shops" vs agile/developer driven, monolithic up front vs bit by bit iterative. I was going to make that observation over on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842510 but didn't as it was a generalization and based on reading two articles (that one and the Orca debacle one). Despite that there's truth behind it and this articles puts some numbers behind that truth.
- jtchang 14y agoThis article makes a lot of assumptions but it is hard to deny that silicon valley is a magnet for people who love technology. It can be difficult to get a gauge on just how well the two parties are leveraging technology. My guess is they are both data mining their voter databases as well as doing some advanced machine learning. If that is the case I would guess recruiting people would be much easier out in the Bay Area.
- eshvk 14y agoIs this really that big a problem though? I mean irrespective of how many people in SV disagree with the candidate, eventually if he/she throws enough money at the problem, he should be able to sort it out? After all, Porn is the canonical example for something that not a lot of engineering people would work on but still manages to attract enough talent to work on some really hard problems.
- nasalgoat 14y agoThat's the thing, though - they threw something like four times the amount of money at it than the Dems did and it still failed. The best metaphor is a Fortune 500 vs. a scrappy startup - who is more agile and can pivot faster?
- moocow01 14y agoI would argue that they just directed that money in the wrong direction. If the parties advertise money for campaign oriented tech Im sure the startup community will increasingly take notice and be willing to service any paying customer.
- eshvk 14y agoIIRC, the reason they spent so much money is because they outsourced it to a bunch of consultants. I am sure that if they wanted to do this properly, they could have organically grown a small team, and done this in-house.
- jiggy2011 14y agoPorn isn't something a lot of nerds like?
- eshvk 14y agoLots of people may consume Porn but only a small subset of that group might be interested in creating Porn.
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- moocow01 14y agoI lean Democrat but the GOP just took the wrong strategy this time around... they'll learn. If they can't find any good technologists that support their cause, pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant. Believe me they'll unfortunately adapt. From my perspective they have many more issues they need to sort out before this one to get themselves back together.
- alxp 14y ago> pulling out a checkbook will reverse people's party alliances in an instant A team of dedicated startup employees who really believe in what they're working on vs. throwing money at consultants 9-to-5er programmers? Pardon me while I place a few long bets.
- moocow01 14y agoThats not what I said... Im saying that you can throw money at a team of dedicated startup employees to level the playing field. All the GOP has to do is establish a pot of money for political tech and be willing to take a risk on startups looking to service political campaigns. Think of essentially the SpaceX competition but for political campaign tech for the GOP
- YuriNiyazov 14y agoYou'd lose that bet. I live in the Bay Area, favor Obama over Romney, and have historically shown plenty of dedication to the startups which I founded or at which I have worked. If Romney's campaign came to me and said "please work 80-hour weeks at $200/hr to build us the most kick-ass infrastructure you can so that we can win" you can be damn sure I'd be moving to Boston the next day. I know plenty others who would as well.
- redthrowaway 14y agoAnd if the Obama campaign were making the same offer, which would you choose? The campaign may have relied mostly on volunteers, but it would be foolish to think they wouldn't hire a small team of engineers to do the same work if they had to. The benefits to fundraising alone are substantial enough to warrant the cost.
- noname123 14y agoIf GOP pays top-dollar which should be their philosophy, I'll def. work for them. It's about monies.
- bernardom 14y agoWhat percentage of "job creators" does this cover? The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that computer and mathematical jobs are 2.7% of ALL jobs and 5.5% of jobs in SF.[1] I can't find the percentage of NEW jobs that are tech-related. [1] http://www.bls.gov/ro9/oessanf.htm http://www.bls.gov/ro9/oessanf.htm
- pvdm 14y agoRead some Chomsky. It doesn't matter.
- mkross 14y agoCare to elaborate?
- exit 14y agopvdm is probably (off topic, and ..) suggesting there is an illusion of choice when it comes to the american political duopoly
- pvdm 14y agoDid not mean to be curt. But when I read articles like this I put up my shields. The article seems to describe how one side is winning but it's only part of the illusion that there is real debate about real issues being discussed in presidential elections. It's like professional wrestling, everyone know it's fake but nevertheless feverishly take sides. Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman wrote about this in their book, Manufacturing Consent.
- pav3l 14y agoGeeks tend to come in two forms - libertarians and equality oriented. Current GOP doesn't really appeal to either.
- rickmode 14y agoSounds about right. Do you have any sources or this or is this what you've seen personally?
- temphn 14y agoYes. The real title fight would have been between Ron Paul and Obama's tech teams. That would have been Google vs. Facebook. Romney vs. Obama in tech was like Myspace vs. Facebook.
- r00fus 14y agoAnd there was rampant speculation that the GOP fixed the Maine 2012 caucus as well to prevent Ron Paul from winning there: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2847234/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2847234/posts http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Governor/Massachusetts/Mitt_Romney/Scandals/Maine_GOP_Caucus_Fraud/ http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Governor/Massachus...
- hkmurakami 14y agoIf it were just about SW talent, I'd suspect that the G.O.P. could find plenty of willing and capable engineers in the finance sector to lead the way (assuming that the IT teams in the finance sector are aligned with the G.O.P. along with the more outward facing facets of the industry).
- larsberg 14y agoWhile I can only speak for Chicago, the traders/finance people certainly lean right, but the developers seem to generally lean left, at least given the last few GOP candidates. Most that I know are in finance because you can stay in Chicago and make substantially more than working at Google/MSFT/Facebook while working 7.5 hour days with no overtime (with a few exceptions, e.g., Citadel).
- nhashem 14y agoIn my opinion, this technology gap will exist as long as the Republican party embraces social conservatism to the point of scientific ignorance. Consider Todd Akin’s comment: "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to just shut that whole thing down." While "legitimate rape" ended up being the colloquial reference that got hammered, what was so utterly offensive was the second part of the sentence. Implying the female body had some sort of magical spermicide. It's not just insensitive, it's scientifically ignorant. There are a lot of reasons why almost 2/3 of college students and recent college grads voted for Obama, and one of them is because of this complete idiocy that Republicans spew. At the "Family Values Summit" earlier this year, Rick Santorum said, "We're never going to be the party of smart people." If you’re not the smart party, what are you? The party that claims the HPV vaccine causes retardation? The party that considers evolution a myth? Sure, but then you won't be the party with constituents that embrace science and technology. Sure, they can throw money at the problem. Even if they intellectually objected with the platform, lots of engineers would work for the Republican party if they paid enough. But successful political campaigns are all about connecting a widespread media message to the individual visceral feelings of voters. If your staff has no idea who that voter is because they aren't actually one of them, then you're not going to have the same quality of campaign. I don't think all is lost for the Republican party. For an example off the top of my head, it would be very easy to philosophically adjust their stances on "economic freedom" to support reforms to copyright and patent law. But until then, Rick Santorum is right. They won't be the party of smart people. Which means they won't be the party that has smart technology talent helping them run campaigns.
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- temphn 14y agoThis true up to a point. Intelligent people go to college, and in addition to technical education they are getting other stuff as well. I'd hope it's not too controversial to posit that (a) most university humanities cultures are more similar to Harvard than West Point, and (b) it is obvious that Harvard's math dept. teaches objective truth, and not so much for Harvard's history dept. Many, perhaps most students care primarily about a job and won't read history on their own time. So in order to get a job they get that technical degree, and receive the humanities content alongside. They never feel the urge to uninstall that humanities content, or to check it against Google Books primary sources. It's just the default. The default today is heavier on the Nazis than the Gulag, as one example, and this difference in emphasis has many downstream effects. Weimar is less likely to be studied than dependencia theory, for another example. With MOOCs, this package deal of tech + humanities is going to end soon. People will take classes a la carte, and one might predict that new grads in 5 years time will start shifting to the right. (It is hard to see the smart shifting even further left!). Time will tell.
- prostoalex 14y ago>>> Among employees who work for Google, Mr. Obama raised about $720,000 in itemized contributions this year, against only $25,000 for Mr. Romney. That means that Mr. Obama took almost 97 percent of the money between the two major candidates. I'm not sure that's indicative of anything, Ron Paul's visit to Google, from what I recall, was a standing room event. I personally just abhor donating money to political causes. It results in negative ads, trivialization of deep issues, omission of important discussion topics, and doesn't benefit Internet industry much - most political spending goes towards TV ads.
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- w1ntermute 14y agoAs mentioned at the end of the post: > Perhaps a different type of Republican candidate, one whose views on social policy are more in line with the tolerant and multicultural values of the Bay Area, and the youthful cultures of the leading companies here, could gather more support among information technology professionals. > Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican, raised about $42,000 from Google employees, considerably more than Mr. Romney did. So Ron Paul getting money is very different from the rest of the GOP getting money.
- dlitwak 14y agoTo everyone saying all Republicans need to do is throw money at it: Missionaries beat Mercenaries every time. And the point of the article is that Democrats have ~5 times more potential to find missionaries than Republicans do. Anyone who has tried to hire will realize that it is difficult, and a pool of 5x gives you a huge advantage.