Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 418 posts

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#321

Post by ebfd »

tchaffee wrote: post #64

I think employees could use some training on how liberals and conservatives think very differently. When I became familiar with Jonathan Haidt and his moral foundations theory, I was able to better understand where conservatives are coming from, and even became a lot better at persuading. For example, when talking about confederate statues coming down, a conservative will respond to arguments around why it's traditio…

>I wonder if conservatives could use their own experiences to develop some much needed empathy for minorities and women in STEM

How so? All the things cited as barriers to minorities/women in tech (underrepresentation, lack of depiction in the media, etc.) are doubly true for conservatives, yet conservatives don't consider them to be barriers.

Not seeing conservative programmers depicted in movies seems like a hilariously trivial non-issue to me, so to hear minorities/women describe the same as "systemic violence" comes across as hysteria at best, and deceptive self-promotion at worst.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#322

Post by austenallred »

cr0sh wrote: post #306
austenallred wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to San Francisco from a small, deeply red town. I'll just say this - I think even that small town would be more tolerant of liberals than I felt when I worked in San Francisco, and I'm not even really that conservative (just economically). The leadership at the company was very reasonable, but the politically active folks terrified me, and didn't just think that those that held conservative viewpoints were mi…

> I didn't vote for Trump, but I know many, many good people that did. Arguably "good people" don't support nor vote for an individual who openly brags about assaulting women... ...unless you have a different definition of what is considered "good". /much like christians claim "everything god does is good" - you know, like genocide via a flood...

I don't disagree that those comments were wretched (again, I didn't vote for Trump), and neither do the majority of the people I know that voted for him, but it seems entirely possible to me that someone would vote for him in spite of those comments, not because of them.

Indeed, if you were to assume that every vote for a candidate is de facto support of everything they do/are, I don't think I ever could have voted for anyone.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#323

Post by yahna »

thedz wrote: post #57

IMO, part of the problem is that some "conservative" viewpoints nowadays are directly attacking or undermining how your coworkers might live. And in many cases, so much so that their views go from "well, that sucks but I can still live my life" to "if your views were enacted, my way of life would be destroyed".

Pretty much. Economic wise I think the republicans are wrong, but it's not a moral issue (well, it is because of corporate influence but that's a different argument).

It's when you start doing things like making it illegal to 2 adults to have sex in the privacy of their home that I start to think "these are just bad people".

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#324

Post by yahna »

phkahler wrote: post #41

>> Politics often don’t mix easily at work, but it’s particularly fraught in tech, where free thinking is prized yet the workforce is predominantly liberal. It used to be free thinking. They would embrace "inclusiveness" under that banner. The problem is they've gone all-in with the notion that being a Social Justice Warrior is a morally superior ideological position and anyone else is a bad person. They really have…

> I'm a pretty simple guy but I'm tired of hearing how bad I am just because I have a Y chromosome. The war on masculinity is very real.

Really, cause never once have I felt that way.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#325

Post by yahna »

tchaffee wrote: post #64

I think employees could use some training on how liberals and conservatives think very differently. When I became familiar with Jonathan Haidt and his moral foundations theory, I was able to better understand where conservatives are coming from, and even became a lot better at persuading. For example, when talking about confederate statues coming down, a conservative will respond to arguments around why it's traditio…

Why would I listen to a Ted talk buy a guy who is calling me disrespectful, disloyal, and impure?

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#326

Post by yahna »

didibus wrote: post #276

I'd guess this is only true if you're in favor of policies that are against other, targeted, groups or people. And that sounds okay to me. That's pretty equivalent to being an asshole. It's normal for people not to like you if you sound mean, unpleasant, and appear to be threatening. If you're being isolated and marginalised for opinions that aren't themselves marginalising, then there's a real problem.

If you are willing to support those who push those opinions then you deserve to be treated as a supporter of those opinions.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#327

Post by yahna »

ubertaco wrote: post #320
neo4sure wrote: post #277

All I can is get used to it. Red states are in decline and the trend will continue into the future. There is a reason tech companies are liberal.

Yeah, the mass migration of tech companies out of the Bay and to Austin, Raleigh, Boston, and Atlanta is definitely a sign of "red state decline".

> Boston

Since when is Boston in a 'red state'?

Austin is in a red state, but it's not a conservative place.

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#328

Post by nkurz »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #170
chrisabrams wrote: post #2

I grew up in Texas but worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. One of the toughest adjustments was going from a small conservative town to a major liberal populace. It was astonishing the number of people who got angry _at me_ for having a different opinion then they did. At one workplace I saw two coworkers get into a fist fight because the liberal was "offended" that the conservative differed on a viewpoint. Go t…

As a theoretical coworker of yours, my reaction would depend a lot on which vote you were talking about. In 00 I thought Bush voters were just sort of clods, hopelessly partisans with a poor understanding of the dangers of nepotism and monarchy. (I thought the same about Clinton voters in 08 and much of 16, to be fair) In 04, Bush voters were supporting a guy who responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading _the wrong c…

If you had admitted voting for his re-election to me at lunch I would have gotten up and left the table without saying a word.

I can understand feeling this way, but do you see this as a response that improves the situation? Is your impulse to silent action just that it's easier than engaging, or is there a positive outcome of silently leaving that would not be also achieved by explaining your reasons for leaving?

Engaging in a discussion of why you feel the way you do seems like it might have the best chance of a possible outcome. If their response is that are in favor of our behavior at Abu Graib that you despise, then I can understand giving up and leaving.

(Ironically, this responseless post was voted below zero when I found it, and dead from user flagging when I tried to reply, which I think is equivalent to the "silently leaving" approach espoused by the author. I'd be interested to hear from those who flagged it why they did so.)

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#329

Post by sctb »

yahna wrote: post #326
didibus wrote: post #276

I'd guess this is only true if you're in favor of policies that are against other, targeted, groups or people. And that sounds okay to me. That's pretty equivalent to being an asshole. It's normal for people not to like you if you sound mean, unpleasant, and appear to be threatening. If you're being isolated and marginalised for opinions that aren't themselves marginalising, then there's a real problem.

If you are willing to support those who push those opinions then you deserve to be treated as a supporter of those opinions.

Could you please slow down and stop doing battle in this thread? We're trying our best to learn something here, and that means comments need to be civil and substantive—they need to say something meaningful instead of just stoking the flames.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: At liberal tech companies, those who disagree on politics say they’re isolated

#330

Post by humanrebar »

ubertaco wrote: post #317
humanrebar wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no pro-life candidate on the ballot that wasn't Trump.

Evan McMullin. I know this, because I voted for him.

He was only on the ballot in 11 states.
Post reply on HN