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Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
21–30 of 68 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#22It depends if you are right leaning because you want lower taxes and smaller government, or if you are right leaning because you are a homophobic, racist.
I don't think it does. The two camps are very anti-each-other, and they don't have a lot of nuance for what beliefs get you to your side. In fact, in 99% of my interactions, they don't know how I arrived on my side. I think it's more likely to be divulged by talk about the president or presidential candidates. I don't think this is true of highly rational people, but I do think it's true of most people that I encount…
> I think it's more likely to be divulged by talk about the president or presidential candidates
Sure, because if somebody says they’re pro-Trump (or really, pro most Republican candidates these days), they’re not saying “I lean towards conservative views”, they’re saying at a minimum “I’m OK supporting Trump because his xenophobia/sexism/etc are lesser concerns to me than his views that I like”.
There are plenty of conservatives in tech. The problem is that the modern Republican Party is no longer guided by conservative principles.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#23It depends if you are right leaning because you want lower taxes and smaller government, or if you are right leaning because you are a homophobic, racist.
The word "homophobic" is used to discredit any disapproval of homosexuality -- it must be a "phobia" and is not rational, and the issue is not open to discussion. To answer the OP, especially on social issues, you cannot be openly right-wing.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#24You can't even have friends who are "too right wing".
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#25Could you define the set of beliefs that comprise "right-leaning"? That should help here.
Unfortunately, right leaning in the US has come to include views that run counter to science, diversity/inclusivity, and human rights for all (right to vote, right to choose). Are these views welcome in tech companies? Not generally.
Left-leaning also "includes" such views - consider tankies, for example. The more meaningful question is what views are genuinely representative.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#26I could say I don't support or believe in tech censorship, vaccine passports, virtue signaling, BLM, critical race theory, white guilt/privilege and that I don't believe that trans women are women. However, I suspect that it's true that an employer would not approve of that, and that right leaning beliefs or believers don't get a fair shake in this climate. So I think it's best to not be open about and say such thing…
The "Milgram Experiments" were successful because of people "just doing their jobs". If the situation has regressed to the point of being a bystander then I'm not sure what's best here.
There is some evidence that the Milgram experiments were manipulated and don't actually show what you claim. See the Validity section of the Wikipedia page for criticisms. At least we can't draw any reliable conclusions from an experiment that was never reproduced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment?wprov=sfla1
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#27I could say I don't support or believe in tech censorship, vaccine passports, virtue signaling, BLM, critical race theory, white guilt/privilege and that I don't believe that trans women are women. However, I suspect that it's true that an employer would not approve of that, and that right leaning beliefs or believers don't get a fair shake in this climate. So I think it's best to not be open about and say such thing…
If it is true that an employer would not approve of any of those views (which is not a given), then it would only be because views which limit other’s humanity are not often regarded kindly.
By saying you don’t support BLM, or that you don’t believe trans women are women, you risk suggesting that you don’t see the value in those people’s lives. Certainly in the case of BLM, which began as a movement to protect Black lives from police brutality.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#28It depends if you are right leaning because you want lower taxes and smaller government, or if you are right leaning because you are a homophobic, racist.
The word "homophobic" is used to discredit any disapproval of homosexuality -- it must be a "phobia" and is not rational, and the issue is not open to discussion. To answer the OP, especially on social issues, you cannot be openly right-wing.
I think you may be inventing a distinction. Nobody is trying to make “disapproval of homosexuality” sound worse by making it a “phobia”. It already sounds bad on its own. Stop disapproving of other people’s identity.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#29Could you define the set of beliefs that comprise "right-leaning"? That should help here.
Unfortunately, right leaning in the US has come to include views that run counter to science, diversity/inclusivity, and human rights for all (right to vote, right to choose). Are these views welcome in tech companies? Not generally.
It takes a very selective reading of the facts to claim conservatives are any more anti science than liberals, in the US. Whatever hot button issue there is, there will be people who deny whatever the scientific consensus is if it doesn't suit their beliefs. The question is, who would you rather have running things? The guy that thought humans were riding dinosaurs 5000 years ago, or the guy who thinks paying 40 million people not to work is going to boost the economy?
The diversity/inclusivity stuff has gone totally bonkers. It's racist now to want to not judge people by their skin color and instead use merit. I don't see how liberals can abide this.. some don't but most are just scared of being yelled at by a twitter mob.
And human rights--with respect to voting one side wants more verification of eligibility and one side does not, no one holds the view that some people shouldnt be allowed to vote. And conservatives think abortion is a human rights issue too, just for the baby (or fetus or clump of cells or whatever you want to call it). We can play word games all we want about it but there is a real moral question here about what constitutes a human.
Re: Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?
#30You can, kinda.
I'm a very small government person. Far more libertarian than republican but the general republican obstructionism in government suits my ends so I like them better than democrats these days.
I'm "out" within my own smallish company. I'm in a very secure position there though and even if I wasn't, I'm not in a position where employment is a necessity for me at this point.
> lower taxes and smaller government, or if you are right leaning because you are a homophobic, racist
See, the problem here is that things I ascribe to being in the former category others will chose to ascribe my motivations to the latter. For example, the canonical example of the baker who refused to bake a cake for the gay wedding? I believe that private businesses should be left to their own devices with minimal government regulation, at least inversely proportional to their size/market share.
The baker who bakes cakes where you can just walk across/down the street to another one? If they chose to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding I'm not going there for a few reasons, besides me not wanting to patronize them they don't want me because I'm gay. I wouldn't patronize a bakery that wouldn't serve women (I'm a guy) or black people either (I'm white) because that doesn't align with my values, but, I don't think the government needs to (or should) inject it's morality into the free market. Most people would call me racist/homophobic because of it. As a gay man I'm shut out of most gay spaces because of having this opinion.
Similarly, and frankly worse, in tech. Tech people are a fun combination of so convinced that they are smarter than everyone else and so convinced that Their Way is The Correct Way and that anyone who disagrees is some form of -ist. In fairness, most tech people I meet are wicked smart but they are also myopic and don't always see the full spectrum.
I had an opportunity to join one of the FAANG companies last year at a seriously significant salary hike. I turned it down in large part because I knew I'd either have to constantly lie about my politics or refuse to answer and I've known others who have become labeled evil and complicit by virtue of refusing to answer the question. From asking some trusted friends on the inside about it, the group I was (possibly) joining wasn't nearly as bad as some others and I probably would have been fine never discussing politics, but, these things can change on a dime and I don't really want to hide. I spend all of my life up to college hiding in one closet, I'm not going back into another closet almost 30 years later.
It's a funny dynamic too, even though it's not open there are conservatives in tech in companies where you wouldn't expect, If we don't know who the others are we do a funny tiptoe around each other to identify (there's no secret handshake or code words unfortunately). We have to suss each other out very carefully. I remember when I was in a conversation with someone in my company and someone from a 3rd party vendor (I knew them both well, but, neither of them had ever spoken) and let slip something which I normally wouldn't say around others. My co-worker gave me laser eyes like "be more careful!" and I quickly responded to explain that Bob was cool.
So are conservatives in tech persecuted in the USA? IMO, absolutely.
Can you be openly right-leaning? For now, you can be, in the right circumstances, at the expense of either your career entirely or at the expense of limiting your career options drastically.
Where is it heading? Reeducation camps for wrong think.
If none of the above convinces you perhaps merely even the fact that this is a question which needs to be asked will give you some pause.