Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
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Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#2Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#3I'm sorry but this article is beyond stupid. It is a narrative in search of data.
Opening line:
>Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers.
Then proceeds to include no data that any donations are actually from software engineers.
Then the actual amounts:
>Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has called for breaking up Facebook, Amazon and Google, raised more than $173,000 from tech industry employees in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg News’s analysis of public data on political contributions from employees at 10 large tech companies.
$173,000? Candidates raising money is usually discussed in terms of millions raised. so 173k? how is that newsworthy? that could be 173 ppl giving 1k.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#4Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.
I think a variety of things get conflated.
(anecdotal insight here): Many people at tech companies are not software engineers. I believe they are more often to the left of the general tech workers. Tech workers can be pretty left still, but I have found to tend more libertarian/a-political.
In general though, many people employed at tech companies are young, coastal (by virtue of where they work), and work in cities. All those factors tend to skew more left.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#5Wasn't too surprised to see that Bloomberg neglected to mention a pretty self evident reason why tech workers might want that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
I'm pretty sure that if the anti-trust litigation in 2001 hadn't battered microsoft then tech wages would not be as high today. Competition among employers is good for wages, and the fewer and bigger the employers, the less the competition.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#6To some degree I agree that some of these companies have too much control over users and collect too much information and give users too little control in that.
With that said, I feel there’s some irony in this. These companies essentially have encouraged and enabled these attitudes in their workforce thinking this would make the employers look like they shared the same goals and had to good of workers in mind. Essentially they thought coöpting the workforce was possible without negative outcomes. History shows this doesn’t work, unless you are a tyrant and have absolute control and have real ways to control them outside of work.
For example Mao could have his PLA and could have his Red Guards and use them to achieve whatever policy he wanted, no matter how ill advised.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#7Maybe they are donating to candidates who they believe are good for everyone ( including themselves ) and not just good for their employers who could care less about them in most cases. Voting on one issue is a sure way to get a candidate who is against you when they ignore that issue.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#8Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.
1. Being in extremely left-wing Bay area with historic ties to the free speech movement. 2. They're not, it just benefits both the tech companies and the media to portray them that way.
Based on personal observations.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#9In re: "Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers." Specifically, loyalty to my "own employers."
These are the folks ("dozens" of companies) who colluded to cheat their own developers of est. $8 billion dollars:
https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...
https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...
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FWIW, "anecdata": I worked at one of the FAANG companies for about two years, and, yeah, hell yeah, the one I worked at should be broken up IMO.
An "exploded view" form would introduce buffers and breaks in very (IMO) appropriate places while still permitting the innovation and economic growth.
Put another way, I don't think the economics of scale apply as cleanly to tech industry as they do to mass production. You want more communication rather than less, and that takes time/energy/attention.
Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
#10Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.
I think it's generational. SV in the Gen X era was highly libertarian. The Millenials in SV seem to be mostly left wing or even socialist. Broadly speaking that is, exceptions abound.