Ask HN: Can you be openly politically right-leaning in tech in North America?

It 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 encounter.

I 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 things. 80% of your paycheck is to do the job, and the 20% is to not have any opinions or sexually harass anyone.

Are you a good person?

That's a weird, loaded, and hard to answer question. It's subjective, and equally in your favor as it is out of it. Politics should have no bearing on your success in the tech world, and if it does then I think you're participating in politics wrong. You can't be openly political anywhere without expecting repercussions, especially now. This concept of "can you be conservative in this" and "can you be liberal in that" is all about setting these self-fulfilling prophecies that only serve to redouble your own political beliefs. Be smart, and stop trying to make other people accountable for the way you behave.

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.