Good luck, LA doesn't like bigots any more than SF does.
Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
461–470 of 901 posts
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to counter this anecdata, the startup I used to work at was founded by 4 conservatives, 2 of whom met working in the George W Bush White House. We used to discuss and debate all sorts of politic topics, and in fact I was quite often in the minority (a position that didn't bother me... it was a good way to learn different perspective on some key issues). They were then and I'm sure still now are quite openly cons…
Can you share the name of the company? Jeb mentions something like "dub tag" but that's apparently not it.
Looks like Thumbtack(?)
www.thumbtack.com/
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article isn't just about Peter Thiel, it's about tech workers in general. Not everyone has the luxury of being a billionaire, and knowing that they live comfortably for the rest of their lives even if they become unemployable. The sentiments expressed by quotes in this article: > People in Silicon Valley “openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified..." > Sometimes Silic…
Same, as another founder. And same, I would consider myself pretty liberal. Pro choice, anti military-industrial complex, anti prison complex, pro legalization, sex positive, pro gay marriage, pro universal healthcare, against church and state coupling, non-climate change denier, pro science, yada yada, you name it. Admittedly, I don't even like the term "conservative", like Naval would say, pinning labels onto yours…
dude, if it's implausible for you to imagine expressing your beliefs without being labelled a bigot, that's a red flag about your beliefs.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#464None of the three people profiled in this article are tech workers. They are investors, or whatever it is that Tim Ferriss is. To the extent tech workers are leaving Silicon Valley, I'm willing to bet the dominant factor is the cost of housing.
This really should be the top comment. Tim Ferris makes money by staying relevant. And Peter Thiel qualifies as a political figure.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
One can be a non-racist conservative, in the sense of wanting a smaller government and less regulation. However, today’s Republican Party is undeniably racist, and supporting them also makes one racist in my opinion. This is especially true since today’s Republican Party is not actually conservative. One cannot want smaller government while simultaneously supporting a drastic increase in immigration and border securi…
Please keep standard political talking points off HN. If you repeat something stock, it will get stock responses. That makes it off-topic on a site dedicated to curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
how is the entire topic of this discussion not a standard political talking point?
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider that this is the majority consensus in Japan and China. Imagine going to japan and saying "guys, this workplace is far too asian, what we really need here is some more indians, africans and arabs to get this workplace into the 21st century". I think most people here could see that not going over well. Would we then think of china and japan as mostly racist? I don't really want to get into racist/racial debat…
They are both pretty openly xenophobic, no? I didnt think that was in any debate. If your point is that racism isnt the sole province of white people - yes, thats worth remembering. White American liberals (which I am) seem to struggle with allowing their world view to incorporate things like this.
No, I feel that the point is rather different, pointing towards a difference between xenophobia and racism.
In USA, the nation is mixed, heterogenous, and thus being anti-diversity unavoidably involves some discrimination of your fellow citizens, being an asshole to some groups of them; and justifying this discrimination tends to require some racist arguments.
In homogenous countries like Japan, the issue is different - you can easily consider other races/ethnicities as equally good/valid/etc while at the same time being anti-diversity, favoring near-zero permanent immigration; i.e. a simple status quo position "the other races are nice, let's visit, chat, trade, exchange experiences but let us stay here and let them stay there" is feasible, unlike USA.
In USA, acknowledging "there's us and there's them" race separation divides the country, in Japan the same thing can unite it. Treating members of another race as guests that are different/separate from your group is reasonable in homogeous nations and horrid in "melting pot" nations.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it? I've never witnessed a Bay Area tech company state that their under representation of women and minorities is due to a different distribution of preferences in these groups as compared to men and whites & Asians. On the contrary, in some tech companies doing this appears to be a fireable offense. Also, the point is not that less conservatives are in tech companies is the issue. I am under no illusion that prob…
What does conservatism mean to you? When you say 'conservative', what beliefs are you describing?
These terms are ambiguous and have fluid meaning. But in general, anything on the Republican party platform, or supported by a substantial portion of Republicans or self-identified conservatives, is something I would consider part of mainstream conservatism. Quick examples include:
* That affirmative action should be illegal or more heavily restricted.
* That unlawful residents should be removed from the country, even if previous administrations chose not to enforce immigration law.
* That welfare programs should be cut back.
* That taxes should be reduced, even if they're reduced in such a way that the wealthy receive a greater tax cut than the non-wealthy.
* That restrictions on firearms purchases and ownership should be kept permissive, and that restrictive local laws (e.g. California's) are unlawful.
* That the US should be more restrictive in allowing foreigners to work in the country (e.g. raising the minimum salary for H1B workers)
* That inequalities in education, employment, and achievement should not be presumed to be indications of bias.
These are just quick examples. Personally, I advise anyone to conceal their political leanings if they agree with any of these statements in my current workplace if they wish to preserve their career prospects, and I think that's a shame. All of these are things that half to 30% of the voting population believes in, and are on the core platform of one of the two major US parties. Any workplace that claims to tolerate conservative views should tolerate these statements.
"Conservative", "liberal", "centrist", etc. are by no means monolithic attributes. I think these labels are better described as broad generalizations of individual positions on issues. For example, I agree with 70-80% of "liberal" positions (maybe closer to 60% if you include San Francisco local issues, but there's arguments to be made that's more "far-left" vs. "left" than liberal vs. conservative). I still consider myself a liberal. That said, I still do censor myself on any non-anonymous forums for the remaining 20-30%.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
I notice you didn't include Alt-right in there which at the moment seem to be political ideology on a big rise and in my personal opinion, I think it's generally less radical than communism. Consider though that one thing the alt-right will never accept is that racial diversity in the workplace is a net positive in itself. Whether it's true or false, it's just apart of the parcel. Now how would someone like that feel…
> being against racial diversity is racist That made me stop and think. I'm trying to imagine a picture of someone who is against racial diversity but isn't remotely racist and whilst I agree there's no logical contradiction inherent in that position I do struggle to think of a realistic portrait of such an individual. I might be missing something here but can you spell out this position for me in a bit more detail?…
I'm not racist and, as you would expect me to say, have over the years made several close friends of widely-varying races. (As an aside, isn't it part of the problem that I even have to open my comment on this topic by expressing my non-racist bonafides?)
In over two decades of work in corporate as well as entrepreneurial environments, I've not seen a difference in efficacy within groups that would be attributed to being either racially diverse or non-diverse.
For example, if there were three groups working on a given technical project, one composed of all white men, one composed of all Asian women, and one composed of a mix of race and gender, would the diverse group produce a superior result? My experience is that they would not. Sufficiently and equally incentivized and qualified, all groups would likely produce similar results.
So, I'd consider myself as somebody who's "against racial diversity" mainly because I haven't experienced it improving the core competencies of my company -- which is what I care about. Nor have I found compelling research supporting higher performance by more diverse groups. Thus, efforts to improve diversity, for diversity's sake, in my experience, feels like an effort to make a change that's not related, and might even be a distraction, to making my company more effective.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
I notice you didn't include Alt-right in there which at the moment seem to be political ideology on a big rise and in my personal opinion, I think it's generally less radical than communism. Consider though that one thing the alt-right will never accept is that racial diversity in the workplace is a net positive in itself. Whether it's true or false, it's just apart of the parcel. Now how would someone like that feel…
> being against racial diversity is racist That made me stop and think. I'm trying to imagine a picture of someone who is against racial diversity but isn't remotely racist and whilst I agree there's no logical contradiction inherent in that position I do struggle to think of a realistic portrait of such an individual. I might be missing something here but can you spell out this position for me in a bit more detail?…
> someone who is against racial diversity but isn't remotely racist
One way I see this working is a person who believes in individualistic meritocracy with libertarian leanings. In this post I'll try to lay out the point of view of hypothetical person (so not everything I say here represents my own personal beliefs or something I personally agree with).
First, the meritocracy part: Such a person would say that all workplace decisions should be made on a totally race-blind basis: "I don't care what race the people at my startup are, what matters is if they can code (if that's what their job title entails)." If it so happens that our society has relatively few people of X race who can code at the required skill level, then as an inevitable consequence on average startups will employ few people of race X, because there simply aren't enough skilled programmers of race X to go around.
Second, the libertarian part: Sure, it's indisputable that there are a ton of social and economic issues that people of race X encounter at home, in their communities, in school, that end up causing fewer young adults of race X to be coders. But it's certainly not this startup's job to try to fix the upbringing of employees that has resulted in their inadequacy to supply the needed labor. This startup's job is more along the lines of, if a person can't do the work the company needs them to do, they shouldn't be working here.
It's not even the government's job to fix this. When it tries, it only succeeds at wasting resources, turning the people it's trying to help into permanent dependents of the taxpayers, and poisoning the reputation of the actual high achievers of race X because everyone who sees them now assumes "Oh, he/she can't possibly actually be able to do his/her job, the only reason he/she's in that position is there's a quota of minorities to fill so the company doesn't get called out / boycotted / sued for insufficient diversity..."
Third, the individualistic part: Do we really want a society based on the group identities of different races? That seems like a recipe for perpetuating our race problems, not fixing them. If you enshrine "racial diversity" into any kind of official or quasi-official policy, then by definition the policy is treating under-represented races favorably and over-represented races unfavorably.
Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider that this is the majority consensus in Japan and China. Imagine going to japan and saying "guys, this workplace is far too asian, what we really need here is some more indians, africans and arabs to get this workplace into the 21st century". I think most people here could see that not going over well. Would we then think of china and japan as mostly racist? I don't really want to get into racist/racial debat…
They are both pretty openly xenophobic, no? I didnt think that was in any debate. If your point is that racism isnt the sole province of white people - yes, thats worth remembering. White American liberals (which I am) seem to struggle with allowing their world view to incorporate things like this.
> They are both pretty openly xenophobic, no?
I mean if xenophobic is defined as preferring your own race compared to others then I guess pretty much the entire world is xenophobic except white liberals in western countries.
China or Japan doesn't (in recent decades at least) put nearly the same amount of effort into destabilizing other countries that they have no cultural affinity with compared to countries like the US.
To me, I would consider these actions more "racist" or "xenophobic" than restricting immigration to prevent excessive racial/cultural diversity. To me this is the rise and fall of nation states 101. More diversity in race and cultures leads to more conflict. You can't have a race riots between two races that don't live in the same nation.
To take this a bit away from race, just look at the middle east. Countries like iraq are doomed constant civil war because of the racial/cultural lines which are commonly expressed through religion sects. I think it would be pretty fair to say that without diversity, iraq as a nation would be much more stable and prosperous.
If it's xenophobic to understand race exists and the human condition is one that accepts race at a foundational level, then I guess we are all born Xenophobic. I personally don't believe in living by original sins.