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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

(www.wsj.com)
370 points sillypuddy | 2 comments | 18 Feb 18 16:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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twblalock ◴[18 Feb 18 21:03 UTC] No.16408620[source]▶
I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views.

Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than liberals are in other parts of the country.

It seems to me, from personal experience, that the people who feel alienated are the ones who bring politics to work in an overbearing contrarian way, seeking to cause offense under the guise of "debate," and then pretend to be shocked when people don't want to put up with their shit. Work is for working; it's not a debating society, and especially not when the debating is done in bad faith.

Peter Thiel has been more politically vocal than most, and he is vocal about things he knows to be unpopular. He can't be surprised that people who disagree with him are also vocal. If he can't take the heat he should stay out of the kitchen.

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strangeloops85 ◴[18 Feb 18 21:30 UTC] No.16408824[source]▶
Yeah I don't get it either, especially the "feeling alienated" part. Does that include being feted and having a respectful discussion with your liberal friend and old colleague, Reid Hoffman, on the Stanford campus on Jan. 31 of this year, moderated by a very sympathetic Niall Ferguson? With laudatory words and praise from the President and Provost? https://news.stanford.edu/2018/02/01/cardinal-conversation-r...

Look, if you're going to speak at the RNC and actively support Trump, you will be on the opposite side of a super-majority of college-educated people in this country at this point. And definitely a large super-majority of people under 35, women, Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans. So if you're surrounded by such people, and are loudly promoting such views, don't expect your interlocutors to not criticize them, or necessarily want to hear them ad nauseum.

The evidence however suggests that Mr. Thiel is certainly being given PLENTY of platforms to continue expressing his viewpoints in a respectful manner in front of influential crowds of people, including students. Who is pushing this whole narrative?

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sseveran ◴[18 Feb 18 23:35 UTC] No.16409571[source]▶
Mrs. Clinton won college educated voters by 9 percentage points which is not exactly a super majority.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...

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1. projectileboy ◴[19 Feb 18 05:56 UTC] No.16411038[source]▶
You're not wrong, but in an election at the national level, 9 points is normally considered a pretty big spread (for example, Obama's victory over McCain in 2008 was pretty solid, and that was by a 7 point margin).
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2. sseveran ◴[19 Feb 18 18:41 UTC] No.16414707[source]▶
It is a good sized spread. I do think there is more interesting things going on there if you really start pulling the data apart. Although there is no technical definition of super majority that applies to all cases I like the 66% number which would imply you are twice as likely to meet someone from group A as opposed to group B if everything was random. Others of course can have their own definition of what a super majority is.