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

This is just bizarre to to me. I moved here from the Midwest, which I found stifling. There's a far greater variety of social values and political ideologies (not to mention backgrounds and interests) here than pretty much any place I've lived. The main hostility I see is to intolerance, but that's hardly surprising given SF's long, welcoming history and the paradox of tolerance. [1]

If I were to worry about any sort of uniformity, it wouldn't be political, but in startup culture. 20 years of success has created some very well-greased rails into which most innovation has to fit: bright young founders, seed round followed quickly by A and B rounds. That can be fine as far as it goes, but it has become so orthodox that I think we're not a great place for doing anything other than a plausible Next Big Thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Really? Because the only values I've heard expressed have been standard democratic talking points and once in a while far left ideologies.

Having also lived in the mid-West and SF, I would agree the mid-West leans more conservative, but in any decent sized city you'll find both view points (election resulted confirm it).

I would say SF is just the opposite of a hardcore conservative town. There is almost no consideration for having a different viewpoint. And if you happen to express one, you're certainly made to feel their is something wrong with you.

Is that feeling of pushback to an (assumed) different viewpoint just that in the midwest, a conservative is in the majority, and in SF they're not? So, in one place you'd encounter almost no confident opposition, and in the other you would? I assume it might stand out and feel like suppression if you weren't at all used to it.