There is another observation to be made from this article. When we look at the erosion of a particular right, the first objective by the opponents of the right is to make exercise of the right subject to public disproval.
This is especially true if an outright ban would be difficult. Notice that in the gun culture, people will go to extraordinary lengths to not end up on a list. Strong proponents of the 2nd Amendment won’t join the NRA. They will look for ways to avoid registering guns, or outright defy being placed on a list of assault weapon owners. Smokers are banished to the outdoors (personally I don’t mind this, but it should be up to the property owner.) I’m sure there are other examples.
And now we have educated, well-paid, American workers, afraid to join Republican clubs at their work out of fear that they will not get that next promotion or raise, or worse, get fired.
One thing that data technology has accomplished very well is the sorting of people and things into categories. There is a Kafka story in there somewhere about a social justice warrior who, due to a dropped decimal point, is categorized as a white, hetero-sexual, conservative, meat-eating hunter whose life gets turned upside down.
I imagine employees of Certain Large Technology Companies That Shall Remain Unnamed who joined any Republicans@TechCo mailing list may be a bit nervous right about now, in this post-Damore era. It’s not just James Damore: there’s also the Pinterest engineer (now former Pinterest engineer) and Google engineer Mike Wacker (now former Google engineer Mike Wacker) as examples.
At the very least, HR and ideological enemies of Republicans are probably lurking on those Republicans@TechCo mailing lists looking for excuses to act. (Which, given that engineers are savvy about these things, will lead to discussions taking place on private servers on non-company owned devices…)
This doesn’t say much about the state of tolerance in Silicon Valley today.
Worse, it will lead to more polarization inside the workplace. If, say, 40% of employees are publicly conservative, and 60% of employees are publicly left-leaning, the majority might be inclined to recognize that their colleagues can’t all be bad people, are unlikely to all actually be Nazis, etc. There might be some honest discussions and common ground found over drinks after work. Maybe, optimistically, there might even be tolerance for different points of view.
But if 60% of employees are publicly left-leaning, and only 2% of employees are publicly conservative, and the rest just remain quiet, the majority might be less inclined to actually have discussions and more likely to wield their power. Maybe I’m not phrasing this very well, but there seems to be an unfortunate trend here, which I suspect will not end well.
This is run-of-the-mill stuff. I was hoping for more given the article’s headline.
If company X has a perceived scandal that’s in the news, a senator is probably going to ask a company X representative about it if company X shows up at a hearing that week. This happens every day. I’ve seen this firsthand at dozens of hearings.
It would be more newsworthy if it didn’t happen. It’s not unique to Silicon Valley.
There is another observation to be made from this article. When we look at the erosion of a particular right, the first objective by the opponents of the right is to make exercise of the right subject to public disproval.
This is especially true if an outright ban would be difficult. Notice that in the gun culture, people will go to extraordinary lengths to not end up on a list. Strong proponents of the 2nd Amendment won’t join the NRA. They will look for ways to avoid registering guns, or outright defy being placed on a list of assault weapon owners. Smokers are banished to the outdoors (personally I don’t mind this, but it should be up to the property owner.) I’m sure there are other examples.
And now we have educated, well-paid, American workers, afraid to join Republican clubs at their work out of fear that they will not get that next promotion or raise, or worse, get fired.
One thing that data technology has accomplished very well is the sorting of people and things into categories. There is a Kafka story in there somewhere about a social justice warrior who, due to a dropped decimal point, is categorized as a white, hetero-sexual, conservative, meat-eating hunter whose life gets turned upside down.
This is sad but true.
I imagine employees of Certain Large Technology Companies That Shall Remain Unnamed who joined any Republicans@TechCo mailing list may be a bit nervous right about now, in this post-Damore era. It’s not just James Damore: there’s also the Pinterest engineer (now former Pinterest engineer) and Google engineer Mike Wacker (now former Google engineer Mike Wacker) as examples.
At the very least, HR and ideological enemies of Republicans are probably lurking on those Republicans@TechCo mailing lists looking for excuses to act. (Which, given that engineers are savvy about these things, will lead to discussions taking place on private servers on non-company owned devices…)
This doesn’t say much about the state of tolerance in Silicon Valley today.
Worse, it will lead to more polarization inside the workplace. If, say, 40% of employees are publicly conservative, and 60% of employees are publicly left-leaning, the majority might be inclined to recognize that their colleagues can’t all be bad people, are unlikely to all actually be Nazis, etc. There might be some honest discussions and common ground found over drinks after work. Maybe, optimistically, there might even be tolerance for different points of view.
But if 60% of employees are publicly left-leaning, and only 2% of employees are publicly conservative, and the rest just remain quiet, the majority might be less inclined to actually have discussions and more likely to wield their power. Maybe I’m not phrasing this very well, but there seems to be an unfortunate trend here, which I suspect will not end well.
This is run-of-the-mill stuff. I was hoping for more given the article’s headline.
If company X has a perceived scandal that’s in the news, a senator is probably going to ask a company X representative about it if company X shows up at a hearing that week. This happens every day. I’ve seen this firsthand at dozens of hearings.
It would be more newsworthy if it didn’t happen. It’s not unique to Silicon Valley.