Jeremy Lyons, a 54-year-old tech worker, joined a recent anti-Trump protest in San Jose, where “no tech executives were anywhere to be seen,” unlike earlier demonstrations.
“One of the things I’ve seen over that time is a shift from a nerdy utopia to a money first, move fast and break things,” Lyons said.
A growing political divide in Silicon Valley has emerged as tech leaders like Elon Musk and David Sacks embrace Trump, while many workers remain liberal but disillusioned.
“The trust is broken,” said Kamal Ali, an AI worker. “It’s going to be different forever.”
Same as it ever was, this is part of why these guys needed unions. They got tricked into thinking they didn’t.
This is one of the reasons I really don’t want to move back to the SF Bay Area, even though my family are all there. Sure, I could probably make shitloads of money, but so much about the tech industry in Silicon Valley has become absolutely soul-sucking, and I really don’t think I could put up with that in terms of my own long-term mental health.
How the fuck did we go from tech being leftist to this?
Capitalism and hyper-silo’d higher education.
I was able to attend school for a year or two before knowing for sure what I wanted to do, and because of that, I was able to take a number of courses that were unrelated to the (pretty narrowly specific) major I ended up choosing.
Because of this, I’ve found that I have a far more well-rounded education than the overwhelming majority of my colleagues. They are very intelligent people, but they’ve been so focused on one specific area of expertise for so long, that they seem completely naive to things like politics.
The more intelligent ones are smart enough to realize they’re not experts in everything. Others, however, have deluded themselves into believing that they are experts in everything. And it’s fucking frustrating.
Capitalism. And the era of easy money and the resulting venture capital nonsense
CEOs that look to subjugate instead of lead? That’s a plumbing problem.
