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We should be specific when we say "tech", whether we mean the fascist overlords, or some kid who works at an Apple Store. The folks who organized unions at Amazon and Google are people, too, and are more _tech_ than any of the tycoons.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social

the only reason that tech was ever remotely left-coded was that in the early 2010s they consciously aligned themselves with what appeared to be the dominant political party. that meant large donations to Dems and nominal gestures toward diversity. as soon as the winds shifted they swung right.

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This bugged the hell out of me recently when an indy newspaper ran a bit about how techies ruined an SF athletic club, but the "tech" people in question all turned out to be Stanford MBAs.

I’m a software engineer at a Fortune 500 tech firm. I’d wager we’re 60+% Dem supporters. All of these articles are talking about “tech” CEOs which are usually more business/sales/finance aligned

It always bothered me that many of the people considered powerful in tech are not actually technical. They just happen to work at or founded a tech focused company but their background is in business or marketing and they know how to talk the talk.

no other industry calls the financiers by the name of the craft! If someone "works in food", we think they're a chef or a cook, not the person who cut a check for funding a restaurant! A person who works "in medicine" is the doctor or nurse, not a developer who built the hospital!

The look on my kid's face when I explained that Musk a) bought Tesla, b) did not invent electric cars, c) did not go to grad school, and d) was born rich. (Said kid was never a Musk fan, but had absorbed some of the hype.)

The commonality is the equity industry. Funders want to be able to take over for IC workers and then say "yeah, I did that!" like the way Musk does. As in, SpaceX is Musk and not the people doing actual rocketry/software work while he's on a ketamine bender. Same with farming, same with web media

This seems generational, too. I think "tech" and I still think "(Mostly) Guys in the 1970s and 1980s who dressed like hippies". The generation before mine (and before all the would-be MOTU came in to ruin the profession). Elon, Vivek et al are what we used to call "SUITS". Not "Tech".

Good point. I don't know if "tech" is mostly left or not. But I think anytime someone becomes mega rich, there is an allure of at least wanting to become fiscally conservative. And the owners of many tech companies are insanely rich.

Yep. Tech workers are predominantly liberal or to the left of us, because educated, politically aware people swing liberal throughout the US population. Tech -bros- and tech entrepreneurs are much more likely to be libertarian or hard right, but that's a different demographic.

sure, but i could give you dozens of examples of individual contributors at every tech firm i've worked at proudly defendign all sorts of vile conservative/facist shit in the company slack knowing they share opinions with the c-suite.

@anildash.com as the architect of vCenter for almost a decade, software in use in every company for their most mission critical business workloads, I find it odd to think of myself as ‘right wing’ because some billionaire is right wing. I voted Harris + maxed out my donations and canvassed

How much of perceived tech polarization comes from 2010s SF politics, when activists blocked buses for tech workers who were bidding up limited housing resources? That feels like it's hiding in the "lefties alienated their allies in tech" charge, although I don't know how much of it lives on.

that's a factor, for sure. anything that reminded the tech tycoons that they couldn't just control the whole world made them furious.