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why is hi-tech liberal
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georgia_tech_swagger Offline
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Post: #3
RE: why is hi-tech liberal
It's a complex multi-variable problem with several contributing factors.

I agree that in the South most engineers are either conservative or libertarian. Overwhelmingly so in fact. But most IT engineering jobs are not in the South, though that has shifted in recent years with the booms in Austin and Raleigh and datacenter build out in the southeast due to cheap electricity. The IT industry is still unquestionably centered around locations which are politically far left and ideological echo chambers (Seattle and the Bay Area). Even areas that seem far away become connected to that culture. The plane flights between SFO and Austin, TX are often called the nerd birds because it's full of Silicon Valley types going back and forth between the two places.

The policies you are implying you're against aren't reflective of a monoculture at these high tech places. They're reflective of the desires of the HR departments and PR departments and the very tip top of the company. Their interests IMO are entirely self-serving: claim the moral high ground, generate sales from people who will buy or shill your product because you agree with their politics, try to use this public holier than thou image to drive recruitment of better IT talent.

Wait, better IT talent? Yes. The talent pool for IT positions is chronically low. This is largely because getting a Bachelors of Computer Science is as useful in the job marketplace for actual IT positions as a Bachelors of Pre-Medicine is for actual medical positions. Examples: "Great, you have your pre-med. Can you reliably and with minimal pain get an IV line in? Oh, you've never done that before?" "Great, you have your BS of CS. Can you use SaltStack to automatically deploy and manage software on a 300 node server cluster? Oh, you've never even heard of that software before?" You need people who don't just have the stupid sheep skin but actually then went on to teach themselves relevant career tech because colleges just flat out don't do it. And this in general means somewhat more introverted people and people who are effectively introverted for other reasons ("on the spectrum", etc). I don't have any hard numbers or know of anybody who does them, but I can say with some confidence that whatever the rate of gender dysphoria is in the broader population it is may be twice that in the IT space. This is where you get a lot of the trans issues in IT. If you're hiring a very large IT pool and you get on the Dave Chapelle alphabet people shitlist ... that could be a real talent fulfillment problem. PARTICULARLY in the Bay Area.

Lastly, there's all the same gender abrasiveness you'd expect from an overwhelmingly male field. That is to say guys having the "locker room" style of decorum which causes pearl clutching, etc, etc. Sexual harassment is a real thing and is certainly there in IT too, in no small part because there's no shortage of dudes not getting action in IT. If you just have a legit 6-pack and guns you move to the top 0.5% of the picking order for women in IT, it feels like. So probably a higher than average number of lonely dudes who don't have strong social skills in general let alone social skills with women. So I wouldn't doubt that it's a bigger problem in IT than most places and so that's where you get a lot of the gender issues in IT.

THAT BEING SAID .... there is a real issue with women being overpaid and overpromoted in IT simply because they have ovaries and companies want to look woke. Women seem to get away with things men never could in the IT workplace when it comes to learning on the job. If you're a guy you're gonna be told to RTFM and be ready to work day one. When women are given the same brusque response men would get, it tends to not go over well.
11-02-2019 02:45 PM
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Messages In This Thread
why is hi-tech liberal - bullet - 11-01-2019, 11:24 AM
RE: why is hi-tech liberal - JRsec - 11-01-2019, 02:00 PM
RE: why is hi-tech liberal - georgia_tech_swagger - 11-02-2019 02:45 PM



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