Tech Workers' Political Leanings

Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

Politically, spaces full of techies have traditionally been an uneasy truce between progressivism (as you'd expect from high-income, high-education white-collar professionals) and libertarianism (from the entrepreneurial and anti-authoritarian segment of the population), with both sides represented in roughly equal numbers. About 80% of the time, these two sides see eye-to-eye, so places like HN can seem more monolithic in opinion than they actually are.

I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views.Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than liberals are in other parts of the country.It seems to me, fr

It's more like this: people in tech for the most part have similar political views, so similar that they almost seem common sense. Take LGBTQ rights. Safe to say Silicon Valley is more pro than con on this issue (and benefits from having a larger and more diverse talent pool), so it is easy to see that perspective being the "correct" side of the argument and seeing the other side as mean-spirited, bigoted, on the wrong side of history...you get the idea.

comments like above are reminders of how strong libertarianism is in tech circles, for better or worse

Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal. A lot of the successes of early tech startups is in part due to liberal hiring policies welcoming women, gays, and minorities who otherwise had a hard time working or getting hired at the old conservative shops like IBM.Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down conservative culture Thiel represents. I'm not sure its

A few guesses as to factors:1. Some prominent people are libertarians, and outspoken about it (Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Eric Raymond, etc.), so the ideas are circulating in the community.2. This part of the economy is doing well, and as a result techies have little personal incentive to support any alternatives to free-marketeering. We generally have options and can get away with telling our employers where to stick it, if we don't like their policies, without the result being poverty

In the United States, liberal and leftist are distinct terms.Even someone like Ben Shapiro recognizes a difference between liberals and leftists (https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/966081078166421504).Silicon Valley types would hardly be described as leftists. Numerous studies have been done on the attitudes of Silicon Valley founders and execs (<a href

From experience, there are fare less libertarians in the "Silicon valley crowd" than many believe. Silicon Valley average tech. employees crowd is largely made of left-wingers, most of which are as far away from classical liberalism as one can be without being a card-carrying communist.

He and the entire tech ecosystem is in a bubble where being as right wing as possible is currency. Literally middle of the road liberal pg is basically a communist compared to this ecosystem now. It’s extremely short sighted on their part as the dialectic is guaranteed to flip back the other way. Much better to hold your own genuine beliefs than to kowtow to whatever is popular at the time