Hacker News Reader

Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. I never tire of the hypocrisy in how these allegedly "progressive" and "left-leaning" tech companies resist unionization.

View on HN

Neoliberal "progressivism" isn't leftist or especially progressive. It has one goal- maximal utilization of labor resources. It just turns out integrating as much of the possible workforce as it can is useful (and helps ultimately drive down labor costs- see e.g. the rise of two-earner middle class households). It's not hypocritical, since these companies usually just talk about those ends rather than redistribution of ownership or other material reforms that would benefit their lower level workers.

Are they allegedly progressive and left leaning? I thought libertarianism was the unofficial state religion of the SV elite.

The top brass are probably as you say. The rank and file, at least as I read, are quite sympathetic to causes and issues we'd generally say are politically supportive of union formation. Why haven't we seen any serious effort from within? Maybe it's not so bad over there. Maybe these "retaliation" stories are few and far between, and we're only hear the employee's side of the story.

SV in itself is this: I support things as long as it benefits me or doesn't change my life.

e.g. Let the immigrants in! (But don't build any housing because then they could afford it here) Global warming is real and we should do something! (Ok - let's mandate solar panels on all /newly/ built homes) etc.

People here are very much self interested.

I always assumed it’s because the workers are pretty well off and have a lot to lose. Tech workers are mostly treated and paid well, so even if one believes unions are great, there isn’t much to push them to create one for themselves.

I'm a moderate liberal and I percieve SV as being quite a lot farther left than me. Notably Google terminating James Damore and Apple terminating Denise Young Smith for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy in the most inoccuous ways possible. Mozilla also pushed out Eich, although his transgression was more controversial, and I don't know that his particular mob was particularly concentrated in/around SV.

People like to make this claim because of their diversity efforts. But the fact is, it's the same stuff every other industry went through, including ones that skew conservative (like food service, oil/gas, and Real estate). They went through this stuff in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's just hitting the tech industry now.

Anyway, leadership at these places tend to support the status quo, and maybe pay lip-service to a few issues to protect the corporate image. They're arguably the real "centrists" which in the US means a socially-permissive capitalist.

They are only left leaning when compared to the rather right wing (pre trump) republican party.

If you reduce the entire spectrum of political opinion to a single dimension with two labeled teams then you can claim something like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com