I'm not making any statement about "small and mid sized California companies". I'm talking specifically about Google. The more time I spend away from there, the more I realize what an incredibly unique place Google is (or perhaps, was).
> I think it's typical when you have smart but insecure people which is most software engineers.
The distribution of "techies" has changed dramatically as everyone else in the world discovered how much money was in it, but this couldn't be further from the truth as far as classic tech culture goes. Perhaps they were "smart but insecure", but it manifested as a hyperindividualist, chaotic marketplace of ideas culture, precisely because you could be fairly confident that the people you were talking with were intelligent enough to handle disagreement without thinking of everyone as heretics, infidels, or faithful to the dogma.
It's the mainstreaming of tech, and the influx of people more in thrall to social conformity over independent thought that's tempered tech culture's famously anarchic tendencies. (I know this is a little reductive but I don't want to write an essay in a single comment. If you have a particular complaint about the way I phrased this, I'd be happy to clarify).
I should note that, to the extent that I'm focusing on the left's abandonment of liberalism, it's because I am and always have been a left-liberal, and most of my milieu has been as well. I hope it's not controversial that the right is abandoning liberalism too: I just don't have exposure to spaces where they're culturally powerful enough to illiberally enforce their dominance.
> I think it's typical when you have smart but insecure people which is most software engineers.
The distribution of "techies" has changed dramatically as everyone else in the world discovered how much money was in it, but this couldn't be further from the truth as far as classic tech culture goes. Perhaps they were "smart but insecure", but it manifested as a hyperindividualist, chaotic marketplace of ideas culture, precisely because you could be fairly confident that the people you were talking with were intelligent enough to handle disagreement without thinking of everyone as heretics, infidels, or faithful to the dogma.
It's the mainstreaming of tech, and the influx of people more in thrall to social conformity over independent thought that's tempered tech culture's famously anarchic tendencies. (I know this is a little reductive but I don't want to write an essay in a single comment. If you have a particular complaint about the way I phrased this, I'd be happy to clarify).
I should note that, to the extent that I'm focusing on the left's abandonment of liberalism, it's because I am and always have been a left-liberal, and most of my milieu has been as well. I hope it's not controversial that the right is abandoning liberalism too: I just don't have exposure to spaces where they're culturally powerful enough to illiberally enforce their dominance.