Tech's Fascism Problem: A Writer Asks, 'Can I Stay?'
I Don't Think I Can Stay in Tech
A tech writer grapples with the normalization of far-right ideology in the industry after learning that CEOs of major companies like Shopify, Stripe, Cloudflare, and Dropbox donated to DHH's Omacom Foundation, despite his supremacist views. The post explores the complicity of 'apolitical' developers, the political valence of AI, and the author's personal dilemma about working for companies that fund or enable fascism, questioning whether it's time to leave tech altogether.
A dozen of the most powerful executives in tech looked at a man who wrote that a British march calling for the deportation of non-white citizens was 'heartwarming,' and decided he was the person they wanted to hand a multimillion-dollar foundation to.
- thevillagechief
The question is, where are you going to go? Finance? Farming, Logistics? Writing/Literature/Philosophy? Big Pharma? All those people are funneling funds to people you find utterly objectionable. You'll find that every career/industry is probably proportionally representative of people who share your values as those who don't. Tech is is only so visible to you because you are so immersed in it. Care less about "Tech" and more about your family/community/friends.
- slowin
I absolutely feel this. I quit my job at Microsoft because they were too complicit with Israel's crimes against humanity (posted about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925777). That left me looking for a job and I have one now, with a startup I like a lot and hasn't done anything unethical to the best of my knowledge. The investors have though. Most of the VC community is straight up fascist/supremacist/genocidal... our industry is sick and while no doubt there was always this underpinning (I just didn't see it or realize my own complicity), it feels like it's ratcheted up a lot in the last 5 or so years.
- Tempest1981
I grew up believing that capitalism somehow separates business from government, with each operating independently. Same with separation of church and state. Not sure what to think of things now.
- sarabande
Seems like an unnecessarily broad brush to paint with, as if "tech" were a monolith. Just don't work for the companies that cross your self-stated lines in the sand:
> But my personal lines definitely extend to don’t give money to people who enable fascism and don’t create value for them, either.
- lo_zamoyski
If I had more time, I might elaborate on the fact that both the author and those he criticizes are children of the Enlightenment. I mention this, because it has a great deal of relevance. Neither Promethean Techno-Pelagianism on the one hand nor Socio-Voluntaristic Manichaeism on the other present a great vision of the good, whatever validity we can find in their criticisms.