Profiled here. Interesting read. Impossible to tell how much of it is true or accurate, of course. They're fucking geniuses, especially in retrospect. Of course.
A couple of points:
- They are all dudes. You could weave a fucking rug with all the facial hair. Why are they all dudes? What happens to women coders who try to get in the door? Maybe they get laughed at or subtly discouraged. Maybe it's a toxic atmosphere.
- The article claims the tech guys didn't start out as politically engaged but ended up that way in mid-'12. They had built this great machine to do something, and that was to win an election, and then they became afraid of losing. "[L]osing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded." No mention of a single issue they cared about, so I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt. These guys make bank. Politics does not touch their lives except for things like net neutrality. Suddenly they're politically energized? No, probably, they're suddenly aware they won't be profiled in The Atlantic if they lose.
Whatever. I don't give a shit whether the people working for us actually share our goals so long as their incentives are lined up with ours.
(Via Cole.)
"They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded"
doesn't a supreme court appointment count as a "single issue they cared about"?
Posted by: upyernoz | November 26, 2012 at 03:57 PM
I don't think of the court as an issue. If you were concerned about a court pick on, say, reproductive rights, that's an issue. It's like saying you're concerned about the election's effect on the economy. We'd need to know more until we could say what your issue is.
Posted by: Mithras | November 26, 2012 at 09:59 PM