I don't understand the hate of the tech sector, I really don't. Can someone please explain it to me or is it basically money=bad?
A lot of it is the fact that they have this insufferable veneer of progressive do-good-ery even as they perpetuate a corporate culture that is incredibly unfriendly to women and anyone who isn't the "right kind" of white person.
At least Wall Street more or less admits they're exclusionary assholes (though they'll tell you they're exclusionary assholes who we can't possibly do without). And your stereotypical "evil robber baron" like Charles Koch does provide employment opportunities for the working class in his chemical plants and paper mills. In that sense, he's certainly giving more opportunity to average people than Instagram or any other "something something apps something" start-up.
So what's up with this stereotype that all tech workers are white? There are also a crap ton of Asians who work in these companies and a lot of startups are started by Asians. Considering the demographics of this district, having a representative focused on tech issues, and solving national issues using increased use of technology is fairly representative of the district.
And someone has to explain to me why it is supposedly the corporate culture that keeps women away from these jobs, as opposed to the fact that most software engineers in college are men. That is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed but it can't be addressed at the corporate level. It needs to happen much earlier than that. And if you guys took just 5 minutes to actually visit Khanna's website, you would see he addresses this problem multiple times.
There actually aren't that many Asians and there are basically zero blacks or Hispanics.
There have been plenty of first-person accounts of women in tech firms who felt alienated and unwelcome by the "frat house" culture that tended to prevail.
Start-ups are fundamentally elitist and exclusionary in the same way that journalism and high-end PR are exclusionary - you can't play the game if you can't afford it. It's customary in that industry to pay employees equity in lieu of wages. That's fine if you have cash flow from family money, but most people do need an actual paycheck every couple of weeks.
There's also the 24/7 mentality. It's a very collegiate atmosphere of late nights and overlap between work and socializing. It only works for someone who was a traditional college student and has remained in that "mode" by not marrying and certainly not having children.
You're a 25 year old man who married after college and has a two year old? Sorry. You're not welcome. You're a single mom who went back to school part time, graduated at 30 and has two kids in elementary school? Thanks but you're just not a good fit for us.
