* Companies, like the rest of the world, are now hyperconnected. We have slack and email and so on. This makes it a lot easier for similar interests to connect across a massive organization, which is a boon for special interest groups, like anime, or magic the gathering. Or politics.
* Companies muscle in on workers' identity. Workers respond to work over email/slack during their off hours. Workers pop open the laptop at home, even pre-covid. Companies try to justify this with a sense of pride, you should be PROUD to work for the great conglomerate XYZ. And guess what? If I'm proud to work for XYZ, as a worker I'm going to expect a consistent worldview that XYZ is aligned with my values. But my values are also tied up in my politics, so now I'm expecting my workplace's values to be consistent with my politics.
* The simple fact is that many companies are overwhelmingly a monoculture in terms of politics. It's easier to make your workplace political when 90% or 85% of employees are liberal anyways, as opposed to say 60%. This is largely a demographic thing, at many companies the target demographic for hiring is a strong overlap with certain political ideology (You are looking to hire a young, 25 year old computer scientist living in a big blue city who graduated from PresigiousUniversity. What politics do you think this person likely subscribes to?).
> You are looking to hire a young, 25 year old computer scientist living in a big blue city who graduated from PresigiousUniversity. What politics do you think this person likely subscribes to?
I think people too readily assume that these people are blue, but you have to remember that academia (and tech in general) tends to have strong social pressure to either be blue or hide your political beliefs. There is likely a very large contingent of closet republicans.
And we have to remember that even the categories here are highly artificial; even people who'd never describe themselves as closet Republicans don't necessarily agree with whatever specific aspect of politics a company might try to target. There are a couple of California ballot propositions I have in mind where polling is very divergent from what you'd expect reading any kind of public discussion about them.
I don't assume anything about any particular person, but I was under the impression that, statistically speaking, someone with these demographics is much more likely to lean liberal. Perhaps I'm wrong about this.
> There is likely a very large contingent of closet republicans.
Whether the minority is outspoken or not, my point is just that it's a minority.
Cities and people with STEM jobs tend to be right wing in Europe though, since you vote right when you earn more and cities have more money. So if you intend to be a global company you will have a mix of right and left wing opinions. At local companies the Engineers I worked with were right wing, then when I worked for Google the local engineers were still mostly right wing but the company culture was very left. Felt very strange, especially since so many concepts people take for granted in USA are very different here.
* Companies, like the rest of the world, are now hyperconnected. We have slack and email and so on. This makes it a lot easier for similar interests to connect across a massive organization, which is a boon for special interest groups, like anime, or magic the gathering. Or politics.
* Companies muscle in on workers' identity. Workers respond to work over email/slack during their off hours. Workers pop open the laptop at home, even pre-covid. Companies try to justify this with a sense of pride, you should be PROUD to work for the great conglomerate XYZ. And guess what? If I'm proud to work for XYZ, as a worker I'm going to expect a consistent worldview that XYZ is aligned with my values. But my values are also tied up in my politics, so now I'm expecting my workplace's values to be consistent with my politics.
* The simple fact is that many companies are overwhelmingly a monoculture in terms of politics. It's easier to make your workplace political when 90% or 85% of employees are liberal anyways, as opposed to say 60%. This is largely a demographic thing, at many companies the target demographic for hiring is a strong overlap with certain political ideology (You are looking to hire a young, 25 year old computer scientist living in a big blue city who graduated from PresigiousUniversity. What politics do you think this person likely subscribes to?).