https://www.vox.com/first-person/20...y-conservatives-religion-atheism-james-damore
The cultural uniformity of Silicon Valley
Julie Fredrickson, a longtime tech entrepreneur and conservative Christian, tells me she frequently feels her religious beliefs are out of place in the tech world. "I'm confident that discovering I'm a Calvinist would lead to some awkward conversations I don't necessarily want to have with Silicon Valley folks," says Fredrickson, CEO of the cosmetics company Stowaway. "People who have actually, very carefully considered belief systems, whether religious or otherwise, don't always feel safe expressing it."
"What, really?" is a typical reaction among the entrepreneurial class when she mentions her religiosity, which she avoids bringing up unless asked, she says. She added that she feels the need to explain her faith to reassure previously skeptical parties that she's "rational."
At Google, few co-workers would blink an eye if you told them that you spent the previous weekend attending an electronic music festival in an otter costume, but you might get some funny looks if you admitted you went to church every weekend. I used to prowl around on a listserv of Googlers who considered themselves agnostics, atheists, and skeptics; the responses on a thread about the revelation that a small group of Christian employees had booked a conference room for a weekly prayer group ranged from, "We employ people who pray?" to, "Is that really appropriate to do at work?" (Note: This is a company that hosted Justin Bieber concerts and pie-eating contests at the office.)
Religious conservatives aren't the only people who find themselves shut out of Silicon Valley's hegemonic culture. Thanks to its well-documented worship of youth — which ties back to the same '60s-inspired counterculturalism — ageism is just as pervasive as one might expect.
It is, I think, the industry's most insidious "-ism," in part because of how little attention it gets. There was no hashtag activism movement launched when nearly 300 people joined an age discrimination lawsuit against Google, or when a report found that job opportunities in Silicon Valley started to dry up when employees hit their late 40s. It was even revealed that cosmetic surgery treatments were soaring in the Bay Area on behalf of employees who were afraid of looking their age.
Silicon Valley's biases reveal a deep distaste for anything that could be considered "square." The euphemistic HR term "culture fit" is meant to ensure employees are comfortable with a company's ethos and attitudes. In reality, it's a concept that's more often used to exclude employees, regardless of age, who would prefer a quiet dinner at home to joining their co-workers for Thirsty Thursday.
The people who don't fit today's stereotypically freewheeling Silicon Valley mold, whether due to religious faith, family status, or simply a distaste for partying with their co-workers, are likely in the majority. As my former Google colleague Adam Singer tweeted in the wake of a notorious (and likely sensationalized) Vanity Fair piece about alleged "sex parties" in Silicon Valley, "99.999% of folk in Bay Area don't go to sex parties, microdose LSD at work or drink water from the toilet." (That last item referred to a New York Times article about an outlandish trend of drinking untreated "raw water.") Singer concluded: "But they make for good media stories to talk about the fringes."
He's right. But when the fringes have enormous influence over the culture and its perception, there's a problem. Silicon Valley holds vast economic influence, and it needs to be open to hiring and retaining employees who don't fit its image. Without it, paradoxically, an industry and culture that professes progressivism, open-mindedness, and a devotion to science and empiricism ends up becoming the most exclusionary and prone to magical thinking.
