> I meet a lot of people in tech who tell me with a straight face that they genuinely think we should just unilaterally disband the Army right now, and cannot comprehend why I’d have anything to do with it. At RubyConf 2014 someone in the lunch queue asked what I did before I was in tech and asked me if I enjoyed killing babies when I explained.
I think Silicon Valley has a lot to learn from this. I worked with a defense contractor (one of the largest ones), designed parts in military airplanes and always found it uncomfortable to share this history of mine after moving to SV. What I did was so cool and always wanted to contrast it with software engineering (which is also cool sometimes but in a totally different way). I was met with tremendous guilt, disdain and unfair judgement of my character. The whole thing would flip after I explain to them that the airplanes I worked on were used for search and rescue recon. SV is myopic and politically fraught, sorry to say.
I’m not following, what’s Dell vs Apple in 1997 has to do with disdain for working on Defense in SV?
I want to clarify: there is still a massive spectrum from people working on Defense in SV and the types of engineers I interacted with (Googlers). What I find incredibly worrying is that the people that have disdain for Defense, it is sort of shallow and the main motive is to use it as a moral-superiority weapon against people that are on the receiving end. It’s free points to score with their colleagues. This is truly despicable behavior and I’ve seen it first hand. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to avert the discussion and diffuse it before it gets worse.
But it has left with me a sort of a chilling effect. Not being able to express one’s history, however marred it is in the opinion of the listener. This was not the case in places I’ve lived (East coast). Anyhow this thread is a way for me to share my grievances, for those listening please be kind to people that may not share your political or philosophical background. They’re not all baby killers.
I think Silicon Valley has a lot to learn from this. I worked with a defense contractor (one of the largest ones), designed parts in military airplanes and always found it uncomfortable to share this history of mine after moving to SV. What I did was so cool and always wanted to contrast it with software engineering (which is also cool sometimes but in a totally different way). I was met with tremendous guilt, disdain and unfair judgement of my character. The whole thing would flip after I explain to them that the airplanes I worked on were used for search and rescue recon. SV is myopic and politically fraught, sorry to say.