In addition, part of what makes people go progressive is a profound contempt and hatred for traditional values, especially anything that smacks of Christianity–and even techies that I worked with who were libertarian when they didn’t own their fleets of jets, seem to have moved left out of hatred for anything that seems even slightly traditional.

That and working for management that was straight out of a Dilbert cartoon convinced me to leave tech. Human factors? We have the web! Response time? Isn’t the web fast? Redundancy? Security? Mean-time-repair? but we have the Web!

And all those old-school techno-weenies (propeller heads, bit twidlers, whatever) were awful hard to work with if you weren’t an old-school white male. Been there, done that.

Consulting you say? Yeah, that’s right. I spent the last part of my career cleaning up the messes left by the consulting arms of the Big 6 accounting firms.

Never installed SAP. But I did work on several other ERP and CRM applications. Not very rewarding. And they didn’t work very well when all was said and done.

The current state of corporate information services doesn’t lend itself to free-thinking. Unless you are working for a cutting edge org doing data mining, or something like that, you pretty much an adjunct to accounting or cost accounting in a manufacturing environment. And until just recently, you could make more money in accounting (by moving eventually to finance).

The younger generation hates the Republican Party, more than they love the Dems’ socialism.

The tech industry 10 years ago was full of people that were doing tech because they enjoyed it. Then the industry matured- the jobs switched from being inventive jobs to being assembly line and maintenance level jobs.

Also, the companies that survived being startups eventually became bloated mega-corps. A startup is a gamble with a small chance of a big payoff, but a successful one eventually ends up becoming more and more cautious- they have deeper pockets and more to lose if they screw up. The culture within these companies shifts and creative people find they are less and less welcome. They leave.

I already left the tech industry a couple of years ago. I’m going into patent law.

It’s quite libertarian, I make something that does what I need it to do, release it. Now someone else comes along and adds to it. I grab that version and I’ve now got something better from my initial investment, just as that person I gave it to did. Of course you have the monetary side as well, that allows others to make books and videos and all the other crap that goes along with software and learning how to use it. The only people being “hurt” are those who stagnate and demand insane amounts of money for what essentially comes down to a status symbol and support of all the parasites that you’re complaining about.

Another things on OS, It reduces piracy as folks move to it and reduces government power to meddle in yet another area of your life. How can THAT be a bad thing?

And just one last thing on it. I can see it, I can change it. Can you show me one single commercial software program that allows for that under the terms of their licensing agreement? You don’t OWN any commercial software, you’re just permitted to use it until they say otherwise.

The longer answer: It stopped being the heady days of the dot-com bubble, and started being more about what you can keep/protect/defend/exploit. The mad rush is more or less over, now it is just territory-defense maneuvers, and that inherently favors the establishment given that the establishment gives those maneuvers credibility, if not outright support. It stopped being about making those new breakthroughs, and started being about how much money you can generate off them.

But that is just me… a part-time, unprofessional nerd.

As for me, I’m proud to say I learned Bell Labs Unix on a PDP-7. I don’t personally find anything inherently socialist in OSF/OSI/OSS, as much as I find it egalitarian (if not ego-driven) and Free is Not Bad. However, I do support our premium OS product for money and do so, proudly. Our sole liberal on the team (and, I add, the oldest member of the team) keeps quiet but does keep a picture of himself and Hillary on his desk, though.

Regards,
Rabbit.