In-late September a group of tech leaders started a well-publicized effort to raise $100,000 for Hillary Clinton. In flush Silicon Valley that is spare change. But by the time the election was over, the campaign had pulled in only $76,324.
For all its visceral dislike of President Donald J. Trump, the tech community did not worry too much about him being elected or, once in office, carrying through with his program. Lulled by favorable polls, distracted by its own destiny, Silicon Valley was above all else complacent.
No longer.
After Trump’s January 27 executive order (EO) restricting immigration, high-tech has gone full-tilt political. Companies are being pushed by their employees, by their customers and sometimes by their ideals. They are trying to go far enough without going too far.
Nearly 130 companies, most of them in the technology field, filed an amicus brief late on Sunday in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to reinstate the travel ban after a lower court blocked it.
The brief, which was signed by an unusually broad coalition of large and small tech companies that included Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, Uber and Intel, said Trump’s order “violates the immigration laws and the Constitution.”
“Silicon Valley is stepping up,” said Sam Altman, who runs the valley’s most prominent startup incubator, Y Combinator. “The companies are working on three fronts: They are vociferously objecting to the Trump policies they think are bad, they are trying to engage with him to influence his behavior, and they are developing new technology to work against policies and political discourse they don’t support.”
It is an improvised and complicated strategy. The companies are among the richest and most popular of US brands, which means they have a good deal of leverage. Yet they are also uniquely vulnerable—not only to presidential postings on Twitter and executive orders, but to the sentiments of their customers and employees, some of whom have more radical ideas in mind.
Many of the companies initially placed their bets on engagement after an upbeat meeting with the president-elect in December. That modest approach, which even the most risk-averse executive can endorse, showed its limits last week.
After widespread customer defections, Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber, was forced to step down from one of the administration’s advisory councils.
“People voted with their feet, and Travis listened,” said Dave McClure, who runs the 500 Startups incubator and started the Nerdz 4 Hillary group that tried to raise the $100,000. “We need to hold the other tech leaders accountable in the same way.”
Resistance, McClure said, begins at home. “You don’t have a voice with the president if you didn’t vote for him,” he said. “But employees and customers have a voice with the tech companies. Silicon Valley should be demonstrating at the front doors of Google, Facebook and Twitter to make sure they share our values.”
Several factors are propelling Silicon Valley to the front lines of opposition to Trump. Some have been widely noted: The companies are often founded by and run by immigrants, which made the EO on immigration offensive and a threat to their way of doing business.
Tech companies frequently stress the importance of talent from other countries to their businesses. Less remarked on has been the political homogeneity of tech workers. “It’s not like you have 60 percent of the employees on one side and 40 percent on the other,” said Ken Shotts, a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “They all have the same leanings.”
Trump does have some support in Silicon Valley, most notably venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Yet another factor pushing the companies is the perennially tight job market in technology. Executives cannot afford to alienate a large bloc of workers. Beyond this, there is the mythology of Silicon Valley, which holds that the work being done there is building a better future. Google’s former slogan “Don’t be evil,” is the most forceful expression of this. “If you go around making a lot of statements about your exalted role in society, at some point your employees might just make you follow through,” Shotts said.
Since the EO was issued, the companies have struggled to keep on the same page with their employees. Microsoft, for instance, initially made relatively muted comments that mostly celebrated immigration. Twenty-four hours later, it was much blunter, calling the order “misguided and a fundamental step backwards”, and saying it would create “much collateral damage to the country’s reputation and values”.
At an all-hands meeting at the beginning of the week with the chief executive, Satya Nadella, who was born in India, Microsoft employees expressed their concern. The company did not file a formal declaration supporting Washington state’s effort to block the order the way Amazon and Expedia did, but its public comments assisted the effort, Bob Ferguson, the state attorney general, said.
The immigration battle is in Microsoft’s self-interest. Seventy-six of its employees were affected by the order, the company said.
Some in Silicon Valley have more expansive hopes for the tech companies there.
“In 2016, we saw how technology could be used to polarize ourselves to extreme levels,” said Altman of Y Combinator. “The most important thing we could do is figure out how to use technology to depolarize the nation.”
Image credits: Jason Henry/The New York Times