"Unique values among workers in tech"

In a new study of political values among workers in the American tech industry researchers found a ”unique” dominance of left-liberal values and anti-establishement thinking. We asked Niels Selling, political scientist at the Institute for Futures Studies, and one of the researchers behind the study about the results. 

You find that no other industry or service sector has employees who sympathize with left-wing values to such a high degree, what other sectors did you study?

– We compared tech workers with employees of all industrial sectors.

Just how different is tech in this regard, compared to other industries and sectors?

– I would say that they are unique. Only employees in “arts and entertainment” are more liberal than tech workers, and no other sector sees its employees exhibiting as strong anti-establishment as much as tech.

What values are we talking about when talking about left-liberal and anti-establishment?

– Left-liberal values are often associated with progressive and socially inclusive policies, such as social equality, economic redistribution, and environmentalism. Anti-establishment values capture a distaste for established authority and the ruling class. Concrete manifestations of such a disposition include rejecting mainstream media and being critical of the two-party system and established political figures.

Why do you think tech has such a unique profile? 

– Our study shows that the tech profession – not the tech firms – creates the unique profile. But how tech workers come to hold these values is not clear. Possible explanations include socialization into an online culture at a young age, university education, and high intelligence, all of which are generally associated with liberal, anti-establishment values.

How much more conservative are their bosses? 

– Tech leaders are, in general, less conservative than the leaders of other types of companies. However, because of the unique ideological profile of tech workers, there is still quite an ideological gap between tech leaders and tech workers. To illustrate, technology registered the fourth largest leader-employee ideological discrepancy across the eighteen sectors.

One can imagine that this ideological divide between employees and their bosses could cause conflict, are there signs of this?

– Absolutely. Tech firms are hotbeds of employee protests and whistleblowing. Tech workers’ liberal and anti-establishment values, in combination with the ideological gap between them and their leaders, may account for this.

Do you think this makes tech-companies more sensitive to these values, more so than other companies, when developing new products or in their public communication?

– That seems like a plausible conjecture. Previous studies have shown that well-educated and highly skilled employees are more able to influence corporate decisions. Tech workers are certainly well-educated and highly skilled. Consequently, we have strong reasons to believe that tech firms must heed the liberal values of their employees, and we have many examples of that being the case.

 Why did you want to study values in tech?

 – Studying the tech industry is crucial because it plays a central role in shaping our modern world. It is especially important in the context of AI, which has the potential to revolutionize various aspects of our lives while also posing significant challenges and risks that require careful consideration and governance.

The study "Liberal and anti-establishment: An exploration of the political ideologies of American tech workers" by Niels Selling and Pontus Strimling, is published in the latest issue of the academic journal The Sociological Review. For a full-text version, please contact communications officer Henric Karlsson at [email protected].