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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley 'Echo Chamber'

• https://www.wsj.com

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has said he plans to leave Silicon Valley in part because of its perceived cultural uniformity. He isn't the only one.

Several tech workers and entrepreneurs also have said they left or plan to leave the San Francisco Bay Area because they feel people there are resistant to different social values and political ideologies. Groupthink and homogeneity are making it a worse place to live and work, these workers said.

"I think the politics of San Francisco have gotten a little bit crazy," said Tom McInerney, an angel investor who moved a decade ago to Los Angeles from the Bay Area.

"The Trump election was super polarizing and it definitely illustrated—and Peter [Thiel] said this—how out of touch Silicon Valley was," said Mr. McInerney, who describes himself as fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.

Tim Ferriss, the tech investor and best-selling author of the "4 Hour Workweek," moved to Austin, Texas, in December, after living in the Bay Area for 17 years, partly because he felt people there penalized anyone who didn't conform to a hyper liberal credo.

People in Silicon Valley "openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified," said Mr. Ferriss in a recent discussion on Reddit.

Mr. Ferriss, who describes himself as socially liberal, said during the discussion that he found that Austin has a "a wonderful exploding scene of art, music, film, tech, food, and more," adding that "the people are also—in general—much friendlier."