I've only been a professional code monkey for 5 years and only at 1 company, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but I've never been to the west coast or even moved. More employers than just Silicon Valley types need programmers.

Maybe you are hanging with the wrong tech crowd. Its hard to find irl but if you can find some FOSS Friends and get in at an org that isn't about products and money you might have fun. I find all my friends that share those ideologies of Libre to be very pleasant.

Replying to this not because I have any answers, but because I'm also hoping someone else here has answers. If I can use this nation to learn technical skills, only to fuck off immediately after getting those skills and use them somewhere more equitable, I can die happy.

The tech industry is as hyper capitalist as it gets. It's basically a house of venture capitalist money ready to be swept away by a light breeze.

I still love writing code. I'm a natural problem solver and my ADHD brain is pretty well suited for jumping into flow states and getting a lot done in a short period of time.

I do wonder at times what I could be doing had I chose another path. It would be nice to feel like the work that I do actually contributes to improving society. There are jobs in tech that do this, but they're definitely not the majority.

Ultimately, I think this is a problem in many industries. When the entire economy is built to serve the profit motive, jobs will naturally do the same. If you can, try and find something with a good work life balance and worry less about your compensation. That way, you'll have more energy to persue more fulfilling endeavors outside of work.

I work in tech. I hopped around from the Midwest to the southwest to now the bay area.

One suggestion I have is to keep an open mind. Tech is extremely competitive in some circles and it might make sense to move to a place you never would've imagined just to get your foot in the door for an industry or to get a promotion, etc. Discounting the bay area, one of the epicenters of tech, just because of the political landscape is self-destructive at worst and limiting of career at best.

I live in the mountains in largely a small town conservative area in the bay area - I own many firearms, never had any problems getting them. I own dirtbikes, ATVs, kayaks, surfboards, a large multi acre property where I can't see my neighbors in the redwoods, etc. Meeting me, you wouldn't even know I worked in tech. My political identity is complicated but I found my place here in the mountains with like minded individuals. If I want to, I can always go into the city and experience it, and it is just over the hill, but it isn't where I want to live.

I am always open to at least interview anywhere and will always ask for a couple extra days when being flown out to check out the area and see if I like it. In some cases, like the southwest, I'll probably never go back to, but I took the dive and lived there for many years before deciding it wasn't for me.

The world is huge. Many of these tech hubs like Boston, New York, and the Bay area are so diverse and just massive that just because overall it can be very liberal, there are many, many niche communities in these areas which can cater to every individual.

The same can be said for companies and even internally within companies. I'm part of a mildly conservative old timer, politically incorrect team, and we do fine and have no issues, while there are other teams I know to be very sensitive and others which are very corporate and unfriendly. All within the same company.

It can take a while to find the right fit. There are known companies here where backstabbing culture to succeed is a thing, and that's probably where a lot of these pretentious kids go to. When we interview, we largely look for that behavior and will reject candidates for it, even if they are a solid tech background.

Not a lot of advice, but some personal anecdotes which I hope can help make you feel better.

I, too, was one of the "Black sheep" of my software engineering class. I was dismayed enough to double major in another degree so I could balance it out.

If you're friends with biologists you could look into biotech or bioinformatics.

The tech industry is definitely as full of assholes as you think. There are some cool people too, but not cool enough to make up for having to be around the assholes. For the most part they are labor aristocracy and act like it. At best they are Vaush viewers, at worst they are sex pests. My first tech job left me so disillusioned that I'm only now trying to get a job again after basically all of my savings are gone. If you can make friends outside of work I'd definitely recommend doing that, and there are a decent number of fun people outside of work although you can generally expect them to not be Communist.

Working in California has many downsides. If you need to get a new job and it happens to be a time where people got laid off from one of the mega corporations you are going to have a hard time. It's possible if you work hard and get lucky, but because the rent is so high you need to save a lot of money in an emergency fund because God only knows how long it will take you to get another job. SF has some of the best public transit in the country but that's not saying much, and it's worse south of SF where most of the companies are.

I'm not a dev, I'm a designer for digital products and services, but I feel exactly the same way.