Engaged in a flirtatious conversation at a Manhattan bar, 23-year-old Gary explained to a woman why he took an engineering job at Palantir, a data analytics company, to help pay off his parents’ medical bills. Raking in a $250,000 salary, he reasoned, would be worth the cost. But he wasn’t met with sympathy. “Medical debt is not an excuse to work somewhere like that,” the woman retorted, referring to the company’s controversial work with governments, including the US and Israel, for law enforcement and military operations.

Since joining the tech company in 2025, Gary has noticed that naming his employer prompts brutal reactions from prospective paramours. “Sometimes people would just straight up stop talking to me,” he says. His friends have even asked him to not mention Palantir on their nights out together. “I get nervous now. I don’t bring it up,” he adds.

James, a 29-year-old who works at Tesla in San Francisco, has also faced skepticism over his politics. On his third date with a woman on Raya, she asked whether he’d voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. A self-described “moderate liberal or moderate progressive” who “always votes blue and always will,” James was offended. “If I don’t immediately say that I don’t like Elon Musk, people think that I’m conservative, which is generally not something that people like in San Francisco,” he says.

Amy Laurent, the founder of a high-end matchmaking company, has a front-row seat to the way Big Tech’s moral failings are causing problems for single, rank-and-file tech bros. “I think 10 years ago, saying you worked in tech was more about innovation, ambition, intelligence,” she says. Now, many people charge Big Tech with “causing the breakdown of society.”

Mira, a 29-year-old Bay Area resident, perceives a career in tech as a possible “right-wing flag” or a sign that someone might be “manosphere-coded” or libertarian. Helen, who worked in tech after graduating from Stanford, views men in tech as guys who “stay up late and maybe have bad hygiene.” She’s questioned the industry’s overall impact, particularly after her family was subjected to human rights abuses in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.