I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this is a common occurrence across tech. Coming from the Midwest, the West Coast seems full of cults. Talking to people, it doesn’t take long to find someone who was raised in a cult, or has family members in a cult.
A big part of the difference is that- aside from Jehovah's Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing, and members tend to stay within the groups for longer- their activities rarely make hollywood-style media news because they're not particularly interesting compared to what we more typically think of as cults (i.e. the doomsday cult" in the article).
West Coast cults have their own particular flavor though, like the Fellowship of Friends.
You're making it harder for people to actually share how to escape an actual cult by calling every religion a cult
From [1]:
Members are expected to participate regularly in evangelizing work ...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_practi...
Did I get that exactly the wrong way around?
I'm gonna make an assumption that you have a much more liberal definition of 'cult' than most of us are thinking of - I've lived and worked my entire life on the west coast, the last 2 decades in Northern California, and I don't think I've ever met someone raised in a cult.
These are ultimately as idiosyncratic and subject to community abuse as the 20th century belief communities that syncretize “Eastern” faiths, materialist philosophies, and various other post-globalization sources.
They may look different to you because the front-door teachings superficially make more sense in one than the other from your perspective, but they’re operationally pretty similar.
Granted, I was raised mormon, which is like a half-cult, but within tech companies themselves I haven't really seen any of this behavior. Perhaps it's more common in other departments (I'm a SWE), I dunno.
The post war boom years are a fertile time for cults in California. You had a lot of people who were isolated from their previous communities that were often easy marks for grifter run cults of all sorts. And not just California. But probably less visible in the Midwest with a less dynamic and conservative population.
Also: My definition of a cult is the question what happens when you try to leave?
https://twitter.com/ViolenceWorks/status/1537524983961767936