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Silicon Valley's Loony Cheerleading Culture Is Out of Control
Nerval's Lobster writes "Kernel editor-in-chief and noted firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos swings away at Silicon Valley's current startup culture, noting that it's resulted in herds of wannabe founders and startup groupies who don't exactly have a track record of starting successful companies or even producing solid code. 'Though they produce little of value, they are the naive soft power behind aggressive capitalist machines in Silicon Valley: the trend-setting vanguard of the global Web and mobile industries,' he writes. 'We should be very wary indeed of these vacuous cheerleaders whose vague waffle about the transformational potential of photo-sharing apps is more sinister and Orwellian than anything dreamt up by a dictator.' How long can such a culture continue before it dries up, and the whole tech-investment cycle begins anew?"
While the content being generated by these startups may be vacuous, there is at least the spark of new ideas (in some cases) or tangental thought that leads to other ideas. Someone else does the real legwork if it's a good spark, if these small startups can only talk the talk. Contrast the want-to-do's with the Microsoft archtype of staying safe and not innovating or thinking fresh.
There is some value to the cheerleading, even if it's just to provide grain for others to mill.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
How long can such a culture continue before it dries up, and the whole tech-investment cycle begins anew?
As long as people with money keep getting sucked in by it
than the attitudes prevalent prior to the dot com bubble (and subsequent bust) in the late 1990s? All of that money being poured into companies with little to no revenue and no solid plans to generate revenue. It blew my mind at the time.
"War makes me sad." - Me
What we're seeing here is that Silicon Valley has become no different than any other business/industry group. Flash, buzzwords, bullshit, business lunches, golf - People that are good at appearances rule in the business community, mostly to the harm of everyone else.
someone's a hater
"the transformational potential of photo-sharing apps is more sinister and Orwellian than anything dreamt up by a dictator."
Flickr is worse than Hitler? What?
No, Milo's prose is worse than a triple shot cappuccino addled New York Times intern.
Sounds like somebody got a hold of something too strong at Burning Man. Slow down guy, it's not worth getting that worked up about stuff like this.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well its the old rant - English majors who get upset when the status quo looks like it might being moving slightly to valuing technical skills.
Even though I agree in spirit with some of the sentiments, I found it very hard to comment on the article, because it was so full hyperbole. There was almost nothing to respond to. The writer was firing shotgun shells at his own windmills. It's a shame that so much passion was not ironed or focused into a more substantial communication.
I would agree Milo is laying it on waaaaay too heavy here....but, honestly, have you met the people he's describing? "Evangelists", "Community Developers", "Mentors", "Facilitators" and their ilk? They have no technical skills to value.
In the site/book Stuff White People Like, the article about "Awareness" summed up much of this mentality:
Getting clean water consistently in a hell hole like much of Africa is a truly transformative experience for many people. Public sanitation, reliable electricity, etc. Nothing your mobile/web app is doing is as transformative for the world as replicating consistent, basic utilities for all of mankind. It's unsexy work that is more commonly associated with redneck laborers (guys who actually make these systems work) than hipsters.
Someone found a thesaurus!
"The artifice of start-up culture is a portent of what is to come."
"At once the zenith of the cult of excessively educated bourgeois bohemians and nadir of a glossy new venture-capital-funded geek culture..."
This reads as a writers masturbatory exercise.
I had a good position in a large, solid software company for over 8 years, but last year I was feeling bored of doing the same things for so long, and my thinking was: "well, I live in Silicon Valley so I should give a start-up a chance", so I started looking around. The sheer amount of start-ups out there with grandiose visions of changing the world is insane!
I can absolutely validate some of the comments on this thread as I've seen them myself, but what I really want to emphasize here, is that start-up "CEOs" will lie, and will promise you infinite wealth with no backing whatsoever. It not only about the products, which many times sound good (even if they are just smoke and mirrors), but it's also about their business practices. Many of these companies don't yet have a culture other than "survive and grow", so ethics and even business appropriate behavior is not there. Many times their HR is just an external service and there is no recourse if you have an issue.
I ended up leaving my position, joining the start-up and working my ass off for almost half a year when I realized this was really going nowhere. One day, out of the blue, the CEO called me to his office and said "we need you too leave" just like that. No explanation other than "there is no fit". Later on I realized he was right, I was no fit for their "culture", and I ended up coming back to my former employer, this time in a better role with 20-25% more pay than I had before. But I know I was also lucky. It could have been way worst.
So here are my lessons learned in hopes that this will be useful to anyone out there:
- Do your homework. Research the leadership team, their track record of success or failure as well as each one of their investors.
- Don't trust in anything verbal. Every promise must be clearly in writing
- Negotiate your contract. Never take their "stock contract" that only protects them. Invest in a legal service ahead of time and have your own template.
- Make sure you negotiate your exit as part of the contract. It's like a pre-nuptial agreement. You can't imagine it's going to be useful some day. - When you are evaluating a company, leave your passion, your beliefs and your ideals at the door. It's business. Look at them as a business that will be the source of your livelihood. How viable are they really?
If any of the points above don't click, then leave. Don't take it. There are another hundred of them out there. Most will die but a few will make it. Do everything in your power to choose wisely.