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Silicon Valley Doesn't Have an Attitude Problem, OK?
Nerval's Lobster writes: In Silicon Valley they think differently, and if that leads to arrogance, so be it. At least that's what Bloomberg Businessweek's Joel Stein implies in his long meditation on the area's outlook on technology, money and changing the world. Stein set out to examine the underlying notion that Silicon Valley's and San Francisco's tech entrepreneurs are feeding a backlash by being, in a word, jerks. His conclusion seems to be that they may well be jerks, but they're misunderstood jerks. He doesn't deny that there's sexism and boorishness at play in the young tech community, but he sees the industry trying to make itself better. He sees a lot of egotism at work, too, but he says if you're setting out to change the world, you're probably going to need a big ego to do it. But tell that to other people in Northern California: undoubtedly, you've read about the tempest in San Francisco recently, where urban activists are decrying the influx of highly paid tech professionals, who they argue are displacing residents suddenly unable to keep up with skyrocketing rents.
would reply to this
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
are like the posters on Slashdot. They're some of the most fairest, open-minded, most professional people around, willing to look hard at both sides of any issue before coming to a conclusion.
Just ask them.
There is just no pleasing this people: 'undesirable element' moves in - they complain about falling property value, 'highly paid tech professionals' move in - they complain about increasing property value.
"How old were you when you lost your virginity?", Steve asked
The candidate wasn't sure if he heard correctly. "What did you say?"
Steve repeated the question, changing it slightly. "Are you a virgin?". Burrell and I started to laugh, as the candidate became more disconcerted. He didn't know how to respond.
Steve changed the subject. "How many times have you taken LSD?"
The poor guy was turning varying shades of red, so I tried to change the subject and asked a straight-forward technical question. But when he started to give a long-winded response, Steve got impatient again.
"Gooble, gobble, gobble, gobble", Steve started making turkey noises. This was too much for Burrell and myself, and we all started cracking up. "Gobble, gobble, gobble", Steve continued, laughing himself now.
At this point, the candidate stood up. "I guess I'm not the right guy for this job", he said.
"I guess you're not", Steve responded. "I think this interview is over."
The whole mentality is dumb. No one DESERVES to live in a particular place. Pay the rent or move. Pay the taxes, or move and rent out your place to someone who can afford to pay the taxes for you.
Are they going to change what SF is? Of course. But SF isn't what it was 50 years ago, or 100 years ago. These things constantly change. At least it is going upward. It could be changing like Detroit.
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Can we, perhaps, not refer to the entire tech community as one thing? Let's have the tech community, and then have the community that makes parking space auctioning apps, social websites, and "break-through" instant messaging apps who think they're on par with Tim Berners-Lee or Packard or Wozniak, because they made an iphone app where you can leave reviews for your favorite pigeon feeding seat in the park.
It's the first gift the Gods give you before they start to F' you up.
They are all about 'diversity', 'inclusiveness', and 'peace'... until you try to move into their area and don't think, talk, and act just like them. Then they start slashing your tires and blocking your buses. Say, didn't school segregationist use the same bus-blocking techniques to try and keep those 'others' out of their wholesome little schools? Oh, the irony...
I dunno if I'd have left. It would have been an interesting change to work for someone who is very obviously more insane than me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Having almost passed the 90-day mark at my first Silicon Valley job, my experience has been that it's a highly overrated (and overpriced) place to start a new tech company. Compared to where I'm from (and currently still reside), Austin, I haven't really been wowed with the talent over there vs over here. The big difference I've seen is that the people over in Silicon Valley just seem more big-headed about what they do.
Tired of these fuckers thinking they are the promised people guiding us out of ignorance.
...for others to follow.
You mean they should all get cancer and die?
The best hire I ever made was someone that a senior VP disagreed with me about during and after the interview. I saw the skill set and personality that was needed for our team and he didn't. Fast forward 10 years, and I found myself approaching the person I'd hired for funding to keep my little startup alive and allow it to prosper. Because I had treated that employee well, we were able to hammer out the framework of an agreement at our first formal meeting. It was the easiest pitch that either of us had ever been through. Behaving like a tantruming child simply because you have money and the illusion of power is the stupidest approach if you plan on being in tech for the long haul. Sooner or later, someone you've trampled or angered *will* be in a position to give a less-than-flattering opinion of you or shut you out.
As the old saying goes "It's not arrogance if you can back it up."
Which the overwhelming majority of them can't. That's kinda the point.
The culture in tech hubs today is in a very real sense based on gambling. VCs bet 7-8 figures on a company that might be the one to make 10 figure returns. It's a high variability strategy that rarely pays off, but pays out staggering amounts of money when it does. And because any VC always has a pool of investments on the go, they can stand to play the long game knowing their mean return is always going to be astronomical.
Many founder/entrepreneur types are playing the same game, just with fewer zeroes and one big shot at a time. Some will make it. Most will fail. Some of them will come back and try again. Many of them won't. It's just like the VCs, but a whole lot more personal, because VCs are the house that always wins, while first-time founders are more like the whales who bet it all on number 3.
Almost everyone else working at these businesses is just along for the ride, because the amount of money they're making is relatively good and they have a chance for a nice windfall if their employer's exit strategy does work out. Neither the founders nor the VCs much care because the salary and perks for decent technical staff are just table stakes in a much bigger game.
But you only have to look at the kind of recruitment processes and qualifications some of these big name SV firms advertise/leak, and then look at the quality of the software they actually produce and/or what some people who used to work there can (or can't) do when they move on, and you can see that having Google or Facebook on your resume doesn't actually prove that you're some sort of super-elite 10x genius geek demigod. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the people working inside the bubble didn't get the memo.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hmm, let's put thousands and thousands of socially maladjusted techies together in one region, appoint a bunch of hypersocialized "brogrammer" types as their bosses, and see what happens. What could possibly go wrong???
I work in the "tech industry" but I work for a specialized IT services firm, which is almost the polar opposite of a bubble-fueled Internet startup. I watched the dotcom bubble inflate and pop, and now this one's on the way out too. By contrast, the people I work with are totally normal. Some have their quirks, but we have very few jerks. Steve Jobs may be the poster child for "tech visionary" but people conveniently forget that he was an absolute jerk and people hated to work for him. In my mind, anyone who emulates that is someone I definitely don't want to work with.
The "techie asshole" personality really does feed on itself. Take a bunch of recent grads with no real world experience and put them under someone trying to channel Jobs, Zuckerberg or similar. Pretty soon, everyone starts acting like that. I'm not surprised at how much sexual harassment goes on in these environments given this fact. It doesn't help that the press is falling all over itself to pump these guys up and give them superhuman status. Yes, smartphones are cool. Yes, people are walking around with $800 touchscreen computers in their pockets that let them do more than they used to. But in my mind, all these late-bubble-stage startups are doing is creating one-off websites competing for everyone's attention. No one's really inventing much new -- it's all about advertising, page views and the sale of your personal data. Some stuff that has come out in the last few years is extremely cool, but a lot of it seems a lot like the very late 90s when the bubble was the frothiest it had been and everyone is piling on hoping to cash out before the big pop.
I call it the "Dr. House" excuse. Basically it goes "Look, who do you want treating you, the a$$hole who's brilliant, or the above average guy who's nice?"
And the honest truth is that 99% percent of the time, we want the above average guy who's nice.
Yes, if you have something incurable, (or something that no one else can figure out what it is in the case of the TV show's Dr. House), then you want the genius no matter how arrogant he is. But in every day issues, you want someone that is going to be nice and do a reasonably good job - not a genius that is going to cure your wart while calling you an idiot and revealing to your wife that you sleep around.
Genius is NOT an excuse to be arrogant. Especially as sometimes the guy you are insulting is actually smarter than you (i.e. look at at Edison and Tesla - 2nd brightest man of his time refused to pay the first brightest man what he was worth and screwed himself ).
Part of being smart is having social skills. Part of being in business is using those social skills. If you can't or won't gain them and use them,
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Found it.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Bill Shockley was the originator of the Silicon Valley arrogant genius archetype. One of the co-inventors of the transistor, he convinced an electronics entrepreneur in the Los Angeles area to pay him to set up a semiconductor laboratory near his mother's home in Palo Alto, staffed with young geniuses. Then his abrasive management drove them away, leading them to found Fairchild Semiconductor, followed by Intel, AMD, and other, less important, electronics companies in the area. In the meanwhile, Shockley went into eugenics.
HP was already around, and Fred Terman of Stanford was encouraging entrepreneurship, but Shockley brought the "silicon" to Silicon Valley. And the arrogance.
Have a nice time.
SF is extremely hostile to new property development that would increase the supply of housing in the city.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It would have been an interesting change to work for someone who is very obviously more insane than me.
Insane, eccentric, egotistical, and dick can be shades of the same color. Steve simply sounds like a dick in that story.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Exactly. And it's not just the SV tech sector that's engaged in winner-take-all gambling posing as productive business. US tax policy is slated to encourage it. And it's not all just the Mitt Romney vs his secretary scenario.
Case in point. It used to be that capital gains from the sale of a home could be rolled over into a new one, and taxes would only need to be paid at the end of the line when you finally downsize or cash out, at which time gains over 250K would be taxed. Sometime in the 90's this changed so that you could take the 250K exemption on each sale - effectively eliminating the capital gains tax on real estate, with one catch. You need to sell every time your home appreciates by 250K or more, and because they eliminated the roll-over feature, you get penalized if you stay in your home long enough for it to appreciate beyond that. I only know this, because I bought a New York City apartment in '92, and have lived there ever since. Now I want to move, but because of the crazy run-up in NYC housing prices, I can't - that is, not without incurring a big tax bite, leaving me unable to afford a new place. So in the rush to reward housing speculators, the incentives in the housing market (which in part, dictate the pricing - whether you think those incentives should exist or not) have lined up to punish non-speculators.
And don't get me started on bank account interest rates. Used to be, you could leave your cash in the bank and at least keep rough pace with inflation. Now, you effectively get no interest at all - and are taxed full freight on even that pittance. Meanwhile more incentives to feed the stock market bubble that everyone will claim was obvious - after it bursts...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
While I think many of the programmers in my group could do many of these things most are not young. Also most of the positions we open are for more senior people since we need people who can do things like write compilers, kernel developers, bootloader developers, etc. who understand the details of CPU architecture. When I talk with young people getting a CS degree I tell them that there is a huge demand for people with these skills. Few software people have a good grasp of hardware.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
There is zero difference in talent. The difference is one of leadership and money. The money is already there, so there is where people go.
Actually, the big difference is a little-known aspect of California intellectual property law:
If you, as an employee, invent something, on your own time and not using your employer's resources, and it doesn't fit into the employer's current or foreseeable future product line, you own it. If the patent assignment agreement in your employment contract says otherwise, it's void.
This means that, if you invent something neat and your employer doesn't want to productize it, you (and a couple of your friends) can rent a garage across the street and found a new company to develop and sell it.
Employees in California can NOT be ripped off the way Westinghouse ripped off Nikola Tesla.
The result is that companies in silicon valley have "budded off" more companies, like yeast budding off new cells. And once this environment got started, thousands of techies have migrated to the area, so there are plenty of them available with the will and talent to be the "couple of your friends" with the skills you need to fill out the team in your garage.
Lots of other states have tried to set up their own high-tech areas on Silicon Valley's model. But they always seem to miss this one point. They need to clone that law to have a chance at replacing or recreating the phenomenon. Result: They might get a company to set up a shop, but they don't get a comparable tech community to build up. Research parks of several companies, generally focused on some aspect of tech, might form, but you don't get the generalist explosion.
Of course, like any network, the longer it accumulates, the more valuable it is to be connected to this one, rather than another that is otherwise equivalent. (This is what the parent poster already alluded to.) Thus there's only one Silicon Valley in California, with the resources concentrated within driving distance, though the law is statewide. Even with the law change, and a couple decades to let the results grow, other states might have a tough time overcoming California's first-mover advantage.
But California keeps fouling things up for techies and entrepreneurs in other ways. So if some other state would TRY this, they might become a go-to place when groups of people in Silicon Valley get fed up and decide to go-forth.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1. The US doesn't need Jack Sparrow running a pirate hospital ship, just get rid of the morbid leaches in the system with a reasonable UHC scheme.
2. Virtually every state capital city on the Aussie mainland now has a massive desal plant, they were all commissioned and built in the final years of our last major drought. Sure they come with higher costs than just collecting rainwater but when your reservoirs of drinking water are hovering at around 10% capacity and there's not a cloud in the sky, it becomes a very affordable option for a first world city. Of course LA would need 4-5 such desal plants due to its unusually large population but these things scale well from an economic POV.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hi!
I don't think you understand what he said entirely.
He said that he can't actually sell his place without incurring a very large tax penalty that would come out of his pocket and affect his ability to buy another property. In short, he's stuck at the level he is without being able to move up or sideways. He's being forced to move /down/ in the property market. He didn't mention how much he earned and it's mostly irrelevant here - the money he'd lose in the gains tax would result in nowhere near enough money to buy another place in that area.
So yes, it's a shitty situation - it's /making/ property speculation and renting the fiscally responsible thing to do. That's just plain stupid.
Except that another place, even another comparable place, would now cost a lot more than $249,999 more than what he paid for his current place.
So if he wants to move to a different but comparable house in a different but comparably priced location, he has to lose a whole lot of money in the process. Meanwhile, people moving frequently to slightly more valuable places continuously over the time he's lived in this one place don't lose anything.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."