How Silicon Valley Got That Way -- and Why It Will Continue To Rule

An anonymous reader writes: Lots of places want to be 'the next Silicon Valley.' But the Valley's top historian looks back (even talks to Steve Jobs about his respect for the past!) to explain why SV is unique. While there are threats to continued dominance, she thinks it's just too hard for another region to challenge SV's supremacy.

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Nothing involving active processes, continued development, and people is permanent. Its longevity is always dictated by its continued management and the ability to keep pushing without growing complacent such that disruptive technologies or hungry competitors don't surpass it or make it irrelevant.

Remeber

[Anonymous Coward]

Silicon Valley was kick-started by federal dollars.

Remember that you fuckers every time you fire American workers for H1-bs and then accuse them of having entitlement issues. And remember it again assholes when you say shit like "you could be in India" so be thankful for your refrigerator.

The only people with entitlement issues are the SV "entrepreneurs" and VCs.

Re:Remeber

[minstrelmike]

People who have money tend to feel entitled to it.

That's because they buy into the Libertarian myth that they made their money themselves.
Daniel Boone couldn't build his own rifle from rocks and sticks, because he didn't have the time nor the skills and Bill Gates could not get rich in Yemen or Somalia simply because the market wasn't big enough, regardless of whether it was steady enough and supported by laws and regulations and trust-worthy money.

Business folks refuse to recognize the need for a government and a market, thinking those things just happen naturally. Even today, the conservative voters and their politicians (get cause-effect correct if you're defining a problem) still want to fix the Bush-recession by raising interest rates even tho most economists recognize the lack of recovery is because of a depressed market and not because of a depressed ability to borrow money. There is no reason to expand a factory if you cannot sell what's already being produced.

The top tax rate in the US during the 1950s was 90%. That meant businesses paid their top employees a lot more (instead of giving _all_ the money to the CEO) and the government had enough money to build the interstate highway system (what is that worth for marketing) and fly to the moon. Then we decided rich people needed to keep "their" money and gradually for most of the people in America (more than half), life started to trend downhill.

We're all in this together. Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant. And this isn't a plea for communism which many conservatives scream at folks who aren't on board with them 1000%. We already know communism doesn't work in groups larger than about 280 or so (but it works fantastically well for a nuclear family. We also know unfettered Capitalism that puts all the money into the rich folks hands without investing in infrastructure will destroy the society. You can see this in any kingdom that didn't invest in bridges or roads or put the collected tax money back in the hands of the people somehow.
Adam Smith (1776) didn't push for complete economic freedom, just for competition within a well-regulated marketplace. Of course, he was writing to kings, most of whom had an interest in keeping their country runnning for mutiple generations.

That doesn't seem to be a true statement about voters nowadays.

Why would anyone start there?

[Billly Gates]

Ultra expensive, employees can leave for another startup, employees demand 2x their national average wage, employees demand partial ownership, highest taxes in nation, lawsuit friendly, non compete clauses not enforceable.

I can do a startup in Texas without these problems for half the cost and low taxes. I can find qualified workers too and not just self-righteous college graduates with no experience demanding 100k a year too! Before I am labeled anti employee assholes I would like to say a 70k job in Austin gets you a nice home. I pay less in taxes on you too and we both win. Try that with 120k in San Francisco?

What made silicon valley was what Texas or North Dakota is today. Cheap land, cheap employees, friendly government, no one leaving for another startup.

In the 1960s Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey was where it was out. Now the reverse is true.

Economics should be encouraging companies to leave. This whole synergy argument is bullshit

Re:Why would anyone start there?

[kamapuaa]

Well it's not like this is all a recent development. The Bay Area has been more expensive than Texas for about 150 years now, and yet SV is the big time, while Austin is a regional hub. "Land is cheaper! Employees will settle for less money!" is true pretty much everywhere except for NYC, and yet I don't see many companies moving to flyover country.

And of course, if a number of large employers all suddenly congregated in Austin, of course land prices would go up, salaries go up, etc...this doesn't all happen in a vacuum.

Re:Why would anyone start there?

[hwstar]

This is precisely why I won't leave California. I will never sign a non-compete contract. Noncompetes are what made silicon valley exceptional. People moving from company to company is what makes companies great, and it distributes the top talent across all companies so they get what they need done at their most
critical stages of development.

Some states are coming around to this way of thinking. Massachuttes, Oregon, and Illinois are considering severely restricting the use of non-competes.

There are 3 areas of reform in United States labor law which need to happen to fully engage employees and to ensure an level playing field:

1. Ban Non-compete contracts at the federal level. Use non-disclosure contracts instead.
2. Ban pre-dispute arbitration clauses.
3. Reform employment-at-will. Move to "just cause" like the rest of the developed world.

Re:Why would anyone start there?

[pspahn]

This is an odd statement. You intend to stay in California until the bitter end despite all the awful problems currently happening there. That is an acceptable trade-off for never signing a non-compete?

You fear employers so much that you are unwilling to leave your cozy little nest even though it might be filled with fire ants and is no longer actually cozy.

It's amazing the things one can be blind to if they never step out of their comfort zone.I hope you have fun sitting in traffic on 880 this summer.

Re:Why would anyone start there?

[SvnLyrBrto]

> What made silicon valley was what Texas or North
> Dakota is today. Cheap land, cheap employees,
> friendly government, no one leaving for another
> startup.

You couldn't be more wrong. People leaving for another startup is EXACTLY what made Silicon Valley.

Pretty much all of the Intel founders met at and left Fairchild Semiconductors to form their own company. Fairchild itself was the result of people leaving Schockley Labs. Jobs and Woz worked at Atari and Hewlett-Packard before founding Apple. Palm came from ex-Apple employees. AMD also came from Fairchild employees. The cofounders of Nvidia jumped ship from AMD and Sun. YouTube was founded by ex-PayPal employees. And all that's just off the top of my head.

Smart people meeting smart people, having an idea, and having the freedom to leave their employer to implement that idea, is the vert heart of innovation. The fact that you tout non-compete shackles as a good thing *does* mark you as an "anti employee asshole". You labeled yourself in your very first sentence. It also proves that you just don't get what makes for an environment that generates companies that are not only innovative, but fantastic to work for.