
If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley - trequartista
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Silicon-Valley
======
snowwrestler
Amazing anecdote from a 2016 New Yorker article on the show:

> During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six
> writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who
> wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research
> meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me....

> “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred many times to
> specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper said. “His message
> was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going
> to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ ”
> (Teller could not be reached for comment.)

> Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a
> dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He
> wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him
> fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said.
> “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while
> it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use
> this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”

[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-
silicon-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-
valley-nails-silicon-valley)

~~~
holywoly
Any shows of the same style on Hollywood?

Do the show producers feel something similar to some in their own industry or
their surreality is just reality for them? Are they brave enough to mock
powerful people they may wish to work with later?

Would be fun to watch one on Hollywood and they should have very intimate
details to bare.

~~~
vincentmarle
> Would be fun to watch one on Hollywood and they should have very intimate
> details to bare.

Try Californication or Entourage

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Heck yeah, Entourage was good. Way good.

------
ibudiallo
A few months ago I wrote a certain story here and to my surprise I received a
call from Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show. We had long discussions
about silicon valley and his new book coming out (I'm featured in it). A few
weeks ago he was in LA and we had another long discussion about the show.

Silicon Valley is the show most startup founders will refuse to watch. My
startup was featured on TechCrunch Disrupt, we were on stage talking about how
we will change the world with our product. Then things didn't particularly go
as planed.

I discovered the show and started watching it shortly after. It was painful to
see that they portrayed our exact journey as it happened. Only the show poked
fun of the mistakes we were making. I watched it not only as a comedy, but
also as a documentary that would predict our fate. It was eye-opening!

My favorite part (and most humiliating) was when we pitched our startup to a
non-silicon valley investor and she simply replied: "OK, cut the crap. Which
website are you scraping?"

All my co-founders were offended by the show. I must admit, its painful to
watch someone else make fun of the things you put your heart to. But from time
to time, someone has to make fun of you or you start to take yourself too
seriously.

If you are trying to make it in silicon valley, please watch the show. At
best, it will help you make your startup more grounded.

~~~
nkoren
Man, you need to get better co-founders! I agree that Silicon Valley often
hits _painfully_ close to home, but that's precisely what makes it so
fantastic.

My own startup has been mostly outside of America, but we get enough brushes
with Silicon Valley culture -- or, worse, wannabe Silicon Valley culture -- to
make the show really resonate.

Even closer to home, for me personally, is the Australian comedy "Utopia" (or
"Dreamland", depending on the market). It's about a municipal urban
development corporation, which is basically my startup's customer group. One
episode features a sendup of what my own startup does (online collaborative
infrastructure planning and stakeholder engagement) -- or, more to the point,
what some of our would-be customers want it to do. You can tell that the
writers know what they're talking about. Damn near killed me to watch it.
Highly, highly recommended!

~~~
mcbain
Utopia is a documentary, not a comedy. I know people that can’t watch it
because it is like being in their office.

------
swampthinker
My favorite Silicon Valley anecdote:

"During the review process once the footage [of Techcrunch Disrupt] was woven
in, another editor criticized the crowd shots for not featuring any women and
blamed Berg for the oversight.

'...Those were real shots of the real place, and we didn't frame women out.The
world we're depicting is f---ed up.' said Berg"

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/hbos-
si...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/hbos-silicon-
valley-had-diversity-problems-at-techcrunch-disrupt-2016-3)

Sorry for the amp link, the main page was broken.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Surprisingly even-handed piece:

 _There 's been debate about whether "Silicon Valley" the show should have
more diversity than Silicon Valley the place, but Berg argues that a show made
for entertainment not meant to be a "social-action wing" or be a force of
change - the show is just satirizing the reality that the tech industry itself
needs to take care of._

~~~
BurningFrog
One thing that mildly annoys me about the show is how white the cast is.

At least in my Silicon Valley career, the "cast" around me has been vastly
less so.

~~~
derangedHorse
I have no idea where you're working at but if you've ever looked at Google's
public diversity report (one of the largest companies in the valley), you'd
see that your Silicon Valley career does not reflect what the majority of
people in this very large company experience.

[https://diversity.google/annual-report/](https://diversity.google/annual-
report/)

~~~
BurningFrog
By this report Google is 56.6% white.

My experience is that white male Americans are roughly 25% of the Silicon
Valley workforce, but if you bundle in white immigrants and women you might
reach 40-50%.

As I remember the TV show, the main characters are 80% white, and the Indian
guy is the whitest one I've seen.

Small sample, I know, and I'm not offended. Just a little bored...

~~~
smt88
> _the Indian guy is the whitest one I 've seen_

What do you mean by that? Can you explain?

~~~
choot
> What do you mean by that? Can you explain?

Maybe he means culturally

~~~
smt88
So a guy who was born and raised in Pakistan and has a Pakistani accent is
culturally white? What exactly does that mean? Does it mean that he’s educated
and wealthy?

~~~
choot
I think he means, that guy is more culturally white than the Indians who he
finds in the SV.

------
ng12
I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny
Valley
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)).
It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's
unsettling.

~~~
johan_larson
"Silicon Valley" is like Silicon Valley, but it goes to 0x11.

~~~
raverbashing
Or to 0x0B?

~~~
rusk
3?

~~~
esmi
0x11 = 17 That’s like 6 above 11! About right in my opinion.

~~~
walshemj
Our Hexadecimal codes go to Q - bonus points if any one gets the Traveller SF
RPG in joke.

Traveller is where of course Elite ripped off the initial space combat system
from.

------
slivym
It's quite amazing how good a job Silicon Valley does considering how badly
wrong it could go (I'm looking at you Big Bang Theory). I'm sure there are
quite a few industries that could have similar comedies about them from people
who really know what the industry is like. W1A is another great example.

~~~
blocked_again
Pardon my ignorance but what did big bang theory got wrong?

~~~
24gttghh
Pardon the terminology, but I consider that show to be Nerd-Blackface. I'm not
sure how else to describe it. I find how the show deals with anything
technical to be an affront to intelligence in general.

~~~
smsm42
I think you set your expectations way to high if you expect a general-appeal
TV show to get what theoretical physicists to right. That said, a couple of
moments were pretty good - e.g. when the guys were thinking about something
with "eye of the tiger" playing on the background. Nice lampshading of the
fact that it's impossible to show intellectual work on TV. They had some
pretty good moments early on. They should've stopped there.

~~~
rthomas6
Yes! That scene was hilarious. I also like the scene when they're super
excited that they hooked a lamp up to a port on the open internet and someone
turned it on. Then someone asks, why spend the time to do this? And they
respond, because we can. It reminded me of me and my friends in college, and
the response we would get for some of the things we did.

------
jpm_sd
This is a pretty great article on the same subject from the New Yorker in
2016.

[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-
silicon-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-
valley-nails-silicon-valley)

My favorite part:

>>>

During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers
sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a
midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings
are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me. GoogleX is the
company’s “moonshot factory,” devoted to projects, such as self-driving cars,
that are difficult to build but might have monumental impact. Hooli, a
multibillion-dollar company on “Silicon Valley,” bears a singular resemblance
to Google. (The Google founder Larry Page, in Fortune: “We’d like to have a
bigger impact on the world by doing more things.” Hooli’s C.E.O., in season
two: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better
place better than we do.”) The previous season, Hooli had launched HooliXYZ,
its own “moonshot factory,” whose experiments were slapstick absurdities:
monkeys who use bionic arms to masturbate; powerful cannons for launching
potatoes across a room. “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he
referred many times to specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper
said. “His message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that
actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that
or not.’ ” (Teller could not be reached for comment.)

Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a
dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He
wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him
fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said.
“It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while
it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use
this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”

------
danans
Love the show partly for how deeply researched its identity and culturally
driven jokes are. Here are a few:

Erlich passing Dinesh off as Latino to get a deal on a graffiti logo design:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzmVFF58Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzmVFF58Mo)

Dinesh recounting to a puzzled Gilfolye about how he was a "cool" kid back in
Pakistan, and why:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz0M6SmQ8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz0M6SmQ8c)

The latter one, in particular, implies that the writers had a deeper than
average understanding of the different youth cultures of the US and South
Asian cultures at a particular time in history.

~~~
screye
They ring true. Some moments don't even have to exaggerated to be funny. That
is exactly how being "cool" works in parts of India, and just the fact is
enough to make a person from the west crack up.

Dinesh is one of the few nerdy Indian stereotypes that I do not mind. All the
others seem like caricatures and generalizations of South Asians. Dinesh on
the other hand, could be sitting right across my table, coding....

If The Big Short is considered a great "documentary" for the 2008 crisis, then
SV does even better for the Valley.

~~~
danans
> That is exactly how being "cool" works in parts of India, and just the fact
> is enough to make a person from the west crack up.

Indeed. In the context of the show, and American culture, it was Dinesh's
perspective that stood out as seeming odd or unique.

But I wonder if the post-1950s American/Hollywood understanding of "cool" \-
the glorification of rebel/outcaste that Gilfoyle's personality represents -
is itself really the anomaly on the global scale.

I'd imagine many/most parts of the world don't develop a romantic cultural
trope around the underdog, or the person who doesn't fit in with the
mainstream. But I'd be interested to learn otherwise.

------
corysama
I love the running joke that the main characters work on fake technobabble,
but the background companies (particularly the TechCrunch episode) are
babbling about stuff that sounds fake but is real tech. “Making the world a
better place through Paxos distributed consensus!”

~~~
saagarjha
I mean, it would be kind of odd if the show's writers came up with something
novel and instead of rushing to patent it decided to make a TV show out of it.
Meanwhile, it's OK for the other companies to work on things that already
exist–it adds to their run-of-the-mill-ness.

~~~
elliekelly
That hasn't stopped people from trying to make PiedPiper a viable startup
though: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-
startup-g...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-gets-
inspiration-from-hbos-silicon-valley-startup-1542391937)

~~~
geggam
My experience in Silicon Valley has me uncomfortably laughing at the show.

This startup is laughing at themselves and the valley. It's so absurd that a
VC actually funded this it makes me wonder if they aren't laughing too.

------
garmaine
I find it hits a bit close to home, so much so as to ruin the comedy
sometimes... it’d be funny if it weren’t so true, which is depressing.

Still watch it, and love it though. And super impressed that a Hollywood
production finally understood Northern California. That never happens (see:
The Social Network, Hackers, every Steve Jobs movie, etc.)

~~~
cknoxrun
I would highly suggest checking out Halt and Catch Fire. It's a period piece,
but I think it captures the spirit of Northern California. The first 2 seasons
are in Texas before they jump ship to San Francisco.

~~~
devmunchies
ditto. Its starts off with a young ex-IBM executive trying to build the first
IBM compatible machine and everything that goes with launching the new
product. Later seasons go into things like server farms, early gaming, and
social networking.

really underrated show.

~~~
ticmasta
I really like the historical/tech story lines but the soap-opera interpersonal
relationships wrecked it for me. The whole "broken imperfection" thing often
goes to far and really detracts from the story.

~~~
marshray
You might like this documentary on the origins of National Semiconductor:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbRZGDV-
ws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbRZGDV-ws)

------
smsm42
I love the show, but there's a lot of things that Silicon Valley is that it
does not cover. It's not the fault of the show - it probably would be much
worse if it did. But some aspects of SV - like how much it is integrated into
the big politics and yet how much they try to downplay it and make it look
like their behemoth companies are just young and agile rebels playing this new
Internet thing, as if it were the early 90s... Or how monocultural and group-
thinky many places are, and how office politics often becomes more important
than tech (but don't tell this to anyone, we're not like those old
industries!) SV series kinda touches on this, but only lightly, mostly
concentrating on things around tech. It probably makes for a much better show.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...how office politics often becomes more important than tech...

Basically all the Hooli scenes are about that. Also just about the entire
careers of Big Head, Jack Barker, and Denpok the "spiritual advisor".

~~~
smsm42
In Hooli there's one big player - Benson - who is erratic and egomaniacal, and
everybody else does what he says. He is a personification of a jerk (I mean,
look at his signature!) and serves as a kind of super-villain that is the
source of all evil. But usually there's no super-villain, there's just
"culture" and everybody is playing by the set of rules that nobody in
particular invented.

------
Apocryphon
It’s pretty crazy how the real SV has been obligingly giving the real show new
material since it first debuted, with ever-increasing excess, quixotic
ventures in search of markets, worsening scandals, and externalities
everywhere!

~~~
ip26
There were also several moments the real show gave the real SV new material.

------
nathan_f77
> Somebody gets an idea almost right, but not quite, and their business fails;
> then someone else does it just a little bit better and they are viewed as a
> genius for the rest of their life.

I'm still thinking about this comment about Fieldbook shutting down [1], and
the "What Happened at Fieldbook" [2] article:

> In contrast, our closest competitor, Airtable, seems to be getting more
> traction.

Was really sad to read that.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18461395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18461395)

[2] [https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at-
field...](https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at-
fieldbook-d70bf25b3968)

~~~
Aeolun
I was thinking about the same thing. Probably because of recent news about
Airtable.

~~~
avinium
Read the same article yesterday, which got me thinking.

I'm not familiar with Fieldbook, but I do wonder if they weren't as savvy as
Airtable when it came to sales & finance strategy.

Products alone rarely make a business. It's a perfectly viable strategy to
keep forging ahead at a loss while you slowly gain market share. You obviously
need to show revenue growth (sales savvy) to keep the funding coming through
(finance savvy).

I'm definitely guilty of getting all caught up in product and neglecting the
business side of things.

~~~
Aeolun
I feel like technically Fieldbook had pretty much everything that they needed
to compete with Airtable.

Airtable probably does a better job of attracting customers with their
extensive collection of premade content though.

But I cannot get over the ‘candy’ look in airtable.

------
jancsika
> It’s more fun to root for the underdog.

Outside of dumb luck, I don't see a plot arc that favors Richard's team at
all.

Especially when one of the overarching themes is that over the seasons the
"underdog" throws friends under the bus, hacks competitors, rents a botnet,
lies, commit fraud, and all kinds of other abuses.

What's the difference between Richard dumping a gf because she uses spaces and
Gavin screwing over Jack because Jack wanted to get dropped off first from the
private plane? The only difference I see is that Richard's narcissism doesn't
come with the weight of a $100 billion company behind it.

Richard's bad behavior comes off as less jarring because almost all of the
time he has considerably less power than Gavin. Richard doesn't have a wall of
lawyers who he can casually probe about assassinating a foe. Gavin does.

Edit: clarification

~~~
Novashi
You know, the show continuing well past where the story makes sense is very
much in the vein of Silicon Valley. Plot planning be damned.

------
imgabe
King of the Hill has also resurfaced on Hulu recently after not being
available to stream anywhere. Mike Judge has a real talent for nailing essence
of a culture.

~~~
komali2
Woah, I had no idea Mike Judge was involved with King of the Hill.

Growing up in Texas, I never appreciated how on-point the show was, until I
left the state and realized that the subtle culture cues of Texas didn't exist
elsewhere, which means that King of the Hill _nailed_ it. I mean, _every
detail_ is perfect.

~~~
c3534l
Hank Hill was basically the "stop hwackin' off in muh toolshed" guy from
Beavis and Butthead.

------
felipesoc
I always like to compare Silicon Valley to The Big Bang Theory. TBBT seems
like a parody of the stereotype of the people they are parodying while SV is a
true parody. I'm always thinking "haha, that's so true" when watching SV, but
never while watching TBBT.

~~~
rchaud
TBBT is not a "parody". It is your standard-issue broadcast network sitcom
about 3 males, 3 females and their friendships as they date and break up with
each other, marry each other and have kids. This is a successful premise that
has stood for decades in American TV. Friends and How I Met Your Mother
followed the same principles almost to a tee. That's how you get a show that
runs for 10 seasons in this day and age.

Pointing out that TBBT's parody is poor is like saying Will & Grace did not
portray a representative picture of gay urbanites.

~~~
InitialLastName
It's funny that you compare TBBT to Will & Grace, since they have very
different receptions among their subjects.

I know lots of gay urbanites who feel well-represented by Will & Grace. I know
lots of people in the "trad nerd" set, but none of them see The Big Bang
Theory and say "yep, that's me".

------
Brimstone
I believe that some of the genius of the show has to go to Dan Lyons as well.
He worked at HubSpot for a stint and wrote a book about it called "Disrupted"
([https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up-
Bu...](https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up-
Bubble/dp/0316306096)). Really funny, in a sad way.

~~~
rkho
I read through this book in a few hours and really couldn't put it down

------
dekhn
I asked my friend if he watched it (I don't) and he said it hit too close to
home. I nodded, then he added "... because I'm a consultant for the show, and
every year they meet with us and we give them ideas from our jobs and things
to put in scenes"

------
wingkongex
Dan Lyons, author of "Disrupted," is also on the writing staff for the show.
Not quite Silicon Valley but if you read the book, some of the stuff from his
time at Hubspot makes it into the show.

Judge surrounded himself with a lot of different perspectives on all of this.

------
adtac
Bill posted this on /r/SiliconValleyHBO:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/9yh7dp/wh...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/9yh7dp/who_wore_it_better/)

I like to think he photoshopped it in his spare time lol.

------
adoago
Pied Piper has the Conjoined Triangles of Success. Asana has...
[https://wavelength.asana.com/pyramid-clarity-strategic-
align...](https://wavelength.asana.com/pyramid-clarity-strategic-alignment/)

------
wturner
Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show recently wrote a new book titled
"Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us ..."

~~~
gcmac
Also worth reading his book "Disrupted" \- the book is every bit as funny and
relevant as Silicon Valley

~~~
Zanni
I loved Dan Lyons fake Steve Job columns, but Disrupted didn't work for me at
all. He presented himself as the lone adult in a sea of misfit children, but
came across as a clueless and bitter crank. The same (admittedly keen)
observations about the corporate culture would have gone down so much better
(for me) if he hadn't tried to crammed every page with so much smug
superiority.

------
saagarjha
I mean, he's not really from Silicon Valley, so I guess we should take his
viewpoint with a grain of salt ;)

> I have friends in Silicon Valley who refuse to watch the show because they
> think it’s just making fun of them.

But yeah, it's good to take a look at satire of yourself once in a while.
Often they can tell you stuff that you may have overlooked, and generally
they're not too hurtful when doing so.

------
cutler
You might also like "Nathan Barley (2005)" \- a savage British TV parody of
the mid-2000s startup scene in Shoreditch, London.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg&list=PLTM-
Dbun10...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg&list=PLTM-
Dbun10Dp86u1TzEKkRkPNqvb0Qt2k)

~~~
nmca
I'd second this recommendation - it's incredible.

------
Zelphyr
Maybe it’s longing for byegone days on my part but it feels like the
atmosphere of the Valley and tech in general has changed so much so quickly
that my head is spinning.

It feels, well, not fun anymore a lot of the time. Development by copy-and-
paste and gluing other peoples code together to arrive at a half-baked
solution instead of exploring the code to try to understand it as a system so
the solution you arrive at is the most effective that time and skill permit.

Being more infatuated with nerd culture than building something great. (I see
this a LOT!) Chasing dollars instead of knowledge. And, don’t get me wrong;
it’s ok to want to make money. Even a lot of it. But that should be the icing
on the cake of solving real problems.

I feel like we used to do this stuff because it was what we loved to do. But
now it feels like too many people do it because they want to look cool and/or
they want a lot of money. The romance is dying.

------
localhost
Dan, "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons also worked as a consultant for Silicon Valley.

------
pkaye
Silicon Valley is more than just Web 2.0 companies. If you went to an average
ASIC company I doubt it would this crazy.

~~~
esmi
Maybe not today. But we’ve had our moments.

[https://youtu.be/-P28LKWTzrI](https://youtu.be/-P28LKWTzrI)

------
dudul
I found that the first few seasons (maybe first 2 or 3) did a great job at
parodying the Valley. They were truly uncanny to watch for me sometimes, and I
don't even live in SF.

The past few years, the quality degraded significantly IMO. It mostly turned
into "The Office but with developers and geeks!!" \- which doesn't make it a
bad show, but not as witty and thought provoking. I wonder if it's past the
point where it needs to reach a wider audience, just like any other show.

~~~
mav3rick
The Office deliberately has a mockumentary style with the characters breaking
the "4th wall" in a very believable way. SV doesn't have that and you don't
really know the "real" motivation and feelings of a character till the plot
unravels. They couldn't be further apart in structure.

~~~
dudul
I'm talking about the general plots/storylines, not the structure of the show.

------
PopeDotNinja
HBO's Silicon Valley isn't a comdedy, it's a documentary. I've met archetype
on that show, and have been a couple of them myself.

------
coleifer
This well-written article has been discussed before, but I figured it was
worth posting. It's a bit more in the "black humor" vein than Silicon Valley,
but it also just nails the real SV vibe:

[https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-
valle...](https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/)

------
justifier
> Even a huge believer in technology like me has to laugh when some character
> talks about how they’re going to change the world with an app that tells you
> whether what you’re eating is a hot dog or not.

sorry bill but one could argue in a round about way that andrej karpathy did
do just that ;P

the hot dog identifying app is one of my favourite examples of how spot on the
show is

here(o) is a question i asked to one of the show's technical consultants
whether the choice of 'not hotdog' was a reference to one of karpathy's early
demos(i||ii)

timanglade> Ha seems like a fun coincidence.

(o)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14639161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14639161)
the yt link is now a dead link.. use either of the below

(i)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6aEYuemt0M&t=465](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6aEYuemt0M&t=465)
; Title: Deep Learning for Computer Vision (Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI) ; Desc:
The talks at the Deep Learning School on September 24/25, 2016 were amazing. I
clipped out individual talks from the full live streams and provided links to
each below in case that's useful for people who want to watch specific talks
several times (like I do).

(ii)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyovmAtoUx0&t=5787](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyovmAtoUx0&t=5787)
; timestamped from the full stream; Title: Bay Area Deep Learning School Day 1
at CEMEX auditorium, Stanford ; Desc: Day 1 of Bay Area Deep Learning School
featuring speakers Hugo Larochelle, Andrej Karpathy, Richard Socher, Sherry
Moore, Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Andrew Ng. ;

------
Symbiote
> This kind of back-channel relationship—satirists texting casually with the
> satirized—is a departure from much of comedic history.

_Yes, Minister_, which satirizes the British government, supposedly had close
access to several people in government, though it was probably careful rather
than casual.

The clips on Youtube are all distorted, don't bother with them, but find
S01E04 "Big Brother".

------
pier25
Mike Judge, one of the show runners, was in the valley during the 80s so it
makes sense that there would be some truth.

~~~
rkho
Dick Costolo and Dan Lyons also worked as consultants for the show.

------
christophilus
Reminds me of this talk by a reporter turned startup employee turned author:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw)

One of the funniest things I’ve seen, while also being sad, because it’s so
true.

------
VikingCoder
Silicon Valley

The Internship

The Circle

It's possible to get a somewhat accurate view from watching these, but you
have to know which parts to completely ignore. I kind of wish there were "this
is accurate" edits of those shows and movies.

~~~
Apocryphon
There's also the short-lived Betas, on Amazon Video. It wasn't as good as
HBO's show is (the characters are far more grating), yet the younger and
scrappier milieu feels like it captures the youth-obsessed, juvenile segment
of startup culture better. And it's also based in San Francisco, unlike the
South Bay-centered Silicon Valley.

------
selimthegrim
The Lena easter egg in plain sight was amusing during a few episodes

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna)

~~~
adtac
I don't think that was a easter egg given that they work on compression. It's
a standard test for image compression, after all.

------
Nuance
I wonder what Bill Gates thinks of the character Jack Barker.

~~~
idontpost
I thought he was more a send-up of Ballmer than Gates, although that might
just be the physical resemblance.

~~~
dmschulman
He is a Steve Ballmer sendup, but Gates and Ballmer worked closely for many
years at Microsoft and had many fundamental disagreements about the direction
the company should take. Ballmer refocused Microsoft from software to hardware
when he became CEO (hence "The Box" joke on the show).

Ballmer himself probably doesn't like the caricature (he's a bit of an
internet darling, isn't he?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY)),
but would someone who worked with Ballmer find it accurate? Likely.

Not to mention, Gates wrote the article about Silicon Valley linked in this
thread.

------
tnolet
People who enjoy Silicon Valley should read the book Disrupted. The writer
went on join the writers at Silicon Valley.

------
Stratoscope
So how does one subscribe to this show without subscribing to HBO? I looked at
their website and don't see anything else I would want to watch. I really want
to watch Silicon Valley, but that's the only thing HBO offers that I'm
interested in. Can I buy just this one show from them?

~~~
thaas53
Just subscribe to HBO Now from your choice of providers for one month and
binge watch all the seasons. Cancel when done and only paid $15.

~~~
Stratoscope
Thanks, I suppose that would work. It would probably take me a few months to
watch all the episodes, but if the show is as good as everyone says, it would
be worth it.

------
newnewpdro
Office Space, Idiocracy, and Silicon Valley. It's practically a NatGeo series
about the USA.

------
blimey74
If you like Silicon Valley check out The IT Crowd, also equally hilarious take
on the world of IT.

~~~
rchaud
Aside from the completely overused line "Hello IT, have you tried turning it
off and turning it back on again?", the show has almost nothing to do with IT.
Apart from a couple of IT-related plotlines, most of the episodes take place
outside their office.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...the show has almost nothing to do with IT.

"The Internet" device. All the tech illiterate coworkers. Jen's imposter
syndrome. Moss's on-the-spectrum reactions. Online dating when it was still
nerdy. Novelty websites. Viral cultural events.

But it wasn't exclusively geek humor. There were broader episodes involving
Jen's and Roy's romantic lives too.

------
zby
What is the best way to watch it online?

I have bought Netflix subscription - but I am dissapointed now - the library
of historic films available for me (in Poland) is very small and the current
productions are kind of mechanistic. And no SV in Netflix.

------
orarbel1
Everything you need to know about how Silicon Valley funding works in a little
over a minute [https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo](https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo)

------
dragonwriter
The final instance of “Silicon Valley” should be set in italics as a title (or
quoted, if HN titles don't allow italics.)

(Would presumably be just as true the other way around, but that's not the
title of the piece.)

------
sergiotapia
Does the show get any better? I stopped around the time they hacked the phones
in that conference, I think season 2?

It was a constant the leader fucking up and the gang coming through at the end
- over and over and over.

~~~
agoodthrowaway
It’s sad that’s all you got out of it. There’s a quite a bit of subtext in the
show, particularly if you’re in SV. I often wonder if people outside the
valley pick up on the themes or if it’s jusy slapstick to them.

------
davidwitt415
I don't think BillG quite got the 'Hotdog Not Hotdog' joke..

------
stevewilhelm
"Conjoined Triangles of Success" and "ruinous empathy."

Pure genius.

~~~
dmschulman
I have a copy of the Conjoined Triangles of Success tacked to my office wall.
I don't think anyone I work with has keyed in on the fact yet that it's a joke
from a TV show. It captures serious business jargon and corporate culture so
well that it doesn't read as anything but.

------
dmode
As someone living in the bubble, Silicon Valley felt way too real. Does this
apply to tech company culture outside of the valley ?

------
sAbakumoff
Also, read "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble" that was
written by one of the SV script authors.

------
joshu
Fun fact: I'm in the background of the basketball court scene in Season 4 (and
I am a consultant for the show)

------
kaizendad
The fact that this is true just makes it hurt more that I am obviously Jared.

------
jiveturkey
needs 2016 tag.

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glenrivard
Love the show and do think pretty realistic in an exaggerated way.

------
torgian
I’ve only seen one episode of the show a couple years ago, and I basically
found it boring. Keep in mind I’ve never been to Silicon Valley.

All the comments here make it sound like a depressing place to be

------
samstave
In 1999 we were working a very long shift waiting for the batch process on the
AS/400 to go through and our FTP "edi" trNsfers to Sun to complete (an ftp
script written for us by these four hacks, who founded linuxcare after this
episode) (sifry, dibona, etc)

We decided to go grab a beer and play pool while we waited for this new thing
to execute based on this new language sun was having us convert everything to,
XML...

While at the pool place these girls in lingerie were walking about selling
raffle tickets.

We asked what they were for.

"We are putting ourselves through school and we are selling raffle tickets for
the lingerie we are wearing, for $5 a ticket."

"I see, where are you ladies going to school"

"Oh, we go to ___silicone_ __valley college... "

\----

I wish this was a scene in Silicon Valley... it was ridiculously funny.

------
russellbeattie
I haven't watched the show much, as I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley
for 20+ years and I don't see much besides a superficial resemblance. I saw a
bit of an episode where a few 'brogrammers' were making fun of the main
character like it was a 'mean girls' high school, and I thought it was
ridiculous. Then I saw another bit where one of the characters was threatening
a kid for his Adderall prescription and, again, thought it was moronic. I
haven't watched much else.

I compare the show to Entourage: Amusing to those outside Hollywood, but
completely ridiculous to anyone who actually works in the industry.

~~~
otachack
Mike Judge does his homework. Being in the industry myself, he does many other
aspects in the show. I recommend you try another episode, such as one that
involves the VCs.

