
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem (2014) - stevewepay
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html?_r=0
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mc32
I think the blaming is misplaced. Or at least we're inconsistent with it. Why
not go ahead and blame the dropouts of whom there was a chance there was one
who could have come up with the cure for some dreadful disease.

Or why not accuse artists and others who don't produce real goods of wasting
their talents on creating art, some of it, in the form of hollywood movies, or
extremely middle brow artists of having wasted opportunity. Or why not come
down on plastic surgeons? Why not ask why they didn't become useful surgeons?
Or barratry lawyers, why not ask them why they didn't all become
constitutional lawyers criminal defense lawyers? Why not bemoan hack
journalists for failing serious journalism and affronting the profession?

No, but tech workers must be exceptional and we must expect much more from
them than the rest of the population rather than let them pursue what they
want as we allow the rest to do without much repudiation.

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downandout
So yes this is apparently a resubmission. But this statement struck me:

 _" Since the acquisition, Biswas, who is 32, has fought to retain the spirit
of the vanguard, but his struggle reveals an implicit fear — that young
engineers might be willing to work at Meraki but not at Cisco (because it’s
too big and fusty), or that clients might be willing to buy from Cisco but not
Meraki (because they don’t really trust start-ups)."_

So maybe the answer is for these large companies to spin out R&D departments
into their own companies with different names and corporate cultures. The
primary customer at first would be the parent, but employees wouldn't have to
deal with the nonsense that comes with working at a large multi-national
company, or with the risk that comes from working for an unproven startup. The
companies could also generate revenue from outside customers that do not
compete with the parent and be publicly traded as a separate entity, which
means that the value of options given to employees and the underlying stock
wouldn't necessarily be tied to the prospects of the parent. Young engineers
go to work for the fun R&D startup, and customers buy the products they design
from the large, reputable parent.

~~~
Eridrus
Interestingly, this model was advocated for in _The Innovator 's Dilemma_,
which was the book that coined the term disruptive innovation.

However the parent company is unlikely to be the first customer, since they're
unlikely to _want_ the product themselves. Cisco probably didn't want Meraki's
business until Meraki proved it to be a valuable one.

~~~
downandout
If a company spins out its critical R&D functions and gives the new company
its intellectual property, then yes, it will want the "product" :) . What I'm
talking about is creating a new company that begins with the express purpose
of doing exactly what the internal R&D department was doing before, with a
long-term contract from the parent to do exactly that. The parent becomes its
first built-in, guaranteed, life-long customer. You're talking about buying
companies that already have IP, which is a different thing.

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theCricketer
Not sure why this re-surfaced now but here's a link to the comments when it
was posted over a year ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384818)

~~~
karangoeluw
Because karma

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autotune
"In a place with one of the best gender-ratios in the country for single
women, female friends I talk to complain that most of the men are, in fact,
not available; they are all busy working on their start-ups, or data-crunching
themselves. They have prioritized self-improvement and careers over
relationships."

I'm particularly curious about what she believes the alternative option is
here. Are we supposed to waste our time and self-esteem with uncertainty and
self doubt in the pursuit of a relationship, or focus on something that brings
immediate and tangible results, and keep building up our confidence through
building and administrating tech like coding through Python and working with
Linux? Personally I'll always take the the one that brings tangible results
and confidence before the one that brings depression and uncertainty.

~~~
douche
I was reading Hackers ([http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-
Anniversar...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversary-
Edition/dp/1449388396)) earlier this month, and that sounds pretty much like
the "bachelor-mode" described therein.

It's tough... You can devote your time to a logical, rational system that
provides consistent rewards to your efforts - or you can pursue sex and
unpredictable human factors.

------
malandrew

        In pursuing the latest and the coolest, young engineers ignore 
        opportunities in less-sexy areas of tech like semiconductors, data 
        storage and networking, the products that form the foundation on which 
        all of Web 2.0 rests. Without a good router to provide reliable Wi-Fi, 
        your Dropbox file-sharing application is not going to sync; without 
        Nvidia’s graphics processing unit, your BuzzFeed GIF is not going to 
        make anyone laugh. The talent — and there’s a ton of it — flowing into 
        Silicon Valley cares little about improving these infrastructural 
        elements. What they care about is coming up with more web apps.
    

While I agree somewhat in principle, especially with the example about GPUs,
but I think the viewpoint of this article greatly discounts the value of the
open-source byproducts from many of the Web 2.0 companies.

For example, scaling to the levels that Facebook has presented many novel
challenges and opportunities to push productivity in traditional computing
areas. The open-compute project, face recognition, apache thrift (which builds
upon ideas that began with protocol buffers), etc. are all ways in which some
foundational technologies were the by-product of pursuing the creation of a
social software empire.

That said, I also think this journalist is blindly by his own industry. There
are plenty of cool startups working on foundational technology, it's just that
they aren't as sexy and stories about them don't attract as many eyeballs.
Take Planet Labs for example. That's some pretty foundational area in terms of
how Space has been valuable to humans and they are aiming to democratize
access to have an eye in Space. Maybe the author just doesn't know how to
discover tech companies that haven't already been discovered for him by the
pop tech journalism media?

~~~
XorNot
We've conflated "engineer" to an absurd degree in the software industry.
Engineering deals in a lot of hard math problem solving - as in, that's
utterly vital to it.

It's also completely orthogonal to the types of problems Web 2.0-type
companies work on - there isn't a 1:1 ability to translate the people going to
work in one area to another.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384818)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452643)

------
brianchu
Some of the best responses to this article are on Quora:
[https://www.quora.com/What-does-Silicon-Valley-think-of-
the-...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Silicon-Valley-think-of-the-NY-Times-
article-Silicon-Valleys-Youth-Problem)

I really hope you can see past the fact there is a login requirement. There is
a lot of really great content on Quora.

~~~
eropple
...and it requires you to put up with their needless shit to get it.

That Google hasn't de-listed them (and everyone else using what is nothing
more than cloaking) is a real shame.

