
‘Silicon Valley,’ Darker Than Ever, Captures the Bleak Mood of Tech - fortran77
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/arts/television/silicon-valley-season-6.html
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ditonal
I worked at a startup that pitched themselves as "social good" working for a
"double bottom line" (profit and social good). Then I worked at Google which
recruited on the catch phrase of "do cool things that matter." Both of these
companies are motivated entirely by profit, there are absolutely zero ethical
qualms beyond making a buck. The "social good" and "cool things that matter"
exist for PR and recruiting purposes, that's it. And once they've recruited
people, those people are far too terrified to lose their prestigious and well-
compenstaed careers to rock the boat.

mchurch's quote that "Silicon Valley is just Wall St for people who can't get
up early" has always made me laugh. But I've also always said that, at least
the guys at Goldman are authentic, they know and we know that they are
motivated almost entirely by money, and they don't pretend otherwise. It
really rubs me the wrong way that both Google the company and the "Googlers"
that make up its workforce to this day want to maintain this image that
somehow they are good people trying to "make the world a better place when"
it's abundantly clear that the overriding concern is the value of the sacred
GSU (Google restricted stock unit). I totally agree with the NYTimes that if
anything, the HBO show is not nearly harsh enough.

~~~
DoreenMichele
On the one hand, attempts to do social good frequently are not especially
profitable.

On the other, a well paying job so you can feed yourself etc is a social good.

We all need food, clothing and shelter. The best way to get that is a job.
Jobs at Google tend to pay well.

~~~
jddj
This first line here had promise, but it needed to go further. Being rich on
its own isn't a social good, but you're right that it can be a good place to
start:

[https://www.effectivealtruism.org/](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I was homeless for years. What I most needed was an earned income to help
resolve my problems, but no one took that seriously. They saw me as a _charity
case_ who had nothing of value to offer and whom it would be cruel to expect
work from. But, no, people were not throwing scads of money at me sufficient
to resolve my problems out of compassion.

It's always odd to me how people think it's only a social good if you are
feeding and clothing someone else, not yourself.

~~~
waterheater
If you don't mind, I'd like to get your perspective on some aspects of
homelessness. With the right systems in place, we _can_ virtually eliminate
homelessness, but it needs to work for, well, the homeless, not some company
preaching "social good."

You say that what you needed most was finding an earned income. Based off this
statement, I have a few questions:

\- Some cities are going into homeless camps and handing out housing vouchers.
Their argument is that once you get people off the streets and into a
domicile, many issues tend to resolve themselves, allowing the formerly-
homeless to work toward stability. If you were given the opportunity to
receive a housing voucher, would it have helped you get to where you are
today?

\- To my knowledge, one hurdle the homeless must overcome when finding a job
is what address to put down on a job application. Did this hurdle pose a
challenge for you when trying to find a job? (An idea I just came up with:
providing the homeless with a free P.O. box to allow them to still receive
mail. Perhaps this program or one like it exists, but I've never heard of it
before.)

\- Many homeless live in cities where the job market is highly competitive.
Imagine an employer provided short-term housing for the homeless but was not
located in a city. (Example scenario: a factory in rural America.) Do you see
any potential in this program?

Thank you!

> It's always odd to me how people think it's only a social good if you are
> feeding and clothing someone else, not yourself.

These people seem to have never learned some pretty ancient wisdom. One
phrasing of it goes, "give a man a fish; feed him for a day. Teach a man to
fish; feed him for a lifetime." Skills (however simple or complex) pay the
bills.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_If you were given the opportunity to receive a housing voucher, would it have
helped you get to where you are today?_

I doubt it.

I was offered housing on more than one occasion. Sometimes, it was a friend
sincerely trying to help but it was very far away (thousands of miles) and
substandard. I have health issues. I need my housing to not be making me
sicker than I already am.

Sometimes, it was in exchange for sleeping with them. This was a non starter
for various reasons.

A home is more than a roof over your head. It means you belong, you have some
kind of security and so forth. Some homeless people float from dive hotel to
dive hotel and are not literally out in the street. It's still a huge hardship
to live that way.

I have researched housing policy and homelessness. We have some serious
housing supply issues. I'm trying to figure out how to write about that on a
blog called Project: SRO. It's so far got an About page.

I'm not up for trying to outline our complicated housing supply issues in an
HN post. I think I need an entire website for that and I'm struggling with
where to start that explanation.

Re addresses. I always (technically) had a mailing address while homeless and
usually had access to mail service. I would like to see more mailing address
services for the homeless, plus more free phones and some kind of storage
locker service. People sometimes have job interviews and don't know where to
stash their backpack.

I provide various informational resources in the form of a group of websites.
This includes talking about making money online.

A lot of homeless people have personal handicaps and a regular job may be a
poor fit. I began doing freelance work while homeless as one piece of the
puzzle for resolving my own issues. I think that's a better option for some
people.

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Justsignedup
A link from the internet archive
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191028014303/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191028014303/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/arts/television/silicon-
valley-season-6.html)

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undefined3840
The cognitive dissonance is certainly strong for any tech worker who cares
about ethics, privacy, etc. Sadly it’s not a frequent conversation that I’ve
had with many others despite having worked in SF for several years now.

~~~
FussyZeus
It shouldn't be the workers job to maintain those ethics, though. Don't get me
wrong I'm all for unionizing and all the benefits it brings, but it's not the
worker's responsibility to ensure business behaves ethically; that's the job
of regulation. They shouldn't have the _option_ to behave unethically in the
first place, and the determining factor should absolutely not be if they can
find sufficient human resources willing to sacrifice their ethics to feed
themselves.

I'm all for whistle-blowers of course, but these companies aren't breaking the
law, and _that 's the core problem_.

~~~
numtel
Laws generally come from practice: first "de facto," (by force) then later "de
jure." (by law)

Those regulations will exist when there is less political friction required to
enact them. When workers unionize, they take the first step into "de facto"
practice.

~~~
dredmorbius
"De facto" does not mean "by force", but "in actuality":

 _especially : being such in effect though not formally recognized. "a de
facto state of war"_

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/de%20facto](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/de%20facto)

------
smaili
The only thing in my view that's making Silicon Valley darker is the clouds of
smoke that continue to haunt us every year from fires and the only answer we
have so far is to cut people's power.

~~~
quotemstr
PG&E's deliberate blackouts are the bay area's version of a cement truck
falling through the west side highway in 1970s New York. Both cases represent
the moment at which it became impossible to ignore the consequences of
postponing tough measures needed to solve chronic problems. Bay Area
governance has been dysfunctional for a very long time. Now the dysfunction
has begun to have severe concrete and physical consequences.

~~~
masonic
A better analogy is shooting a hostage to make your captors know you're
serious.

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bhl
Each new season of the show has been progressively less comedic and
entertaining to watch. However, I’m unable to disentangle whether this has
been because the content itself has worsened, or whether because reality has
caught up such that I can’t carelessly watch the show anymore. Comedy I’d
argue is like disappointment, greater when expectations and reality are
separated. In that sense, it parallels the ending of House of Cards.

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leed25d
I am reminded of the Peter Principle: "Cream rises to the top and then it
sours"

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gok
I find Manjoo generally pretty insufferable but this is actually a pretty
solid review.

------
known
In the past, America was not as unequal as it has become
[http://archive.is/QYuH9](http://archive.is/QYuH9)

