
Silicon Valley Techies Still Think They're the Good Guys. They're Not - rbanffy
https://www.wired.com/story/the-other-tech-bubble/?mbid=social_tw_backchannel
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lzy
Previous discussion 5 days ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944084)

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ukulele
I've worked in Silicon Valley for the last 10 years, both as entrepreneur and
investor, and I have rarely encountered the bad behavior described in this
article. In my experience, the success stories are primarily by hardworking,
modest, highly intelligent people who see an opportunity and just go to work
on it for a long time.

That said, I'd imagine that a reporter is constantly exposed to the bad apple
"bros" who view Silicon Valley as a get-rich-quick, fake it til you make it
process. And by extension, this is what most of the outside world sees. After
all, what's interesting or noteworthy about a bunch of people just working
hard for a long time?

To bring it full circle: I've had a slightly (but not overly) negative view of
Wall Street to date, but now I'm curious as to whether it was a similar story
there. I feel like there is inherently more value in people building
technology and companies than in buying and selling financial products, but
I'm obviously biased.

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rbanffy
I had the same impression, very common at least in Brazil, of civil servants.
You always read about incompetence and corruption, so, it's natural to assume
all civil servants are either corrupt, or incompetent, or both.

It was not until I started giving courses (Zope, Plone) to the IT staff of
government agencies that I realized how dedicated, competent, principled, and,
many times, idealistic (making much less money than they'd do in the general
market takes a lot of determination) they are.

Of course, there are bad apples. It's just so good apples are far less
interesting than the really rotten ones.

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nitwit005
> Evidence is mounting that that the world is no longer fascinated with
> Silicon Valley

That would be absolutely great. I'm rather tired of the excessive media focus.

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erik_landerholm
Omg, who cares if wired writes a story about your startup?!? No story has ever
made a company...

