
Silicon Valley Is Not a Fad - Elof
https://medium.com/@duncanr/silicon-valley-is-not-a-fad-5979bd950615
======
throwaway713
I have always been interested in computers and programming since I was little
and made it a goal to move to Silicon Valley when I graduated from high school
11 years ago. Now that I’m here and working at my dream job, it’s funny how
“mundane” it is (in a good, engineering sort of way). Wake up, go to work,
program and talk about technical things, then go home. Repeat the next day. My
day to day life is very unlike the TV show this place is based on (although
that craziness definitely exists around here for those looking for it, but
it’s not difficult to avoid). Sometimes it’s hard to believe this is the tech
capital of the world because the infrastructure is just so ordinary and
suburban looking.

Weirdly enough, I think my favorite thing about living here is the vegetation.
The quirky trees, the rolling hills, and the funky plants are just so
different than what you find in the rest of the U.S. My favorite pastime is
just driving around here on the weekend looking at it all.

~~~
westoque
It's not really the infrastructure that makes it Silicon Valley. In my 15
years of living here, it's the people. The concentration of tech companies
here and talent is astounding! This is the only place where every week there's
an interesting meetup with whatever tech of your choosing, be it Rails,
Clojure or with management, with how to design/UX, and agile. This is the only
place where a cafe is filled with tech people talking about their startups,
pitch, their stack, etc.

I have been to many places including different tech metropolitans, like
Berlin, but there's still nothing quite like Silicon Valley in terms of what I
said above.

Now, my only gripe is that the housing market is crazy. It's funny how only
the tech crowd get to afford to live here. I've seen families bunch together
just to afford rent.

~~~
navigatesol
> _This is the only place where a cafe is filled with tech people talking
> about their startups, pitch, their stack, etc._

How many people actually find this appealing?

To an outsider, this _is_ the joke of the Silicon Valley show: everybody is
always "talking business" and "crushing it", while the vast majority of
"engineering work" being done is mostly useless. The Silicon Valley lifestyle
is to me the other side of coin as the Wall Street lifestyle.

~~~
woah
I guess if you don’t like software it’s not a great place

~~~
jjtheblunt
If you do like software, it's still not a great place, because of groupthink.
disclaimer : worked with a high rank in a FAANG company for several
years...loved that microcosm, but quit because of the boredom of groupthink.

------
Apocryphon
Cheery optimism and pride in a place are all well and good. This article feels
like it's from a different time, perhaps a decade before. Certainly, there has
been a lot of negative press of Silicon Valley in recent years. Much of that
has been well-deserved. For years, engineers have pretended to be above the
petty tribalism of politics (even as we bikeshedded and fought our editor holy
wars), only for the revelations of the last few years of SV lobbying and
collusion with the surveillance state to come out.

Of course, this article is more about SV as a cultural place and ideal, and
not a political force, more about Manhattan than Wall Street. But it still
brushes off high rents as normal, something ever-present. Meanwhile, a San
Jose city councilman and his family are evicted because of high rents:

[https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-housing-crisis-
council...](https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-housing-crisis-
councilmember-raul-peralez-evicted-from-his-home/)

I grew up in San Jose. (I remember when we were the capital of Silicon Valley,
not San Francisco.) We now live in a very different Bay Area from that of the
irrationally exuberant '90s. I think positive profiles of SV have to be
tempered by realistic coverage of the many, many problems this place is
experiencing. At the very least, acknowledgement of these problems- and not
breezy dismissal- can spur change to make things better. So we can build a
Silicon Valley worthy of these utopian fantasies.

~~~
ido
I still don't quite understand how it's economical for all these huge
companies to hire engineers in SV/SFBA for 2-3x as much as in other western
markets, and probably more like 10x of non-western markets when the internet
to a large extent mitigates a lot of the down- and upsides of geography.

By that I don't necessarily mean everything should be outsourced to India -
even Vancouver (same language, same timezone, similar cultural background) has
drastically lower developer wages than SFBA & plenty of talent.

~~~
kitsunesoba
I think it has to do with desired quality. Hiring high quality engineers can
be a difficult task even in the massive talent pool present in SV, and it’s
only going to be more difficult in cities with smaller pools. That’s not to
say that quality doesn’t exist in these places, but it’s certainly not as
readily available.

~~~
ido
These other major tech-centers have less well-paying competition than SV as
well. As someone who has done hiring in several companies in Berlin & Vienna
the difficulty mostly lies in the fact companies don't want to pay much.

If you are willing to pay 10-15% above market rates (which is still 1/2 of
SFBA market rates) there is no shortage of senior engineers in Berlin.

------
networkimprov
There's another characteristic that's apparent to only some of us who live
here, but many of those who don't...

How out of touch many here are with the rest of the nation's and world's
concerns, aspirations, feelings, values, and needs.

For example, we now know that the Internet has a corrupting influence on civil
society that's stronger than its capacity to uplift it.

~~~
Judgmentality
> For example, we now know that the Internet has a corrupting influence on
> civil society that's stronger than its capacity to uplift it.

You believe the Internet is a net negative for society? I think it's easily
one of the greatest inventions in all of history.

~~~
ctz
> I think it's easily one of the greatest inventions in all of history.

Really? I'm surprised you rank it above inventions which allowed the
agricultural, industrial or transport revolutions to happen.

Personally the Internet as an invention would rank way below the automobile,
wheel, plough, spinning jenny, telegraph, telephone, broadcast television,
aeroplane, etc.

~~~
marviel
do you think if the internet had somehow existed prior to these inventions,
their creation would have been hastened?

~~~
base698
No, the inventors would become influencers selling CBD oil.

------
sumanthvepa
Silicon Valley is not a fad, but not quite a place either. As the author
describes it, the drab office complexes are not quite what makes Silicon
Valley what it is. In my opinion, a person living half a world away, Silicon
Valley is a collective state of mind in a place with the right resources and
context. It has talent, capital, and the infrastructure, both physical and
intangible. It has free markets, great universities, rule of law, safety,
democracy, and most importantly an acceptance of a certain kind of risk
taking. This combination is surprisingly hard to recreate. As an Indian living
half a planet away, I look upon the place with a mixture of admiration, awe
and envy.

~~~
ido

        It has free markets, great universities, rule of law,
        safety, democracy, and most importantly an acceptance 
        of a certain kind of risk taking. This combination is
        surprisingly hard to recreate.
    

These all exist to a large extent in a lot of major (and not so major!)
western cities. Not that unique.

~~~
AstralStorm
The unique thing here is the same thing that is unique in Shenzhen in China -
how much of everything is packed close together reducing externalities and
improving communication.

If the is business in the category, you're liable to find it in the SV, even
more likely to find it in the Chinese city.

~~~
navigatesol
> _If the[re] is business in the category, you 're liable to find it in the
> SV_

This in an interesting take. My understanding is that SV caters to a very
particular business: software. Sure that business is growing (eating the
world), but Silicon Valley doesn't strike me as "all business friendly",
especially when everyone is trying to grow at all costs, while the rest of the
country (and world) operates on small, sustainable businesses.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Yeah, I recently watch a German-produced special about Silicon Valley that
concluded Google engineers learn how to network by attending Burning Man. [0]

It's obvious to identify the product of Silicon Valley companies because they
generally are marketed globally. But it's really hard to convey what it's like
to live and work here. Generally, it's nothing like you might imagine. The
architecture is mundane, the weather is great, the traffic stifling. That can
describe many places, so then you have to talk about housing costing more than
anywhere in the world (at this scale), and $12,000 bottles of Cognac at
Costco.

In the end, it's the people who live here. Generally well paid,
disproportionately wealthy (but not nearly everyone), probably from another
country, not here to show off what they have, but rather, what they can
achieve.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQy0ZCx3UCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQy0ZCx3UCY)

~~~
01100011
> The architecture is mundane

I take issue with this. For most of my career I worked in a standard office
building. False ceiling tiles, cubicles, rectangular concrete 'tilt and pour'.
It served the job well. It was relatively quiet, comfortable, intimate and
fostered my productivity.

Now I work in an architectural masterpiece of modern green engineering. It is
loud, impersonal, distracting, and not at all conducive to actually getting
work done. It's like the people who designed the building hated engineers and
typical engineering personalities and set out to design a building to torture
them.

Apple has a similar problem. Apple's senior vice-president of hardware
technologies Johny Srouji refused to move his team into their new, piece of
shit exercise in architectural masturbation.

~~~
AstralStorm
The main thing to blame is open plan... Read: cheaping out on walls. This
includes undamped glass walls and doors.

~~~
Cthulhu_
And I just can't figure out if it actually IS cheaper - I mean you're dealing
with interior architects after all, as well as the glass walls which can't be
cheap either.

Plus, personnel costs (especially in Silicon Valley) are a multiple of floor
space, so I can't understand that argument either.

But then, so far, I've never had someone who calls the shots on the open
office model go public on why they went for it. I mean the cynic in me thinks
it's about cutting costs (but then why do they have developers in SV instead
of outsourcing it?) or showing off (open offices look good on pictures / when
the manager walks around in it).

~~~
njepa
I don't think it has much to do with money. These companies either have or are
already burning trough a lot of it. It is about careerists avoiding
accountability. That is why you hire contractors, have open offices and host
in the cloud. As long as no one can blame you for anything, which they will to
further their own career, you will make it to the next level.

------
dblock
This article makes me sad. While not a fad, Silicon Valley is the ultimate
manifestation of a place where Americans and contagiously the rest of tech
workers value work over life.

------
erikpukinskis
The prime question for me, as it relates to real estate, is:

"Will the majority of Silicon Valley's economic activity ever move to virtual
locations?"

I.e., will over half of the meetings at Facebook, Google, etc, ever happen in
a game world, with participants logging in with HMDs?

It's hard to make a conclusive prediction, but I have an extremely difficult
time justifying a "NO" with even 51/49 odds. I would put the odds at least at
10/1 "YES" but again that's pure speculation.

The only real justification for a strong "NO" is something like "It has been
tried before with other telecom tech and it didn't work" but we don't even had
access gaze tracking yet, which science shows is crucial for language. We seem
assured to have a blistering release of body tracking tech over the next 10
years, and the claim "none of it will change teleconferencing materially"
seems impossible to justify.

The counterclaim, "teleconferencing will hit feature parity with in-person
meeting for 90% of corporate interactions within 10 years" to me is very easy
to entertain.

And if the counterclaim is true, what does that mean for Bay Area real estate?
I can't justify a million dollar mortgage if there's even a 50/50 change of
this outcome.

HMD teleconferencing vs. meetings in conference rooms seems like a classic
disruptive technology situation. Right now HMDs are unacceptably poor in
comparison. But they have key advantages the incumbent tech (in-person
meetings) can never match: no commute, exponentially more and cheaper housing
options, muting, easier and better access to data and visualization in the
meeting space, faster transition between workstation and meeting, can include
people on other continents, infinite meeting spaces available at all times,
etc.

This seems to me the biggest looming change to Bay Area culture, period. I am
surprised it's not more discussed.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
and a lot of it has to do with people's willingness to use those remote
methods, and the culture at those companies. Right now there's a lot of young
people working in tech that don't have much incentive to be remote. But, in
the coming decades, some of them will want families of their own. At that
point a desire to move out of the bay area may overcome their resistance to
working remotely.

------
bentossell
“Y Combinator, like Silicon Valley itself, tends to produce great innovation
with a generous pinch of bullshit.”

Interesting way to round off the post!

------
sureaboutthis
I've always said that Silicon Valley is the Hollywood of the tech industry.
When one wants to make a film in Hollywood, and the script calls for a special
piece of equipment or prop that's never been made before, one can walk down
the street and find three people who can make one for you in an hour because
Hollywood is where the movie people congregate.

The same is true for the Valley.

------
coleifer
Nice read, thoughtful.

Another thoughtful read, from the other side:
[https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-
valle...](https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/)

------
mastazi
Suggested reading: a long-form article about the history of Silicon Valley
seen through the lives of the author's own family (Kim-Mai Cutler, 2014):
[https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/silicon-valley-lost-and-
fo...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/silicon-valley-lost-and-found/)

------
dnautics
biased, since I know the author. Think it's a rather mediocre piece, but I
liked this quip a lot:

"It's easy to say silicon valley is full of 'tech bros' if that's the cohort
you surround yourself with"

~~~
navigatesol
> _It 's easy to say silicon valley is full of 'tech bros' if that's the
> cohort you surround yourself with_

Everyone hates tech bros, but I don't think tech bros know they're tech bros.

~~~
burger_moon
Silicon Valley where diversity and inclusion is welcomed, unless you look like
someone we don't like, then we hate you, and get out.

------
ralph84
I just wish finance would take off again so all the mercenaries looking for a
quick buck but with no personal affinity for technology would have somewhere
else to go.

~~~
BadassFractal
When is this sentiment justified and when is it just gatekeeping?

~~~
pm90
Look at the cohorts of Product Managers, Security "Specialists" (Disclosure:
they're not engineers, experts, its a totally made up title), Certified Buzzy
Buzzwordingtons etc. Its not very hard to see, as the OP pithely pointed out,
that Tech seems to be the only place today where its possible to strike gold.

------
freddref
The last paragraph includes this about Y Combinator: "in my opinion it’s also
incubated a lot of nonsense." and "tends to produce great innovation with a
generous pinch of bullshit."

Is there some backstory missing here?

------
purplezooey
If we could put a dent in the housing thing, it would be a wonderful place.
ATM we are helpless before it.

------
axaxs
I don't mean to insult a PHD, but this piece reads like a middle school
persuasion piece. It's pure 'why my city is great', with little objective
evidence.

~~~
avinium
A PhD is a piece of paper, not something that elevates the holder to the
position of a deity. I don't think it should even be mentioned as something
that might temper your criticism.

(General comment only, I haven't actually read the article yet).

~~~
geggam
PhD's who do silly things deserve more criticism because they are supposed to
know better, and its funny watching their reaction that you dare.

------
gnicholas
> _In the late two-thousands, at a party in the Mission District_

Do people refer to the first decade of this century as "the two thousands"?

~~~
chrisco255
Personally excited to enter the twenties so we can refer to decades by
standard nomenclature again!

~~~
cylinder
Wow I hadn't thought about that. I also think most people haven't yet realised
this is the last year of the current decade!

~~~
falsedan
wait what happened to March-Dec of 2019?

Since there was no 0 AD, we count decades from 1 - 10, not 0 - 9. yes that's
stupid

~~~
acheron
No. Nobody ever does that.

We count centuries that way, because we say "1st century", "20th century",
"21st century". (That is, "20th century AD".) Ordinal numbers, based on the
year 1 AD.

Nobody says "178th decade", or "213th decade". Decades are cardinal numbers.
Nobody starts "the decade" in the 1 year.

~~~
falsedan
> _Nobody start "the decade" in the 1 year._

wow rude, I do. I think the 60s started 1961-01-01 and understand that people
usually mean "the years that give a quotient of 196 when divided by 10".

I understand that we use ordinals to refer to centuries, also I understand how
that's unrelated to which specific years are in a decade/century/millennium

fun fact the Australian constitution came into force on the 1st of January,
1901, aligning with the starting boundary of the 20th century.

~~~
cylinder
So if someone mentioned something nice happening in 1960 you'd say "yeah the
Fifties were great!" ?

~~~
falsedan
wow rude again, that's not 'assuming the best intent of the commentator' and
is against this site's code of conduct

> _[I] understand that people usually mean "the years that give a quotient of
> 196 when divided by 10"._

since I'm not a pedantic sicko that gets off on telling people they're wrong
and lording my hugely advanced intellect over them, I use human words for
genuine natural interactions.

------
quickthrower2
"You read a lot. We like that." meh!

