
Things you can't say in Silicon Valley (non-political version) - i_dont_know_
https://medium.com/@nimishgautam/things-you-cant-say-in-silicon-valley-non-political-version-174ea277736d
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notacoward
"Let's think things through before we dive into coding."

"'Enterprise' and 'legacy' shouldn't be insults. Those are the systems that
actually run our economy."

"Microsoft is more innovative than Apple."

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syntaxing
I find it so interesting how different "tech" companies and "industrial"
companies are from each other (apparently engineers who work in the industry
such as OEMs are not really "tech" from what I read in the media, _shrug_ ). I
worked from startup (that was working on only hardware) to multi-billion
"life-style" companies, and I never hangout with my coworkers after work, let
alone beer-bashes. I have a coworker who won't even come to free Christmas
lunches. It's just expected where we can talk and joke during work, but when
it comes to personal time, its personal. Also as a MechE, people tend to
listen to you more when you're more experienced (typically older), not the
other way around. People I work with understand while dreams are important, it
does not feed your family. I really want to get into the software side of
things but the culture from what I read is almost repulsive...

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notacoward
Almost? ;) I think my Silicon Valley employer has a great culture in a lot of
ways, but the whole "not just your employer but your whole world" attitude
still bugs me. I also threw myself into work every waking moment when I was
younger. I was also happy for my coworkers to be my primary social partners as
well. Those were great years, but that kind of thing stops working once you
have a family. Treating people with families as exceptions to the overall
company culture - even if they're pretty well tolerated exceptions - is ageist
and not OK.

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syntaxing
I think the biggest reason for this is because Silicon Valley has an abundance
of younger workers (relatively speaking). When you're young, you spend
literally every moment working to strive for your ambitions. When I got older,
I started to learn that every hour you spend at work is one less hour for you
to spend on something meaningful to your personal life. At the end of the day,
working long hours is just not worth it. There's literally nothing to show for
it at the end of the day. You make less per hour. Your family hates you. And
you have no personal life. The only people that really benefit from this
mentality is the owners and investors and this is so unfair and toxic to the
workers.

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notacoward
Agreed. To be fair, though, this is neither new nor limited to Silicon Valley.
The most severe case of this attitude that I've encountered during my career
was in Ann Arbor thirty years ago. Exploitation of young workers, both high-
and low-skill, goes back much further than that. At least I didn't live in a
literal company town, or work in a literal sweat shop.

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zaarn
Interestingly I agree with these sentences (sans not being 30 yet and not
having kids and leaving at precisely 5:30)

I want to start a product because I think it'll be useful and I have bills to
pay, I concern myself with user privacy first and foremost when designing and
I don't want to fall into the trap of doing an "apple design". I don't want to
scale either, I want to have a healthy and slow growth, maybe not even grow
beyond a point. From a pure business standpoint these things are irrational
(except paying bills) but personally I find them important.

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quadcore
> maybe not even grow beyond a point

Meaning you'd refuse access to your product to customers?

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zaarn
I don't really see the problem with that. It is not a requirement for a
business to constantly grow or seek the maximum amount of customers. If I make
some profit without growing, I'm satisfied, especially if my existing
customers are satisfied.

(And there are many ways to control growth beyond just "refusing access")

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quadcore
What would you get from controlling growth? Existing customers more happy?
Anything else? Just curious.

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zaarn
Less work, better customer relations, etc.

I personally believe that a small business is just better at making customers
happy than a big business (atleast for a lot of things on the internet)

~~~
quadcore
Less work is great.

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ecshafer
"maybe having an entire c-suite with less than 10 employees is premature."

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smsm42
Sorry, but it sounds like bunk - out of top 10, I've said most myself and
heard others to say it. Well, except the beer bash thing, I must admit -
though I have had coworkers that did not drink alcohol (and nobody resented
them for that), I didn't really hear anyone claiming beer bash can't be fun.
So I guess 1 out of 10 is kinda plausible?

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linkmotif
Ironically this is political as well just not civic political but office/work
political instead (although really what’s the difference if you think about
it? Not much IMO). You can’t have a “Things You Can’t Say” that isn’t
political in one way or another. Man is a political animal.

