
Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem - jmacd
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303661404579175712015473766-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMzEwNDMyWj
======
jerf
A Guy Said Something That Freaked Me Out So The Wall Street Journal Would Like
To Remind Silicon Valley On Behalf Of The Establishment That It Is Not The
Establishment And It Should Stay Aware Of Its Place

------
Glyptodon
Silicon Valley may have an arrogance problem, but Wall Street, DC, Hollywood,
and the mainstream media have pretty much ruined the United States of America,
so pardon me for being mostly unmoved when an ancient and beholden behemoth of
the Murdochian trumpet parade decides to bellow it.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think there is an arrogance problem, and it arises when MBAs from Ivy League
schools, lawyers who worked their way through the byzantine federal government
legal and lobbying system, Hollywood moguls who have mostly fueled their
careers on deceptive accounting, and heads of large moribund media
organizations, suddenly decide that they need to get in on this whole tech
thing, almost invariably at the executive level, yet lack even basic knowledge
of how computers, the internet, software, or for that matter, online
marketing, work.

~~~
jstandard
You left engineers who think their command of technology makes them superior
to all of these "recent" luddite invaders off the list. Your comment reflects
the essence of what a large part of the article criticizes, an insular
technologist culture that feels most of its ailments come from without. I
agree that I've seen some of the folks you mention parading around, but have
run into even more technology folks who think their hot new startup is far
more important than anything else someone could be working on.

~~~
ojbyrne
Actually I agree with you somewhat, but in my experience a lot of what they're
doing is trying to hype their thing, because that's the game they're playing.
Underneath there's a huge amount of self-doubt.

Whereas the people I'm talking about, underneath there's a huge amount of
noblesse oblige.

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projectileboy
I think this is a fifth-level recycling of progressively more sensationalistic
reporting about a talk that was, I thought, quite humble and thought-
provoking. I expect this kind of journalistic garbage in the tech press and in
lesser (read: most) mainstream news outlets; I definitely do _not_ expect it
from the WSJ. I know it was merely an opinion piece, but still very
disappointing.

~~~
AsymetricCom
Can you explain to me the opinion here? I think it's very cut-and-dry telling
like it is. SV needs customers and customers are in US, living US ways. Where
is the opinion?

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mehrdada
Interestingly, I do not even think the main point of the talk is to actively
seek independence for Silicon Valley, but rather, it's simply projecting a
future that will happen, and in fact, is mostly a continuation of the trend
that's been going on for a while. It's not a matter of if, but when and how.
Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations, and
"code" becomes the de facto law in many contexts. This insight suggests that
you'll have leverage if you build things that will facilitate life in that
future society that will inevitably happen.

What I do not see in this talk directly is arrogance. That is not to say that
people in Silicon Valley are not arrogant. This talk is not.

Also, I personally think the WSJ article is pointless and whiny. Even if
Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is quite
justified. That's not hard to see. Just look at the appreciation rates of
stocks by category in the past 5 years, for instance.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Even if Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is
> quite justified."_

Uhhhh... Way to prove the point, man.

> _" Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations"_

Yes and no. And this is part of Silicon Valley's arrogance: it is so utterly
full of itself that it has usurped the entirety of the word "technology".

Think about it for a second, step back from your day to day writing code and
think about the word "technology". We software people occupy a _tiny_ portion
of tech, even though we're so loud and so good at attracting attention to
ourselves that it seem to everyone else (and us) that we _are_ technology.

Forget nanotech, forget good old mechanical engineering, forget aerospace,
forget biotech, forget electric, civil, geological engineering. Apparently
those don't exist, and the only technology that matters is code.

What a load of shit, and I say that as someone who writes code for a living.

We are part of a much, much greater whole. We do interesting things,
occasionally they are immensely impactful, 99.9% of the rest of the time it's
really not.

There's a old Chinese parable: "the frog at the bottom of the well" \- about a
frog stuck at the bottom of a well, who is immensely self-satisfied with his
situation, because the rest of the world is just one boring little blue
circle.

~~~
mehrdada
> Uhhhh... Way to prove the point, man.

I am not SV.

The point I am trying to make is that it is irrelevant that SV comes across as
arrogance. Certainly not worthy of a WSJ article. Similarly, you can say that
the article comes from an arrogant mindset the same way.

Silicon Valley might be "arrogant", but that's not necessarily a "problem".
The premise of the headline is incorrect -- and hypocritical to say the least.

> Forget nanotech, forget good old mechanical engineering, forget aerospace,
> forget biotech, forget electric, civil, geological engineering. Apparently
> those don't exist, and the only technology that matters is code.

I put "code" is in quotes, in case you did not notice, and Silicon Valley has
welcomed more industries than just cut-and-dry coding. By no means I believe
code is the only important technology out there. (That said, while this is
beside the point, code is an increasingly critical part of those other
disciplines you mentioned.)

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brandonb
There's an excellent Quora thread on this with 34 answers:
[http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-
people-i...](http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-in-
Silicon-Valley-arrogant)

People cite everything from arrogance as a defense mechanism against failure,
to the necessity of entrepreneurial delusion, to youth, to denying that people
in SV are arrogant at all.

~~~
nextstep
And I think we're starting to see all those same arguments made here in this
comment thread.

~~~
smtddr
I haven't even read the article, but I did just read this[1] and I agree very
strongly that SV; particularly developers, are very difficult to approach.
Everything & everyone is below them; not worth their time. If you lack any
detail of some domain-knowledge of whatever treny new tech you're trying to
ask about, you just get insulted(maybe accompanied by a vague hint at the
answer). Basically, like this video[2].

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-
the-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-
things-about-working-at-
google-2013-11?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1#comment-52768b7d69bedd692a53c738)

2\.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI)

3\. ...really?
[http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png](http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png)

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wavesounds
Yeah "Silicon Valley has an Arrogance problem" not the Banks this rag is a
mouthpiece for that created the worst economic collapse since the great
depression and then held the American people hostage for Billions of dollars
in tax payer bailouts.

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sneak
The problem is that the WSJ's main premise about SV needing the rest of the US
is wrong. The internet is decentralizing that control faster than SV's economy
of locality can produce more.

Look at Berlin, Kiev, Riga, and a dozen other places. SV's monopoly on world-
changing does not have "USA" as a dependency.

Indeed, soon if not already "not US-based" will be or already is a feature.

~~~
pratik661
Well Silicon Valley does need America's consumer market, legal infrastructure,
security, and skilled work force. The author of the article is not wrong in
that sense. How successful would your start up be if you had to waste time
worrying about your clients breaching contracts (with no legal resource for
you to recover the money owed to you)? Or waste time worrying about populist
policies destroying your business model? Or figuring out ways to cope with
extortionary behavior from local organized crime/and or government?

These are all legitimate problems businesses in other parts of the world face
(though not in places like Germany or UK).

Even the markets developed countries like Germany are not as large as the US
consumer market. Having close, easy access to the biggest consumer market in
the world has its perks.

~~~
bigd
> skilled work force ... see H1B slavery

> legal infrastructure ... see patent trolling

------
balajis
Sheesh. Balaji here. Clearly this touched a nerve, so will be writing on this
at some length. But this is the bit I don't get:

    
    
      But when I asked him what harms techies faced that might   
      prompt such a drastic response, he couldn't offer much 
      evidence.
    
      He pointed to a few headlines in the national press warning 
      that robots might be taking over people's jobs. These, he 
      said, were evidence of the rising resentment that 
      technology will foster as it alters conditions across the 
      country and why Silicon Valley needs to keep an escape 
      hatch open.
    
      But I found Mr. Srinivasan's thesis to be naive. According 
      to the industry's own hype, technologies like robotics, 
      artificial intelligence, data mining and ubiquitous 
      networking are poised to usher in profound changes in how 
      we all work and live. I believe, as Mr. Srinivasan argues, 
      that many of these changes will eventually improve human 
      welfare.
    
      But in the short run, these technologies could cause 
      enormous economic and social hardships for lots of people. 
      And it is bizarre to expect, as Mr. Srinivasan and other 
      techies seem to, that those who are affected wouldn't 
      criticize or move to stop the industry pushing them.  
    

But that was actually exactly my point: as Farhad states, people may indeed
"move to stop the industry", so we need to keep an escape hatch open. A huge
chunk of the people here in the Valley are first or second generation
emigrants who picked up stakes from their home countries and currently work
from a laptop. They left their N home countries because those locales weren't
favorable to technology. Is it impossible to think that backlash could make it
necessary for us to leave an N+1st, as our ancestors (recent or distant) did?

I can only speak for myself, but the motivating emotion here isn't arrogance.
It's one part apprehension, knowing what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia,
the Indians in Uganda, and the Jews in Europe. And it's one part hope,
thinking that we can build something better with a clean slate, without 230
years of legacy infrastructure and cruft.

------
wavesounds
The talk did not "dismiss non-techies as unimportant to the nation's future".

BSS was talking about finding new places for trying new things if they aren't
allowed in America. Or even within America finding new ways of trying new
technologies without affecting the entire society all at once.

This article is overly sensational and reactionary.

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DanielRibeiro
The talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" that the article mentions was
(also?) given at Startup School a few weeks ago:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)

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agrias
Srinivasan is orchestrating a lot of great work with Bioinformatics. In the
comments, it's very odd that people think the best and the brightest in SV are
only building tools that help give ads more exposure.

But then again I should probably stop reading WSJ comments, and that would
also probably get me called arrogant.

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agorabinary
Effectively argues, to use an analogy, that China with its explosive market-
based growth needs Western debtor nations to buy its stuff, and that
acknowledging its superior economic sustainability is "arrogant". And the
"paper belt" isn't the arrogant one?

I view this author's attitude a lot like I view that of Fareek Zakaria, whose
tripe we're all force-fed in high school: "We may be entering a post-paper-
belt world, sure, but we can't be certain how this will all turn out so it's
best to speak moderately and carry around a copy of the New York Times."

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paul_f
Is there a single example of arrogance in this entire article? My guess is the
headline write/editor was having a bad day. I don't think that was the intent
of the writer.

~~~
jmacd
It does feel a bit like the whole article is trying to justify the title. I
think it should fall squarely under the Editorial byline...

~~~
vbuterin
It's an ideological bible-thumping parade. Every ideology has people who do
these from time to time; progressives, conservatives, authoritarians,
libertarians, everyone. The point is not to convey information; the point is
to say (1) this threat exists, and (2) transmit the author's feeling of moral
indignation to people who are on the same "moral wavelength". If you're an
authoritarian, seeing some post on reason.com rambling about the evils of
coercion will just seem silly to you; that's the point, you're not the target.

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AndrewKemendo
>The government funded the early technologies that led to the Internet,
venture capitalists are financed by nontechies' retirement funds, and laws
passed in Washington can determine the tech industry's legal future.

Right, and the Spanish and British founded modern America, what is your point?
There is quite a bit of precedent for taking the ball from the previous
players and starting your own game to their exclusion.

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babesh
The question I have is what are the values that you want these experimental
societies to live by. Tech for tech's sake is pointless.

Sounds like Page and Thiel want to be the experimenters and someone else to be
the guinea pigs. I doubt those two want to be in those societies other than as
dictators. Too much to lose.

We just need a new frontier like the moon or mars.

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001sky
SV needs biz models that dont rely on the the assets controlled by the largest
lobbying groups in the US congress.

~~~
pvdm
Military industrial complex, big pharma, carbon/energy complex, insurance, big
finance. what else ?

------
Zigurd
One thing that goes completely unsaid in the WSJ article is that people want
real representation and self-determination, and the government, and maybe
America itself, is too unwieldy to deliver on that.

Small democracies can be restored. Big ones... maybe not.

------
runewell
Yes, it's SV that is arrogant. Hopefully we can one day match the humbleness
and deep community-oriented spirit known as Wall Street. What a joke.

------
Sentil
Split California into North and South states, so that influence of Los Angeles
Hollywood on valley will reduce.

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Sindrome
If SV has a arrogance problem then does Wall Street/Hollywood have an
arrogance epidemic?

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keepkalm
A peaceful exit, on our barge. Good day sir.

------
michaelochurch
Here's what really makes me angry. These jackasses who are going out and using
technology's success to spout insane pro-rich politics, making asses of
themselves in all sorts of creative ways (cf. Sean Parker's wedding, and that
"jungle party" with the caged tiger) are a bunch of old-style corporate
executives who, after invading technology, have given technologists a bad
reputation in the country at large. Our image is being tainted by their
arrogance.

Look, it's not the nerdy engineers (the ones who love technology, who would be
in it even if it weren't "hot") who are responsible for this crass, New Money
horror-show. It's the carpetbaggers who failed into technology because
banking, hedge funds, and consulting didn't want them. They don't really
belong in the first place. They're an invasive species in tech, and they're
the ones creating this arrogance problem. They capture the lion's share of the
value, set themselves up as the elite (when tech is "hot") and make a whole
set of unrelated people look bad.

However, I agree. The Sand Hill Road elite is utterly unfit to manage a bag of
rock salt, much less run the world. Those sad wankers built a society in the
Bay Area where the software engineers building the place can't even buy a
house-- and they want to call government ineffective? Crackah, please.

~~~
yoloswag
Fuck Sand Hill Road, fuck TechCrunch, fuck YC, fuck every venture fund,
accelerator, and all the hype.

They are all distractions. All of them. If I start my own company I'm going to
do it without all of that frivolous shit. I'm tired of disruption. I'm tired
of "changing the world", "changing the way we X", and all the blithering
idiots who made Snapchat a $4b company. Think about it. Dropbox, Facebook,
Twitter and all of the other successful companies would have succeeded
_despite_ all of this shit. They were awesome ideas. They would have succeeded
anyway.

I refuse to participate. I'm tired of it. I can't be the only one who's
disillusioned with all of this nonsense.

~~~
Afforess
Given your username, I can't tell if serious or jest.

~~~
gtremper
Poe's law.

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eriksank
Balaji Srinivasan makes a lot of sense. The paper belt used to run the show.
They are now losing that power and trying to claw it back with yet more
paperwork. I am entirely favourable to the idea of curtailing, thwarting, and
thoroughly undermining the regulatory bullies in the filthy paper belt. They
have no legitimacy.

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crassus
Here's the original talk for anyone that prefers original content to the
"journalist telephone" game
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)

