
How the world came to hate Silicon Valley - dolphenstein
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/how-the-world-came-to-hate-silicon-valley-20140304-3417q.html
======
apsec112
The real story here is not the protests, which are _very_ small. (Compare to
the Iraq War protests, which involved _ten times_ the _entire population of
SF_.)

The real story is how a certain section of the media loves to blow up anything
anti-Google, no matter how trivial or insignificant (a few dozen people
staging a rally? two months ago?), into The Biggest Problem Ever. One imagines
that they make big advertising dollars from spreading their ideology of hate,
just as William Randolph Hearst did a few generations back. Or maybe Bill
Gates ran over their puppy back in 1982 and now they've dedicated their lives
to petty revenge.

"Look Who’s Gawking: Inside Nick Denton’s phony, hypocritical class war
against tech workers": [http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-
nick-de...](http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick-dentons-
phony-hypocritical-class-war-against-tech-workers/)

~~~
noamsml
I live in SF, and I can confirm that I'll walk past people and overhear the
same fragments of conversation, talking about the buses and gentrification.
The tone varies, but just because not everyone is protesting doesn't mean the
ideas aren't out there.

------
steven2012
Certainly Silicon Valley has their fair share of douchebags, but the media
hype surrounding this is simply nonsense. The world hates Silicon Valley?
You're telling me that somehow all these SV douchebags outweigh Hollywood or
Wall Street douchebags? Come on, now.

~~~
michaelochurch
The ethics of the power players in Silicon Valley are far worse than those on
Wall Street. (I don't know dick about Hollywood other than its reputation.)

Wall Streeters are greedy, but they don't go out of their way to ruin peoples'
careers (except in the movies). They'll do a lot of things to get that $10
million bonus, but they don't hold long-term grudges and wreck careers of
people who've since flown away from them. A trader will get you fired if it
suits his career goals, because he is ruthless, but once you're out of his
way, he'll take an active interest in making sure you get a better job
afterward. Valley people, when they separate, tend to make it really ugly:
lots of gossip, negative references, long-term grudges and other nonsense that
wouldn't exist among people who cared more about themselves winning than about
other people losing.

Silicon Valley attracts people who want power, and those tend to be worse than
those who want money. It also attracts, more than nerds, people who come on
_specifically to take advantage of nerds_. The latter set tend to be horrible,
and to rise fast.

Finally, there's the false poverty effect. If you make $10 million in a year,
you're rich. If you're a trust-fund kid, but you're only paying yourself a
$25,000 salary because that's all your investors will let you take out, you
feel more entitled to fuck people over because you're "the little guy" and
because, being "scrappy" (or "lean"), you "can't afford" the costs of being
ethical.

~~~
sskates
Whenever I read HN and see an extremely anti-startup comment I always know
it's from you. For a while I'd get angry reading your comments, but I'm
actually curious- What on earth happened between you and startups to make you
think they're a huge scam to take advantage of the unsuspecting?

I'm a nobody who came to Silicon Valley and has done relatively well for
himself as a founder. I've seen many, many other founders with similar
stories. We raised a significant amount of money and can spend it however we
want. The worst I can say about my experience with investors is sometimes they
can be arrogant. The ones that did invest in us have been nothing but
incredibly humble and helpful. But going out of their way to screw someone
over? I just haven't ever seen anything close to that happen to anyone in the
3 years I've been here.

I used to work in finance where they're much more ruthless. I have a classmate
from undergrad who recently was arrested for "stealing trade secrets" from a
hedge fund:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/02/19/analyst-c...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/02/19/analyst-
charged-with-stealing-quant-trading-models-from-major-hedge-fund/). Who knows
what actually happened but that sort of stuff would never fly in Silicon
Valley.

That's not to say I have the correct perspective but I always see these
generalizations coming from you that seem so far off from my reality that I
wonder what's going on. What happened to you?

~~~
michaelochurch
I've written about it at length already and don't choose to relive it in
detail, but I worked for an _extremely_ unethical startup.

In 3 months, I saw... bait-and-switch hiring all over the place, multiple
people hired into the same management role, and (after I left) a CEO who spent
months trying to destroy my reputation.

At 3 months, I was brought into a room with HR and the CTO. Upper management
wanted to get rid of early hires with "too much" equity and wanted to pull my
technical credibility to justify their firing, but the documents I was asked
to sign constituted perjury (blaming people for nonexistent technical
shortfalls, claiming that I directly managed people I didn't even know, etc.)
Some of the claims would have required revising my past and saying I'd
consulted (a consulting VP/Eng, I can't make this shit up) with the company
before the start date (in order to make the rest of the story check out). They
fired me for refusing to do it. When I pointed out that I had grounds for a
lawsuit, the CEO threatened to pull family connections and bribe judges.

I'm sorry, but I don't do "We're giving you 10 reports, and your job is to
fuck over all of them over the next two months." I may or may not be a leader
(that's not for me to decide) but I am surely not a henchman.

This is one of the VC darlings and although it was almost a down round (barely
above flat) and dilution was heavy, they raised again in late 2013 (almost 2
years after that happened). Granted, this last VC round is essentially a
severance, giving the company a couple years to run on fumes while its
executives find better things to do with their lives. But I didn't get a
severance, so why should they?

Now, I think companies that are _that_ shitty are pretty rare, even in the VC-
funded world. That might be bottom 1% overall and bottom-10% in the VC-funded
world. Even most startups and ex-startups (e.g. Google) aren't nearly as bad,
but there is a certain crappiness to the tech world in terms of how regular
people are treated. Companies care a lot about image (being sexy, "cool", VC
darlings, whatever) but not about long-standing reputation-- at least, on the
latter, not enough to seriously value doing the right thing.

The old Silicon Valley was a pay-it-forward economy. Even when you separated,
you were good to other people. If you had to cut people in your startup, you
introduced them to investors. People helped each other out. You didn't fuck
over a talented engineer, because you might want to work with him 5 or 10
years later. That's gone now.

I do have to offer this disclaimer, though. I never worked on the West Coast.
Maybe it's different out there, but the things I've heard convince me that
it's not that different, and I've definitely met dodgy characters in
California.

Day to day, what angers me is the general lack of respect for engineers in the
"new" Silicon Valley. I'm talking about the startups offering pathetic equity
slices, and about the companies that are actually very business-driven posing
as "tech companies". Engineering and research talents aren't really valued,
despise the mouth-honor paid to them.

~~~
steven2012
"I do have to offer this disclaimer, though. I never worked on the West
Coast."

LOL okay I guess that explains it. I've been in the Bay Area since the dot-com
times, and the type of behavior you describe is something I've never seen, not
even once. I've worked for some real assholes, and I don't deny that this
probably happens here, but not often for it to be a discernible trend.

Yes, you had a bad experience, but no it's not all like that, at all. I work
for a YC startup, something I never thought I would do, and the cofounders are
genuine, smart and people I'm ready to put my career and financial future
behind even though I'm roughly 15 years older.

------
morgante
There is a clear cognitive dissonance in articles like this and the actions of
protestors. They highlight on the extreme wealth of certain
founders/executives, yet direct their wrath (and stones) on the entire tech
industry.

Regular Facebook employees aren't Mark Zuckerberg, and certainly aren't paid
like it. Most tech workers make less than twice the median family income in
the Bay Area—good pay, but not obscene.

If people have a problem with income inequality, they should be siding with
tech workers—we're way closer to barista wages than being in the 1%.

So why are tech workers the ones getting attacked? You can bet Larry Page
isn't taking the bus, but he's the one making the money.

~~~
joe_the_user
_They highlight on the extreme wealth of certain founders /executives, yet
direct their wrath (and stones) on the entire tech industry._

Not even, the protestors manage to direct their wrath at the employees low
enough level to be riding the shuttles.

It's pretty ironic seeing the ostensible radical leftists following the lead
of the Valley Wag's middle brow demagoguery.

~~~
epoxyhockey
_employees low enough level to be riding the shuttles_

Yes, SF's banking-class and politicians are loving this. The middle-class is
distracted fighting their middle-class peers.

~~~
waps
Are you really unable to see the problem is not "the banking class" and a few
politicians. The problem is thousands of developers making much more than
normal people, and a way too big fraction of them wanting to live right smack
downtown San Francisco ?

Or are you truly unable to see that you are not making anything remotely near
average wages ? That you are not middle class, and certainly also not working
as hard as the average middle classer ? You get sundays off, for one.

The result of these actions is people getting thrown into the streets by their
landlords. Here's a tip : there does not exist an argument that will make
people OK with that. Stop looking for it.

~~~
joe_the_user
I am sad to see someone actually falling for the claim that someone else being
willing to pay a higher price is to blame for the cycle of often illegal and
generally unconscionable evictions that have happened in San Francisco and
elsewhere.

I mean, the immediate cause is _landlords_ and the ultimate market cause is
the lack of housing in Silicon Valley. Tech workers in SF are just dominoes in
a chain.

And the cause for Tech workers being better paid is the failure of the average
workers to defend their wages. You could defend your living standard by the
left-wing means of unionization or by the right-wing means of providing more
value to your employer so if you just sit on your ass and attack higher paid
_workers_ , you deserve contempt from any point of view.

------
magicalist
Uh, except for a single mention of taxes in Britain, this is an article about
How San Francisco came to hate Silicon Valley. I mean, seriously, Valleywag
really capturing the zeitgeist of the common man? Jesus.

(I thought the plural "bricks through the window" in the subheadline was
particularly indicative, when as far as I know that was brick _singular_ )

The _world_ , meanwhile, follows a bit of news about tech companies, they have
opinions about some of the bigger ones, and they like taking sides over their
favorite phone brand, but they continue to steadfastly not care about Silicon
Valley. Seriously. Go on vacation, get out of the bubble, talk to people. They
don't even have an opinion on the place.

------
parennoob
Seriously, employees who ride buses to their 10-hour jobs who are probably
scrabbling to get some work done on the commute (those buses have wi-fi for a
reason) are causing "heightened anxiety about the widening income gap between
tech workers and "ordinary" citizens"?

These protesters are either misinformed or being deliberately malicious if
they are targeting the ordinary tech employee. At $39000 average spending per
year ($3250/month according to the article), how much do they exactly think SV
engineers get paid? At say, 100k, which would be considered pretty decent by
an SV engineer, the 28% tax bracket, leaves 72k actual income. Minus the
$39000 housing expenses mentioned, that's $33000/year, or $2750/month for
food, clothing, paying for your kids' education. etc. If your spouse doesn't
work, you will be living a pretty Spartan life. Hardly the kind of money you
imagine rich assholes throwing around, is it?

~~~
mercutio2
While I don't in any way think the antagonism towards tech workers make sense,
I don't think you're quite on target with your numbers.

A) income tax is progressive and continuous, you can't say $28k in taxes for
the 28% bracket (however, FICA and CA income taxes mean that number is in the
right ball park)

B) a couple living on one income in a 2-bedroom isn't considered a birthright
in dense cities like SF

C) $100k would be an unusually low salary even for someone just out of school
taking the megacorp buses, and this is before bonuses and RSUs

So I disagree with the thesis that Bay Area tech workers are by any measure
living a spartan life.

~~~
dredmorbius
Net of deductions (Federal & State income tax, FICA, SSI, healthcare, and 401k
-- remember, you've got to save for retirement too), figuring taking home 60%
of your salary isn't a bad ballpark. So yes, after

I'm not so sure that low six figures is considered low for someone straight
out of school, remembering that not all hires are superstars, and there are a
lot of less technical positions being filled as well.

And in the Bay Area, childcare and/or education expenses are likely to add up
unless you've got a very good local public school.

~~~
ForHackernews
> and 401k -- remember, you've got to save for retirement too

Oh no! I don't have any money left after I'm done saving all my money!

~~~
dredmorbius
There's short-term accessible savings, and your retirement.

Part of those "subsistence wages" are the funds which cover your expenses when
you aren't working. Whether due to disability, between gigs (part of Smith's
detailed discussion of the basis of wages in Book I, Ch. VIII of _Wealth of
Nations_ , I recommend it strongly), or in old age.

Your 401k funds are _not_ generally available to you to meet pre-retirement
expense needs. There are some exceptions, but in almost all cases, you're very
strongly advised _not_ to make use of them: you can borrow against 401k funds,
but this 1) costs you the earnings on those funds (part of the basis of the
whole concept) and 2) the loan must be repaid (though without interest) if you
terminate a relationship with a loan sponsor. Which is to say: at the very
time you're most likely to have a cash crunch (you're transitioning
employment), you have to repay the loan.

Early distribution is also possible, but with very significant financial
penalties.

Your comment is juvenile and specious.

~~~
ForHackernews
Just for a little context, fewer than half of Americans even have access to a
401(k) (or 403(b) or similar) retirement plan, and its disproportionately the
wealthy that can afford to take advantage of such plans:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-401k-retirement-plans-
fail...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-401k-retirement-plans-failing-most-
workers/)

Look, I get where you're coming from, in that you don't _feel_ rich,
especially in the context of San Francisco, but seriously...

"The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of
all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big
expenses in the Xxxxxxxxx family budget--their $60,000 a year in contributions
to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings
building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private
school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars--are simply out of reach
for the overwhelming majority of Americans."

[http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling-
res...](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling-responds-to-
someone-who-might-be-professor-todd-henderson.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
_Just for a little context, fewer than half of Americans even have access to a
401(k)_

Yep. That's going to be a problem.

Even many of those who _do_ have a 401(k) (or equivalent) are subject to
market losses, insufficient funding, interrupted employment (how many 30-40
somethings do you know with significant interruptions in the professional
lives -- right in the middle of their peak earning years)? One of a number of
messes we're busily creating.

I've been arguing in another thread about what a minimum living wage means,
and on those terms, you've _got_ to allow for retirement. Otherwise the
alternative (including state support of retirees) remains yet another net
welfare support for businesses which were paying insufficient salaries in the
first place.

See thread here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337228)

And post here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1z5vfb/thoughts...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1z5vfb/thoughts_on_minimum_wage_enterprise_viability/)

------
malandrew
Why does every single one of these stories always leave out the most
responsible counterparty in these matters... the landlords.

The tech workers are just showing up with buying power. The decision of
whether or not to pursue ellis act evictions is not carried out by tech
workers, but the San Francisco landlords who are trying to free up their rent
controlled units to be able to jack up the price.

Many of these landlords are either San Franciscans who still live in the city
or those that grew up here, but moved out to the supports and now just manage
rentals in the city. So at the end of the day its fellow San Franciscans to
whom these protestors should direct their anger.

------
salgernon
It should be noted that San Francisco isn't the only area blighted. Cho's in
Palo Alto is being pushed out by the landlord.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25015784/chos-close-palo-
alto](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25015784/chos-close-palo-alto)

------
kaa2102
This reminds me of a tweet from Alexia Tsotsis saying that everyone will
either work for Google or Walmart in the future. It looks like San Francisco
is giving us a preview of that future.

~~~
gojomo
Notably, there are no Walmarts in San Francisco.

------
unepipe
I was wondering if this was serving as some kind of rebuttal to the occupy
wallstreet stuff. As in - "don't pay attention to the actual wealth inequality
that is choking the economy in many places, these recent grads who work in the
Valley but live in SF are the bad guys"

Sure conjecture and conspiracy-theoryish but why the fuck else would any part
of the media be paying attention to 10 protesters and a staged, crass fake
"nerd" pretending to be a Google employee?

------
stevewilhelm
You mean installing reclaimed log cabins in your cafeteria, sorry casual
dining area, isn't endearing? [1]

[1] [http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_25251868/lib-at-large-
novat...](http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_25251868/lib-at-large-novato-
contractor-supplies-century-old)

------
cafard
Right, I read about it all the time on Facebook and Blogspot.

Many people have concerns, but a) even most of them don't all the time, and b)
as a proportion of world adult population, not many.

------
daemin
I would have thought having an extra $10 million in the local economy (from
the wedding) would be a good thing. Isn't that the whole concept of a trickle
down economy?

------
briantakita
Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

~~~
rsl7
but the players deeply love this game, and play it ruthlessly. What then?

~~~
michaelochurch
The people being targeted by the hate are low- and mid-level engineers at
companies like Google and Twitter, who have nothing to do with San Francisco's
absurd housing policy or the economic inequality in general. They might be
better-paid peons, but they're still peons. They aren't responsible for "this
game" and many of them detest it. (Would you want to have no savings at age 37
because, despite your relatively high salary, the landlords have taken
everything?)

The First Estate of Silicon Valley (here, including San Francisco) are the
highly influential angels, VCs, and corporate executives who can force
acquisitions. The Second Estate are the engineers, mid-level product managers,
and data scientists. The Third Estate is everyone else. Naturally, the First
Estate is trying to prevent any chance of alliance between the Second and
Third Estate, and actively encourages tension between the those two groups.
It's also clear, however, that the First Estate screws the Second (all of the
collusion/anti-poach agreements that have been uncovered). In fact, the Second
and Third Estates have a common enemy in the First. They've just been
prevented from realizing it, in large part, by all the obfuscation that's
going on.

To people in poverty, $120,000 per year is a large amount of money, but it's
not nearly enough to bribe city councils into enacting the NIMBY policies that
make San Francisco unaffordable.

The real bad guys don't ride Google buses. They have private drivers, and the
Google buses don't stop on Sand Hill Road.

~~~
countrybama24
I believe they're using the Google buses as symbols in lieu of direct
knowledge of the First Estate's whereabouts or access to them.

------
bengrunfeld
Australians despise the U.S. and The Age is simply airing the rank and fetid
feelings of the people that read their newspaper.

Trust me, I know - I was born and raised in Australia, and because of the
country's heavy Socialist/British background and identity, we were taught to
hate everything about America. My wife and I lived in Melbourne from
2009-2012, and she suffered horrible discrimination for being from the US.

Silicon Valley is one of the great monuments to American individualism and
entrepreneurial spirit, and it sickens most Aussies to see the success and
fortune that has come of it.

The Age is ensuring that the anti-American sentiment is kept at a poisonous
and noxious level.

~~~
gregsq
I think this is a bit extreme.

Firstly, this Melbourne Age piece is syndicated from The Telegraph, a British
newspaper from my home country. As a regular visitor to Australia, with
relatives living there, I had presumed that the article was syndicated even
before I reached the byline. This due to a clarity of language unusual in
locally written newspaper articles.

It sounds atrocious, the treatment of your wife, and if her treatment was as
widespread as I'm inclined to take on trust from what you say, then I'll need
to reassess a thing or two.

Australians know virtually nothing about Americans as people, and that's a
pity. Their television is acutely americanised, and their culture inculcated
with American influence, but I've noticed that hardly any Australians have
actually met an American. It's hardly polite or even civil to blame the rare
American they meet for the perceived wrongs of the US body politic. And I can
empathise with your experience somewhat.

It can be parochial. I watched Grease the movie on Australian TV recently, and
it reminded me that Australians love John Travolta because he loved Olivia
Newton John, who's really a Brit anyway. He's in if he can say g'day. On the
other hand Mel Gibson was Aussie and became American. He's not claimed
anymore.

But I haven't found hate as you appear to have. Australia is a lot bigger than
the left wing inner city self styled intellectuals you apparently met too many
of.

Go to country NSW and they all dress and sing like Chet Atkins.

~~~
RK
_On the other hand Mel Gibson was Aussie and became American. He 's not
claimed anymore._

According to Wikipedia, Mel Gibson was born in the US to American parents and
moved to Australia when he was 12. Somehow I remembered that factoid when I
read your comment :)

~~~
gregsq
Thanks. I didn't fill in that detail. I thought only his mother was American,
and I should always check my facts before I post anything here. So in, and
then out, but oddly, out in a similar way that Rupert Murdoch is out.

Pride and Prejudice.

------
nirnira
_Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, spent a reported $US10
million on his wedding_

Wow, how unbelievably arrogant. Spending his money however the fuck he wants?
Paying people to render him services of their own free will? What an asshole.
He must've forgot signing that social contract with angry poor radicals that
once you hit $(whatever today's immoral amount of money is) you no longer have
the right to spend it... oh wait.

Whatever. Give me a break. This article is really about the worst side of SF -
not the successful businessmen, but the unsuccessful, jealous, negative,
unproductive "radicals" whose politics boils down to "I hate everything that I
don't understand, and I'm not going to bother to try and understand it because
I hate it."

 _an arrogant and often tone-deaf industry_

The only arrogant people here are these fucking losers who think they deserve
to live in the one of the world's most expensive and desirable cities, and
think they deserve to dictate how other people can and should behave, despite
providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone.

Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched
opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews (a similar
group of successful, largely innocuous businesspeople.)

~~~
doktrin
> _Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched
> opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews_

This perverse non-analogy is an embarrassment. It reads like absurd satire.
Please stop repeating it.

~~~
nirnira
Sorry, no, it does have merit. In both cases, a failure of popular economic
intelligence lead or is leading to self-defeating national attitudes and
policies, driven in both cases by misattributed resentment.

