

We were raised by the Valley - michokest
http://blog.teambox.com/raised-by-the-valley

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highlander
This struck a chord with me. I grew up in rural Scotland, learning to program
my MSX and the BBC Micros they had in our school. I picked up a lot of 'tech
culture' from Byte magazine, which would sporadically appear in our local
newsagent. Although I have been to the US a few times now, I've only been to
the valley once, but walking through Palo Alto listening to everyone around
talking tech I had the strangest feeling that in some way I felt 'at home'.

~~~
alnayyir
Please move here, but remember there can be only one!

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natesm
This is interesting. I'm just out of college and from central Massachusetts, a
place that I can best describe as "incredibly boring" (but with pretty good
public schools).

However, Silicon Valley doesn't appeal to me at all. San Francisco? Sure,
that's appealing, but it's not really "the Valley" (correct me if I'm wrong
here). Even if it is, it's still not as appealing as Boston/Cambridge or New
York.

I've been to the (non-SF) Valley. To me, it seems like home, but a little
denser and with more money. There's still a lot of sprawl. You have to drive
most places (I have very little interest in owning a car currently - I don't
have $20000 on hand and I'm not interested in debt). BART seems kind of, well,
sad, compared to the MTA or MBTA. I guess there's the advantage of being able
to easily bike year round, but I would still need to bike a lot further.

It's a _nice_ place, I certainly won't debate that. And I would appreciate a
place where me saying "Cocoa" didn't bring chocolate to most peoples' minds.
But I don't think it's for me.

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Klonoar
This article is a load of valley sensationalism if I've ever read it.

This culture is not exclusive to the valley at all; you're not "coming home"
to some exclusive club for a group of people who were shunned by the rest of
the world. This culture and the types of people involved exist elsewhere in
the world (in very large quantities, much of the time).

You can claim LucasArts as valley, sure, that's fine. However, don't claim
IRC, don't claim Linux, and don't claim the Anarchists Cookbook of all things.
You got to where you were because you had persistance and some level of
dedication that enabled you to build something remotely interesting - this is
not the doing of a given area in the world.

I love technology and startups as much as the next guy, but I really do think
a more critical view of the valley and the surrounding tech scene is
necessary. This kind of blind evangelizing for the valley also does nothing
for other location's tech scenes.

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bengl3rt
This is kind of odd for me to read considering I actually grew up in the
Valley - San Jose, to be precise - and have been working in high tech
companies since I started high school. It's weird to me to think that the
place where I grew up might also be the best place for me to start my career -
I understand most peoples' lives aren't like that.

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pnathan
It's kind of strange, but when I read ESR's "Portrait of a Hacker", I
recognized many traits in myself that I had independently developed, many
prior to getting into the software world online.

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3pt14159
I would got to the Valley for a while if it didn't mean Visa trouble.

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tomjen3
Getting a turist visa shouldn't be that much of a problem.

But yeah, moving to the Valley is kinda like NASA going to Mars: quite a lot
talk is going on and you keep getting your hopes up but in the end it just
isn't feasible yet.

Chile on the other hand...

