
Silicon Valley Tech Entrepreneurs: Behind the Stereotype - applecore
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/silicon-valley-tech-entrepreneurs-behind-the-stereotype
======
gleenn
As one of the 20-something's making cell phone apps, I have to laugh a little
bit about how much we get bashed. I feel bad when people get kicked out of
their houses, and I wonder how terrible we really are. But I'm not walking
around trying to hurt anybody. And I'm reading this article right after the
one about the school teacher who showed up drunk and pants-less on her first
day of school, but I doubt countless people are going to show up to her house
(straw-man, I know).

I feel like this is a classic problem of economic conservatism/liberalism: how
should money be allocated to people. It's just really exacerbated by a lot of
young people making a lot of money and pulling the divide apart.

~~~
fred_durst
Let's try to see it from another human perspective.

You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place
making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life.
Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the
house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last
place was and over half your income. But that doesn't matter because the
market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway. So now
you go into a desperate struggle to save the life you've built for the last 10
years. Calling and emailing everywhere trying to find a place. You have 20
days left. 10 days left. You have an old friend in Oklahoma City. He says you
can crash for a couple weeks and that there's plenty of jobs and cheap rent.
You know you have to go and leave behind your life. You know that if the tech
boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. Sure you're not going to
die on the streets. But I would probably be pretty pissed.

~~~
aianus
Plenty of tech workers left everything behind and moved thousands of km across
borders and oceans to work in SF in precarious visa situations and make a
decent living. If they lose their jobs they don't get to go to OKC, they're
deported back to India or China in 10 days.

It's harder to empathize with US citizens who've managed to squander their
enormous advantages and have to suffer the relatively mild indignity of moving
to a different US city.

~~~
fred_durst
"Squander"... many US citizens see the actions of Silicon Valley and the
entire tech VC culture as grossly immoral and unethical. Maybe you have yet to
realize that all your actions in the US will only make rich families richer
and hurt and damage the lives of those beneath you, but many Americans decide
to do work that helps individuals directly as opposed to help investors become
even richer.

It's fun to think poor Americans are lazy, but when you realize that helping
people in America is one of the lowest paid(often volunteer) positions, how
warped the reality of the US dollar is.

To many "dignity" as you described it, is not working like a slave to enrich
the evil that is destroying our country. And if you are moving here to
contribute to that you are not much more than a paid mercenary.

EDIT: Look, I get it that you are possibly coming from a fucked situation
wherever you might come from. And I can't blame you for it. But realize that
few people in the US actually will benefit from it, and it will actually make
their lives worse. It's what you have to do, but it really isn't something
that many Americans would think is good. We already learned about imperialism
in High School and prefer not to repeat it.

~~~
aianus
Money is obviously an imperfect proxy for how much someone contributes to
society but it's the only fair way to ration housing or any other limited
resource. "My parents lived in this city and I grew up here" does not and
should not trump "I moved here to work and be productive".

~~~
McDoku
Are you seriously arguing that "to work and be productive" overrides the
rights of native inhabitants of a region?

~~~
aianus
It's better for society as a whole to distribute limited resources based on
some kind of merit rather than "I was here first".

~~~
McDoku
Loyalty is merit. Would you rather a civilization that simply discarded you
when you have lost utility?

This is poor long term planning that undermines the nation for short term
intrest. Unless you have pledged your allegiance, your contributions and
loyalty is short term.

So obviously we are going to prioratize someone who has our back. If you have
the education it is likely because you come from a privileged family. There is
also strong corrupting ingrained into the system. Unless my last red envelope
was given to me in error.

There are men and women in your country of greater merit who are not given the
opportunity. If we were truely acting on merit they would be hear, and not
you.

They would have been given the scholarship and the resources in childhood to
succeed. I have met way too many entitled princelings lacking any of the
virtues of a gentleman.

------
pnathan
There's tremendous value in having the mental freedom to break off your roots
and just _go_. That's something very precious and rare. Feeling the freedom to
build and create something wonderful is, in and of itself, wonderful.

------
applecore
Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8149162)

