I had the privilege to meet Federico Faggin (I'm also Italian, but that's not the main reason why) - ops, I only met him online, not in person! Post-covid, it's strange to think that you've "met" and instead it was just a zoom call. Anyway.
He's 80 years old, and he has more energy and smartness than someone else half his age. Wonderful individual. He is essentially one of the fathers of the microprocessor. A legend. Few know him, many more should.
Lately he's been focusing on consciousness and quantum. This is a good starting point [0].
Edit: I checked and my memory served me well: if you look at any picture of the first CPU, the Intel 4004, you can see "F.F." in the bottom left or top right, depending on how you look [1]. Those initials are, of course, Federico's.
Why do European experts have to come to Silicon Valley? I see it all the time. They should build up expertise at home - start the new ST Microelectronics
I used to work at a company in Australia that was a pretty big feeder for the FAANGs in the US, and I don't think the salary alone explains it.
So many of my coworkers were completely aware that they could double (or even triple) their salaries by moving to San Francisco/Seattle, but chose not to. Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation, a general "fuck the poor" culture (on both sides of the political isle), gun violence, cost of living and the fact you'd be leaving your family behind if you left made it an easy choice to stay in Melbourne.
The people that did go often intended on going there for 5-10 years then coming back rich.
Point is, I think the reason that so many huge tech companies are there is much more complex than just "more money attracts more smart people" and perhaps some other factor at play too.
> So many of my coworkers were completely aware that they could double (or even triple) their salaries by moving to San Francisco/Seattle, but chose not to. Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation
Not that I've ever lived there (fellow Aussie like you, just visited it for work) – but my impression is that some of those problems – especially the homelessness, crime and public defecation issues – are much worse in San Francisco proper (Oakland too) than in (say) Silicon Valley.
One language issue here – Australians tend to use bare city names to primarily refer to metropolitan areas – an Australian who says "Sydney" or "Melbourne" likely means the whole metro area, not the "City of Sydney" or "City of Melbourne" local government areas specifically – whereas to an American, "San Francisco" usually only means "the City and County of San Francisco", and the whole metro area is "the Bay Area". An Australian is likely to think of Silicon Valley as part of San Francisco, to most Americans Silicon Valley is not part of San Francisco, rather (roughly) 45 minutes south of it (maybe closer to 30 minutes from the southern end of San Francisco proper to the northern end of Silicon Valley).
> my impression is that some of those problems – especially the homelessness, crime and public defecation issues – are much worse in San Francisco proper (Oakland too) than in (say) Silicon Valley
Kind of? Violent crime is always going to be higher in a city than the suburbs, that’s just life.
But homelessness…it’s rampant everywhere, although a different kind of homelessness. Think fewer tent encampments and more motor homes. There are RVs parked on El Camino for miles down Palo Alto and Mountain View.
Not, of course, on the actual residential streets, because the city made that illegal - which brings us on to the nasty politics, which I’d argue is worse in the suburbs than the cities.
I'd say for Americans it depends on the city - for instance if someone says Los Angeles or Houston there's a good chance they mean those metro areas rather than the cities proper.
Probably because LA County has over 75% of the population of its MSA and over 50% of the population of its CSA; by contrast, however you define it (its MSA, the traditional 9 county "Bay Area", or its CSA), San Francisco County is only a minority of the population of its metro area. It isn't even the most populous county in the Bay Area–Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa all have significantly larger populations. Similarly Harris County and the City of Houston dominate the population of their metro area in a way in which the City and County of San Francisco does not.
I still think there is a difference here between American and Australian usage – American popular conceptions of geography pay far greater attention to local government boundaries than Australians do. That makes complete sense, considering that local governments in the US have vastly more power than those in Australia – here, courts, elections (even local elections), prosecutors, corrections departments, law enforcement, fire departments, ambulances/paramedics, public schools, public hospitals, public transport and land titles are all exclusively state government responsibilities, and in inner metropolitan areas, the state government runs the water supply and sewerage system as well. Americans pay much more mental attention to local government boundaries than Australians do, because those boundaries have a significantly greater impact on their everyday lives.
I've always considered it to depend mostly on whether we're talking about the current location or not.
So if we're actually in San Francisco metro area and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the city proper. But if we're in DC and I talk about "San Francisco", I probably mean the metro area. Or, commonly, I actually mean somewhere specific but I don't expect my listener to know the more specific areas, so I just say "San Francisco".
> Nasty politics, homelessness, crime, public defacation, a general "fuck the poor" culture (on both sides of the political isle), gun violence
Not to be an apologist for any of this, but I find it hard to believe any of these were more important deterrents to the emigration of your peers than our capricious, byzantine, and dehumanizing immigration system.
People seem to have the bizarre attitude that San Francisco and its suburbs (which make up the great majority of the population of the SFBA) are some post-apocalyptic hellscape, which is mostly a narrative promulgated by the right-wing media, and with the exception of cost of living and homelessness/housing issues (which are hardly unique among major metros, including Melbourne) it's pretty far from the objective truth. Try visiting sometime.
> but I find it hard to believe any of these were more important deterrents to the emigration of your peers than our capricious, byzantine, and dehumanizing immigration system.
On average, it is easier for Australians to immigrate to the US than for people of most other countries, largely due to the special E-3 visa which the US has for Australians only.
I know several Australians who have moved to the US, mostly on E-3s and L-1s, and for university-educated professionals, the immigration process itself usually isn't a big issue. The question of whether you want to do it, whether it is the right thing for you and your family, generally looms much larger than visas.
No doubt US immigration can sometimes subject the unlucky to bureaucratic stuff-ups, the capricious application of arcane, unfair and incomprehensible rules – but on average Australians are less on the receiving end of that than most other nationalities – and Australia's immigration department is just as capable of that as the US is. An ex-colleague of mine has a Master's degree in IT, many years experience working in New York's financial sector, fluent in both English and Spanish (he's Puerto Rican), came to Australia on a temporary work visa, wanted to stay here for good, tried to switch to a permanent resident visa – he eventually succeeded, but Australian immigration put him on a very stressful "how can I find enough points?" run-around - when I'm thinking "why are we making someone like this jump through all these hoops? isn't he the kind of high value immigrant a country should be laying out the welcome mat for?"
I finally acquired it by visiting in 2015. Landed at SFO, went through pretty mediocre airport, then visited SF... and went "hey, this looks more like middle east war torn country than what I expected" - and my expectations were already dashed by things such as crowdsourced maps of tenderloin based on quantity of human feces on sidewalk.
Thing is, my mental model assumes that other places in USA are probably worse, if not in the same ways.
But the immigration system is biggest stopper, even for visiting, indeed.
The immigration system is probably relatively european/australian friendly. It's not rare to see people come and go to the US. It's also a constrained problem that you don't have to think about for a few years once it's cleared.
In that regard the other more day to day aspects would be more impacting.
On San Francisco+suburbs, I think it can't be that bad, but if I'm going to move somewhere, being able to freely explore the other cities/states is nice.
Also only judging from the net, I find it harder and harder to understand what to expect for a person of color for example. It seems to vary a lot depending on the city, or even the neighborhood, and there's enough cultural difference that just looking at people's twitter doesn't help much. The picture is either super bleak, or super bleached, with little nuance in many discussions.
I think most of us from elsewhere in the English-speaking tech world know very much what the Bay Area is like. I can't speak for Australians, but most Canadian tech workers have been there many times. But only some of us choose to move there even tho NAFTA makes it fairly trivial to do so. And many just end up coming back.
I don't think the SF Bay Area is a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Most of urban California is... fine.
It's just that when one immigrates to go take a job there, one isn't just immigrating to the Bay Area. One is immigrating to the United States of America. And ... that's a much bigger kettle of fish.
I think people here got the idea that SF is post-apocalyptic by visiting it for conferences, since the area around Moscone is especially bad, you only have to go on a short wander for lunch before you end up in the Tenderloin, etc.
The last time I visited SF (for WWDC), I witnessed more crime first-hand in one week than I had in my entire life before (and since). I also witnessed more homelessness than I've seen in any single city.
While wildfires are certainly a growing issue in much of the Western Unites States the area around San Fransisco is a relatively low risk area.
I realize you are just being snarky but Australians are no strangers to hellscape wildfires. Australia suffered a 60+ million acre wildfire in 2020, way larger than all California wildfires in that year combined.
Yep. The air quality issue does create anxiety for several relatives who live or visit Silicon Valley. There can be a few days a year that are intolerable for those with particular sensitivity and they must cancel their engagements and head out of town, or hole up in room with a quality purifier.
Can't really say that is a problem where I live, although recreational fires in fire pits are increasingly annoying as people increase outdoor gatherings in covid times.
Mostly just being sparky as far as hellscape but the air quality can be nasty in Palo Alto several days a year. Some people are indeed forced to take time off work and head out of town.
Large market with the same language and more or less the same culture. I am working on a b2b saas product in the EU; so far capital was not an issue really, nor good people. The marketing strategies per country and in different languages are pretty annoying and, unless you somehow go viral for the US and UK, you kind of have to have different plans (including prices) for every country here. French companies are prepared to pay for subtly different things than Spanish companies etc. In a previous product we did, we noticed this massive difference between NL and DE. It was just things that worked in NL really was a complete ‘nope’ in Germany and vice versa. It’s details but enough for companies to not take you over a local solution.
I would love to move back to California but had to relinquish my Green Card when I moved to Asia for over 2 years.
There is little chance to find a US employer sponsoring a new one. They just don't care to go through the process. Even though it's not too cumbersome.
US firms can pay higher R&D/engineering salaries because they have a lower cost of capital.
Part of the explanation for the lower cost of capital, is that US investors have a higher risk appetite than those in most other OECD economies; also, the US has an arguably more efficient pipeline (VC firms, etc) for getting money from investors to entrepreneurs.
Some of it is no doubt influenced by regulatory issues (such as taxation differences), but cultural differences likely also play a role.
> is that US investors have a higher risk appetite than those in most other OECD economies
Certainly here in the UK and certainly upto the mid 00's, if someone ended up bankrupt their life was over, blocked from credit in most cases, massively high interest rates in the future if they could get credit, the lenders certainly got their pound of flesh so it wasnt worth feeding the parasites, the population became risk averse.
Repression comes back to bite...
The other problem is the Class system, something Royalty holds onto dearly, and what some euphemistically call the old boys network, but it keeps people in their place so the [European] Caste system acts as a drag on the economy.
The UK classism is not an EU-wide phenomenon - although a degree of classism is obviously still there (as it is in the US, in practice), it's not as utterly dominant in France or Italy as it is in the UK.
The legislation around bankruptcy, however, is definitely very repressive on the continent too. TBH I don't think it's particularly lenient in the US either, but over there creating and operating companies is easier and cheaper, which means people can more easily offload debt obligations.
I agree its not as widespread in Europe, but you do find Royalty lurking in some EU countries and they do cause an increasing drag on their economies whether they want to admit it or not. Its the same in other parts of the world, Royalty is becoming increasingly toxic.
> The legislation around bankruptcy, however, is definitely very repressive on the continent too.
Europe has the largest slice of banking and financial interests but thats being slowly chipped away by the US. Look at some of the old banks which have gone bust or been swallowed up for liquidity reasons since the financial crisis in 2008. You have the US and UK printing money to dilute China's hard work, the Weimar republic has a lot of parallels.
It is difficult to separate the culture from the consequences of the culture. In the US there is minimal social stigma for trying something ambitious and failing, the culture respects the ambition and courage to try even if it doesn't work out or the idea was slightly idiotic. In many parts of the world, trying something and failing is held against you and becomes a social black mark; Americans just shrug and move on to the next thing. Investors in the US reflect that culture.
A lot of American cultural difference relative to the rest of the world can be explained almost entirely by the unusual absence of Tall Poppy Syndrome[0] that is a hallmark of most other industrialized societies. American culture respects those taking large risks for concomitant rewards, and doesn't begrudge the rewards that might accrue to someone taking those risks. It is easy to have a high risk appetite when it increases one's social status.
> In the US there is minimal social stigma for trying something ambitious and failing
I think fear of bankruptcy can be a higher deterrent for foolish risks than social stigma.
> In many parts of the world, trying something and failing is held against you
In Europe you don't lose people's sympathy if you try something and fail.
Availability of capital for investors is one thing.
A lot of the VC pipeline also reaps rewards from how USA was the one country with untouched industry at the end of WW2 and then funneled huge amounts of moneys into expanding, not reconstruction.
I have to imagine there are simply more people with so much money that they can throw it around easily. Isn't the whole thing that (for example) when a big startup gets bought you suddenly have loads of millionaires with money to burn in their pocket?
I don't think it is just money otherwise you would have plenty of silicon valleys in switzerland.
I think that large part of the reason is that government, public companies, academia and private investors in US have funneled a lot of resources into tech, or even invented it.
This created an ecosystem the rest of the world has consistently had a hard time to follow.
Silicon Valley literally started thanks to US Navy and later general DoD funding, which brought more companies interested in local integration of services (even if you weren't taking government contracts, your clients might be, etc.) and this spiralled up
Federico Faggin came to Silicon Valley as part of the Olivetti group, which in the sixties was on a great trajectory. Then Adriano died unexpectedly [0], and things started to fall apart.
Iirc up till recently EU environmental laws practically outlawed any kind of silicon fabs on the continent. It's only now that Intel has decided to move a plant here, so something must've changed.
Have a look at this Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... – and see that it lists semiconductor fabs in multiple EU countries – Germany, Italy, the UK (was in EU at the time), Ireland, France – opening in every decade from the 1950s through to the 2010s. The accuracy of your recollection seems open to question.
There used to a lot more fabs in the US and Europe back in the 90s. I used to work at a company that supplied fab equipment to many of them. My guess is there was a lot of consolidation over the years due to lax environmental laws and labor costs in Asian countries.
European environmental laws can be complied with and the technology to do so is commercially available. There are tens of larger process fabs in Europe. AMD Dresden was only behind Intel when it was new.
