It's tough, I've long empathized with complaints about SV taking over San Francisco and the soaring rents. Largely because I believe SV culture is intentionally blind to or intellectually dishonest about the fact that it is first and foremost a business sector that generates revenue, not a community that innovates for the betterment of humanity (and I think we should be okay with being a business sector! it's creepy to try and avoid that obvious truth). And the claims you occasionally hear about SV being a "true meritocracy" are deeply concerning. Being a "true meritocracy" of people with elite educations is a joke. I do include the self educated people in that comment, once again, great work but a huge percentage of America and the world grow up in places where the idea that they could learn Python and make 100k is unfathomable. And quite frankly, do not have easy access to the educational and cultural environments that aid in developing the soft skills that are necessary to be a self educated success in SV. In short, there are a lot of ways the SV is full of itself, so I empathize with people feeling they are being shoved around by privileged elites.
That said, some of the anger at SV is starting to remind me of general resentment of nerds, in a very high school way. My guess is both of these things are going on and they are getting conflated and that's causing real discussion to halt. Which is a shame because both are real problems, some SV people are clueless elites and blanket anger towards geeks is unreasonable. Any intelligent conversation about the culture of San Francisco should keep those things in mind and be very careful not to conflate them.
That said, some of the anger at SV is starting to remind me of general resentment of nerds, in a very high school way.
Actually, the real enemy of both categories (engineer "nerds" suffering calibration scores and cliffing vs. San Fransicans being priced out by useless, bland people) is the same for each: the executive douchebags who beat those nerds up in high school and are now VPs of BizDev in those supposedly engineer-centric startups.
Hey. No. Stop pretending. The people hitting the Google bus pinatas are mad at you. They're not mad at the "douchebags" in "bizdev". The difference between someone who makes 140k+benefits and someone who makes 200k+benefits is immaterial to a family of four bringing in 60k. Both groups are pricing that family out of their apartment.
The difference is material to you, because you're upset that they're making more than you without justification. But guess what? Factory workers generally think you make much more than you're worth too, and, more importantly, they're a lot more afraid of you displacing them than the VP/Bizdev who doesn't want to live in their neighborhood to begin with.
If the executives who invented calibration scores have EE/CS degrees from Stanford, that's because they either threatened to beat nerds up, or paid them, to get their homework done.
That's how people stupid enough to bloviate about "synergizing our disruptive verticals" manage to get through elite colleges. I wish I were kidding, but something like 60% of MBA students cheat.
Shit doesn't change much, and VC-istan is Corporate America, not some more enlightened successor.
If the executives who invented calibration scores have EE/CS degrees from Stanford, that's because they either threatened to beat nerds up, or paid them, to get their homework done.
Do a lot of engineers still have this persecution complex? This isn't an 80's sitcom. Grown people don't threaten other grown people for their lunch money.
That's how people stupid enough to bloviate about "synergizing our disruptive verticals" manage to get through elite colleges. I wish I were kidding, but something like 60% of MBA students cheat.
I would love to see your elaborations on how everyone who ends up using buzzwords is a malicious idiot.
I think you're overstating what it takes to get through elite colleges and perhaps misunderstanding what it takes to get in them. There are many strategies to get through those sort of institutions. Ideally the experience at an elite college is an exercise in improving your analytic and communication skills and you thus use those skills in papers, exams and labs to both grow and show your skills. I imagine that's what you have in mind.
For other people it is closer to rote memorization and the challenge is recognizing the problem and remembering the solution. Elite colleges don't weed these type of people out with their admission process or their evaluations. And particularly on the coursework side students looking to game the system tend to find courses and professors that are most suited to their goals. Some of these courses are even offered by "good" professors who would rather focus on genuinely engaged students and give the others good enough grades. I've even seen professors that are harsher to genuinely engaged students because they "expect more" from them.
The academic system is flawed. And if you think about it from the perspective of an admission dean there aren't any incentives to get it right. For all the complaining we do about types of technical interviews, think about admitting students to a college. You are pretty much only assessed on the superficial statistics of the classes you admit. A company can immediately reap the benefits of a talented employee that flies under the recruiting radar due to not fitting a traditional profile. Most talented high school students need at least a decade before they make meaningful impacts on the world. By then a dean of admission has moved on to a new job.
That said, some of the anger at SV is starting to remind me of general resentment of nerds, in a very high school way. My guess is both of these things are going on and they are getting conflated and that's causing real discussion to halt. Which is a shame because both are real problems, some SV people are clueless elites and blanket anger towards geeks is unreasonable. Any intelligent conversation about the culture of San Francisco should keep those things in mind and be very careful not to conflate them.