I am deaf in one ear and played college tennis. I happen to be half-Korean also. I have known for a while that due to my deafness my balance is worse than the average persons and that is one scenario that is not mentioned in the article. I fail conventional balance tests where you close your eyes and have to stay up. I never thought about the sound of my opponents ball meaning anything as I couldn't decipher it clear enough to learn anything from that, but that might be useful. This article has made me realize that perhaps being deaf helped me with tennis. Perhaps it helped me read the game well as I had to rely on my vision and perhaps it resulted in me having better reflexes than I would have had if I wasn't deaf. I did have the best reflexes on the team fwiw but that's a small sample size (12 players). I struggled to hit overheads well compared to players at my level. I would feel disoriented when the ball was in the air and I was looking up and would be praying that my smash would go in lol. I felt I had less control over that shot compared to the people I was playing. I hope you might find my thoughts insightful on a small level :)
Not all people who don't hear well have a problem with balance. Of course because the mechanism for the balance sense is co-located with the hearing sense in the vestibular organ, medical difficulties in the vestibular organ often affect both senses. But this is not always the case.
The rents are high here compared to most places in the world, but the opportunity is greater here (if you are starting a company or joining an early stage one).
What I have tried to convey is that for those people the times aren't as bad as they think they are and that they should stick it through.
If you aren't taking advantage of that unique eco-system leaving is fine move. The people I have chatted to before I wrote the piece were people who were/should be taking advantage of that eco-system.
I agree with that. If you are working on a small, niche technology business living somewhere cheaper is a solid play. Moreover, those people have been raising capital in the last few years and attempting to do pivots to shoot for the moon when they could have a successful business, and this often ends up in disaster as the company is not a unicorn.
The over-printing of money by the Fed is a real problem and the bailout in 2008 I don't think was a good idea, but I'm not the best to comment on that particular subject. The point I'm attempting to make is if you are a person that wants to solve problems for people, general macroeconomic trends shouldn't hurt you to the point where you aren't working on that problem.
The biggest value in Silicon Valley outside of access to capital is something I didn't mention in the article. It is the network of people who are very capable that you can get to know who know a lot about the specific fields you are entering (e.g. mobile, hardware, VR, semi-conductors etc)
There are pluses and minuses to being here, but there will always be capital available to those that are solving real problems. Some of the best companies were started in downturns (e.g. Facebook 2007 I believe?)
I am also of the school of economic thought that there are always opportunities in the market. I think it is a compelling argument that there may be even more opportunities in a "down" market.
I am sure the network of people in silicon valley is great. However, I think most people are just out there trying to get a nice 120k job and chill. When vc capital drys up, all of these people are going to leave. The fact remains - many people are up to their eyeballs in debt and they cannot afford to sit around potentially not having a real job. There may be holdouts like yourself who stick around and have money to pay the rent with - but all of the transient 120k people are going to leave.
The gist of what I am saying is that I think you overestimate the cash reserves of the average person. When the jobs leave, the people leave. Simple as that! It doesn't matter if they want to solve problems. They have bills to pay.
I like what you are saying. Generally, people have less money than what you would think they have. The people who have the $120k job and want to chill are incentivized to consider leaving if the jobs aren't there. This is not a calm area of the world so if you want to work and chill out there are much better places to be no matter the stage of the cycle. They aren't the sorts of people that start companies or join the earliest stage ones that I was attempting to appeal to.
You are right though that sometimes economics dictates the situation and people have to leave due to not being frugal enough during the good times. You should always be prepared for a rainy day.
If one entrepreneur or early stage employee reads the article who is on the fence and it convinces them to stick it out, then it was an article worth writing.
I'm one of the co-founders. My name is Tom. Thanks for all of the input. If you have any questions and thoughts on what you'd like to please fire away. Also, my email address is tom@blonk.co
