Silicon Valley Can Suck It

http://timothybsmith.com/articles/silicon-valley-can-suck-it

by timothybsmith • 14 years ago

42 23 14 years ago

Another complaint post, hurray! Don't hate the player, hate the game. ;-)

I get tired of the "Don't hate the player, hate the game" mantra after a certain point though. We make the damn game. And if the players are assholes, the game is going to suck.

niggler• 14 years ago

Unsurprisingly we see the same exact phenomenon in finance (though it isn't quite as pervasive)

casca• 14 years ago

TL;DR - SV is 1) detached and not personal, 2) downright douchey most of the time

aaronbrethorst• 14 years ago

It's 432 words long including the title. That's not even a full single-spaced 8.5x11" page.

anigbrowl• 14 years ago

ts;dr :-l

donretag• 14 years ago

I live an hour and a half from Silicon Valley. Recruiters are constantly shocked when I tell them that I do not want to work in SV. They can't understand why not. I simply do not want to be part of the game.

That said, rants like these are not productive. Even the back-patting posts here in HN are not productive, but at least they are not negative.

joshuamerrill• 14 years ago

Entrepreneurs start companies for many reasons. The author seems content to unload his negative feelings on any company that's ever a) been acquired, b) fundraised, or c) pivoted. Sorry, I don't share his feelings. Every circumstance is different.

badusername• 14 years ago

Overly-simplified generalizations can suck it.

theevocater• 14 years ago

I was (sort of) with it until

> Being an entrepreneur used to mean something. Entrepreneurs were innovators.

Maybe in your ideal visualization of the past, but that is totally false. People have always been starting companies for a variety of reasons; some of them selfish and some of them not.

This seems to just be another face of the "What has $category ever done for anyone? Build something that matters!!" type posts we see all the time. Unguided angry meaningless criticism.

jneen• 14 years ago

Having seen at least two companies who were out to do social good totally flail trying to pay back the guys in the suits, I wholeheartedly agree. I'd love to work for a social good company that isn't VC-backed. But I haven't come across any yet, despite looking.

OldSchool• 14 years ago

What seems be lacking is the acknowledgment of a middle ground.

It seems that, as portrayed lately at least, the startup mentality has spiraled into all-or-nothing lotto think. Reality TV and social media seems to give everyone the idea that anyone cares about their latest "pivot."

It's encouraging to see the genius of many of the hobby projects here, but when engineers start behaving like actors fresh off the bus from Ohio in Hollywood looking for and expecting their "big break" it's just sad.

ngokevin• 14 years ago

This post seems a tad negative for one that ends with "have fun, be nice...happiness".

dglassan• 14 years ago

Not everyone in Silicon Valley is a douche like you seem to believe here. Just because someone lives there doesn't automatically make them a part of the culture or 'detached and not personal', so I don't understand why you're generalizing here.

I've lived in the Bay area most of my life. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I'm living in SF now. Frankly, I've never seen this startup culture everyone talks about because I've chosen not to be a part of it. I've never been to a launch party, never been to a tech meetup, never been to a hackathon or these hackerspaces. Sure, I agree with you that the startup space is filled with douches and that's why I don't hang around those people. But that's a fraction of all the people living in Silicon Valley.

Have you even been to Silicon Valley before? Or even the Bay area in general? It's a huge place with lots of people. Your assumption is like me saying "Dallas can suck it because I don't like cowboys." It's a terrible argument.

In the future, please don't submit content to your own blog with link bait titles, thanks.

efa• 14 years ago

I don't think he means the literal geographic area, but the VCs and startup folks that most people think of when saying "Silicon Valley". I don't consider this title misleading. I didn't think for one moment he was talking about the firemen/teachers/doctors of the Silicon Valley.

timothybsmith3• 14 years ago

Thank you. You've got it right :)

jonmc12• 14 years ago

Stereotyping is such a sloppy way of perceiving the world, and dangerous - especially when others can relate their own experience and feelings to a misguided abstraction (and subsequently support it in a public forum to make it seem validated).

How about instead of generalizing a large, disparate geography, identify the specific events that are bothering you? Don't make it generalized, don't make it personal. Be constructive - drill down to the facts, closer to reality. Similarly, share a better way in terms of your own results and experiences instead of philosophy.

danilocampos• 14 years ago

Very thin bit of content, there.

I don't think anyone can be more exhausted by the douchiness of the valley than people who actually work here. But this post smacks of contempt prior to investigation – OP is from Minnesota.

> It’s amazing to me that people covet having millions of dollars, a downtown loft and private jets. Everything comes at a price and those who live that life are empty, work most of the time, and don’t have meaningful human relationships.

It's a compelling straw man, here. I'm not sure I know anyone who covets millions of dollars or a private jet. I do know people who covet an escape from debt, a chance at a self-directed life, or an opportunity to make something cool without a PHB distracting them with bureaucratic nonsense.

OP seems to have a cartoon vision of greed and hubris. And maybe that exists here, somewhere. But as a guy who's been working in the neighborhood for three years, this level of avarice isn't a frequent topic of conversation among people I know – actual, living, breathing millionaires included. (Incidentally, having single digit millions of dollars would be insufficient to afford a private jet.)

A compelling argument against the VC system could be made – they are certainly an interesting breed and their expectations can definitely pollute the potential for solid, long-term businesses. But no such argument was made here.

> Sure, I like to make things. Yes, I might not always think about my products all the way through. I may never be rich. But, damn it, I will have had fun. I will have had passion for the things I get involved in and I will love my family and my friends to the death.

This is where shit gets uncomfortable for me. It would seem that OP is rationalizing his lack of prosperity or outsize riches – or something – as a result of his principled distaste for and avoidance of that dreadful hive of scum and villainy in California.

Silicon Valley has several things going for it. Ample venture capital. Local concentration of engineering and design talent. Terrific weather. If you live in San Francisco, you even get a world city into the bargain.

Like anything, it has its downsides. You can take it or leave it. OP chooses leave it. Which is fine. But the image depicted by the post has puzzlingly little relation to what I would say is reality.

timothybsmith3• 14 years ago

I appreciate the comment. Yes, I currently live in Minnesota. However, I'm not from here. I used to live in California. And yes, I've been to the Valley many times.

dguaraglia• 14 years ago

I don't really see the point. While looking for a job in the Bay Area, I only met extremely cool and open people. Sure, the VC world might be a bit different, but I don't know where this idea that entrepreneurs are "douches" comes from. Maybe I happened to meet the only good ones of the lot, but I highly doubt it

pbiggar• 14 years ago

No evidence, uninformed, no nuance at all - this post can be dismissed more easily than he dismisses an entire culture.

FrankThousand• 14 years ago

It's exactly the opposite. The drive to found a startup (or several) comes out of an excruciating feeling of wanting to resolve something that is clearly broken. It comes out of the discontentment with the behavioral patterns that old paradigms instill in people. Out of the desire of wanting to show people can still marvel by doing something they're used to but in a completely better and awesome way.

Being a founder is an act of compassion - the other end of the spectrum of not being personal! It's also the stamp of a rebel. On the structural side, it's out of urgency. A feeling that you have to do it because you're not seeing any better.

It's also extremely pleasurable. You get to trigger your creative mode full speed. And one needs not to bother with the bombarding of demoralizing judgement. It is indeed a very personal experience of one who wants to share it with as many people as possible.

You could say it's a ride out of detachment as well. Detachment from the prevailing of holding onto the "should-s" of portraying the proper this and that. Detachment in the sense you need to be lighter than the seriousness which seems to want to invade the not so confident. It's lighter but intense and a trajectory of the authentic and courageous.

Oh, and btw, it's a lot of fun!

P.S. Did you notice I didn't even mention money here? It's because it's all about creating wealth. And wealth is when you're overflowing with something lots of people want! And in order to partake in it people gift you: with money :)

timothybsmith3• 14 years ago

Thanks everyone for your comments. If I offended any of you, I'm terribly sorry. I do and don't mean to generalize. I've had some bad experiences and wanted to organize my thoughts. I do completely agree that a better post would have been more specific and even backed up with harder facts. Thanks for reading :)

Silicon Valley Can Suck It

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