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[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

An interesting article I came across this morning:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/08/dear-silicon-valley-americas-fallen-out-of-love-with-you/

Some interesting excerpts:

Your ideas are only as good as the people in the room. And your door is shut to most people.

As evidenced by the major backlash over the recent launch of a company called Bodega — where the founders and investors genuinely didn’t understand why the name was problematic — you don’t always have the best handle on how your ideas will be received outside of the Silicon Valley bubble. You’ve got major blind spots.

Why might this be? Face the facts: when Silicon Valley investors are considering new ideas, you don’t have very many different perspectives around the table. Over 90% of the decision-makers in the venture capital industry are white men.

And your insulation makes tomorrow’s problems harder to solve.

Your leaders are increasingly coming from a narrower group of universities, companies, and socioeconomic classes. Your companies are now solving “my-world problems” (food delivery, cold-pressed, on-demand juice versus the “real-world problems” you used to solve (getting affordable computers in the hands of everyone; inventing the Internet). Your solutions literally create the script for a satire show on HBO–and you don’t see what a big problem it is.

The article also contains some examples of companies trying to do better. I suggest reading through the whole thing.

 

[RuGalz]

It's definitely a bit like modern day gold rush.

 

[LegendofJoe]

The upper levels of executive branch department leadership and NGOs in Washington DC have the same problem. Too many people from the same universities with a sheltered, priveledged upbringing.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Most of the consumer devices coming out of the valley nowadays are point-blank solutionism. People are basically subscribed to Google and Apple without any expectation of something new and revolutionary coming out of the gate each year; they just want the annual refresh of their devices.

 

[zeemumu]

Are you telling me than an app that delivers clothes for puppies isn't as important as making high quality tech more affordable?

 

[BetterThanNothing]

I blame Steve Jobs in general, with his tendency to be a complete ass while turning everything he touches into gold. Strong personality that changed the world at least 3 separate times. Apple PC, iPod, iPhone. Everyone wanted to be him, or Elon Musk/other dotCom millionaires, or the next Zuckerberg/who ever the fuck made myspace. It always comes back to money, which is glamorous by default.

Nerdy became cool when computers meant that you could talk to anyone at any time because they fit in your pocket now, and don't have a plastic look. Nerdy became cool because it meant you were fucking rich. Anyone who can program is automatically a genius destined to become the greatest American/Westerner you can be: Rich as fuck.

Hollywood stepped in behind Forbes and suddenly computers were synonymous with getting laid.

Silicon Valley(HBO) finally put the nail in the fucking coffin with post modern bullshit that was cynical to ridiculous pretentious proportions, while still accurately deconstructing everything associated with a self-propelling culture of toxic assholes smart enough to design systems for 40+ hours a week but dumb enough to actually believe they had any chance at winning the IPO lottery. Everything's a Unicorn eval even if it's just another image app, i mean fuck the 'sup' app(just texted "sup" to people instantly) was valued at $1B+ if I remember correctly.

Having a CS degree means i'm fucking god and getting into 'web dev'(designing cookie cutter websites with almost no back end) meant people had the right to call themselves engineers. The inflated egos coming out of SV even had a role in the US's devaluation of education due to their little Stanford club. People got mad because they had useless degrees or none at all and suddenly i'm full of myself for answering an unprovoked question in a casual conversation.

Everything surrounding development is atrocious and honestly puts me off the whole thing. I loved the academic aspect but fuck corporate and fuck startups. Never turn a passion into something that will allow others to use you.

dude totes need to work there they have bean bags and pool tables definitely not going to burn out and fucking kill myself within 1000 days

 

[airmangataosenai]

Dumb article, people still work on plenty of big picture and forward thinking ventures and there have been stupid unnecessary start ups ever since start ups became a thing.

When Youtube started we were in the midst of articles talking aboit the end of major Internet start ups.

 

[richiek]

I have problems with companies like Uber and Airbnb, which fatten the wallets of the executives who do almost nothing, while screwing the people that do the actual grunt work.

The tech industry is also ruining the porn industry.

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/10/6/16435742/jon-ronson-butterfly-effect-internet-free-porn

Alexander Bisley
So these sites like PornHub, which are stealing porn and giving it away for free, have wildly depressed the money available for productions and the fees the performers are able to get, right?

Jon Ronson
Yes. So a lot of people are making a lot less money and are working much, much longer hours to make that money. That's happening a lot. Whereas the people in charge of PornHub are making so much money they don't know what to do with it.

These tech people who've never set foot on a porn set in their lives, these optimizers and algorithm people and AB testers, these ”respectable people" — they're the ones who seem to be causing the most trouble [in] the lives of porn performers.

I saw time and time again, people [in the porn industry] would have to move from pretty nice houses to much smaller houses. Porn performers have to go into escorting to pay the rent. More and more producers are going out of business. So in many ways it's decimating the San Fernando Valley, but the tech people are doing very well.

The tech takeover of the world isn't being criticized enough. It's having these seismic changes, and people tend not to think about it because they're giving the world what it wants, which is free porn.

 

[BetterThanNothing]

I have problems with companies like Uber and Airbnb, which fatten the wallets of the executives who do almost nothing, while screwing the people that do the actual grunt work.

The tech industry is also ruining the porn industry.

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/10/6/16435742/jon-ronson-butterfly-effect-internet-free-porn

I agree that the situation is messed up for those performers but the problem is not with the people who are providing a service for a demand. If he has a problem with that(which is reasonable), then he's actually criticizing capitalism's effect of sacrificing entire the value of individuals of entire industries. The same could be said for almost every technological innovation that changed the way everything is done.

 

[Razorback]

As a counter-point, I recommend this blog post by Scott Alexander where he argues that the problems with Silicon Valley are overstated.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-reality-check/

 

[Muppet of a Man]

It's true. Silicon Valley is a cringe inducing "utopia" for entitled, privileged Masochists.

Besides, all of our worthwhile computing and telecommunications technology comes from Bell labs back when it operated in Holmdel NJ. They invented the transistor, the transistor based microcomputer, and the cellular technologies that make mobile networks feasible. They actually laid the ground work to make silicon valley a thing in the first place. They were the first silicon valley before there was one.

We've been coasting on the shoulders of these giants since then. And silicon valley took all the credit.

 

[rudger]

I fell out of love with Silicon Valley when it became clear that many developers I spoke with (and many news stories that would come out) made it clear how little they understand or care about basic consumer rights. Your actions don’t matter if you are making your product better - is a disturbingly common mindset from Silicon Valley and tech in general.

 

[Haly]

I agree that the situation is messed up for those performers but the problem is not with the people who are providing a service for a demand. If he has a problem with that(which is reasonable), then he's actually criticizing capitalism's effect of sacrificing entire the value of individuals of entire industries. The same could be said for almost every technological innovation that changed the way everything is done.

Well, 1) you can and people do.

And 2) at least in the context of the industrial revolution, the death of cottage industries still resulted in the creation of a middle class when previously there was only the poor and the rich.

What SV is doing these days is the reverse of that, which is concentrating more wealth and value provided by the working class into the technocratic class. Basically this is a preview of the inevitable automation crisis, how are you supposed to climb the social ladder (will it even exist?) if it’s impossible for you to create more value than robots and algorithms?

 

[Infinite]

I think the fundamental disconnect is that these SV guys are capitalist trying to get in on what they perceive as a gold rush and not innovators they fancy themselves as.

 

[m_shortpants]

Dumb article, people still work on plenty of big picture and forward thinking ventures and there have been stupid unnecessary start ups ever since start ups became a thing.

When Youtube started we were in the midst of articles talking aboit the end of major Internet start ups.

This.

Try to stop using all SV based services and see how far you get.

 

[BocoDragon]

Your ideas are only as good as the people in the room. And your door is shut to most people.

As evidenced by the major backlash over the recent launch of a company called Bodega — where the founders and investors genuinely didn’t understand why the name was problematic — you don’t always have the best handle on how your ideas will be received outside of the Silicon Valley bubble. You’ve got major blind spots.

Why might this be? Face the facts: when Silicon Valley investors are considering new ideas, you don’t have very many different perspectives around the table. Over 90% of the decision-makers in the venture capital industry are white men.

This is why James Damore's anti-diversity memo at Google was totally wrong. Diversity initiatives are not merely about compensating for some sexist/racist barriers to the tech industry (although it is partly that). It's about encouraging a more diverse group of engineers and designers because it makes for better tech products that serve a wider range of humanity. Aside from being more ethical, that's good for the bottom line.

 

[tearsintherain]

Money ultimately doesn't really care about the race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, etc of people. It just chases whatever makes it more money. The next huge innovations will come around in AI, group communications, biotech, nanotech, etc and its just as possible it could come from somewhere outside the USA than from silicon valley, and in fact eat up silicon valley. Silicon Valley is very reminiscent of the old school industries of earlier monopoly decades and they are extremely resistant to massive changes, which of course leaves them very vunerable to seismic changes in the way technology is developed / deployed / used. SV currently operates on the model of people buy phones, people use apps, servers know everything about people. That could be upended by someone, someday.

Pornhub is also located in Montreal afaik, so that little vignette might be interesting but its not silicon valley. They have no offices in Silicon Valley afaik (they are now owned by Mindgeek which is located in Montreal, Eastern Europe, etc).

While there are a number of biotech companies in the bay area I think there are still more outside SF, like in San Diego, Boston, and Jersey and North Carolina.

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce players and they are in Washington.

 

[Fuchsdh]

As a counter-point, I recommend this blog post by Scott Alexander where he argues that the problems with Silicon Valley are overstated.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-reality-check/

I don't know if this is the "real" Silicon Valley any more than the one typified by the media and the OP's story, but it's a fair counterpoint.

Stories of greed and VC overreach are naturally going to appeal to people's biases, especially when it comes to our uneasy relationship with technology.

The point about how self-selecting and incubating different personalities can be is also germane, although you could argue that ties into SV's relative lack of diversity.

As for the idea of America "falling out of love" with tech startups, I'd just laugh at that assertion. Even in my non-gentrified neighborhood, people are using Seamless, everyone's using Uber and Lyft, homeowners in my neighborhood put their spare rooms on AirBnB. If people are "falling out of love" with startups, it's clearly not to the level that they won't use their services.

 

[demon]

The lack of Silicon Valley worship these days is disconcerting. SV is making the world a better place with their ingenuity and vision, adding wifi and touchscreen to household items never before thought possible.

 

[Skellig Gra]

That's just not true at all. People live on their phones and social media. Constantly use ride sharing or food delivery apps. People may not love the corporate culture over there but it has negligible results on them not using the products.

 

[Ogodei]

Like any crowded marketplace the ratio of good to crap was bound to invert out of the tech sector eventually (which doesn't mean the crap hasn't always been there, but it was lower profile because in a smaller marketplace, the investors could follow the more obvious good ideas)

 

[Hari Seldon]

I have been thinking this for years. Silicon Valley used to do actual fucking tech. Hardcore computer engineering and advanced computer science. Now it is just about get rich quick ideas designed to entice VCs. And because everyone has the same privileged background and comes from the same 2-3 universities, they all have the same dumbass ideas lol. The robotic revolution is largely coming from the East coast and not silicon valley, although they have jumped on board.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

The lack of Silicon Valley worship these days is disconcerting. SV is making the world a better place with their ingenuity and vision, adding wifi and touchscreen to household items never before thought possible.

Don't forget DRM for juicers because who wants to juice like a caveman.

 

[BeardyChan]

The lack of Silicon Valley worship these days is disconcerting. SV is making the world a better place with their ingenuity and vision, adding wifi and touchscreen to household items never before thought possible.

Have you seen the new Facebook message printer? It takes the place of your normal TP roll and prints out high quality, environmentally friendly bullshit that you can easily flush down the toilet. It's this holiday's hottest gift!

SV has a lot of problems, but what problems it has are fixable. I don't see a lot of other industries taking the risks SV is willing to.

 

[Forward]

The lack of Silicon Valley worship these days is disconcerting. SV is making the world a better place with their ingenuity and vision, adding wifi and touchscreen to household items never before thought possible.

I laughed.

I am easily amused today, but that does not take away from your point.

 

[sohois]

Why must people insist on bundling up large, disparate groups into a single entity all the time? "Silicon Valley" contains multitudes, probably thousands of firms and millions of employees. There's no possible way that there isn't huge variance across all these people and firms, yet any one firm is seen as representative of the whole, every time. Perhaps the issues with Bodega were due to the people in Bodega, and not some Silicon Valley hive mind? I don't doubt there are at least some shared cultural sensibilities and tropes but not so much as the media likes to portray for their articles

 

[nelsonroyale]

The lack of Silicon Valley worship these days is disconcerting. SV is making the world a better place with their ingenuity and vision, adding wifi and touchscreen to household items never before thought possible.

Is this some clever sarcasm? Well done. That is exactly what we are supposed to be getting excited about. At some point I could be arrested for murdering my toaster.

It does seem like SV is in love with its own vision of 'smart technology'. I think we are reaching diminishing returns down that avenue. Eco and bio-design, and renewable energies, is where real innovation needs to come from.

 

[AbortedWalrusFetus]

America never understood the breadth and depth of what Silicon Valley actually does or represents, so it's clear that such a shallow love could never last.

I think it's absolutely silly that it's required to BE in Silicon Valley to get ahead with a lot of software, since so many other places in this country offer good opportunity at vastly cheaper costs, but that doesn't diminish what Silicon Valley is. The press just doesn't actually COVER what Silicon Valley is, only the wildly reactionary bullshit that gets the press clicks.

 

[BetterThanNothing]

Well, 1) you can and people do.

And 2) at least in the context of the industrial revolution, the death of cottage industries still resulted in the creation of a middle class when previously there was only the poor and the rich.

What SV is doing these days is the reverse of that, which is concentrating more wealth and value provided by the working class into the technocratic class. Basically this is a preview of the inevitable automation crisis, how are you supposed to climb the social ladder (will it even exist?) if it’s impossible for you to create more value than robots and algorithms?

You try to keep up with the rise in required skill sets, just as people were required to do in order to work an assembly line or in a shipyard, etc. Progress has a price, and I don't have the answers to the problems presented by the unprecedented situations of the future. What do you suggest we do? Tell people not to act on their ambitions? If an idea is had and is possible to execute, it will be done. You can't put it back in the box.

To be clear, my post was that you should criticize the system, not the people within it. However you want to go about that, I'm all ears. The consequences of the loss of outdated tech and methods is not a responsibility of those who innovate. The idea that these guys are to blame because they cater to needs and wants is absurd; nothing would ever be produced if it were not for the initial potential market.

In response to the benefits of the coming age when compared to the industrial revolution: who knows? It's one of the reasons guys like the founder of Y Combinator are trying standard income out of their own pocket. Maybe the tech will actually allow us to not require work, allowing us to actually live our lives instead of spending the vast majority of adulthood spent doing something that we most likely hate and are almost certainly not invested in for any reason besides money. Maybe this will lead to the first time in human history where people won't have to be part of the elite rich just so they can be allowed a life that is actually chosen without fear of acquiring basic necessities. Hopefully, we'll be looked at by our great grandchildren the same way we look at hunter gatherers. Understandably doing what was necessary but with a recognition that it sucked a ton of ass and was a brutal process of evolutionary selection. Just like today.

There is never a perfect solution, and change is always going to hurt people. Creation requires destruction. Nobody wants to pay for pornography.

 

[Bronx-Man]

I'd say it's the culture of SV that people are getting tired of. That and the nonsense revolutionary inventions that are just shit like buses or vending machines that you need a smartphone to operate.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Wait, what is the problem with the name 'Bodega'?

 

[Muppet of a Man]

I'd say it's the culture of SV that people are getting tired of. That and the nonsense revolutionary inventions that are just shit like buses or vending machines that you need a smartphone to operate.

It's starting to mirror the flimsy, fake, or even predatory "innovations" seen within our financial system. In many ways, silicon valley has become like high tech wall street: a place where the rich figure out schemes to exploit the masses and act as gatekeepers for accessing wealth and capital.

Real innovations from silicon valley are few and far between these days.

 

[Grimm Fandango]

Your leaders are increasingly coming from a narrower group of universities, companies, and socioeconomic classes. Your companies are now solving “my-world problems” (food delivery, cold-pressed, on-demand juice versus the “real-world problems” you used to solve (getting affordable computers in the hands of everyone; inventing the Internet).

I don't see this as a fair critique. There are still SV companies doing good work. Just some with dumb ideas are making big headlines

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

Your solutions literally create the script for a satire show on HBO–and you don’t see what a big problem it is.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Is this some clever sarcasm? Well done. That is exactly what we are supposed to be getting excited about. At some point I could be arrested for murdering my toaster.

It does seem like SV is in love with its own vision of 'smart technology'. I think we are reaching diminishing returns down that avenue. Eco and bio-design, and renewable energies, is where real innovation needs to come from.

This is the new high tech economy. And big money is not taking it seriously.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Wait, what is the problem with the name 'Bodega'?

https://www.eater.com/2017/9/13/16302386/bodega-startup-corner-store-silicon-valley

 

[Sophist]

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

 

[creatchee]

This article has a fatal flaw - the general public doesn't care about Silicon Valley, or rather, who makes up the employees and boards of the companies there. The general public cares about the new app or the smart card or, yes, The Bodega. When it comes to representation in business, a very small portion of people actual care. That's just the way it is. It's not right or anything like that, but writing an article that there's some overwhelming distaste for or offense taken at Silicon Valley by anywhere near a majority of the public is a gross exaggeration at best. They just want their toys and they want them to work.

Now we can certainly talk about steps to getting the public to care all day and that might even work in the years to come, but it sure as hell ain't right now.