Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora(oreilly.com)
oreilly.com
Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-end-of-silicon-valley-as-we-know-it/
301 comments
I started a PhD in biomedical engineering back in 2017, coming from a EEE background. The topic I was studying was the application of machine learning for neurosignal decoding.
Imagine the development of a "thought keyboard" that could be used by someone with motor neurone disease to communicate with their family or drive a robotic arm - young me was excited!
While it's true that the field had shifted towards machine learning in the decade preceding, that wasn't because ML techniques showed any amazing promise or were likely to be the foundation of any breakthrough. Quite the opposite, in fact - there was strong evidence to suggest that the "ML revolution" would go nowhere, but that's where all the grant money was.
So day after day, year after year, hordes of researchers would churn out ML papers they knew would yield no fruit simply because that was the path of least resistance. Occasionally they would get a "breakthrough" result that never generalised to other datasets. It could be the case that ML is showing genuinely amazing results in other biomedical fields, but after going through that I'm always a bit skeptical. (For anyone wondering, I left after a year and basically gave up the right to ever study a PhD in Australia again.)
Imagine the development of a "thought keyboard" that could be used by someone with motor neurone disease to communicate with their family or drive a robotic arm - young me was excited!
While it's true that the field had shifted towards machine learning in the decade preceding, that wasn't because ML techniques showed any amazing promise or were likely to be the foundation of any breakthrough. Quite the opposite, in fact - there was strong evidence to suggest that the "ML revolution" would go nowhere, but that's where all the grant money was.
So day after day, year after year, hordes of researchers would churn out ML papers they knew would yield no fruit simply because that was the path of least resistance. Occasionally they would get a "breakthrough" result that never generalised to other datasets. It could be the case that ML is showing genuinely amazing results in other biomedical fields, but after going through that I'm always a bit skeptical. (For anyone wondering, I left after a year and basically gave up the right to ever study a PhD in Australia again.)
Really disappointing to hear this. The ML revolution is very real and so is the immense value it’s capable of granting us...HOWEVER it’s really only in a narrow category of problems and people don’t want to admit that so they try to shoehorn it into every corner of everything...not too dissimilar from blockchain.
That narrow problem space where ML has become revolutionary is classification problems where the cost of a false positive is marginal. In the industry we frequently refer to it as “professional judgement” and anyone who has ever referred to that statement in the course of their work should be concerned because ML is coming for you. As far as the false positive part of it, we’ll no on bats an eye when a surgeon loses a patient, but we’re unlikely to accept the same from a computer any time soon.
The biggest area where I can think of that this narrow problem space exists to be capitalized on is...search. Not surprising then that Google became a king of ML because to them it was actually a revolutionary leap forward to their core problem.
That narrow problem space where ML has become revolutionary is classification problems where the cost of a false positive is marginal. In the industry we frequently refer to it as “professional judgement” and anyone who has ever referred to that statement in the course of their work should be concerned because ML is coming for you. As far as the false positive part of it, we’ll no on bats an eye when a surgeon loses a patient, but we’re unlikely to accept the same from a computer any time soon.
The biggest area where I can think of that this narrow problem space exists to be capitalized on is...search. Not surprising then that Google became a king of ML because to them it was actually a revolutionary leap forward to their core problem.
And just like blockchain, the reason it gets forced into every field is VCs.
"We are going to challenge existing players in $market" gets you nothing, "We are going to disrupt $market with blockchain/ML" gets you a eight-digit seed round.
"We are going to challenge existing players in $market" gets you nothing, "We are going to disrupt $market with blockchain/ML" gets you a eight-digit seed round.
Seriously? A narrow category of problems?
ML has been used and is being used to significantly advance image processing, video processing, image classification, speech-to-text, natural language understanding, medical imaging interpretation, medical notes and differential diagnosis, warehouse management, shipping and delivery, transportation, networking, agriculture, biomedical research, insurance, law practice (document scanning), journalism, politics (through better polling, targeting, gerrymandering, whatever), probably other things I'm missing.
ML has been used and is being used to significantly advance image processing, video processing, image classification, speech-to-text, natural language understanding, medical imaging interpretation, medical notes and differential diagnosis, warehouse management, shipping and delivery, transportation, networking, agriculture, biomedical research, insurance, law practice (document scanning), journalism, politics (through better polling, targeting, gerrymandering, whatever), probably other things I'm missing.
That list is flag planting of the first order — like a dog claiming territory as a kingdom after a few stray golden showers here and there.
Yes, ML has been applied to all those topics, but to narrow/superficial applications & with limited success (in most of those areas, any how). The applications have also been explored in relatively ad-hoc ways, with little improvement in systematic understanding/knowledge of any of those fields.
Yes, ML has been applied to all those topics, but to narrow/superficial applications & with limited success (in most of those areas, any how). The applications have also been explored in relatively ad-hoc ways, with little improvement in systematic understanding/knowledge of any of those fields.
Please. The vast majority of the above are fields where ML failed spectacularly.
If you had any idea about medical diagnosis, biomedical research, supply chain optimization, politics and journalism you would know that machine learning is a laughing stock in these fields.
ML had 2 big wins: (image & data) Classification & NLP. It is stupid to not use ML for these problems, but it equally stupid to try to fit ML in fields that it cannot work.
If you had any idea about medical diagnosis, biomedical research, supply chain optimization, politics and journalism you would know that machine learning is a laughing stock in these fields.
ML had 2 big wins: (image & data) Classification & NLP. It is stupid to not use ML for these problems, but it equally stupid to try to fit ML in fields that it cannot work.
Let's not claim something has failed when it has just begun... Given today's hardware and given that it's a very new topic of research, IMHO the accomplishments are incredible. It's not yet production ready, but that doesn't mean another 10 years of progress won't get it there.
We need to invest in long term R&D to potentially achieve an ML breakthrough in one of the above fields instead of allocating enormous capital to ML unicorn businesses.
But to do so, we need to first openly admit the truth. ML is not working for the wide range the problems it is currently pitched for.
But to do so, we need to first openly admit the truth. ML is not working for the wide range the problems it is currently pitched for.
Seconded. Today’s “narrow”applications are quite wide compared to the expert systems of decades ago. I wouldn’t say we are in a second AI winter when cool new applications of DNNs pop up frequently on HN.
My impression about ML is that it shines where "intuition of a master" is needed. That is, for example, the mastery of a "technician painter" who has build an intuition of imitating Van Gogh painting can be achieved through AI.
Any intuitive skill that can be built through hard work and years of experience seems to be within the realms of what AI/ML can learn to do. Separating background from the subjects, guessing the 3D shape of an object from a 2D image etc. Anything that people can master through experience, including stuff like "sensing that there's something fishy but can't tell exactly what" kind of intuition.
I bet that there would be welding machines that can help an amateur to weld like a master by learning and imitating the way a master welder does its job.
Any intuitive skill that can be built through hard work and years of experience seems to be within the realms of what AI/ML can learn to do. Separating background from the subjects, guessing the 3D shape of an object from a 2D image etc. Anything that people can master through experience, including stuff like "sensing that there's something fishy but can't tell exactly what" kind of intuition.
I bet that there would be welding machines that can help an amateur to weld like a master by learning and imitating the way a master welder does its job.
In you view, why do you think the society has an issue when a “machine “ makes a decision vs a human? Can you think of a legitimate areas where trust in machine outputs wouldn’t be favoured vs a human?
ML systems will struggle when the question itself is ill-posed.
A human can say “I’ve been instructed to group these data into those categories, but this particular example doesn’t fit into any them.” and then devise a way to handle special cases.
By construction, an ML system can’t. At the end of the day, a classifier needs to assign one of the predefined labels to each example. At best, it might give you a confidence value, or a probability distribution over labels. However, interpreting those is usually outside of the system itself.
A human can say “I’ve been instructed to group these data into those categories, but this particular example doesn’t fit into any them.” and then devise a way to handle special cases.
By construction, an ML system can’t. At the end of the day, a classifier needs to assign one of the predefined labels to each example. At best, it might give you a confidence value, or a probability distribution over labels. However, interpreting those is usually outside of the system itself.
Forgive me for my ignorance, but could the issue have not been the ML but rather, put simply, the input data? Is it the case that we truly know what signals to measure to get a clear indication of intent? It seems to me the answer is no (then ML is not going to help)?
You've hit the nail on the head. There were actually impressive trials done wherein researchers used invasive sensors that penetrated the brain tissue itself and directly measured neutral spikes.
The idea that ML could magically classify signals from sensors above the dura/skull was laughable. Your signal (and therefore training data) is affected by basically any thought of action the user has, and is then spatially low pass filtered by a big fat slab of bone and flesh.
Imagine trying to train a "cat recogniser" by showing it low-resolution pictures of a random location in a room where a cat is. It was a joke then and I suspect still is now.
The idea that ML could magically classify signals from sensors above the dura/skull was laughable. Your signal (and therefore training data) is affected by basically any thought of action the user has, and is then spatially low pass filtered by a big fat slab of bone and flesh.
Imagine trying to train a "cat recogniser" by showing it low-resolution pictures of a random location in a room where a cat is. It was a joke then and I suspect still is now.
The article reminds me somewhat of an earlier O’Reilly piece, which taught me that the man’s got a bit of social consciousness in his critiques of SV:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23657403
I suspect the Pollyanna tone is why people aren’t actually engaging with the material in it. Applying machine learning to medical science is indeed exciting, but it’s hard to envision what exactly is the product that causes “The nexus of machine learning and medicine, biology, and materials science will be to the coming decades what Silicon Valley has been to the late 20th and early 21st century.” Not to mention, I would wager most commentators are not equipped to address his point about SV being unable to deal with medical regulations, seeing as there’s been medtech startups that have already attempted to flout FDA regulation.
> The hubs where that knowledge can be found are not the special province of Silicon Valley
Isn’t South SF a biotech hotbed?
His points about regulators actually doing able something substantive towards big tech platforms, and the end of “casino capitalism” also feel too Pollyannaish for our current lamentable moment. Maybe it has to all get worse before it’s foreseeable.
O’Reilly certainly calls it out as he sees it with the social commentary:
> When the “superstar firms” ruthlessly compete with smaller firms that come up with fresh ideas, not only starving them of talent but often introducing copycat products and services, there is decreased innovation from the market as a whole. Cities are dominated by a new class of highly paid big-company employees driving up housing costs and forcing out lower wage workers; wages and working conditions of workers in less profitable industries are squeezed to drive the growth of the giants. Their very jobs are made contingent and disposable, with inequality baked in from the beginning of their employment. Governments are starved of revenue by giant companies that have mastered the art of tax avoidance. The list is far longer than that.
Honestly, this article’s a great read.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23657403
I suspect the Pollyanna tone is why people aren’t actually engaging with the material in it. Applying machine learning to medical science is indeed exciting, but it’s hard to envision what exactly is the product that causes “The nexus of machine learning and medicine, biology, and materials science will be to the coming decades what Silicon Valley has been to the late 20th and early 21st century.” Not to mention, I would wager most commentators are not equipped to address his point about SV being unable to deal with medical regulations, seeing as there’s been medtech startups that have already attempted to flout FDA regulation.
> The hubs where that knowledge can be found are not the special province of Silicon Valley
Isn’t South SF a biotech hotbed?
His points about regulators actually doing able something substantive towards big tech platforms, and the end of “casino capitalism” also feel too Pollyannaish for our current lamentable moment. Maybe it has to all get worse before it’s foreseeable.
O’Reilly certainly calls it out as he sees it with the social commentary:
> When the “superstar firms” ruthlessly compete with smaller firms that come up with fresh ideas, not only starving them of talent but often introducing copycat products and services, there is decreased innovation from the market as a whole. Cities are dominated by a new class of highly paid big-company employees driving up housing costs and forcing out lower wage workers; wages and working conditions of workers in less profitable industries are squeezed to drive the growth of the giants. Their very jobs are made contingent and disposable, with inequality baked in from the beginning of their employment. Governments are starved of revenue by giant companies that have mastered the art of tax avoidance. The list is far longer than that.
Honestly, this article’s a great read.
> Cities are dominated by a new class of highly paid big-company employees driving up housing costs and forcing out lower wage workers
This is just an ignorant hot-take though that once again blames upper middle class tech employees for a housing problem caused solely by bad govern policies.
There is no “domination” here considering that tech employees are well. 21 percent [1] are now considered tech jobs and the FAANG employees clearing $500K+ to afford houses make up a small fraction of that.
> Governments are starved of revenue by giant companies that have mastered the art of tax avoidance.
SF tax revenue has been climbing the whole decade [2]. CA is the same [3]. The governments are absolutely not “starved of revenue”. They have been operating in a completely inept fashion for decades and the waste/corruption is eating everything up. Double the tax revenue in California and politicians will have it squandered in the year.
This is just another lame attempt to blame the tech boogeyman for a failed government. How much homelessness, high housing costs, high tax rates, failed public infrastructure, etc do we have to endure before we realize crying about one of the few major successful industries isn’t an answer?
1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-a... 2. https://sftreasurer.org/annual-report-fiscal-year-2018-19 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...
This is just an ignorant hot-take though that once again blames upper middle class tech employees for a housing problem caused solely by bad govern policies.
There is no “domination” here considering that tech employees are well. 21 percent [1] are now considered tech jobs and the FAANG employees clearing $500K+ to afford houses make up a small fraction of that.
> Governments are starved of revenue by giant companies that have mastered the art of tax avoidance.
SF tax revenue has been climbing the whole decade [2]. CA is the same [3]. The governments are absolutely not “starved of revenue”. They have been operating in a completely inept fashion for decades and the waste/corruption is eating everything up. Double the tax revenue in California and politicians will have it squandered in the year.
This is just another lame attempt to blame the tech boogeyman for a failed government. How much homelessness, high housing costs, high tax rates, failed public infrastructure, etc do we have to endure before we realize crying about one of the few major successful industries isn’t an answer?
1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tech-employment-bay-a... 2. https://sftreasurer.org/annual-report-fiscal-year-2018-19 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...
> Governments are starved of revenue by giant companies that have mastered the art of tax avoidance.
Your rebuttal appears to miss the point that O'Reilly makes.
First: This page [1] shows business tax is about 1B of 6B total for San Francisco. In most cities in the United States, business tax is a relatively small part of total tax revenue. Most cities derive the largest proportion of tax revenue from property taxes. For SF, it is 2B per year -- the highest of any tax revenue category. SF property prices have risen a lot in the last ten years, so property tax has also risen. I understand some of this could be attributed to a strong economy combined with difficult regulations to build new residential housing. Thus, SF has seen a historic rise in housing prices.
Second: Speaking more specifically to O'Reilly's point about the "art of tax avoidance": Are you familiar with "base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS)"? Sometimes you hear the term "Dutch Sandwich" or "Double Irish arrangement" in media. Global (tech) companies can greatly reduce national taxes by using these tax strategies. Thus, they deny much needed tax revenue to various countries where they operate. Please note: These tax strategies are not only limited to tech. Any industry that is heavily weighted towards "intellectual property", such as pharma, uses similar tax strategies. (General Electric was one of the earliest and most aggressive.) Famously, even Starbucks, which isn't a very "IP intense" industry managed to pay zero national taxes in the UK one year. After some embarrassing news stories, they offered a voluntary payment to the UK nat'l gov't.
[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards//finance/expenditures-and-reven...
Your rebuttal appears to miss the point that O'Reilly makes.
First: This page [1] shows business tax is about 1B of 6B total for San Francisco. In most cities in the United States, business tax is a relatively small part of total tax revenue. Most cities derive the largest proportion of tax revenue from property taxes. For SF, it is 2B per year -- the highest of any tax revenue category. SF property prices have risen a lot in the last ten years, so property tax has also risen. I understand some of this could be attributed to a strong economy combined with difficult regulations to build new residential housing. Thus, SF has seen a historic rise in housing prices.
Second: Speaking more specifically to O'Reilly's point about the "art of tax avoidance": Are you familiar with "base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS)"? Sometimes you hear the term "Dutch Sandwich" or "Double Irish arrangement" in media. Global (tech) companies can greatly reduce national taxes by using these tax strategies. Thus, they deny much needed tax revenue to various countries where they operate. Please note: These tax strategies are not only limited to tech. Any industry that is heavily weighted towards "intellectual property", such as pharma, uses similar tax strategies. (General Electric was one of the earliest and most aggressive.) Famously, even Starbucks, which isn't a very "IP intense" industry managed to pay zero national taxes in the UK one year. After some embarrassing news stories, they offered a voluntary payment to the UK nat'l gov't.
[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards//finance/expenditures-and-reven...
The lost national taxes in the US are effectively irrelevant for his point though. The despair in the Bay Area has nothing to do with federal funds. More importantly, federal funds haven’t been dictated by federal revenue in decades. In the US the federal government just accumulates debt whenever it wants at historically low interest.
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“The nexus of machine learning and medicine, biology, and materials science will be to the coming decades what Silicon Valley has been to the late 20th and early 21st century.”
I've been hearing the trinity of information technology, life sciences and materials science for over a quarter of a century again and again. Since the first time and ever since it reminds me of these tests where you are presented a list of words that are related somehow and you have to find the one word that doesn't fit in the set.
For me materials science seems to almost fit at first glance, but not really when you look at it. Both the other areas have already changed our life more than anything in the past decades and there is good reason they will continue to do so even more in the near and intermediate future. I don't see this to be true for materials science. At least there seem to be at least a dozen fields that are equally influential.
Does anyone know why materials science is so often included?
I've been hearing the trinity of information technology, life sciences and materials science for over a quarter of a century again and again. Since the first time and ever since it reminds me of these tests where you are presented a list of words that are related somehow and you have to find the one word that doesn't fit in the set.
For me materials science seems to almost fit at first glance, but not really when you look at it. Both the other areas have already changed our life more than anything in the past decades and there is good reason they will continue to do so even more in the near and intermediate future. I don't see this to be true for materials science. At least there seem to be at least a dozen fields that are equally influential.
Does anyone know why materials science is so often included?
Superconductors, buckyballs, artificial diamonds etc are all quite sexy and easy to grasp, so they have a big profile in popular news despite their comparative lack of utility, much more so than (until recently) incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo about mRNA, convoluted neural networks and whatnot.
That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.
That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.
> That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.
There are a lot of other directions that materials science is exploring that might turn out to be transformative. Higher energy densities and power densities in batteries and capacitors, weldable ceramics, thin film thermal insulators, electroactive polymers, tunable optical refraction and reflection, biocompatible materials for implants, etcetera, etc.
There are a lot of other directions that materials science is exploring that might turn out to be transformative. Higher energy densities and power densities in batteries and capacitors, weldable ceramics, thin film thermal insulators, electroactive polymers, tunable optical refraction and reflection, biocompatible materials for implants, etcetera, etc.
It sounds crackpot, but in the merger of ML enhanced medicine and bio-generics, we're gonna see attempts to push genetic manipulating cosmetic plastic surgeries into the mainstream - like tattoos, these medical enhancements will be sold like apps, and they will create novelty capabilities or novel appearance transformations for the customers. Some artist gets sparrow wings on their feet (like the Greek God Mercury) or an artist has a living hydra-snake-wig created that accompanies her with backup vocals, who the hell knows? with this tech, bizarre combinations are possible and will driven by pop culture excess curiosity. Not "if" but "when" a popular music artist embraces such technology, we'll see a whole generation of Transhumanists Entertainers flooding society.
There are countless takes on this, but I'll add one more: Silicon Valley's failure is in being unable to diversify effectively from a failure in city-building.
For a good stretch, the bay area was the place to be. Lots of people wanted to be there, whether or not they were engineers. The cost of living made these ambitions completely unreasonable, except for the well compensated engineers.
Monoculturalism is a failure to diversify, and it stems from an inability to build an effective dense urban region. The bay area could have had human AND financial capital rivaling NYC, a megapolis perhaps in league with Tokyo, but this failed to materialize so instead the region will likely go the way of Detroit: rising and falling in step with the industry it's built around.
For a good stretch, the bay area was the place to be. Lots of people wanted to be there, whether or not they were engineers. The cost of living made these ambitions completely unreasonable, except for the well compensated engineers.
Monoculturalism is a failure to diversify, and it stems from an inability to build an effective dense urban region. The bay area could have had human AND financial capital rivaling NYC, a megapolis perhaps in league with Tokyo, but this failed to materialize so instead the region will likely go the way of Detroit: rising and falling in step with the industry it's built around.
> Silicon Valley's failure is in being unable to diversify effectively from a failure in city-building.
What if it's the other way around? Public school didn't teach me about the Second Great Migration of black Americans westward during and after World War 2, and I was unaware that there was basically zero black population here until then. Check out the first graph in particular in this article: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-segregation-san-franci...
It's impossible for me to ignore the time correlation between these demographic changes, the civil rights movement, and the birth of California's various anti-housing policies like Prop 13. All the houses in my area of San Francisco had racial deed covenants making it illegal to sell them to non-whites, and this was new construction in the 1940s and '50s! That obviously became illegal in the 1960s so segregation became economic, locking in existing segregation by pricing out newcomers and letting existing residents pass homes to their kids down with no tax reassessment: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OEHRENWBSHNO
What if it's the other way around? Public school didn't teach me about the Second Great Migration of black Americans westward during and after World War 2, and I was unaware that there was basically zero black population here until then. Check out the first graph in particular in this article: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-segregation-san-franci...
It's impossible for me to ignore the time correlation between these demographic changes, the civil rights movement, and the birth of California's various anti-housing policies like Prop 13. All the houses in my area of San Francisco had racial deed covenants making it illegal to sell them to non-whites, and this was new construction in the 1940s and '50s! That obviously became illegal in the 1960s so segregation became economic, locking in existing segregation by pricing out newcomers and letting existing residents pass homes to their kids down with no tax reassessment: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OEHRENWBSHNO
Prop 13 is the root of the issue. It's had an awful effect on minorities and is probably illegal as "disparate impact" under the Fair Housing Act. This paper makes it clear:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3012949
I don't know if it's wise to pursue this under Trump's supreme court though
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3012949
I don't know if it's wise to pursue this under Trump's supreme court though
I think a big challenge here is single family housing with a yard is by far the most desirable housing in the US.
I doubt folks would accept a significantly more dense living if they were the engineers of tomorrow. They’d expect the single family home and yard for their work.
Where in the USA is this not a challenge? Single family zoning is everywhere and existing residents in most American cities have little reason to want that to change.
I doubt folks would accept a significantly more dense living if they were the engineers of tomorrow. They’d expect the single family home and yard for their work.
Where in the USA is this not a challenge? Single family zoning is everywhere and existing residents in most American cities have little reason to want that to change.
I don't think this is all democratic will. The legal and government structures we have that enable the NIMBYism undermine democracy. Yes, single family homes are the greater meme, but I'm convinced if we actually built the density we need (building and public transit) it would be prosperous and people wouldn't flee it.
Simply put, the fact that prices go up in densest parts of SF and NYC basically confirms that there's people that enough people want real cities to bootstrap the process.
Simply put, the fact that prices go up in densest parts of SF and NYC basically confirms that there's people that enough people want real cities to bootstrap the process.
Many engineers of today and tomorrow would much prefer a large apartment in tokyo with SF weather than droll american suburbia and the worst of all worlds that is american city life with bad transit, choking car life and a lack of safety and hygiene due to a failure of public institutions.
Millenials have show a preference for good cities, %50+ of SV engineers are immigrants from all over the world. A truely urban SV would be amazing.
Millenials have show a preference for good cities, %50+ of SV engineers are immigrants from all over the world. A truely urban SV would be amazing.
People have been saying SV will be the next Detroit on HN for the past 5 years.
I think this might be more of a wish than based in any sort of reality. Perhaps if it _does_ go the way of Detroit then I can afford to move there!
I think this might be more of a wish than based in any sort of reality. Perhaps if it _does_ go the way of Detroit then I can afford to move there!
To be clear, my position on "next Detroit" is
> rising and falling in step with the industry it's built around
The tech industry is definitely still rising
> rising and falling in step with the industry it's built around
The tech industry is definitely still rising
It might definitely be leaving, giving the same result.
This overlooks the cybercrime crisis, which in 2020 did ~4x more financial damage than weather & climate disasters. And it's expected to get much worse this year.
https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail/status/1372201054213787660
Silicon Valley probably has a role to play in suppressing cybercrime.
References:
Cybercrime, $945B: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/07/cybersecu...
Climate, $258B: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/01/world-hammered-by...
https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail/status/1372201054213787660
Silicon Valley probably has a role to play in suppressing cybercrime.
References:
Cybercrime, $945B: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/07/cybersecu...
Climate, $258B: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/01/world-hammered-by...
The difference is that cybercrime is self-solving: when companies start losing enough to really impact their bottom line, they'll finally have incentive to invest more in proper cybersecurity. Whereas with climate, any thing a single company or individual does has absolutely minimal impact on reducing their risks unless everyone else does it too. Most cybercrime isn't a result of really really clever cybercriminals, it's a result of really really poor security practices, a solveable problem.
> The difference is that cybercrime is self-solving: when companies start losing enough to really impact their bottom line, they'll finally have incentive to invest more in proper cybersecurity.
Let's drop "cyber" for a second.
Suppose some (potentially, foreign state sponsored) actor starts to physically attack/kidnap company employees in company's home country that is starts to affect the bottom line. No one would say "They have to start investing more into security". It would be normal for the company to totally offload the problem on the home state.
Now, getting back to "cybersecurity": why company is supposed to handle it instead of offloading the problem on the state?
Let's drop "cyber" for a second.
Suppose some (potentially, foreign state sponsored) actor starts to physically attack/kidnap company employees in company's home country that is starts to affect the bottom line. No one would say "They have to start investing more into security". It would be normal for the company to totally offload the problem on the home state.
Now, getting back to "cybersecurity": why company is supposed to handle it instead of offloading the problem on the state?
I don’t believe this is true. Wealthy companies that do business in dangerous countries tend to pay quite a bit for security of key employees. If you are a white collar worker of MegaCorp Oil traveling to Iraq for business, you will be provided with security. If you are a local Iraqi working in the oil fields, you can probably expect less security, precisely because your loss won’t affect the bottom line. But even so, private security is common in many factories and other company facilities, even in the US. Pretty much every skyscraper in NYC has security employees even though you can call the police there. If New York became more dangerous, I assure you security budgets would go up
This reminds me that there is a fascinating Econtalk podcast episode on the subject of how the kidnapping insurance market works. Companies who have employees working in parts of the world where they are at risk of kidnapping for ransom have access to insurance against this risk.
Two of the things that struck me about this market are (a) the insurance companies require their customers to get serious about mitigating the risk. Employees all have to attend training on how to avoid kidnapping and what to do when it happens, the insurance customer has to take other measures to limit where they go, the customer has to beef up physical security, etc. And there are some situations they refuse to insure, so that's a big red flag. The insurance company becomes a partner in doing everything they can to prevent kidnappings. and (b) customers are sworn to secrecy and may not reveal that they have this insurance. Employees don't know they are insured against kidnapping. They don't want kidnapped employees spilling the beans.
The insurers have local negotiators in their employ who often have longstanding relationships with the kidnappers.
Anyways, a bit tangential, but I learned a lot about this niche industry, and it gave me more of an appreciation for how insurers can raise the professionalism of their customers in their efforts to minimize risks. A similar approach with the benefit of setting standards could definitely apply to cybercrime insurance.
https://www.econtalk.org/anja-shortland-on-kidnap/
Two of the things that struck me about this market are (a) the insurance companies require their customers to get serious about mitigating the risk. Employees all have to attend training on how to avoid kidnapping and what to do when it happens, the insurance customer has to take other measures to limit where they go, the customer has to beef up physical security, etc. And there are some situations they refuse to insure, so that's a big red flag. The insurance company becomes a partner in doing everything they can to prevent kidnappings. and (b) customers are sworn to secrecy and may not reveal that they have this insurance. Employees don't know they are insured against kidnapping. They don't want kidnapped employees spilling the beans.
The insurers have local negotiators in their employ who often have longstanding relationships with the kidnappers.
Anyways, a bit tangential, but I learned a lot about this niche industry, and it gave me more of an appreciation for how insurers can raise the professionalism of their customers in their efforts to minimize risks. A similar approach with the benefit of setting standards could definitely apply to cybercrime insurance.
https://www.econtalk.org/anja-shortland-on-kidnap/
The idea of an insurance policy you have to keep secret reminds me of chancel repair insurance in England.
Because of various arcane feudal remnants, the ownership of certain pieces of land comes with an obligation to pay for repairs to the local church building. This can be very expensive, so buyers of land where there is a possibility that this liability might exist are advised to buy insurance to cover it.
This insurance is very cheap, because it's quite rare for this liability to be discovered- usually it's a one-off payment of about £30-50 on buying the property. It is, however, a standard term in the policy that it is void if you tell anyone that it exists.
The reason for this is that, while the liability for repairs to any given church originally attached to one piece of land, this land has often been subdivided. In this case, the owners of all the pieces of land are jointly and severally liable for repairs- in other words, the church can go after any one of them for the full cost. And, of course, a property owner with insurance is a more attractive target as they're more likely to be able to pay, and to do so without making unpleasant headlines about how they might lose their home because of an obscure mediaeval law.
Because of various arcane feudal remnants, the ownership of certain pieces of land comes with an obligation to pay for repairs to the local church building. This can be very expensive, so buyers of land where there is a possibility that this liability might exist are advised to buy insurance to cover it.
This insurance is very cheap, because it's quite rare for this liability to be discovered- usually it's a one-off payment of about £30-50 on buying the property. It is, however, a standard term in the policy that it is void if you tell anyone that it exists.
The reason for this is that, while the liability for repairs to any given church originally attached to one piece of land, this land has often been subdivided. In this case, the owners of all the pieces of land are jointly and severally liable for repairs- in other words, the church can go after any one of them for the full cost. And, of course, a property owner with insurance is a more attractive target as they're more likely to be able to pay, and to do so without making unpleasant headlines about how they might lose their home because of an obscure mediaeval law.
You're right, that's why I deliberately limited the scope of the argument to "home country".
You're still supposed to put locks on your doors even though it's the police's 'job' to prevent property crime.
Moreover, I don't think many tech companies want to give the state the access required to impliment preventative security measures for them, they'd rather role them themselves to maintain control.
Moreover, I don't think many tech companies want to give the state the access required to impliment preventative security measures for them, they'd rather role them themselves to maintain control.
> You're still supposed to put locks on your doors
Locks are for honest people.
> to impliment preventative security measures for them
That's not a job of the state. The job of the state is to punish (cyber)criminals. And it's not the harshness of the punishment that matters, it's the inevitability.
Locks are for honest people.
> to impliment preventative security measures for them
That's not a job of the state. The job of the state is to punish (cyber)criminals. And it's not the harshness of the punishment that matters, it's the inevitability.
> Locks are for honest people.
That's a great slogan. But-- your (cyber)security stance obviously affects your risk. There are things you can do with business model, stance, and organizational controls that absolutely affect your exposure to both cybercrime and real-world crime. Your home state can absolutely provide help in your strategy against (cyber)crime, but surely we also should probably avoid getting blackout drunk and flashing large sums of cash around dense urban cores, too.
That's a great slogan. But-- your (cyber)security stance obviously affects your risk. There are things you can do with business model, stance, and organizational controls that absolutely affect your exposure to both cybercrime and real-world crime. Your home state can absolutely provide help in your strategy against (cyber)crime, but surely we also should probably avoid getting blackout drunk and flashing large sums of cash around dense urban cores, too.
It isn't kidnapping - operating under physical assumptions betrays a lack of understanding of the digital. It is the same fallacy as the airforce roots in thinking that the best defense is a good offense for cybersecurity.
We don't have wars where engineers do some work and render soldiers intrinsically immune to grenades but we can prevent buffer overflow attacks by not using bad functions. We don't need to develop new police practice to deal with every new house design or modification.
Especially given that computers themselves are hijackable you cannot rely upon ad bacculum cybersecurity.
We don't have wars where engineers do some work and render soldiers intrinsically immune to grenades but we can prevent buffer overflow attacks by not using bad functions. We don't need to develop new police practice to deal with every new house design or modification.
Especially given that computers themselves are hijackable you cannot rely upon ad bacculum cybersecurity.
> Now, getting back to "cybersecurity": why company is supposed to handle it instead of offloading the problem on the state?
To a certain extent it does get offloaded, just like other crimes. But also like other crimes, businesses have a role to play in prevention, and basic competency in security should be expected.
It's 2021. If you employ more security guards than cybersecurity pros, you may be doing it wrong.
To a certain extent it does get offloaded, just like other crimes. But also like other crimes, businesses have a role to play in prevention, and basic competency in security should be expected.
It's 2021. If you employ more security guards than cybersecurity pros, you may be doing it wrong.
Cybercrime will be properly addressed when companies realize: 1) it's not just a matter of insurance, "ticking boxes" and "buying solutions" and 2) law enforcement actually investigates and prosecutes those involved (even if it involves international action)
Cybercrime vs cybersecurity is an arms race, and arms race scenarios are not necessarily resolvable.
> arms race scenarios are not necessarily resolvable.
Usually they are resolved when one or more of the racers goes bankrupt. See the Soviet Union.
Usually they are resolved when one or more of the racers goes bankrupt. See the Soviet Union.
Climate is self-solving too, just not in a way that humanity should welcome. When the climate becomes inhospitable enough, lots of humans will die. When humans die, they stop producing carbon emissions (well, technically a bit after they die, since they still need to decompose). Eventually the planet reaches a new equilibrium with fewer humans and higher temperatures.
Humanity has a self-preservation instinct in not letting that happen, just as corporations have a self-preservation instinct for not losing all their money to cybercrime. But one advantage corporations have is that they can generally act as one body, while getting all of humanity to agree on something is usually not possible until it's too late.
Humanity has a self-preservation instinct in not letting that happen, just as corporations have a self-preservation instinct for not losing all their money to cybercrime. But one advantage corporations have is that they can generally act as one body, while getting all of humanity to agree on something is usually not possible until it's too late.
Comparing these two numbers doesn't make sense, because:
1) Cybercrime activity has an immediate impact, whereas the impact of climate-changing activity will be felt for many years, and
2) The impact of climate-changing activity results in actual destruction of value, whereas cybercrime results in only the transfer of value (from the victims to the perpetrators).
Of course, the threat of cybercrime results in other value-destroying activity, like the effort spent on cybersecurity ($200B/year according to Statista).
1) Cybercrime activity has an immediate impact, whereas the impact of climate-changing activity will be felt for many years, and
2) The impact of climate-changing activity results in actual destruction of value, whereas cybercrime results in only the transfer of value (from the victims to the perpetrators).
Of course, the threat of cybercrime results in other value-destroying activity, like the effort spent on cybersecurity ($200B/year according to Statista).
While I agree with the overall sentiment, crime is usually negative sum: the perpetrator gains less than the victim lost, thus some value is destroyed even before security spending.
Cybercrime generally results in actual destruction of value, as even for pure ransomware attacks where a ransom is paid, the losses to businesses and recovery costs are on the same scale as the ransom itself, and of course there are cases like the NotPetya attack, which caused billions of damages and did not even have a working mechanism to extract money from victims, it was purely destructive.
Climate should be considered worse, the 250B will go up. and the lost oppotunity cost isn't factored. Crime will always be with us. right now we are in the wild west stage of the internet (still) but give it 20-30 years and everything will be better. The crime will be more complex. But the climate will just keep getting worse.
That seems astonishing and hard to believe; the WaPo is paywalled, where are they getting that number from? Is it by any chance an organization trying to sell cybercrime solutions?
SV has probably had just as much a role in enabling cybercrime as fighting it.
SV has probably had just as much a role in enabling cybercrime as fighting it.
> The projection of $945 billion in losses, from a new report out today[0] from the Center for Strategic and International Studies and computer security company McAfee, is almost double the monetary loss from cybercrime than the $500 billion in 2018.
McAfee's report "The Hidden Costs of Cybercrime"[0] seems to be the source.
[0] https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/assets/reports/rp-hi...
McAfee's report "The Hidden Costs of Cybercrime"[0] seems to be the source.
[0] https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/assets/reports/rp-hi...
I can read the WaPo article in a private/incognito browser window.
The IETF in particular has had a huge role in facilitating phishing via SMTP.
The IETF in particular has had a huge role in facilitating phishing via SMTP.
There is no place like Silicon Valley where taking a career risk to quit a job and start a company is normalized, understood, and encouraged.
Additionally, California is one of the only states that doesn't recognize non-competes [1], that is key for innovation and competitors coming up including small/medium competitors. This part is always overlooked.
> A few states, such as California, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, totally ban non-compete agreements for employees, or prohibit all non-compete agreements except in limited circumstances. [1]
There is also a massive augmented wave coming that is heavily underestimated and will change everything. The future is heavily content creation in new phases of technology which are huge. Overall, it is better to have a virtual economy that uses less resources than a physical one.
The new markets are definitely remote and that is how you communicate with most people now even in the same building, so being physically in California isn't as needed. Though the policies of not recognizing non-competes needs to go nationwide. Non-competes are anti-innovation, anti-worker, anti-business, anti-competition and only help the bigs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#United_Stat...
> A few states, such as California, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, totally ban non-compete agreements for employees, or prohibit all non-compete agreements except in limited circumstances. [1]
There is also a massive augmented wave coming that is heavily underestimated and will change everything. The future is heavily content creation in new phases of technology which are huge. Overall, it is better to have a virtual economy that uses less resources than a physical one.
The new markets are definitely remote and that is how you communicate with most people now even in the same building, so being physically in California isn't as needed. Though the policies of not recognizing non-competes needs to go nationwide. Non-competes are anti-innovation, anti-worker, anti-business, anti-competition and only help the bigs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#United_Stat...
Tons of companies that aren't in California don't have non-competes or have very limited ones. I've never had a meaningful non-compete in the course of my career. (Had a very narrow one when one company was acquired.)
I'm certainly not a fan of non-competes but note that, even in California, a company can drag you into an expensive court battle over non-solicitation clauses, NDAs, etc. It's also a matter of non-competes not being enforceable in general. A small company may still choose not to hire you if they think there's a possibility they may need to go to court.
I'm certainly not a fan of non-competes but note that, even in California, a company can drag you into an expensive court battle over non-solicitation clauses, NDAs, etc. It's also a matter of non-competes not being enforceable in general. A small company may still choose not to hire you if they think there's a possibility they may need to go to court.
I've had 3 in a row in Europe. I doubt they would have been enforceable, but from conversations with colleagues they certainly had a chilling effect.
Yet with the high rents and the lack of universal healthcare it takes a crazy person to take such a risk. I personally will start my startup from abroad when the time is right.
Yes, it’s still risky. But at least you’re still understood because of the pervasive startup culture in SV. Everyone in SV can relate to startups. I think what’s tough outside of SV is that people don’t relate to startups. People might think you’re just weird.
Who cares if your investors are from sv but you’re based elsewhere?
The investors care. Traditionally they wouldn't fund anyone who wasn't in easy reach.
It's also easier to hire employees since they're all in SV.
It's also easier to hire employees since they're all in SV.
I am curious. What else do investors "traditionally" care about? I am referring to aspects that aren't always explicit, like physical proximity.
Do investors not also want (competent) exceptions that stand out?
Do investors not also want (competent) exceptions that stand out?
Investors want to meet a slightly smarter but younger version of themselves. This makes them feel comfortable with the risk of their investment, they imagine all kinds of congruencies between you and them, even if they don't exist. They want to convey some nugget of wisdom that you, the entrepreneur, reverence as they key to their success. But most of all, they want you to be a money tree that buds and flowers and bears fruit continually, to the degree the generated revenues are a problem. Anything less, and they go silent for a while before applying pressures with rarely helpful advice from non-technology or old-technology backgrounds.
Considering the amount of random cryptocurrency being funded, heh
Some VCs want to see you have a good team that works together, and some combination of good ideas and work history that makes it seem like your startup will take off even if you have to pivot and give up your current prototype.
Others are having a midlife crisis and want to be your new rich dad, or they want a cult leader who makes them feel smart and throws cool insider parties. In this case it helps to be a white guy or at least Elizabeth Holmes.
One would hope YC is the first since we’re on their website, but having read pg’s essays and noticed his advice for startups is half post hoc fallacies (“use Lisp because I did”) and half is unethical (“don’t hire women or people with accents to get culture fit”) I dunno.
Others are having a midlife crisis and want to be your new rich dad, or they want a cult leader who makes them feel smart and throws cool insider parties. In this case it helps to be a white guy or at least Elizabeth Holmes.
One would hope YC is the first since we’re on their website, but having read pg’s essays and noticed his advice for startups is half post hoc fallacies (“use Lisp because I did”) and half is unethical (“don’t hire women or people with accents to get culture fit”) I dunno.
Employees are all in SV? What?
There's a strong distance effect, where investors will invest more easily companies located near them. It could be that this will change after a year of experience with doing everything online, but it's been true historically.
It kinda balances out when you're young and can easily get a seed $1M dollars to build a company with a very dubious (or non-existent) business plan
There's your salary. If the company works out or not later, well, you're a founder and has the experience, it's easier to get a job anywhere.
There's your salary. If the company works out or not later, well, you're a founder and has the experience, it's easier to get a job anywhere.
> Yet with the high rents and the lack of universal healthcare it takes a crazy person to take such a risk.
It takes a rich person to take such a risk, but yay, meritocracy!
It takes a rich person to take such a risk, but yay, meritocracy!
he says that the question is what kind of company one will build
... that's because it's not a career risk when you're a multi millionaire who will just be rehired by your friends if your venture fails.
Who are these multi millionaires? Clearly I know the wrong people in tech in the Bay Area.
Probably most people I work with in their 30s or 40s are multimillionaires.
Yeah? On paper, 401k, or elsewhere? Where have they worked and for how long?
Because in my experience, the “everyone who works at a FAANG is a multi-millionaire” meme is 100% bullshit. Especially when I read things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336029
Because in my experience, the “everyone who works at a FAANG is a multi-millionaire” meme is 100% bullshit. Especially when I read things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336029
I never said everybody is, but I do think most people who have been at FAANG or companies that pay in the same ballpark like trendy late stage pre-ipo companies for 10+ years are or are close (especially if we define multimillionaire as >2m networth including 401k and house equity, and include household wealth for married couples).
My other comment you linked I still stand by. But you don't need to be IC6/L6/E6, refreshers and equity appreciation are very powerful if you are lucky enough to get both.
My other comment you linked I still stand by. But you don't need to be IC6/L6/E6, refreshers and equity appreciation are very powerful if you are lucky enough to get both.
Definite humblebrag here.
Maybe you should check what some of their houses are worth lol
The people I know in tech in the Bay Area rent. It’s their parents, who bought their properties in the 1980s or before, who are the land-owners.
That said, I’d definitely be interested to see actual statistics about own vs. rent for people in tech in the Bay.
That said, I’d definitely be interested to see actual statistics about own vs. rent for people in tech in the Bay.
If your talented and fail at starting your own company it won’t be very hard to find a job in sv
If you get an entry level TC of 140k and save 50% of it, you'll be a millionaire in 15 years.
That's without any kind of growth, investment, stock options growing in value, raises, etc.
That's without any kind of growth, investment, stock options growing in value, raises, etc.
I don't think that's the primary reason, nor as common as you imply. The old saw about how SV is a place where failure isn't disrespected is closer to the truth.
Why doesn’t that happen elsewhere?
At the heart of progressive thought is concern over the twin evils of oppression and exploitation. O'Reilly’s piece focuses on the latter but relies on the assumption that profit==exploitation. I’m not convinced it is that simple.
I wish I could have had a chat with Milton about the Friedman doctrine [1]. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. From my perspective, shareholder value is a relatively easy measure that acts as a proxy for the true goal of a corporation: creating sustainable customer value.
Within the context of his original article, Friedman was arguing that customers, employees, and shareholders could choose to give to charity, for instance, but it is wrong for a corporation to do it on their behalf. The concept is not intuitive but it is far from promoting selfishness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
I wish I could have had a chat with Milton about the Friedman doctrine [1]. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. From my perspective, shareholder value is a relatively easy measure that acts as a proxy for the true goal of a corporation: creating sustainable customer value.
Within the context of his original article, Friedman was arguing that customers, employees, and shareholders could choose to give to charity, for instance, but it is wrong for a corporation to do it on their behalf. The concept is not intuitive but it is far from promoting selfishness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
> The generosity of open source software and the World Wide Web, the genius of algorithmically amplified collective intelligence are still there
Is it? I think it's dying with the generation that believed in that culture. What are the collective intelligence projects created by young inventors?
Even this article is written by someone who is of an older generation
Is it? I think it's dying with the generation that believed in that culture. What are the collective intelligence projects created by young inventors?
Even this article is written by someone who is of an older generation
There are sv open projects but many are extentions of some company effort, i.e pytorch/Facebook, tensorflow/Google.
Much of the traditional spirit of open source seems to be coming from Europe and South America.
Much of the traditional spirit of open source seems to be coming from Europe and South America.
The spirit is still there outside the USA, but especially developers from Europe catch on to the fact that their free labor is exploited by U.S. Foundation and Council members, who build their careers on the work of others.
This is not "ideological flamewar", it is a fact that international contributions are monetized and governed in America.
This is not "ideological flamewar", it is a fact that international contributions are monetized and governed in America.
It honestly doesn’t really matter to the world if “Silicon Valley” moves to another or multiple other locations. What’s far more important is, “does the ever-accelerating dominance of a small number of companies show any signs of weakness?” and this article doesn’t seem to think so.
It may seem unfair. However, population increases (fast, actually), so hierarchical structures grow in size, and concentration as well.
A CEO of a large company in 1980 would be considered a small CEO in 2020. There are more employees everywhere and necessarily more layers of management (and the same goes for the startup/VC ecosystem, and the same goes for democratic structures which require more stringent rule so everyone lives on the same planet). Concentration is more a side-effect of population than any other trend.
A CEO of a large company in 1980 would be considered a small CEO in 2020. There are more employees everywhere and necessarily more layers of management (and the same goes for the startup/VC ecosystem, and the same goes for democratic structures which require more stringent rule so everyone lives on the same planet). Concentration is more a side-effect of population than any other trend.
I have been a long time fan of Tim O'Reilly for the past ~20 years or so. Recently I had the opportunity to interview him [0] for a podcast/videocast I run, in which we covered his friendship and work with Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, how the O'Reilly Media company came to be; but most importantly, Tim's "political" involvement in keeping the internet free and open.
In particular, I really like his way of looking at good startups and good companies: the ones that don't simply intercept or capture value, but that instead create it.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AgeutcMbC4
In particular, I really like his way of looking at good startups and good companies: the ones that don't simply intercept or capture value, but that instead create it.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AgeutcMbC4
> The final, and perhaps most important, reason why Silicon Valley as we know it may be over is that its current incarnation is a product of the extraordinarily cheap capital of the years since the global financial crisis of 2009.
Seems to be implying that cheap capital is ending? Isn't the narrative everywhere right now that capital will remain cheap (almost) indefinitely and one of the reasons why many fear inflation and money is rushing to wallstreet and sv-casino (SPACs)?
Seems to be implying that cheap capital is ending? Isn't the narrative everywhere right now that capital will remain cheap (almost) indefinitely and one of the reasons why many fear inflation and money is rushing to wallstreet and sv-casino (SPACs)?
What I don’t understand about the article is saying that SV is doomed because other areas are likely to be so huge is to ignore that there are already so many other areas of the economy even during SV’s growth. True FAANG grew at incredible rates over the past decade. It’s unclear that’ll slow down at all as software and computerization continues its current path. But all these biotech / green economy jobs it talks about will still run on software and microchips... in R&D, manufacturing, logistics, etc. Why can’t this be an AND versus an XOR? The article also implies there’s no biotech in SV - the Bay Area is home to many world leading biotech companies. Yes there are other gravitational pulls in SD, Boston, NJ (and I’m sure others internationally), but it’s not like that mix doesn’t exist here. And once the green economy starts really going, why wouldn’t there be places for new companies for follow in SV?
"To be sure, a great deal of content on the World Wide Web and in social media is produced and consumed with commercial intent, but a remarkable amount is produced entirely without a profit motive. Google economists have told me that only six percent of Google search result pages carry any advertising at all. The other 94% of pages are the product of the joyful exuberance of humanity, creating and sharing for the joy of it."
I have been repeating the second part of this statement as a truism for decades as internet advertising keeps growing.
Apparently I have have been living it too because nearly 100% of the searches I make have zero targeted ads.
To the gatekeeper companies controlling the www today there appears to be no commercial/non-commercial distinction.
For these companies and all those who ride their coattails, data collection for the ultimate purpose of internet advertising is fair game anywhere and everywhere.
"Silicon Valley is a mirror of what is wrong with our economy and corporate governance, not the cause of it, or even the worst exemplar. (Tobacco, oil, and pharma companies vie for the top spot.)"
Tobacco, oil and pharma are all highly regulated industries. SV is highly unregulated.
It is curious to me why financial services did not make the the list of exemplars. Meanwhile the author then proceeds with a criticism of "casino capitalism".
Perhaps there are links between the rise of "casino capitalism" and the rise of the www as a promoted commercial prospect, in the late 1990s/early 2000's and again more recently.
I have been repeating the second part of this statement as a truism for decades as internet advertising keeps growing.
Apparently I have have been living it too because nearly 100% of the searches I make have zero targeted ads.
To the gatekeeper companies controlling the www today there appears to be no commercial/non-commercial distinction.
For these companies and all those who ride their coattails, data collection for the ultimate purpose of internet advertising is fair game anywhere and everywhere.
"Silicon Valley is a mirror of what is wrong with our economy and corporate governance, not the cause of it, or even the worst exemplar. (Tobacco, oil, and pharma companies vie for the top spot.)"
Tobacco, oil and pharma are all highly regulated industries. SV is highly unregulated.
It is curious to me why financial services did not make the the list of exemplars. Meanwhile the author then proceeds with a criticism of "casino capitalism".
Perhaps there are links between the rise of "casino capitalism" and the rise of the www as a promoted commercial prospect, in the late 1990s/early 2000's and again more recently.
> nearly 100% of the searches I make have zero
Google has pretty much eaten all advertising they can eat, there is no more to eat no matter how many ads they add. They can pretty much set the prices of their ads arbitrarily high since they have control over both advertisers and publishers.
> financial services did not make the the list of exemplars
Yeah, from the outside , SV currently seems to be Finance #2: greed is good, morals are for losers, grow fast and gtfo mentality
Google has pretty much eaten all advertising they can eat, there is no more to eat no matter how many ads they add. They can pretty much set the prices of their ads arbitrarily high since they have control over both advertisers and publishers.
> financial services did not make the the list of exemplars
Yeah, from the outside , SV currently seems to be Finance #2: greed is good, morals are for losers, grow fast and gtfo mentality
LOL @ rabois being a harbinger of things to come.
Isn't another growing/bigger centre for technology innovation now in China/Taiwan? Are we just pretending that Silicon Valley is still Mecca?
I think its fair to say that they're growing for sure, as the government and corporations have been investing there. What I feel makes Silicon Valley unique (backed by the history as I understand it) is the proximity of things
- The foundational organizations and proximity to an intense congregation of early innovation orgs, many of which started in Silicon Valley, or always had a large presence from the early days
- Proximity to a delta of good universities (large hiring pool, of ready to work post grads helps a lot)
- The incubation of VCs that despite many attempts to lure them, are still largely located in Silicon Valley
I think these over arching factors are the biggest reason Silicon Valley is unique. They're also not often talked about in this way very often in the 'mythos' of SV, but are very much the bedrock
It also doesn't make SV unique, per say (I think for medical device startups, states like Minnesota would be a good fit for your company, since they have a lot of investment in this area by multiple entities, as well as the same university graph so the pool of students you can hire is pretty good, and I feel this is pretty key to a lot of it)
- The foundational organizations and proximity to an intense congregation of early innovation orgs, many of which started in Silicon Valley, or always had a large presence from the early days
- Proximity to a delta of good universities (large hiring pool, of ready to work post grads helps a lot)
- The incubation of VCs that despite many attempts to lure them, are still largely located in Silicon Valley
I think these over arching factors are the biggest reason Silicon Valley is unique. They're also not often talked about in this way very often in the 'mythos' of SV, but are very much the bedrock
It also doesn't make SV unique, per say (I think for medical device startups, states like Minnesota would be a good fit for your company, since they have a lot of investment in this area by multiple entities, as well as the same university graph so the pool of students you can hire is pretty good, and I feel this is pretty key to a lot of it)
I’m guessing you haven’t been to Shenzhen. Where everything you mentioned is, and growing.
> Proximity to a delta of good universities
What good unis are in Guangdong (GD) province? The most famous ones I know are in Shanghai and Beijing. From my limited experience with hiring in Shenzhen, almost no one was from GD, nor went to uni in GD. Most went to uni in Shanghai or Beijing.
> The foundational organizations
I think the OP is referring to big gov't research (DARPA, etc.) that is the backbone of technologies behind the Internet and integrated circuits. Do similar orgs (and history) exist in Shenzhen? Again, my impression is that most of those orgs exist in Shanghai and Beijing.
What good unis are in Guangdong (GD) province? The most famous ones I know are in Shanghai and Beijing. From my limited experience with hiring in Shenzhen, almost no one was from GD, nor went to uni in GD. Most went to uni in Shanghai or Beijing.
> The foundational organizations
I think the OP is referring to big gov't research (DARPA, etc.) that is the backbone of technologies behind the Internet and integrated circuits. Do similar orgs (and history) exist in Shenzhen? Again, my impression is that most of those orgs exist in Shanghai and Beijing.
DARPA was based in Virginia... so not sure what SV history you are referring to.
Yes Guangdong is the technology zone for China, it receives both state funding, state run incubators and special economic status.
But in essence they have both highly skilled hardware engineers and software engineers which is like SV of old. Where as current day SV is dominated by software, where they ship the manufacture of things to Shenzhen or Taiwan.
As far as universities, you have Sun Yat Sen University in GZ one of the top tier universities in China. And yes a whole lot of internal migration from the north to the south. Shenzhen growing from 70k to 10mil in 40 years is an insane population movement
Yes Guangdong is the technology zone for China, it receives both state funding, state run incubators and special economic status.
But in essence they have both highly skilled hardware engineers and software engineers which is like SV of old. Where as current day SV is dominated by software, where they ship the manufacture of things to Shenzhen or Taiwan.
As far as universities, you have Sun Yat Sen University in GZ one of the top tier universities in China. And yes a whole lot of internal migration from the north to the south. Shenzhen growing from 70k to 10mil in 40 years is an insane population movement
I was in both BJ and Taipei and I didn’t see that. BJ has Chinese players for sure, but that’s it, while Taipei still feels like a small player that’s comparable to berlin / chiangmai
Taiwan home to TMSC (amoung others) currently (with apples help admittedly) putting intel to shame.
Edit: Looking for Tech in PK is like looking for tech in D.C China’s “bay area” is in Guangdong in the GZ, SZ, DS triangle.
Edit: Looking for Tech in PK is like looking for tech in D.C China’s “bay area” is in Guangdong in the GZ, SZ, DS triangle.
It’s still going to be Chinese heavy (assuming you said ShenZhen and not SuZhou)
For software it sure is Mecca and nothing else comes close.
Well good to know there's a ton of other holy places besides Mecca
Except in China. Which is my point.
For every Uber there is a Didi. Microsoft there is a Tencent...
Etc. but they don’t play at US scale, they play at China scale.
For every Uber there is a Didi. Microsoft there is a Tencent...
Etc. but they don’t play at US scale, they play at China scale.
You are listing giants who are generaly state supported and largely copies of western tech. The thing is about having a rich ecosystem of small players innovating. That is what makes SV.
I’m trying to say that the “good old days” of SV are the current days in Shenzhen. Yes, heaps of little startups doing cool stuff with easy access to software and hardware talent.
Copies of western tech? This is just propaganda the US tells itself. There is a lot of original tech in China. Where did they copy 5G from? Or their vaunted “social credit” system from?
Copies of western tech? This is just propaganda the US tells itself. There is a lot of original tech in China. Where did they copy 5G from? Or their vaunted “social credit” system from?
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Overall this is a really good piece. O'Reilly is wrong that the world was unprepared. South east Asia was prepared and handled it Amazingly. It's not just communist governments that did well, New Zealand and Australia did well too.
However, the western world was unprepared and despite being rich, failed it's people... Especially the USA and UK.
O'Reilly is right that we need to switch gears and solve climate change instead of more social media ad tech development. And he may be right the skills needed are elsewhere.
However, the western world was unprepared and despite being rich, failed it's people... Especially the USA and UK.
O'Reilly is right that we need to switch gears and solve climate change instead of more social media ad tech development. And he may be right the skills needed are elsewhere.
> O'Reilly is right that we need to switch gears and solve climate change instead of more social media ad tech development
Solving climate change in relevant timescales involves severe cuts to consumption, which will cause havoc because it will mess with all the economic growth projections people expect, which will cause short term pain even if it accomplishes long term gain. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Solving climate change in relevant timescales involves severe cuts to consumption, which will cause havoc because it will mess with all the economic growth projections people expect, which will cause short term pain even if it accomplishes long term gain. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
So much for innovation. I am
sure China will deploy enough carbon free power infra
What you say is true, but I wonder what you mean by "failed it's people". Because from what I saw it wasn't just really poor leadership. It was the prevalent attitude of individualism above everyone else that made things really bad in many western countries. People failed themselves. And great leaders aren't going to change that culture.
Oceania's willingness to be bold may be a good omen for their future
Oceania will be on the front lines of the geopolitical rivalry between China and the West. Australia is already hurting because China is screwing with their exports.
I really wish I believed this article more, but it strikes me as too optimistic :( It says a bunch of changes are coming that I wish were coming, but don’t believe we’ll get soon. Weird to come away from a “SV will die” article with that feeling.
> as Theranos demonstrated so vividly, it is harder to sustain a hype balloon in a scientific enterprise than in many of the markets where Silicon Valley has prospered.
This narrative continues to frustrate me. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said:
> Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
The big idea behind Theranos was that combining multiple microfluidic tests could produce a lab-on-a-chip. Theranos failed to combine more than a handful of microfluidics together and scrambled to find alternatives to bridge the gap.
Ultimately they were foiled by brain-dead regulatory tests that specified blood draw volumes of blood. This regulatory test has to change to accommodate fingerpick volumes of blood; a key feature of microfluidic tests.
Our collective small minds couldn’t focus on anything but the people involved. The core idea is still an outstanding hard problem.
This narrative continues to frustrate me. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said:
> Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
The big idea behind Theranos was that combining multiple microfluidic tests could produce a lab-on-a-chip. Theranos failed to combine more than a handful of microfluidics together and scrambled to find alternatives to bridge the gap.
Ultimately they were foiled by brain-dead regulatory tests that specified blood draw volumes of blood. This regulatory test has to change to accommodate fingerpick volumes of blood; a key feature of microfluidic tests.
Our collective small minds couldn’t focus on anything but the people involved. The core idea is still an outstanding hard problem.
> Ultimately they were foiled by brain-dead regulatory tests that specified blood draw volumes of blood. This regulatory test has to change to accommodate fingerpick volumes of blood; a key feature of microfluidic tests.
As I understand it, for many of the tests Theranos was aiming to do there's no real way to achieve it with the tiny volumes of blood they were trying to use: the concentrations of the substance they were testing for were so low the statistical variation of the amount in any given small volume of blood would invalidate the test, even if you could accurately count it.
As I understand it, for many of the tests Theranos was aiming to do there's no real way to achieve it with the tiny volumes of blood they were trying to use: the concentrations of the substance they were testing for were so low the statistical variation of the amount in any given small volume of blood would invalidate the test, even if you could accurately count it.
> for many of the tests Theranos was aiming to do there's no real way to achieve it with the tiny volumes of blood they were trying to use
This is exactly the right question to ask. Right from the start we should have had a scorecard of the common lab tests doctors request (under 50 I think). For each test you should ask “is it possible with microfluidics?” and then “has it been combined on a single strip/card yet?”
I’m not sure if any concentrations are too low for microfluidics rather than the dilution required to meet the volumes specified in the standardized tests. Are fingerpick volumes too small or are the regulatory tests outdated?
The same issue applies to self administered rapid antigen tests during the pandemic. Regulators focused on the “gold standard" PCR tests and ignored the benefit of cheap and easy unamplified tests that can be used in a daily regiment.
This is exactly the right question to ask. Right from the start we should have had a scorecard of the common lab tests doctors request (under 50 I think). For each test you should ask “is it possible with microfluidics?” and then “has it been combined on a single strip/card yet?”
I’m not sure if any concentrations are too low for microfluidics rather than the dilution required to meet the volumes specified in the standardized tests. Are fingerpick volumes too small or are the regulatory tests outdated?
The same issue applies to self administered rapid antigen tests during the pandemic. Regulators focused on the “gold standard" PCR tests and ignored the benefit of cheap and easy unamplified tests that can be used in a daily regiment.
They focused on the people because they were either scammers or well-known people with no domain knowledge.
The basic idea was very straightforward. I can come up with lots of great ideas if I ignore whether there's any reasonable path to a solution. Hey! Let's have a Star Trek medical tricorder implemented in a watch. Let me know when you're done implementing it. I'll be at the beach.
Nothing to do with regulator bogeyman.
The basic idea was very straightforward. I can come up with lots of great ideas if I ignore whether there's any reasonable path to a solution. Hey! Let's have a Star Trek medical tricorder implemented in a watch. Let me know when you're done implementing it. I'll be at the beach.
Nothing to do with regulator bogeyman.
> They focused on the people because they were either scammers
The scamming came after the failure of the core premise of the startup: microfluidic lab-on-a-chip. My point was not to excuse the scamming, it was to switch focus back to the core ideas and not the people sporting black turtlenecks.
I suspect that if the original strategy worked the story would be different. Transparently reporting technical/business failure is an admirable trait but it is a different thing than innovation. Journalists and analysts should have been reporting on the scorecard (strategy/tactics/execution). When the company did a technical pivot why was this not enough to investigate the underlying cause? I'm a potential customer that wants this solution; I feel like I've been cheated by all involved.
QUESTION: if someone else succeeds with a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip can the regulators validate its efficacy?
The scamming came after the failure of the core premise of the startup: microfluidic lab-on-a-chip. My point was not to excuse the scamming, it was to switch focus back to the core ideas and not the people sporting black turtlenecks.
I suspect that if the original strategy worked the story would be different. Transparently reporting technical/business failure is an admirable trait but it is a different thing than innovation. Journalists and analysts should have been reporting on the scorecard (strategy/tactics/execution). When the company did a technical pivot why was this not enough to investigate the underlying cause? I'm a potential customer that wants this solution; I feel like I've been cheated by all involved.
QUESTION: if someone else succeeds with a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip can the regulators validate its efficacy?
Presumably they compare the results with those from known good tests.
I’m one of them. Left San Francisco due to the shitty weather, high crime, high rent, not much to do there, everybody is absorbed by their work, etc.
I’ve been travelling and I’m currently wondering if I should come back or not...
I’ve been travelling and I’m currently wondering if I should come back or not...
This is a genuine question: have the tech companies done much to help out with the homelessness and crime rate? For example, through funding homeless shelters?
I ask because I thought SF wasn’t a very nice city, due to the large scale of homelessness. Seeing how much money there was, I wondered why tech companies didn’t just throw money at the problem so that they’d have a nicer environment to live in.
I know that homelessness is a multifaceted problem, but (especially in the states) high housing costs and lack of public services are major, solvable, factors.
In my home city in the U.K. we have a major homelessness problem, but we don’t have the wealth to do much about it. Looking at SF it’s not clear that generating wealth helps. And my overriding impression of Americans is that they’re far more generous with their cash than the English.
I ask because I thought SF wasn’t a very nice city, due to the large scale of homelessness. Seeing how much money there was, I wondered why tech companies didn’t just throw money at the problem so that they’d have a nicer environment to live in.
I know that homelessness is a multifaceted problem, but (especially in the states) high housing costs and lack of public services are major, solvable, factors.
In my home city in the U.K. we have a major homelessness problem, but we don’t have the wealth to do much about it. Looking at SF it’s not clear that generating wealth helps. And my overriding impression of Americans is that they’re far more generous with their cash than the English.
Yes, they threw a huge amount of money at the problem.
https://rsmus.com/what-we-do/services/tax/state-and-local-ta...
https://rsmus.com/what-we-do/services/tax/state-and-local-ta...
There's an assumption that if you pay taxes, then you have no social responsibilities beyond that. It's subjective perhaps, but to me that's such a weird way to look at the world. Helping people is one of the main purposes to life, and - particularly if you're partly to blame for the problem - why wouldn't you want to help as much as you could? In this case, it'd even be partly selfish to help, as your employees would presumably be happier if they didn't have to step over homeless people on their way to work.
We can't rely on the "system" to be perfect. You can't say "As long as it's legal it's good" and you can't say "so long as I pay the tax I have to all is well." You have to develop a conscience.
We can't rely on the "system" to be perfect. You can't say "As long as it's legal it's good" and you can't say "so long as I pay the tax I have to all is well." You have to develop a conscience.
Perhaps you are part of the problem? Maybe leaving would be best for both you and SF.
I was born and raised in the area, and have watched as friends and family are forced out due to rising costs. These are folks who legitimately loved the area and were actively involved in their communities. And they get replaced by people who seem to only care about big paychecks and spend more time complaining about the area than actually doing anything to improve it.
The rise in remote work due to COVID seems like a perfect opportunity to correct this misalignment. For those that don't like it here, I think everyone would be better off if you moved to somewhere that suits you better. And as a bonus you can take your big paycheck with you. I don't mean to offend, it just gets a little old seeing people complain about a place when they are perfectly capable of leaving.
I was born and raised in the area, and have watched as friends and family are forced out due to rising costs. These are folks who legitimately loved the area and were actively involved in their communities. And they get replaced by people who seem to only care about big paychecks and spend more time complaining about the area than actually doing anything to improve it.
The rise in remote work due to COVID seems like a perfect opportunity to correct this misalignment. For those that don't like it here, I think everyone would be better off if you moved to somewhere that suits you better. And as a bonus you can take your big paycheck with you. I don't mean to offend, it just gets a little old seeing people complain about a place when they are perfectly capable of leaving.
People are not leaving SF because tech employees are coming in. If nobody moved in, the economy would just get worse, housing wouldn't get any more available.
The problem is that your parents go to every community meeting and get all the housing projects shut down to prevent "greedy developers". That's been happening consistently since the 70s.
The problem is that your parents go to every community meeting and get all the housing projects shut down to prevent "greedy developers". That's been happening consistently since the 70s.
It's not SF but I did leave Seattle because of tech employees coming in. They destroyed my beloved city of excellent, cheap music played out of our parents' basements and in any of the bars on Capitol Hill and replaced it with shining citadels of emptiness. Seattle was a bright little miracle before Amazon set itself down right in the middle and disgorged its peoples flown in from far and wide.
The knock-on effects of Amazon moving in included a flurry of real estate speculation which directly led to the closing of a restaurant that had been continuously operating for over a decade and close family losing their job there they had worked since its beginning.
I firmly lay the blame of this wanton appropriation at the hands of the tech companies. Amazon didn't need to move directly into the heart of Seattle: they could have done as Microsoft and moved next door to Redmond. But hey, eff the residents who grew up there, right?
I have a great little story of a waiter who had lived in his apartment in the Belltown neighborhood for many years: somebody had come in to look at apartments for all the new tech hires. Person is getting the tour of a unit, pauses to look around at all the other units, "Great, we'll take it!" It was every unit in the building including the occupied. Waiter got the boot.
Seattle had and continues to hold onto the cultural evil of the "Seattle Freeze" but I sure do miss the music and to hear the punky cries of Alice Glass: "Down, down, cities fall down on me."
The knock-on effects of Amazon moving in included a flurry of real estate speculation which directly led to the closing of a restaurant that had been continuously operating for over a decade and close family losing their job there they had worked since its beginning.
I firmly lay the blame of this wanton appropriation at the hands of the tech companies. Amazon didn't need to move directly into the heart of Seattle: they could have done as Microsoft and moved next door to Redmond. But hey, eff the residents who grew up there, right?
I have a great little story of a waiter who had lived in his apartment in the Belltown neighborhood for many years: somebody had come in to look at apartments for all the new tech hires. Person is getting the tour of a unit, pauses to look around at all the other units, "Great, we'll take it!" It was every unit in the building including the occupied. Waiter got the boot.
Seattle had and continues to hold onto the cultural evil of the "Seattle Freeze" but I sure do miss the music and to hear the punky cries of Alice Glass: "Down, down, cities fall down on me."
> People are not leaving SF because tech employees are coming in
I didn't say that. I literally said they are "forced out due to rising costs".
I am all for tech workers moving to the bay area if it suits them. What I don't like, is tech workers who show up and then just complain about how much they hate it here. If you don't like it here, either leave or get involved with your community and help us fix things (including YIMBY, which all of my friends and family support, for the record).
I didn't say that. I literally said they are "forced out due to rising costs".
I am all for tech workers moving to the bay area if it suits them. What I don't like, is tech workers who show up and then just complain about how much they hate it here. If you don't like it here, either leave or get involved with your community and help us fix things (including YIMBY, which all of my friends and family support, for the record).
One day you too will move somewhere else, and realize that either you love it or that it’s pretty bad and... think “why should I try to improve this place when I can just move elsewhere?”
Housing is cheaper when the economy is worse. See Berlin.
That's not sustainable, you're just living on scraps because a lot of other people have made bad decisions in your favor. They're not going to keep investing after that, and of course it's bad for the people who moved out - this is a cause of gentrification.
Tokyo, Vienna, Singapore are examples of cities with good housing policies. Although for Vienna's to get started all the landlords had to die in WW1, and then the planners died in WW2.
Tokyo, Vienna, Singapore are examples of cities with good housing policies. Although for Vienna's to get started all the landlords had to die in WW1, and then the planners died in WW2.
I’m totally part of the problem! I actually had that theory that most people in SF are just temporarily here to get as much money as possible before leaving. Knowing that why would they try to improve anything? To improve homelessness you need both a national effort and a local effort. Both are embarrassingly small compared to the seriousness of the crisis.
I can't figure it out. I'm fairly well travelled in the world, and San Francisco is my least favorite of any city I've ever encountered.
But some tell me I just don't understand, which, in fairness, is also a true statement.
But some tell me I just don't understand, which, in fairness, is also a true statement.
But San Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. For most of the history of Silicon Valley, SF wasn't any part of it. It is only in the last decade (roughly) that a handful of high profile companies have established in SF, so arguably, perhaps, SF is today part of Silicon Valley.
Even today, none of FANG is HQ'd in San Francisco.
Even today, none of FANG is HQ'd in San Francisco.
That feels unfair, they can’t be HQ’ed in SF because there’s no space for an HQ.
There's a lot more to Silicon Valley than San Francisco. It's just as expensive with a lot of people absorbed in their work, but does away with the bad weather and crime.
I've never understood why so many tech companies over the last decade went up to SF. Before that most were down the peninsula and in San Jose. I'd pick the lower peninsula over SF no question.
I've never understood why so many tech companies over the last decade went up to SF. Before that most were down the peninsula and in San Jose. I'd pick the lower peninsula over SF no question.
The South Bay is either boring or very expensive. SF still feels very genuine and has a lot more going on compared to Sunnyvale. Not to say there is no reason to live there, but it seems to mostly attract families who like suburban living
South Bay has much better restaurants than most suburbs, if you like food, and it's not hard to get out to nature. Weather's better than SF and it's a lot cleaner. But if you want nightlife there isn't any, no.
There is even less to do there.
If you like office parks upon office parks and parking lots then yea sure... go to Sunnyvale or Santa Clara etc...
If you like office parks upon office parks and parking lots then yea sure... go to Sunnyvale or Santa Clara etc...
Because the younger talent they’re trying to attract prefers a lively city to the suburban sprawl with good schools
The younger talent they are trying to recruit prefers a lively city with broad culture and opportunities, which exist in many places outside of SV - and in different forms than just the tech mono-culture that SF is today.
Sure but the person I was replying to was talking specifically about Silicon Valley versus SF.
There are many cities out there that will attract people certainly. I don’t live in the Bay Area anymore so I can relate.
There are many cities out there that will attract people certainly. I don’t live in the Bay Area anymore so I can relate.
Everything else is pretty dead imo, for people in their 20-30 who prefer a city vibe SF is sort of the only solution here.
Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world.
Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US. Despite having much higher educational standards even in 3rd world countries, the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.
Do I like what Silicon Valley has turned into? Hell no. I like the 90s version so much better, where nerds were tinkering with cool stuff and writing software because they loved software, not because they want to increase engagement by 1%. But it is what it is, and Silicon Valley will change with the times, I'm sure. I would love to see another dot-com-bust and clear out some of the chaff, but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen this time around.
If there's anything that will kill Silicon Valley it's that people since 2010 have made *too* much money. Practically anyone at a FAANG is now a multi-millionaire no matter what you've worked on. One of the factors I listed above, greed, is now missing for the most part. People have too much money, and with that they stop getting hungry. The hunger for making money, which propelled a lot of the advancement in previous decades, is absent in many people here. Even I've become a multi-millionaire over the last 5 years by doing nothing differently except buying a house and working at a tech company. This causes a financial convection current, which you're somewhat seeing, of the bored rich Googlers moving on and doing other stuff. The incentive is gone for many.
But as long as more immigrants from other countries come to Silicon Valley because they've heard about how rich people come, that will continue to fuel things for decades to come. These days, if you get funded by a VC, you're getting $5 million for 20%, which is a lot of money. Deals like that can't be matched elsewhere and another reason why you won't see people trying to raise money elsewhere, they will just come to Silicon Valley with their greatest ideas and keep propelling it.
Silicon Valley will never die.
Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US. Despite having much higher educational standards even in 3rd world countries, the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.
Do I like what Silicon Valley has turned into? Hell no. I like the 90s version so much better, where nerds were tinkering with cool stuff and writing software because they loved software, not because they want to increase engagement by 1%. But it is what it is, and Silicon Valley will change with the times, I'm sure. I would love to see another dot-com-bust and clear out some of the chaff, but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen this time around.
If there's anything that will kill Silicon Valley it's that people since 2010 have made *too* much money. Practically anyone at a FAANG is now a multi-millionaire no matter what you've worked on. One of the factors I listed above, greed, is now missing for the most part. People have too much money, and with that they stop getting hungry. The hunger for making money, which propelled a lot of the advancement in previous decades, is absent in many people here. Even I've become a multi-millionaire over the last 5 years by doing nothing differently except buying a house and working at a tech company. This causes a financial convection current, which you're somewhat seeing, of the bored rich Googlers moving on and doing other stuff. The incentive is gone for many.
But as long as more immigrants from other countries come to Silicon Valley because they've heard about how rich people come, that will continue to fuel things for decades to come. These days, if you get funded by a VC, you're getting $5 million for 20%, which is a lot of money. Deals like that can't be matched elsewhere and another reason why you won't see people trying to raise money elsewhere, they will just come to Silicon Valley with their greatest ideas and keep propelling it.
Silicon Valley will never die.
While the title of Tim's essay (which is not all matching with the title) is wrong so is your conclusion.
> Silicon Valley will never die.
Silicon valley is already dead in many sense. It has long stopped being the place where bunch of nerds could meet and make interesting stuff purely for the soul in the game. In last 20 years it is replaced by "i want to get rich" crowd who are building crappy products, VCs in suites who just get lucky every now and then, Big Tech which is a bog in itself, greedy and corrupt politicians squeezing people. The joy of building stuff is replaced with pressure of white board coding, and folks are large cos are not really solving interesting problems but haggling over promos and TC on teamblind.com.
SV of today is just another wall street where people spend their 20s and 30s doing back breaking work so they could get out of this place in their 40s. It is a soul less place.
I think SV will die eventually (so will NY, London or any other city) over sufficiently long period.
> Silicon Valley will never die.
Silicon valley is already dead in many sense. It has long stopped being the place where bunch of nerds could meet and make interesting stuff purely for the soul in the game. In last 20 years it is replaced by "i want to get rich" crowd who are building crappy products, VCs in suites who just get lucky every now and then, Big Tech which is a bog in itself, greedy and corrupt politicians squeezing people. The joy of building stuff is replaced with pressure of white board coding, and folks are large cos are not really solving interesting problems but haggling over promos and TC on teamblind.com.
SV of today is just another wall street where people spend their 20s and 30s doing back breaking work so they could get out of this place in their 40s. It is a soul less place.
I think SV will die eventually (so will NY, London or any other city) over sufficiently long period.
> Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world.
Tel Aviv has it. Beijing has it. SV’s big advantage over them is the internal market and Beijing will acquire that soon enough.
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
True enough in software but see SAP. DeepMind was British, no? Give it time. Germany was the epicenter of the chemical industry before and to a large extent after WW1. It's still a big deal but Detroit is still a big deal in the automotive industry too.
> Despite having much higher educational standards even in 3rd world countries, the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.
There is no credible interpretation of this. In CS the US’ dominance in research is so great I’m not even sure what the best non-US university even is, perhaps ETH Zürich?
Tel Aviv has it. Beijing has it. SV’s big advantage over them is the internal market and Beijing will acquire that soon enough.
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
True enough in software but see SAP. DeepMind was British, no? Give it time. Germany was the epicenter of the chemical industry before and to a large extent after WW1. It's still a big deal but Detroit is still a big deal in the automotive industry too.
> Despite having much higher educational standards even in 3rd world countries, the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.
There is no credible interpretation of this. In CS the US’ dominance in research is so great I’m not even sure what the best non-US university even is, perhaps ETH Zürich?
> Beijing will acquire that soon enough.
I very much doubt it. Israel and china have something in common like all rising powers do, strong nationalism. Foreigners getting funded before locals is I am sure completely unthinkable.
I very much doubt it. Israel and china have something in common like all rising powers do, strong nationalism. Foreigners getting funded before locals is I am sure completely unthinkable.
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
Probably the most ignorant comment I've ever seen on HN.
Probably the most ignorant comment I've ever seen on HN.
This sentiment crops up semi-frequently here and I find it really odd. The USA has a lot going for it, but they don’t have a monopoly on impactful tech.
[deleted]
Instead of calling OP ignorant, can you help us with world-leading tech companies that are not in the US?
I can think of Tencent from China in terms of company valuation, but my impression is that Tencent's dominance is confined to China instead of the world.
I can think of Tencent from China in terms of company valuation, but my impression is that Tencent's dominance is confined to China instead of the world.
I’ll bite: Leadership in chip manufacturing is firmly in TSMC’s hands. Chip design is dominated by ARM and Qualcomm. Display tech by Samsung and LG.
Today, if you have an idea for a new gadget and you need fast prototyping, you’re far better off setting up shop in Shenzen than San Jose.
I’ll give you one thing: When it comes to software, by far SV has still the most influence. But when you include the whole tech space I think one should differentiate.
Today, if you have an idea for a new gadget and you need fast prototyping, you’re far better off setting up shop in Shenzen than San Jose.
I’ll give you one thing: When it comes to software, by far SV has still the most influence. But when you include the whole tech space I think one should differentiate.
Not saying you're wrong, but isn't Qualcomm an American company?
you could say that, but certainly not an SV company.
I would even add that only a handful of companies out of SV did add real societal value and many of them with their dark engagement patterns are even detrimental.
There's dozens already listed - but just to name a few off the top of my head - ARM, TSMC, Spotify, Sony, Nintendo, DJI, TikTok (ByteDance), Atlassian, Skype (pre-MS), Canva, Nubank.
And that's also ignoring the dozens of Chinese companies that dwarf their US counterparts but don't really do much outside China (Ant/Alibaba/Jingdong/DiDi/etc).
"Only the US can produce world-leading tech companies" is the type of thing you say when you get all your news from TechCrunch and have never been outside the US.
And that's also ignoring the dozens of Chinese companies that dwarf their US counterparts but don't really do much outside China (Ant/Alibaba/Jingdong/DiDi/etc).
"Only the US can produce world-leading tech companies" is the type of thing you say when you get all your news from TechCrunch and have never been outside the US.
Spotify came from Sweden. Not sure they’re a world leading tech company but they definitely fit the SV startup mould.
I agree completely with what you mean, but this was an unnecessary, extremely insulting way to say it.
What the OP wrote is considerably more offensive than what I responded with (and I also was originally going to respond with something FAR less polite, but decided against it).
Sugarcoating it any more would just dilute the message. I stand by what I said.
Sugarcoating it any more would just dilute the message. I stand by what I said.
[deleted]
> Silicon Valley will never die.
Over what time period? It’s absurd to say this and mean forever, if you have ever opened a history book. Even America itself will pass out of dominance, as all superpowers have. Rome, Britain, etc. Change is the rule, not the exception. It is the natural way.
https://marketcap.com.au/history-world-reserve-currencies/
Over what time period? It’s absurd to say this and mean forever, if you have ever opened a history book. Even America itself will pass out of dominance, as all superpowers have. Rome, Britain, etc. Change is the rule, not the exception. It is the natural way.
https://marketcap.com.au/history-world-reserve-currencies/
The research at Los Alamos that Geoffrey West has summarized most recently in his book Scale demonstrates different dynamics are at work. Creatures and companies grow and age and die. Cities are a completely different construct. Rome and Londinium are both still large and influential. Two particularly stark demonstrations of this effect are Hiroshima and Nagasaki both of which were wiped off the map with nukes yet in roughly 30 years were back to being thriving urban conurbations. Times change, but influence remains more consistent than most expect. The startup scenes in Detroit and Cleveland are other examples of boom towns that were written off yet remain significant contributors.
Sure, there is still innovation coming out of Detroit and Cleveland, but I still think if SF/SV became like one of those cities that would qualify as "dying" to a lot of people who currently live there.
Many places have plenty of talent, capital is increasingly global, and greed is a human constant. None of these are meaningfully unique to Silicon Valley these days. What traditionally has been unique is the culture, the importance of which should never be underestimated. Unfortunately for Silicon Valley, that culture now exists in many pockets outside of Silicon Valley, often brought there by former denizens of The Valley. And those people are bring a lot more wealth with them due to making loads of money.
To your point, I do think the amount of money being thrown at employees in Silicon Valley (and Seattle, and...) has been detrimental to the ability to build hardcore technology startups. The cost of building a critical mass of highly qualified employees has made doing so effectively unachievable in many domains that require such employees to have any chance of executing successfully. This has created an arguably pathological selection bias for the kinds of startups that can be funded or the kinds of founders that can plausibly start a given company.
Silicon Valley isn’t dead but as a place to build a tech company it is looking less differentiated with each passing year. Some critical future software deep tech is now developed almost entirely outside of Silicon Valley (cloud, AI, etc) even at companies headquartered in the Valley.
To your point, I do think the amount of money being thrown at employees in Silicon Valley (and Seattle, and...) has been detrimental to the ability to build hardcore technology startups. The cost of building a critical mass of highly qualified employees has made doing so effectively unachievable in many domains that require such employees to have any chance of executing successfully. This has created an arguably pathological selection bias for the kinds of startups that can be funded or the kinds of founders that can plausibly start a given company.
Silicon Valley isn’t dead but as a place to build a tech company it is looking less differentiated with each passing year. Some critical future software deep tech is now developed almost entirely outside of Silicon Valley (cloud, AI, etc) even at companies headquartered in the Valley.
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
A few examples:
Nokia (the sleeping giant will awaken again :))
Nordic Semiconductor
The Qt Company
Unity Technologies
I might be influenced by living in Scandinavia. :)
A few examples:
Nokia (the sleeping giant will awaken again :))
Nordic Semiconductor
The Qt Company
Unity Technologies
I might be influenced by living in Scandinavia. :)
> Nokia (the sleeping giant will awaken again :))
There is a nice little scene of companies in Espoo filled with some incredibily talented technologists who all got their start at Nokia.
Even if Nokia itself doesn't return, I expect at least one or two major technology developments out of there. I have my eye on ICEYE and have even thought of maybe working there.
There is a nice little scene of companies in Espoo filled with some incredibily talented technologists who all got their start at Nokia.
Even if Nokia itself doesn't return, I expect at least one or two major technology developments out of there. I have my eye on ICEYE and have even thought of maybe working there.
Also Nintendo, Sony, Ericsson, and Samsung
Wasn’t Opera, Nokia, and QT all within the same building too in Oslo? Maybe something’s in the water
Not Nokia, but yes I used to work for opera and trolltech was just a floor above us. We did a lot of work for Nokia device so maybe that’s what you were thinking of.
Nokia itself was a giant corporation with multiple buildings around Finland.
Nokia itself was a giant corporation with multiple buildings around Finland.
TSMC
ASML
ASML
SV will exist for as long as the US is in the position it is in the world. Money will flow while USD is the worlds reserve currency.
The US is however rotting from within. The political disfunction will eventually destroy everything.
The US is however rotting from within. The political disfunction will eventually destroy everything.
The US has a lot of democratic risk but I have more hope for the country than Europe or Africa, because our economic policy is so much better. Europeans love their post-WW2 welfare states, but in practice their current governments react to everything with more austerity, and they're really anti-immigration.
US economic policy is a result of the dollar being a world reserve currency. This is a unique privilege (usd being overvalued and liquid) and also a curse (inequality).
Europe has quite a lot of internal migration and the US largely benefits from highly educated european and asian immigrants to SV. What makes europeans move is access to capital. It all comes down to the dollar.
Europe has quite a lot of internal migration and the US largely benefits from highly educated european and asian immigrants to SV. What makes europeans move is access to capital. It all comes down to the dollar.
Well, that's a theory, but it's not proven and we'd have to lose the status to do the experiment.
There are countries with higher median wealth than the US and there are countries with a higher debt to GDP ratio - Japan and Canada have both. Really it just seems like printing money is much safer than people think, and everyone is just afraid of inflation because it happened once in the 70s due to an energy crisis.
There are countries with higher median wealth than the US and there are countries with a higher debt to GDP ratio - Japan and Canada have both. Really it just seems like printing money is much safer than people think, and everyone is just afraid of inflation because it happened once in the 70s due to an energy crisis.
> There are countries with higher median wealth than the US and there are countries with a higher debt to GDP ratio - Japan and Canada have both.
All irrelevant.
> Really it just seems like printing money is much safer than people think
It is safer when your currency is the one most other countries are indebted in and buy their goods in. USD increasing in value causes economic crises around the world, USD decreasing in value causes economic booms around the world. All because countries are paying their debts in dollars.
> and everyone is just afraid of inflation because it happened once in the 70s due to an energy crisis.
A whole lot of things happened in the 70s. Like the USD going off the gold standard completely, other countries starting to get rid of it for this reason and the establishment of the petro dollar to get it under control again. The 70s showed how things start unraveling when USD status is threatened.
All irrelevant.
> Really it just seems like printing money is much safer than people think
It is safer when your currency is the one most other countries are indebted in and buy their goods in. USD increasing in value causes economic crises around the world, USD decreasing in value causes economic booms around the world. All because countries are paying their debts in dollars.
> and everyone is just afraid of inflation because it happened once in the 70s due to an energy crisis.
A whole lot of things happened in the 70s. Like the USD going off the gold standard completely, other countries starting to get rid of it for this reason and the establishment of the petro dollar to get it under control again. The 70s showed how things start unraveling when USD status is threatened.
The root cause is people around the world still trust the US organization as a country, at least more than the others.
Yeah and the terrirists hate you for your freedom.
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
Young people might not remember but 10+ years ago, Nokia used to be the market leader in mobile phones.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-mobile-phone-mark...
Young people might not remember but 10+ years ago, Nokia used to be the market leader in mobile phones.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-mobile-phone-mark...
I agree, but never say never.
The Chinese will for sure have their own version of Silicon Valley and their giants will rival ours, no doubt.
I think there will be other critical centers of tech innovation, similar to how Hollywood is Hollywood but NYC has an industry as well.
The Chinese will for sure have their own version of Silicon Valley and their giants will rival ours, no doubt.
I think there will be other critical centers of tech innovation, similar to how Hollywood is Hollywood but NYC has an industry as well.
Also it's very much worth nothing that Silicon Valley no longer has the monopoly on talent that it once had. In fact in some of the more important development areas now, it's shifted to places like Boston or elsewhere.
Not to mention that a lot of talent are moving to Austin, Miami, or literally anywhere thanks to the teleconferencing technology that Silicon Valley invented.
Which raises the question if Silicon Valley isn’t geographical but is rather a catch-all for the cutting edge and dumb money aspects of the U.S. tech industry. Is the Amazon/Microsoft/Valve tech scene in Seattle any less Silicon Valley than SV itself? Is Austin, which had techbros since the 90s with the likes of Trilogy [0], and an ongoing rush of new blood flowing out of the Bay Area, any less SV? Will VCs moving to Miami turn it into the funding operations center of SV?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=620848
Which raises the question if Silicon Valley isn’t geographical but is rather a catch-all for the cutting edge and dumb money aspects of the U.S. tech industry. Is the Amazon/Microsoft/Valve tech scene in Seattle any less Silicon Valley than SV itself? Is Austin, which had techbros since the 90s with the likes of Trilogy [0], and an ongoing rush of new blood flowing out of the Bay Area, any less SV? Will VCs moving to Miami turn it into the funding operations center of SV?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=620848
I've found that as much as the technical folks have spread out to Seattle & Austin (and now elsewhere as those are getting too expensive), nearly all of the business folks stick to the Valley. Both the brilliant and the parasites.
As the capital cycle has shifted away from VC towards companies consolidating and needing to make real returns, it's going to be interesting to see if SV can stay what it is until things turn around again.
During the dotcom correction, it was still possible for some people to stick around and eek out a living. Today that's not possible without technologist wages.
Business folks are mostly trend followers now and "leaving California" is a trendy thing to do.
As the capital cycle has shifted away from VC towards companies consolidating and needing to make real returns, it's going to be interesting to see if SV can stay what it is until things turn around again.
During the dotcom correction, it was still possible for some people to stick around and eek out a living. Today that's not possible without technologist wages.
Business folks are mostly trend followers now and "leaving California" is a trendy thing to do.
Zoom is mostly developed in China, not even SV.
I think you’re not looking far enough back in the history of computer technology to think it’s _recently_ shifted to places like Boston. There’s always been companies outside SV, and especially in Boston. And there’s always been ebb and flow.
I'm well aware, but my point is this time that there are entire fields where the _hub_ is Boston and not SV.
The fear of China "overtaking" the US is like the fear of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Real, but with no substance. A system built on top of paranoia is very unlikely to succeed.
Downplaying China and their potential is exactly how China got to the level of prominence they have today. I don't see the Soviet Union as a good comparison. I think China could still fail, of course, but they're much more likely than the Soviets (from whom they no doubt learned some of what not to do) to succeed in the longer term.
The biggest problem is that the West is allowing them to win, by being addicted to cheap goods and losing the ability to manufacture many things (cost-effectively or at all) ourselves, while China doesn't open up their markets to outsiders, at least nowhere near the same degree as we give them access.
The biggest problem is that the West is allowing them to win, by being addicted to cheap goods and losing the ability to manufacture many things (cost-effectively or at all) ourselves, while China doesn't open up their markets to outsiders, at least nowhere near the same degree as we give them access.
No one said they would over take - merely they that are a formidable foe and will have a presence no doubt.
The kind of hubris in this thread tells me despite how asinine these articles are they hit HNs nerve.
The kind of hubris in this thread tells me despite how asinine these articles are they hit HNs nerve.
I wouldn't say "no one"; my personal opinion is that if the West doesn't wake up, they'll quite easily overtake in a few decades, if not sooner. We continue to enable their rise, while ignoring their bad behavior, all because we need access to their manufacturing capability... capability we've willingly ceded to them over the past decades.
you oversimplify their model, for most people in Schenchzen(Chinese silicon valley) the motivation is the same as it was in US
I'm sorry, but China is much stronger economically than the USSR ever was
》But as long as more immigrants from other countries come to Silicon Valley because they've heard about how rich people come
Why should I come to SV? Living standard, taxes, workforce cost, housing... I may get $5m funding, but that would only buy an office and couple of employees for a few years. And if I ever make it, VC and California taxes would eat 90% of my profit.
And do not even let me start on family and children cost and friendliness. Buying $3m house, so homeless guy can expose himself in front of my daughter... :(
Raising funds is not that big deal, there is so much free capital now. New trend is residency in tax heaven (UAE, Singapore, Cyprus) and globally distributed team.
Why should I come to SV? Living standard, taxes, workforce cost, housing... I may get $5m funding, but that would only buy an office and couple of employees for a few years. And if I ever make it, VC and California taxes would eat 90% of my profit.
And do not even let me start on family and children cost and friendliness. Buying $3m house, so homeless guy can expose himself in front of my daughter... :(
Raising funds is not that big deal, there is so much free capital now. New trend is residency in tax heaven (UAE, Singapore, Cyprus) and globally distributed team.
California doesn't have a high tax burden. If you manage to get a house you're actually set, it's a feudal system where you essentially never have to pay taxes again, since your property tax will be below inflation forever.
Prop 13 allows for 2% increase every year[0]. That's more than the (supposed) inflation rate in many years[1], though agreed that feels inaccurate.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_...
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_...
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
Compared to what? California is not exactly known as tax heaven.
That’s because the only people who complain about “taxes” in general terms are propagandists like Grover Norquist who don’t care about reality. People actually trying to skip on their tax bills like Musk tend to do it quietly and make up excuses.
Anyone who lives here knows perfectly well that their neighbor who bought a house in the 80s has a property tax bill 10x lower than theirs - actually I live next to several car dealerships who’d pay less than I would if I could afford a house here. That’s the power of Prop 13.
Besides that, CA residents are probably getting a tax refund this year because the state has a budget surplus.
Anyone who lives here knows perfectly well that their neighbor who bought a house in the 80s has a property tax bill 10x lower than theirs - actually I live next to several car dealerships who’d pay less than I would if I could afford a house here. That’s the power of Prop 13.
Besides that, CA residents are probably getting a tax refund this year because the state has a budget surplus.
So rant about local politics and shaming people who decide to leave.
I am sure California tax rate is under 70%, but I find it highly non transparent and unpredictable.
I am sure California tax rate is under 70%, but I find it highly non transparent and unpredictable.
> Buying $3m house, so homeless guy can expose himself in front of my daughter... :(
You’re talking about a few limited neighborhoods out of an entire metropolitan area.
You’re talking about a few limited neighborhoods out of an entire metropolitan area.
that it's normalized is his point
shame on us for that
shame on us for that
> There's a reason why we have never seen a world leading tech company come out from anywhere except the US.
Spotify, ATI, ARM, BlackBerry?
Spotify, ATI, ARM, BlackBerry?
Canonical and the part of AWS built in SA?
I love this take. It’s true, after the rise of modern tech post-2008, the top talent got rich off RSUs and lost their greediness. Greed made this industry what it is, in every innovation cycle (hardware, software, dotcom, mobile).
We need a return to greed and a rise in hunger and competitiveness, which creates innovation. Too many talented individuals resting on their laurels cashing RSUs instead of starting a company.
We need a return to greed and a rise in hunger and competitiveness, which creates innovation. Too many talented individuals resting on their laurels cashing RSUs instead of starting a company.
I think it’s a massive success that tech has been able to share as much of its profits with its workers, and I think that’s because of stock comp creating a race to the top with wage growth. We need more of that, not less.
> If there's anything that will kill Silicon Valley it's that people since 2010 have made too much money. Practically anyone at a FAANG is now a multi-millionaire no matter what you've worked on.
No they're not. A multi-thousandaire maybe.
You can get to millionaire status if you buy a house and pay off the loan, but for that you need more than 10 years of working in SV or an inheritance.
No they're not. A multi-thousandaire maybe.
You can get to millionaire status if you buy a house and pay off the loan, but for that you need more than 10 years of working in SV or an inheritance.
> That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed.
> Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world.
Nothing lasts forever. Some time ago, Detroit would have been on your list, too:
"so tired of random writers trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. It's like saying Detroit is doomed. Detroit has the critical mass of talent and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world."
> Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world.
Nothing lasts forever. Some time ago, Detroit would have been on your list, too:
"so tired of random writers trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. It's like saying Detroit is doomed. Detroit has the critical mass of talent and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world."
[deleted]
> or Wall Street is doomed
IDK Wall Street seems pretty irrelevant to me. The only thing that matters these days is the Fed.
IDK Wall Street seems pretty irrelevant to me. The only thing that matters these days is the Fed.
Did you even read the article? Because you seem to be addressing a generic “Silicon Valley the place is dead” clickbait article rather than an in-depth thoughtful essay about the state of the tech industry and how it might transform as more sciences beyond computing come to prominence.
As detailed as your comment is, it doesn’t seem germane to the OP at all and appears to be responding to merely the title and the identity of the author.
As detailed as your comment is, it doesn’t seem germane to the OP at all and appears to be responding to merely the title and the identity of the author.
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that.""
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Very well, next time I will simply state “the article doesn’t mention any of that, you have clearly not read it, and you are using this comment thread as a personal soapbox to broadcast your own opinions about a subject that is orthogonal to the actual link, sucking up valuable discussion that could be actually relevant and addresses the article at hand.”
Ok, I see what you mean and realize that I didn't really read your comment beyond the trigger phrase at the beginning.
Yes, generic top subthreads that don't really address the article, but rather get sucked straight into $predictable-thing-people-always-argue-about, are indeed one of the biggest problems on HN and I'm constantly trying to convince people not to go there.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Still, please don't "Did you even read the article"—it doesn't help. However, if you (or anyone) notice one of these generic subthreads sitting at the top of a thread, gathering mass and choking out more interesting discussion, there actually is something super helpful you can do: email [email protected] to let us know. We downweight those, and doing that is perhaps the single best moderation thing we can do in large threads. It makes a huge difference.
Just please remember that the problem is a co-creation, and the bulk of it is caused not by the root generic comment but by the upvotes they routinely attract. It's more a tragedy-of-the-commons thing and not worth taking out on any individual user. The solution is moderation, i.e. a module whose job it is to watch over the main system and jiggle it out of its failure modes.
I plan to add software so that users can help identify and downweight these generic subthreads. Pending that, though, emails [email protected] alerting us to these are greatly, fabulously appreciated.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Still, please don't "Did you even read the article"—it doesn't help. However, if you (or anyone) notice one of these generic subthreads sitting at the top of a thread, gathering mass and choking out more interesting discussion, there actually is something super helpful you can do: email [email protected] to let us know. We downweight those, and doing that is perhaps the single best moderation thing we can do in large threads. It makes a huge difference.
Just please remember that the problem is a co-creation, and the bulk of it is caused not by the root generic comment but by the upvotes they routinely attract. It's more a tragedy-of-the-commons thing and not worth taking out on any individual user. The solution is moderation, i.e. a module whose job it is to watch over the main system and jiggle it out of its failure modes.
I plan to add software so that users can help identify and downweight these generic subthreads. Pending that, though, emails [email protected] alerting us to these are greatly, fabulously appreciated.
I understand, it’s incredibly dispiriting to see long written comments that grab a bunch of upvotes yet have absolutely nothing to do with the OP kill off all the interest in the actual article. Can they simply be flagged?
Though admittedly this article would probably be easier to approach if it was broken up into four parts that could each be addressed in different threads.
Though admittedly this article would probably be easier to approach if it was broken up into four parts that could each be addressed in different threads.
You can flag them because generic tangents are against the site guidelines. It might help, but when they're at the top of a thread, the upvotes will most likely dominate the flags. That's why moderator intervention is needed.
Btw, a lot of the time these comments are perfectly fine as long as they're halfway down the page. Humans like to talk and we naturally talk about what we already know, and repeat things we've said or felt many times before—it's just the way we are. The problem comes more because people upvote the familiar (because hey! I feel that way too!), and then suddenly the more boring category (regurgitating the familiar) chokes out the more interesting one (new and unpredictable information). In most cases that wasn't the commenter's intention. The solution is for a countervailing mechanism, like downweights, to dampen the effect of this suboptimal one. Unfortunately that still requires moderator intervention, which is a bottleneck.
Btw, a lot of the time these comments are perfectly fine as long as they're halfway down the page. Humans like to talk and we naturally talk about what we already know, and repeat things we've said or felt many times before—it's just the way we are. The problem comes more because people upvote the familiar (because hey! I feel that way too!), and then suddenly the more boring category (regurgitating the familiar) chokes out the more interesting one (new and unpredictable information). In most cases that wasn't the commenter's intention. The solution is for a countervailing mechanism, like downweights, to dampen the effect of this suboptimal one. Unfortunately that still requires moderator intervention, which is a bottleneck.
> the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.
So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen.
Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking system's?
Sorry... Silicon Valley is dying.
So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen.
Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking system's?
Sorry... Silicon Valley is dying.
You've listed literally 4 things.
You can't really believe that compares to the innovations to come out of Silicon Valley, right?
You can't really believe that compares to the innovations to come out of Silicon Valley, right?
Sorry, your right:
- largest electric vehicle manufacturer and adoption
- 5G (still no SV grown solution there)
- Most advanced solar manufacture
- biggest investor in renewable energy and nuclear
- biggest investor in space based technology and delivery
If you’d like more I can keep going. I was responding to: “they steal everything”... I pointed out the most widely used social network that was homegrown and unique.
- largest electric vehicle manufacturer and adoption
- 5G (still no SV grown solution there)
- Most advanced solar manufacture
- biggest investor in renewable energy and nuclear
- biggest investor in space based technology and delivery
If you’d like more I can keep going. I was responding to: “they steal everything”... I pointed out the most widely used social network that was homegrown and unique.
> - 5G (still no SV grown solution there)
Is this a real thing that anyone cares about? There was a lot of marketing from Samsung and Supermicro for a few months about how everyone needed "5G AI cloud infrastructure", but it seemed like an especially bad strain of bullshit. I certainly haven't figured out what it was supposed to mean yet.
Selling infrastructure to ISPs is not an amazingly high margin business.
Is this a real thing that anyone cares about? There was a lot of marketing from Samsung and Supermicro for a few months about how everyone needed "5G AI cloud infrastructure", but it seemed like an especially bad strain of bullshit. I certainly haven't figured out what it was supposed to mean yet.
Selling infrastructure to ISPs is not an amazingly high margin business.
Yeah, 5G is a real thing. It’s really fast and awesome!
It involves both improvements in hardware and software. Huawei are the leaders in it. (Devastating to the narrative that China just copies everyone)
It involves both improvements in hardware and software. Huawei are the leaders in it. (Devastating to the narrative that China just copies everyone)
5G FR2 is certainly fast but we already had "fast" (5Ghz Wi-Fi or wired Internet), and it's pretty harsh on mobile batteries. 5G FR1 is somewhat better than LTE but not really enough to enable new uses.
The real issue preventing new consumer uses is that wireless plans are expensive and have data limits. Driving that down presumably involves investing in the wireless ISP backend, which doesn't have much to do with the radio technology.
The real issue preventing new consumer uses is that wireless plans are expensive and have data limits. Driving that down presumably involves investing in the wireless ISP backend, which doesn't have much to do with the radio technology.
Define awesome. How will it improve my life? Please don't mention high speed. Or if you do, mention applications where it makes difference.
I do share your skepticism overall, 5G is being pushed more aggressively than its value would warrant. But there are parts of 5G suite that are indeed valuable and go beyond the mere "moar speed" mantra.
Network slicing is not consumer facing, but is a big deal in business-to-business connectivity, likely enabling business models that just aren't possible today. It's a bit like renting virtual machines in the cloud, but instead you're renting connectivity, tailored to your SLA needs.
Higher bandwidth, lower latency and lower power consumption are not exciting in isolation, but improving all of them at the same time does bring notably better user experience (see the raving reviews of M1 Mac for the same phenomenon).
Network slicing is not consumer facing, but is a big deal in business-to-business connectivity, likely enabling business models that just aren't possible today. It's a bit like renting virtual machines in the cloud, but instead you're renting connectivity, tailored to your SLA needs.
Higher bandwidth, lower latency and lower power consumption are not exciting in isolation, but improving all of them at the same time does bring notably better user experience (see the raving reviews of M1 Mac for the same phenomenon).
This list includes no genuinely new innovations except for maybe 5G. You are listing that China is a major manufacturer, which is true. The OPs point was that China has a record of stealing IP from the US, which is also true. Listing manufacturers in China doesn't disprove this point.
So please, if you'd like, a list of genuine technologies who's origins can be traced to China... I'll be waiting.
So please, if you'd like, a list of genuine technologies who's origins can be traced to China... I'll be waiting.
So WeChat, and 5G. Should be discounted because they don’t support your point, and you will wait for others? Got it!
- Facial recognition on banking transactions.
- Tele Health rolled out via their ubiquitous home grown social network
- AI drones policing temperature and mask wearing
- real-time automatic translation hardware and software.
- Chinese based text input via keyboards
- Chinese voice recognition (a different problem to tonal languages)
By all means point out where they stole those things from
Then when you can’t do that, check out their space program, their capability easily surpasses NASA and is competitive with space X. Which given they are banned from even the iss where did they steal that from?
- Facial recognition on banking transactions.
- Tele Health rolled out via their ubiquitous home grown social network
- AI drones policing temperature and mask wearing
- real-time automatic translation hardware and software.
- Chinese based text input via keyboards
- Chinese voice recognition (a different problem to tonal languages)
By all means point out where they stole those things from
Then when you can’t do that, check out their space program, their capability easily surpasses NASA and is competitive with space X. Which given they are banned from even the iss where did they steal that from?
Most of the things you've listed here use WESTERN TECH just re-applied for a Chinese market, and you're calling that innovation? The fact that you had to list "Chinese based text input via keyboards" as a genuine Chinese innovation is telling.
Done with this discussion. You can't seem to come up with even 2 genuine Chinese innovations and instead refer to the reapplication of tech developed in the western world.
Nobody is saying China can't take what others have done and improve on it. That is happening more and more. It used to be China just straight up copied and stole intellectual property. I'll admit that line is beginning to blur. But genuine novel innovation is still very lacking.
Done with this discussion. You can't seem to come up with even 2 genuine Chinese innovations and instead refer to the reapplication of tech developed in the western world.
Nobody is saying China can't take what others have done and improve on it. That is happening more and more. It used to be China just straight up copied and stole intellectual property. I'll admit that line is beginning to blur. But genuine novel innovation is still very lacking.
I started with 5G. I know it's devastating to your case so you'll ignore it, but that is where I started.
The great firewall?
Social credit system?
Automated J-walking tickets based on facial recognition?
Tell me where those were copied from in the west.
Everyone just straight up and copies and steals intellectual property (Xerox, Apple, Windows)... But when china does, it's some how "china just steals everything".
Also there is piles of innovation in the "boring stuff" like "how to actually make a battery" or "smart phone manufacture" that is almost exclusively in Asia (and predominantly china). Or in BYDs case (the company that was making mass produced electric cars long before Tesla "innovated"), making batteries that are environmentally friendly when disposed of.
But hey, you're done with this discussion. So enjoy the blissful ignorance.
The great firewall?
Social credit system?
Automated J-walking tickets based on facial recognition?
Tell me where those were copied from in the west.
Everyone just straight up and copies and steals intellectual property (Xerox, Apple, Windows)... But when china does, it's some how "china just steals everything".
Also there is piles of innovation in the "boring stuff" like "how to actually make a battery" or "smart phone manufacture" that is almost exclusively in Asia (and predominantly china). Or in BYDs case (the company that was making mass produced electric cars long before Tesla "innovated"), making batteries that are environmentally friendly when disposed of.
But hey, you're done with this discussion. So enjoy the blissful ignorance.
edit: forgot i was done. damnit.
From what I can find, 5G wasn't invented in China, nor was the concept of electromagnetic information transfer. Nor were transitors. Nor were micro processors. Nor were personal cell phones...
The list goes on, and it goes DEEP right down to the fundamental physics of these innovations which all did NOT come out of China.
Devistating as this all is to your point, you'll probably never accept it. China has a long history of stealing from the West, where the true innovation has occurred over the years.
Yes, I do think this is starting to change and I applaud China where it has introduced improvements to technology instead of raw copying (which it has a long, long history of doing). The unfortunate reality is that cheating for years has tainted their image, and try as you might to point out one or two examples of how it's changed, doesn't make it so.
From what I can find, 5G wasn't invented in China, nor was the concept of electromagnetic information transfer. Nor were transitors. Nor were micro processors. Nor were personal cell phones...
The list goes on, and it goes DEEP right down to the fundamental physics of these innovations which all did NOT come out of China.
Devistating as this all is to your point, you'll probably never accept it. China has a long history of stealing from the West, where the true innovation has occurred over the years.
Yes, I do think this is starting to change and I applaud China where it has introduced improvements to technology instead of raw copying (which it has a long, long history of doing). The unfortunate reality is that cheating for years has tainted their image, and try as you might to point out one or two examples of how it's changed, doesn't make it so.
Gosh, you know... I think you've left a very novel innovation from China off your list.
https://youtu.be/dnY2OtnTOcA
https://youtu.be/dnY2OtnTOcA
QR codes are Japanese not Chinese.
Contactless payment systems are everywhere now, the big push being COVID.
Taiwan isn't China, any Taiwanese will tell you that. Taiwan did a lot of things right when it came to the COVID response, but it's easy to do when you have a population of 23 million on a tiny island. I have several friends who are living in Taiwan and I've been jealous of them throughout the pandemic because their government handled it correctly. However, the US vaccination response is the best in the world. Even I have been vaccinated.
Silicon Valley isn't dying. It's literally the biggest creator of wealth in the world, and it's so much that it's causing a horrible amount of income inequality, especially in the Bay Area itself. It's almost being a victim of its own success, as I already mentioned.
Contactless payment systems are everywhere now, the big push being COVID.
Taiwan isn't China, any Taiwanese will tell you that. Taiwan did a lot of things right when it came to the COVID response, but it's easy to do when you have a population of 23 million on a tiny island. I have several friends who are living in Taiwan and I've been jealous of them throughout the pandemic because their government handled it correctly. However, the US vaccination response is the best in the world. Even I have been vaccinated.
Silicon Valley isn't dying. It's literally the biggest creator of wealth in the world, and it's so much that it's causing a horrible amount of income inequality, especially in the Bay Area itself. It's almost being a victim of its own success, as I already mentioned.
I never said Taiwan was part of China... in fact I mentioned them both separately by name... which would be weird if I was saying they were the same right? #strawman
>biggest creator of wealth in the world
Amazon you mean? Or do you mean Tesla? Or Microsoft?... oh wait... none of them are from SV.
>biggest creator of wealth in the world
Amazon you mean? Or do you mean Tesla? Or Microsoft?... oh wait... none of them are from SV.
Yes, it was weird that you mentioned Taiwan when I mentioned China.
Tesla is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, Uber, Twitter, the list goes on and on. China takes US ideas and copies them, and then releases them in China where they don't have to compete against the US originals. It's a simple fact.
Tesla is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix, Uber, Twitter, the list goes on and on. China takes US ideas and copies them, and then releases them in China where they don't have to compete against the US originals. It's a simple fact.
So what is Tencent a copy of?
And which application does wechat copy? Or Weibo?
What is Huawei a copy of?
Your simple fact, sounds awfully like racism.
And which application does wechat copy? Or Weibo?
What is Huawei a copy of?
Your simple fact, sounds awfully like racism.
Tencent started as a rip-off of ICQ. Their application name was literally called OICQ. Then they became a rip off of Zynga. Tencent succeeds because it's safely protected by China, but it would never have gained enough marketshare without that monopoly. That's my entire point.
Huawei is a ripoff of Cisco. It's another company protected by the Chinese government.
And you forget Didi, which is a simple rip off of Uber. Uber was competing against Didi and would have won, except the Chinese government backed Didi and Uber decided it couldn't survive its source of money so they gave up. Didi even engaged in corporate spying, by sending their workers into Uber China to work there, sabotage it, and steal internal data. Didi couldn't win without cheating.
The fact you pull the race card is very sad. It means you're losing the argument.
Huawei is a ripoff of Cisco. It's another company protected by the Chinese government.
And you forget Didi, which is a simple rip off of Uber. Uber was competing against Didi and would have won, except the Chinese government backed Didi and Uber decided it couldn't survive its source of money so they gave up. Didi even engaged in corporate spying, by sending their workers into Uber China to work there, sabotage it, and steal internal data. Didi couldn't win without cheating.
The fact you pull the race card is very sad. It means you're losing the argument.
So Wechat...?
Also msn messenger was a copy of icq as well... as was AOL instant messenger. But China at the copy-cats?
Huawei are a copy of Cisco!? Yet Huawei make half the worlds telecoms and Cisco don’t.
Uber was always shit in China. Didi was more like Uber X and Uber copied them... Didi won from the beginning.
No, not a race card. You are being racist. Applying a higher standard to Chinese than you apply to Americans. That’s called prejudice, and racial prejudice is racism.
Edit: To be clear, I’m referring to Ubers original Premium service in China. I’m not sure they even got to Uber X in China.
Also msn messenger was a copy of icq as well... as was AOL instant messenger. But China at the copy-cats?
Huawei are a copy of Cisco!? Yet Huawei make half the worlds telecoms and Cisco don’t.
Uber was always shit in China. Didi was more like Uber X and Uber copied them... Didi won from the beginning.
No, not a race card. You are being racist. Applying a higher standard to Chinese than you apply to Americans. That’s called prejudice, and racial prejudice is racism.
Edit: To be clear, I’m referring to Ubers original Premium service in China. I’m not sure they even got to Uber X in China.
I'm Asian, so it looks like you're the racist for assuming I'm white. I'm not even American.
Anyway, you keep thinking what you want to think, you're entitled to your opinion. But it's not backed up by actual facts, so you're not living in reality, but that's also your right.
Anyway, you keep thinking what you want to think, you're entitled to your opinion. But it's not backed up by actual facts, so you're not living in reality, but that's also your right.
I never assumed you were white. Just pointed out you were racist. You’ve now double downed on it with some strange implication that Asians can’t be racist.
Actually everything I’ve said is backed by fact, please point out where I’m factually incorrect.
Actually everything I’ve said is backed by fact, please point out where I’m factually incorrect.
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Crappy payments isn't a tech problem, it's a market problem. Consumers and merchants can't be bothered to adopt contactless technologies that were introduced half a decade ago.
Companies have tried QR codes and other payment schemes long before that (including the unfortunately named ISIS), but again, no traction.
Companies have tried QR codes and other payment schemes long before that (including the unfortunately named ISIS), but again, no traction.
Americans don’t like contactless payment?
Or (more Likely), unlike their Chinese counterparts, American banks are way more conservative with adopting new technologies. Hence why y’all still get paid with paper cheques :)
Or (more Likely), unlike their Chinese counterparts, American banks are way more conservative with adopting new technologies. Hence why y’all still get paid with paper cheques :)
We have contactless payment with EMVpay/Apple Pay. There are some QR code systems like Venmo but I don't know what the value add of scanning a code is supposed to be.
Nobody gets paid with paper checks unless they want to, although if you're poor and have been blacklisted by the bank system you might take it so you can use a check cashing service.
Nobody gets paid with paper checks unless they want to, although if you're poor and have been blacklisted by the bank system you might take it so you can use a check cashing service.
People have their habits. I do increasingly use my Apple Watch (or a contactless credit card) to pay but my observation on the outskirts of a large East Coast metro is that effectively no one does.
I still use checks for service people and some other purposes, e.g. when there's a fee for online payment.
I still use checks for service people and some other purposes, e.g. when there's a fee for online payment.
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Maybe, at least people won’t be tied down 100% and can work remote. If you have a family you can now afford a home to raise kids in.
Just a quick review of the four main points based on my own experience and also reworded hopefully respectfully:
1. Consumer internet founders are not great at life sciences
This is a distraction. Most of the money in internet has been with automating or supporting business operations for medium to large sized businesses. Life science tech brings unique challenges which is why so many life science tech companies are based in the valley or have offices here. Just to pick out one example the highest resolution ultrasound machines made come from a company based in the valley. This statement appears to be based more on the distracting powers of social media and consumer tech.
2. Internet regulation is upon us
This is good thing because regulations give consumers confidence in the reliability and safety of new technologies. Even the most care free developers do not expect that the current order of things will endure.
3. Climate response is capital intensive
This is a distraction from the fact that the most promising technologies for addressing climate response are extremely well represented in the valley. Analysis of orbital and aerial sensor data, automated sensors, control systems for solar and wind generation, modernized electrical grid support systems, and more were all led in part by companies in the valley. More to the point all of these technologies were initially developed by small companies for small applications. Real progress with climate response is likely to involve some big projects, but these projects will be successful because they are based on much smaller works.
4. The end of the betting economy
Economies are based on bets and consist of bets, as is said, all the way down. The difference is that the terms are changing. Instead of throwing money at pets.com or Facebook plugins or cryptocoin wallets founders are going to have to be more careful and sparing of resources. This is actually a good thing and is likely to at least in part lead to a return to business success competing with hype for available capital. The situation now is that investors can outspend customers in any sector so the venture capital space has become disconnected from genuine business success. Squeezing the slop out of the system should be good for everyone.
The analogy that comes to mind is being told that the future is being researched and started at universities and then concluding that frat parties do not yield meaningful tech progress, frat parties are consistently targeted for regulation, frat parties do not address social issues, therefore universities are not actually likely to host research and development that shapes the future. And yes, in this example the current giants in the valley are what amounts to a loud frat party.
1. Consumer internet founders are not great at life sciences
This is a distraction. Most of the money in internet has been with automating or supporting business operations for medium to large sized businesses. Life science tech brings unique challenges which is why so many life science tech companies are based in the valley or have offices here. Just to pick out one example the highest resolution ultrasound machines made come from a company based in the valley. This statement appears to be based more on the distracting powers of social media and consumer tech.
2. Internet regulation is upon us
This is good thing because regulations give consumers confidence in the reliability and safety of new technologies. Even the most care free developers do not expect that the current order of things will endure.
3. Climate response is capital intensive
This is a distraction from the fact that the most promising technologies for addressing climate response are extremely well represented in the valley. Analysis of orbital and aerial sensor data, automated sensors, control systems for solar and wind generation, modernized electrical grid support systems, and more were all led in part by companies in the valley. More to the point all of these technologies were initially developed by small companies for small applications. Real progress with climate response is likely to involve some big projects, but these projects will be successful because they are based on much smaller works.
4. The end of the betting economy
Economies are based on bets and consist of bets, as is said, all the way down. The difference is that the terms are changing. Instead of throwing money at pets.com or Facebook plugins or cryptocoin wallets founders are going to have to be more careful and sparing of resources. This is actually a good thing and is likely to at least in part lead to a return to business success competing with hype for available capital. The situation now is that investors can outspend customers in any sector so the venture capital space has become disconnected from genuine business success. Squeezing the slop out of the system should be good for everyone.
The analogy that comes to mind is being told that the future is being researched and started at universities and then concluding that frat parties do not yield meaningful tech progress, frat parties are consistently targeted for regulation, frat parties do not address social issues, therefore universities are not actually likely to host research and development that shapes the future. And yes, in this example the current giants in the valley are what amounts to a loud frat party.
The people that he mentions at the beginning of the article who have left have all peaked in their careers. The real loss would not be of people who have peaked leaving but of people who haven’t peaked yet leaving.
People who have “peaked” have a lot of offer in terms of mentorship, connections etc.
In fact, a concentration of people who’ve been there done that is probably that hardest thing to find in one place outside the respective central cities.
In fact, a concentration of people who’ve been there done that is probably that hardest thing to find in one place outside the respective central cities.
LOL yea.
That's exactly the SV problem. Lure a bunch of inexperienced young people who give away their best years to a corporation in hopes of becoming rich. Very few do.
The vast majority spend their money on NYC-level high taxes and rent.
That's exactly the SV problem. Lure a bunch of inexperienced young people who give away their best years to a corporation in hopes of becoming rich. Very few do.
The vast majority spend their money on NYC-level high taxes and rent.
You gotta play to win. Yes, not everyone can win the lottery, that's true.
> people who haven’t peaked yet leaving.
No, it is people who haven't peaked yet not even coming in the first place.
No, it is people who haven't peaked yet not even coming in the first place.
True. Hence the wrong focus in the article.
It’s like if Bill Gates leaves Seattle. Nothing happens because Gates is done in his career.
It’s like if Bill Gates leaves Seattle. Nothing happens because Gates is done in his career.
Bill Gates is not done at all. In fact he is doing more and better things for mankind with his career now than he did when he ran Microsoft.
Sure, but Bill Gates leaving Seattle would not impact the Seattle tech industry at all.
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NeverFade(1)
I don't think a lot of people quite grasp how big of a scam silicon valley is. I've pieced most of the information together from articles that I have seen here.
Do you know who owns the majority of rental properties in silicon valley? East coast and Midwest pension funds or investment firms using their capital. This includes office space and residential areas. Care to take a guess who's capital the majority of VC firms are investing? If you guessed east coast and Midwest pension funds, you're right.
Moving to silicon valley to get a good paying job? Prepare to spend most of it on rent, basically paying a significant portion if not the majority of your salary to the very individuals that own controlling interest in the company paying you. Going to silicon valley to start a company? Prepare to pay a significant portion of that funding you got right back where you got it for office space.
Imagine if you could take a significant share, potentially a controlling interest, in every major tech startup basically for free. You create an engine to suck productivity out of some of the most creative, technically proficient innovators in the US by owning land in northern California and convincing them that they have to go there and rent from you to get your money to make their big ideas happen. Now you get to own some of the most productive people on the planet. That's one hell of a profitable scam. And the funny thing, we all forgot why you had to go there in the first place, that the silicon was made there, and we just take it as gospel that you have to go there to work in tech, even though the silicon is all made in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China now. And let's not even get started on the hypocrisy of pension funds that exist due to union lobbying doing this.
Now, if you're still considering going there, as an added bonus consider that you'll be surrounded by people that step over homeless people on the way to work where they will write social media posts about income inequality.
Do you know who owns the majority of rental properties in silicon valley? East coast and Midwest pension funds or investment firms using their capital. This includes office space and residential areas. Care to take a guess who's capital the majority of VC firms are investing? If you guessed east coast and Midwest pension funds, you're right.
Moving to silicon valley to get a good paying job? Prepare to spend most of it on rent, basically paying a significant portion if not the majority of your salary to the very individuals that own controlling interest in the company paying you. Going to silicon valley to start a company? Prepare to pay a significant portion of that funding you got right back where you got it for office space.
Imagine if you could take a significant share, potentially a controlling interest, in every major tech startup basically for free. You create an engine to suck productivity out of some of the most creative, technically proficient innovators in the US by owning land in northern California and convincing them that they have to go there and rent from you to get your money to make their big ideas happen. Now you get to own some of the most productive people on the planet. That's one hell of a profitable scam. And the funny thing, we all forgot why you had to go there in the first place, that the silicon was made there, and we just take it as gospel that you have to go there to work in tech, even though the silicon is all made in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China now. And let's not even get started on the hypocrisy of pension funds that exist due to union lobbying doing this.
Now, if you're still considering going there, as an added bonus consider that you'll be surrounded by people that step over homeless people on the way to work where they will write social media posts about income inequality.
You're not entirely wrong, but you're more wrong than right. For example, yes, a good paying SV job involves spending a lot on rent, but nowhere near "most of it"...very much the opposite. Yes there are issues, but it's not "how big of a scam", and by describing it that way you lose credibility.
When I looked a few years back, nice houses would go around 12k/month. Maybe shared condos are not expensive, but not everyone wants to live that way.
Agree. We tried to get funded a few years ago, but gave up. VCs insisted we relocate to SV, but it would not make sense (we are remote). It felt like a scam to pump property market.
Nope.
> The extractive behavior the tech giants exhibit has been the norm for modern capitalism since Milton Friedman set its objective function in 1970: “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” This is all the sadder, though, since the tech industry set out to model something better. The generosity of open source software and the World Wide Web, the genius of algorithmically amplified collective intelligence are still there...
I don't buy that at all, the tech INDUSTRY was the result of attempting to extract value out of technology. I have to scoff at the inclusion of "algorithmically amplified intelligence" as one of the egalitarian core values of SV. If you hadn't caught on by then, you must have been heady off the fumes of it all.
I don't buy that at all, the tech INDUSTRY was the result of attempting to extract value out of technology. I have to scoff at the inclusion of "algorithmically amplified intelligence" as one of the egalitarian core values of SV. If you hadn't caught on by then, you must have been heady off the fumes of it all.
So open source was just tech people not understanding their core purpose of "extract value out of technology" ?
For some business plans, open source is a means of keeping competitors some number of releases behind internal development, perpetually, while they're none the wiser.
Open source is an entirely different movement. OSS is written the world over, yet SV is where everyone is busy extracting orders of magnitude of value from it.
From plenty of experience, SV open sources because it provides a business advantage, because it costs them nothing or because it's part of the business model of OSS+Support. Individual contributors are the heroes here, people doing it for the love of the software. The software industry will spin their work for a dollar all fucking day with no contribution back.
From plenty of experience, SV open sources because it provides a business advantage, because it costs them nothing or because it's part of the business model of OSS+Support. Individual contributors are the heroes here, people doing it for the love of the software. The software industry will spin their work for a dollar all fucking day with no contribution back.
Oh really... So the open source code that contributed/drove the delivery of that comment wasn't written in SV?
edit: To the second part of your comment... so why are the browsers all open source (at least at their core)? What's the business advantage? The non-organisational contributors are hardly the "heroes" of those projects. And they have contributed a ridiculous amount of free value to world.
edit: To the second part of your comment... so why are the browsers all open source (at least at their core)? What's the business advantage? The non-organisational contributors are hardly the "heroes" of those projects. And they have contributed a ridiculous amount of free value to world.
There is no doubt that the vast majority of open source software comes out of the software industry in SV. The arguing point I have is that it isn't out of an egalitarian view from the industry to provide for others and make the world better, generally speaking. Exceptions abound, sure. But the industry is busy making money, the fact that say Chromium and Webkit are open source is a very good example of how a company can use open source to leverage a competitive advantage.
My main gripe with the article is that it tried to conflate the technology movement and the software industry. Tied tightly together no doubt, but they are different. The very nature of the industry is to make money and that is totally fine, but let's not pretend the industry was some utopian ideal from the outset. As I said in my first comment, the industry specifically, grew out of the attempt to extract value from the technology. That's fine. It hasn't been twisted over time, it just is what it is.
I may have been flippant in my commentary.
My main gripe with the article is that it tried to conflate the technology movement and the software industry. Tied tightly together no doubt, but they are different. The very nature of the industry is to make money and that is totally fine, but let's not pretend the industry was some utopian ideal from the outset. As I said in my first comment, the industry specifically, grew out of the attempt to extract value from the technology. That's fine. It hasn't been twisted over time, it just is what it is.
I may have been flippant in my commentary.
High-profile entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, venture capitalists like Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, and big companies like Oracle and HP Enterprise are all leaving California.
Oh wow! Larry Ellison, that one guy who lies about his cars putting literal lives at risk, a figurative vampire (infuses literal blood of young people into himself) and his thrall, and a company that hasn't been relevant since the 1970s all are leaving the Valley!
I don't even live there, and I never plan on living there, but they're not citing anyone all that meaningful. Larry Ellison is somehow the person who comes off the best out of that group! Larry Ellison! A guy who can best be described with a lawnmower metaphor! Come on!
And now a guy who corporatized free software to the point of it being completely unenforced and also coined Web 2.0 to sell you books is telling you to leave!
I'm skeptical about this "end" of the Valley, somehow. Almost seems like they're trying to get you to leave to devalue the price of real estate, scoop it up and then advocate once more for the Valley.
Oh wow! Larry Ellison, that one guy who lies about his cars putting literal lives at risk, a figurative vampire (infuses literal blood of young people into himself) and his thrall, and a company that hasn't been relevant since the 1970s all are leaving the Valley!
I don't even live there, and I never plan on living there, but they're not citing anyone all that meaningful. Larry Ellison is somehow the person who comes off the best out of that group! Larry Ellison! A guy who can best be described with a lawnmower metaphor! Come on!
And now a guy who corporatized free software to the point of it being completely unenforced and also coined Web 2.0 to sell you books is telling you to leave!
I'm skeptical about this "end" of the Valley, somehow. Almost seems like they're trying to get you to leave to devalue the price of real estate, scoop it up and then advocate once more for the Valley.
Oracle is, unfortunately, extremely relevant, just in none of the places you care about. Your biases keep you from seeing it.
In fact I was just recently involved in some conversations that could see the spend of tens of millions on their Cloud platform and where they are seriously looking like the strongest contender on both the technical and the business side.
Second tier cloud providers should be extremely worried about Oracle eating their lunch. Eventually the big three might have to too...
In fact I was just recently involved in some conversations that could see the spend of tens of millions on their Cloud platform and where they are seriously looking like the strongest contender on both the technical and the business side.
Second tier cloud providers should be extremely worried about Oracle eating their lunch. Eventually the big three might have to too...
Silicon Valley's value is in innovation. Oracle doesn't innovate, and Amazon's in Seattle anyway. There's really nothing that matters as far as any of the cloud companies; they're valueless.
Was.
Now it's just a myth that people perpetuate. What SV has now is a bunch of greedy people looking to give money to ideas.
It's not that SV technologists are innovators anymore, it's just that they are in proximity to money.
Now the business people and their greed and money are leaving SV en masse. What does it have left?
Now it's just a myth that people perpetuate. What SV has now is a bunch of greedy people looking to give money to ideas.
It's not that SV technologists are innovators anymore, it's just that they are in proximity to money.
Now the business people and their greed and money are leaving SV en masse. What does it have left?
"give money"
This isn't what happens.
SV worked fine before there was money there, they'll work fine after. No VC is going to stop throwing money with conditions at people in the Valley, because they're not stupid, and they know how to make more. They're just going to tell other people to leave.
This isn't what happens.
SV worked fine before there was money there, they'll work fine after. No VC is going to stop throwing money with conditions at people in the Valley, because they're not stupid, and they know how to make more. They're just going to tell other people to leave.
Capital is cyclical and we're moving out of the phase that's favorable to VCs literally right now. We're in a consolidation period and winners/losers are going to be picked very soon. Funding has been slowing down a lot.
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/global-2020-funding-and-exi...
Global VC Report 2020: Funding And Exits Blow Past 2019 Despite Pandemic Headwinds
Global VC Report 2020: Funding And Exits Blow Past 2019 Despite Pandemic Headwinds
The article neither tells anyone to leave SV nor is it talking about SV as a geographical area but rather the modern state of the tech industry, if you and so many others like you have actually bothered to read to the end of the very first paragraph.
> Is this the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? Perhaps. But other challenges to Silicon Valley’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora.
> Is this the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? Perhaps. But other challenges to Silicon Valley’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora.
I read, or skimmed, all the way to the end, and I don't think it gets any better.
One particular super up-to-date cliché that annoys me is where it goes on about "casino capitalism". So today we're not attacking "Wall Street's short term thinking"? When you're against risk taking and conservatism, all you're saying is "people shouldn't make mistakes, blaargh". You're right, they shouldn't. It's been noted.
I don't think the whole thing says anything worthwhile at all, or contains any non-clichéd thought, so I think people who didn't read it should be excused.
All I want from a "thoughtful" article is some thought that is new and could be right or wrong. "Not even wrong" gets all the clicks.
One particular super up-to-date cliché that annoys me is where it goes on about "casino capitalism". So today we're not attacking "Wall Street's short term thinking"? When you're against risk taking and conservatism, all you're saying is "people shouldn't make mistakes, blaargh". You're right, they shouldn't. It's been noted.
I don't think the whole thing says anything worthwhile at all, or contains any non-clichéd thought, so I think people who didn't read it should be excused.
All I want from a "thoughtful" article is some thought that is new and could be right or wrong. "Not even wrong" gets all the clicks.
I did read the article. I'm still 100% confident that it's just a way to get people to leave.
Its been in decline ever since outsourcing began. Inevitable in a connected world. Time to move on. Whats the Chinese/Indian equivalent of HN?
SV is a bubble and it will be defended by those who benefit from that status quo for quite a while still.
I do agree with the article decrying humanity's chronic inability to act on preventable crises. But it seems (a) most of humanity is much more inert and passive than we are inclined to think and (b) the vested interests and/or the powers-that-be are really that powerful so as to prevent the action of everybody else.
At the same time the article is overly optimistic: it claims that the consumer internet and social media are coming to an end.
I do agree with the article decrying humanity's chronic inability to act on preventable crises. But it seems (a) most of humanity is much more inert and passive than we are inclined to think and (b) the vested interests and/or the powers-that-be are really that powerful so as to prevent the action of everybody else.
At the same time the article is overly optimistic: it claims that the consumer internet and social media are coming to an end.
Until 1988, California was ruled largely by Republicans.
Since 1988, it gradually cane to be ruled more by Democrats, with the notable exception of the "moderate" Republican governor Schwartzenegger.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-voting...
In both eras, its GDP and population went up, until it became the 5th or 4th largest economy in the world.
A bit of mean reversion occurs, after massive spikes in housing prices, wildfires and a pandemic and everyone loses their crap. Seriously, people... this is about as bad as cries of "CARNAGE!!" in 2016 when crime has a slight uptick after 10 years of decline.
Since 1988, it gradually cane to be ruled more by Democrats, with the notable exception of the "moderate" Republican governor Schwartzenegger.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-voting...
In both eras, its GDP and population went up, until it became the 5th or 4th largest economy in the world.
A bit of mean reversion occurs, after massive spikes in housing prices, wildfires and a pandemic and everyone loses their crap. Seriously, people... this is about as bad as cries of "CARNAGE!!" in 2016 when crime has a slight uptick after 10 years of decline.
Perhaps you're thinking of some other state?
https://governors.library.ca.gov/36-wilson.html
https://governors.library.ca.gov/36-wilson.html
baloney1(1)
To help with that, we've changed the title above to the what high school English teachers would call its thesis statement.