Secret History of Silicon Valley (2009)(steveblank.com)
steveblank.com
Secret History of Silicon Valley (2009)
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
47 comments
Accepting failure is the prerequisite of learning. This works great when people can do things mostly by themselves - they try something, they fail and learn. When the basic unit to do something becomes a company coordination becomes more important than personal achievements. For coordination you need more stability, less agility. This is quite intuitive - when the leader changes the direction too often - then people tend to stop following him. But I have a feeling that this can also be formalized in terms of the system theory - it is a basic fact that in a system with feedback loops it is often that you need to react slower and less intensively or you can destabilize the system completely (think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game or even just one basic Business Inventory https://books.google.pl/books?id=JSgOSP1qklUC&lpg=PA51&vq=bu...).
Personally I feel unfit for the position of a leader because I tend to be frank about my failures, react to changes quickly. I have been thinking much about making a starup - I have lots of ideas etc. - but I am afraid I would not be a good CEO. Fortunately I discovered that it works quite well when speculating (I now trade crypto - but that is just coincidental).
At the dawn of the era experimenting on a small scale was essential - now we need bigger experiments and this means more coordination, and that means politics unfortunately.
Personally I feel unfit for the position of a leader because I tend to be frank about my failures, react to changes quickly. I have been thinking much about making a starup - I have lots of ideas etc. - but I am afraid I would not be a good CEO. Fortunately I discovered that it works quite well when speculating (I now trade crypto - but that is just coincidental).
At the dawn of the era experimenting on a small scale was essential - now we need bigger experiments and this means more coordination, and that means politics unfortunately.
Hmmm. A certain amount is accepted/supported today. Just consider the number of startups that get funded with the expectaion that the majority will not survive. On the flip side how would a supporter distinguish repeated failures toward success vs futility? It's very difficult so cap it in some manner. The best we can do is to document the attempts for others to study, learn, and continue.
I'm tired of hearing 'X is the Silicon Y'.
The truth is that few places in the world have the tolerance to failure that SV has. In many so called 'Silicon Y' a failed startup would mean the end of your career. And that is why it has been so hard to reproduce that success in some places in Europe.
The truth is that few places in the world have the tolerance to failure that SV has. In many so called 'Silicon Y' a failed startup would mean the end of your career. And that is why it has been so hard to reproduce that success in some places in Europe.
You should read The Master Switch.
Culture has changed dramatically and I hate to blame things on politics but i feel like that's exactly what it is. It's divided us all, made the identification of truth seem like a nonsensical fairytale, and those sentiments have sank into the background of cognition. We can dissociate all we like from culture and relegate ourselves to our comfort zones of computing, technology, things that bring us stability and a way of making sense of the world - but if we can't own up to our own mistakes then all of that goes away.
You can say you aren't affected by it, but it's divided people through argument, it's made progress in education and research seem pointless because no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe.
Failure is something to be scared of in a culture that's been indoctrinated into seeing chaos everywhere to the point that the only thing that matters is survival. Survival instinct is something people can hack. The point is to not allow it to blind you from coming to solutions as a group with people you are supposed to trust - whether through contractual obligation or through your own self defined choice.
Don't let this culture break our culture. Don't let the culture of shifting of blame become part of you.
Failure is critically important to success. Anyone who ignores this fact is blind to the process of learning. You have to be able to identify your own errors. Being right all the time is it's own version of insanity, because one literally can not identify the difference between correctness and error.
We need to be able to fail and we need to be able to fail in front of others. Otherwise everything will keep going in circles with no sense of progress.
I've lived my whole life this way, change, change, change. Blame, blame, blame. Accept, accept, accept. Correct, correct, correct.
This is not a good mindset to have when you have to build things with other people unless you can point out your own errors to others, allow others to point out errors to you.
You have to know what failure is in order to identify success. In education, this is obvious. A or F. In groups of building things, people define these metrics. Everyone either must agree 'this is the metric' or everyone must agree 'this is the new standard'. That's how to measure yourself in systems where rules are continuously changing and you can't identify why.
You can say you aren't affected by it, but it's divided people through argument, it's made progress in education and research seem pointless because no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe.
Failure is something to be scared of in a culture that's been indoctrinated into seeing chaos everywhere to the point that the only thing that matters is survival. Survival instinct is something people can hack. The point is to not allow it to blind you from coming to solutions as a group with people you are supposed to trust - whether through contractual obligation or through your own self defined choice.
Don't let this culture break our culture. Don't let the culture of shifting of blame become part of you.
Failure is critically important to success. Anyone who ignores this fact is blind to the process of learning. You have to be able to identify your own errors. Being right all the time is it's own version of insanity, because one literally can not identify the difference between correctness and error.
We need to be able to fail and we need to be able to fail in front of others. Otherwise everything will keep going in circles with no sense of progress.
I've lived my whole life this way, change, change, change. Blame, blame, blame. Accept, accept, accept. Correct, correct, correct.
This is not a good mindset to have when you have to build things with other people unless you can point out your own errors to others, allow others to point out errors to you.
You have to know what failure is in order to identify success. In education, this is obvious. A or F. In groups of building things, people define these metrics. Everyone either must agree 'this is the metric' or everyone must agree 'this is the new standard'. That's how to measure yourself in systems where rules are continuously changing and you can't identify why.
> no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe.
It's a myth that "trusted news sources" were more truthful before the internet. It's just that the internet has exposed all the propaganda going on.
Professional historians well know that historical accounts tend to be more propaganda than factual, which is why they always look for independent corroboration. Archaeology has rewritten many accounts of things like battlefields, even modern ones.
It's a myth that "trusted news sources" were more truthful before the internet. It's just that the internet has exposed all the propaganda going on.
Professional historians well know that historical accounts tend to be more propaganda than factual, which is why they always look for independent corroboration. Archaeology has rewritten many accounts of things like battlefields, even modern ones.
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This is probably true. In the past we have stable worldviews - but they were not very accurate, now we have much more information. It is now possible to build more accurate models of the reality - but overall do people build more accurate models or maybe they just use the additional information to dig themselves deeper into their biases?
I think people go between two modalities for understanding information, shallow and deep or selective and generalized. We, globally, have more information, but information alone is relatively flat. Knowledge can seem to form feedback loops. I'm not sure if the models are more accurate as a consequence. The models themselves are mathematical objects. One domain of knowledge can easily map to another domain of knowledge through a mathematical model (up to isomorphism, meaning, they share the same model, use a different vocabulary, but that's besides the point, the literal mathematical model connects the knowledge domains).
The obvious thing is knowledge uses math. Knowledge uses mathematical objects to model the world. You can keep seeing patterns from one knowledge domain to another, but it doesn't mean they are connected by the model intrinsically, that is, that the model is the thing generating the knowledge. The model is just a model. Math is filled to the brim in ways of making models of things. The model can be representative of a full data set and closed under the data set, or the model can be representative of a prediction. In an open system, there is no mathematical closure. So in an open system that is producing knowledge, something has to be the ground. The mathematical models.
I don't know how this relates to bias, or digging oneself into a bias, but I do know that after enough cycles of going in a feedback loop, it can converge.
Worldviews are always difficult. You never have all the information. There's always more information. If there's not more information, people will invent new ways of making more information.
This is always the dilemma with data versus theory.
The obvious thing is knowledge uses math. Knowledge uses mathematical objects to model the world. You can keep seeing patterns from one knowledge domain to another, but it doesn't mean they are connected by the model intrinsically, that is, that the model is the thing generating the knowledge. The model is just a model. Math is filled to the brim in ways of making models of things. The model can be representative of a full data set and closed under the data set, or the model can be representative of a prediction. In an open system, there is no mathematical closure. So in an open system that is producing knowledge, something has to be the ground. The mathematical models.
I don't know how this relates to bias, or digging oneself into a bias, but I do know that after enough cycles of going in a feedback loop, it can converge.
Worldviews are always difficult. You never have all the information. There's always more information. If there's not more information, people will invent new ways of making more information.
This is always the dilemma with data versus theory.
Politics are revealed, not created. The revelation usually comes when someone unlike the people already there tries to join without hiding all that makes them different, and all the local assumptions fall apart. The people you perceive as "creating" politics likely understand and thrive in chaos and failure better than you do because they were born into it and didn't have a choice in the matter.
When I find out about some identity I haven't heard about, I just say "cool" and move the heck on. My world is not turned upside down if someone shows up with neon green hair, three boyfriends, and six headmates because I live in a world where that kind of thing happens.
The thing is, so do you.
When I find out about some identity I haven't heard about, I just say "cool" and move the heck on. My world is not turned upside down if someone shows up with neon green hair, three boyfriends, and six headmates because I live in a world where that kind of thing happens.
The thing is, so do you.
You are projecting. Everything is always in a constant state of chaos. Order comes from the mind that decides to see order. Order is born into the mind that is born of chaos.
My world is not turned upside by anything. My world has been turned upside down more times than I have numbers to count with, and I believe in Cantor's infinity of infinities.
When I find out about some cool identity, I go with it.
The thing is, so do you.
Local assumptions are garbage. Adapt faster. That's the rule.
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." - Friedrich Nietzsche
My world is not turned upside by anything. My world has been turned upside down more times than I have numbers to count with, and I believe in Cantor's infinity of infinities.
When I find out about some cool identity, I go with it.
The thing is, so do you.
Local assumptions are garbage. Adapt faster. That's the rule.
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." - Friedrich Nietzsche
9/10 times someone complains about politics, they're complaining about those uppity minorities trying to get into their castle. There is a kind of toxic politics that forms in excess order, but in my experience it's rarely what people mean.
Maybe I'm wrong about you. Chaos!
I'll add this experience to order when I find order useful.
Maybe I'm wrong about you. Chaos!
I'll add this experience to order when I find order useful.
I think your statements are more well supported by a different hypothesis: these effects have been caused by a shift to being a more emotionally driven society. Emotions are what cause people to ignore truths or even invent their own, even when they likely know deep inside that they're lying to themselves.
Emotion is what causes knee jerk responses to failure. Emotion and emotionality is, in general, the key cause behind practically all irrational behavior. The most dangerous thing is we live in a society where not only has emotionally driven thinking become far more prevalent, but there seems to be a top down effort to encourage even greater levels of emotionality.
Emotion is what causes knee jerk responses to failure. Emotion and emotionality is, in general, the key cause behind practically all irrational behavior. The most dangerous thing is we live in a society where not only has emotionally driven thinking become far more prevalent, but there seems to be a top down effort to encourage even greater levels of emotionality.
Really curious to know what you mean by "an emotionally driven society". What does that imply?
Literally that. Knee jerk reactions that have nothing to do with reality. Getting lost in lala land over beliefs that can't be proven, but are sentiment driven. Attachment.
A society where the primary driver behind decisions is emotional rather than rational.
For instance when individuals choose their views not based on an impartial analysis of the choices (and their consequences in particular), but on which view is most emotionally appealing or acceptable to them. And when evidence which comes into conflict with those emotionally chosen views is presented, is the response emotional or is it rational? Even when deciding on an individual system of morals, are choices driven by emotion or by rationality?
For many people, the answers to all of these questions is now heavily emotional. This is dangerous in many ways. Aside from the fact that emotions can and regularly do lead people to make very bad decisions, they are also regularly exploited by others for their own benefit. Politicians get people to support them or oppose their opponents with emotional arguments. The media gets people to click on things by creating emotional stories. Even individuals can increasingly exploit others' emotionality to either try to increase their own perceived 'standing' in some group, or at times even for direct economic benefit.
For instance when individuals choose their views not based on an impartial analysis of the choices (and their consequences in particular), but on which view is most emotionally appealing or acceptable to them. And when evidence which comes into conflict with those emotionally chosen views is presented, is the response emotional or is it rational? Even when deciding on an individual system of morals, are choices driven by emotion or by rationality?
For many people, the answers to all of these questions is now heavily emotional. This is dangerous in many ways. Aside from the fact that emotions can and regularly do lead people to make very bad decisions, they are also regularly exploited by others for their own benefit. Politicians get people to support them or oppose their opponents with emotional arguments. The media gets people to click on things by creating emotional stories. Even individuals can increasingly exploit others' emotionality to either try to increase their own perceived 'standing' in some group, or at times even for direct economic benefit.
That's an interesting slide and I think that a lot of universities unknowingly put up a lot of barriers to entrepreneurship because they don't get the value of it, or they don't get how that value is created. Berkeley vs Stanford is a decent example of this contrast
eh? can you give a concrete example or two? there is a seeming innumerable number of new startups, solving very small niche problems. it is a given that very very many will fail. the funding continues.
my very small company uses maybe 15 saas vendors. maybe 10 of them are small guys that will be out of business in 3-5 years.
there’s tons of failure to go around!
my very small company uses maybe 15 saas vendors. maybe 10 of them are small guys that will be out of business in 3-5 years.
there’s tons of failure to go around!
https://kottke.org/18/06/a-sad-update-about-a-scissors-maker...
The cultural pressure not to fail is so immense that it drives people insane. I watched it firsthand with my friend's father. He mismanaged the business into the ground and never really got over that. Trying again doesn't even come into his mind.
And that same mentality is very often the way we bring up children. Play it safe. Get a good job. Prioritize work over your own desires. Sacrifice yourself for others. And whatever you do, make sure it goes well.
The cultural pressure not to fail is so immense that it drives people insane. I watched it firsthand with my friend's father. He mismanaged the business into the ground and never really got over that. Trying again doesn't even come into his mind.
And that same mentality is very often the way we bring up children. Play it safe. Get a good job. Prioritize work over your own desires. Sacrifice yourself for others. And whatever you do, make sure it goes well.
> And that same mentality is very often the way we bring up children. Play it safe. Get a good job. Prioritize work over your own desires. Sacrifice yourself for others. And whatever you do, make sure it goes well.
It's always been that way. Self-sacrifice is a common theme in religions and cultures. The idea that life should be a pursuit of pleasure is very modern.
It's always been that way. Self-sacrifice is a common theme in religions and cultures. The idea that life should be a pursuit of pleasure is very modern.
> The idea that life should be a pursuit of pleasure is very modern.
No it is not at all new, greeks already discussed hedonism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
No it is not at all new, greeks already discussed hedonism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
If you can't afford to fail, learning to not fail is useful and rational.
When I started in computing in the 80s a lot of people did programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun. People did things like easter eggs and other stupid stuff. Now it's just a career and everything is about money, money and more money. I guess that's a natural progression once something goes mainstream.
From my POV (maybe I'm just looking in a different direction?) I see way more people programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun than ever before. As just one example the 2018 Global Game Jam had 8,608 game created in a weekend. The Unity community is HUGE. The Processing community, the Open Frameworks community, the Three.js community. Not seeing a lack of people doing programming for curiosity and fun.
I was more talking about the workplace. Now we have a lot of "professionalism" and "management" with a lot of restrictions. Back then you didn't have that in a lot of companies. As a dev in a company you had much more freedom. I can understand the need for professionalism but it definitely takes the fun and adventure out of things.
There are more people programming for intellectual reasons now than ever before in absolute numbers.
However, that larger absolute number is a much smaller proportion of the total number of programmers than it was in the past.
I think it's also safe to say that the mainstream of programming has moved more towards monetary motivation and away from intellectual curiosity.
However, that larger absolute number is a much smaller proportion of the total number of programmers than it was in the past.
I think it's also safe to say that the mainstream of programming has moved more towards monetary motivation and away from intellectual curiosity.
And look at the quality:quantity ratio...
When something is valuable economically, this shift seems inevitable... the same happened to electronics, electricity (telegrams etc), steam etc. (Probably, it was different before the industrial revolution and modern corporations.)
The actionable question is: what's next? What promising technical field is not yet economically valuable?
The actionable question is: what's next? What promising technical field is not yet economically valuable?
People can't afford to have hobbies like they used to.
The computer history museum has done an amazing job of documenting the history of computing. I'd argue they slant heavily to hardware but for the early history that was the coolest part. I wish they'd get BillG to speak.
What Steve Blank has told is essentially a golden past... This[1] is the present...Life in SV!
[1] https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valle...
[1] https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valle...
A perennial HN favourite, but well worth reading if you've not already, or re-reading if you haven't lately.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...
Most likely this was posted because it was mentioned on one of the latest A16Z podcast episodes, if anyone is curious.
Edit: I believe this is the episode: https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-20...
Edit: I believe this is the episode: https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-20...
Also interesting would be the secret history of silicon valley AFTER 2009. I think it's the biggest boom area all over the world since the 2008 crisis. Would be really interesting to see how NY banking started interacting with west coast engineering or VC circles there.
Somebody shared this in a HN comment sometime back and I absolutely loved this video. As a government contractor I had no idea of this rich history. His website is also full of amazing gems too.
Failure was accepted as a part of the culture. Today it seems the opposite. Any hint of failure and people seem to distance themselves from your future ambitions.
More and more, we seem to be moving toward a world ruled by massive corporations, where small developers have almost no autonomy or freedom, and we're subservient to the concept of intellectual property and non-disclosure. The age of tinkerers building something huge seems to have been a short-lived historical accident.
That's related, because the only way to build something huge is to repeatedly fail at it. And that doesn't seem acceptable today.