Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.
Uncanny Valley
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: Uncanny Valley
#12I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.
Re: Uncanny Valley
#13>“I feel sorry,” he says, his breath moist against my neck. “Everyone’s going to hit on her.”
Re: Uncanny Valley
#14Since the site seems to be down, here's a Readability mirror I made using the Google cache version: https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn
Re: Uncanny Valley
#15Great writing. Reads like a memoir, but with the depth of an ethnography. I believe the company described here is Mixpanel FWIW.
Rip sticks and dftc. Dead giveaway.
Re: Uncanny Valley
#16This is fucking amazing
Re: Uncanny Valley
#17The article form of "Silicon Valley" HBO...
I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM. Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim. This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book like this...
Favorite line:
> The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I’ve never met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.
Re: Uncanny Valley
#18The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes it herself:
> "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR’s idea of fun and a 23-year-old’s idea of work-life balance."
I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life" living ever again.
Re: Uncanny Valley
#19It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture.
Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse").
Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this contrast interesting.
Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider spectrum.
Re: Uncanny Valley
#20It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture. Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last boo…
I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style.
If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today. The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn to them by their nature.
The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering, and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path. I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a different vibe than what it used to be.
At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.