This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley

Hmm. Okay.

My reaction exactly. I read through the entire article (inexplicably) and I can't tell what it's trying to "say." What am I supposed to feel after reading this exposition?

Nannys? Going to fancy restaurants hoping to see venture capitalists?

Most people your age do not by any means conduct themselves like this, nor could they if they wanted to. Their "nanny" is their sister or mother or mother in law or a neighbor.

They don't go to a fancy restaurant because they don't have the money for both the fancy restaurant and a baby-sitter.

They're a two income-family forever, not until stock options vest and can be sold on secondary markets to speculators with easy capital.

This whole scenario is ridiculous and not at all representative of anything but a very small demographic. But I guess that's the Valley, at least to this outsider reading articles like this.

Reading this was an interesting anthropological experience to me as the lifestyle is so different from my own though it seems the underlying long-term goals are similar to mine (wealth, meaning, having smart and interesting friends and acquaintances). I too live in SV, but in a modest home I own in the East Bay. I too commute a little less than an hour to work, but I do my own grocery shopping and I don't care for nice restaurants, fancy cars or the latest gadgets. I still drive my 08 Prius.

I have a fair amount of stock options I've collected from 3 different mid-size companies over the last half decade; all are still in business but none are showing extremely promising outlooks, so I no longer count stock options in my long-term financial planning though it would be a welcomed bonus to my plans. Instead, I count the value of $5000/month left over from my decently high salary minus my non-materialist lifestyle invested in index funds to achieve financial independence the old fashioned way. Somewhat anti-Silicon Valley philosophy? Perhaps, but the Bay Area is all testing diverse ideas and out of the box approaches to life satisfaction. I don't claim my life is superior to the theoretical in this article, but it is much simpler and probably lower stress, and I'm pretty happy on a day to day basis so I'm not yet tempted to dive in to the alternate approach.

livin' the rat race one latte at a time