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Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

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Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#91

Post by look_lookatme »

xversilov wrote: post #27
carbocation wrote: post #8

As someone outside of SV (Nevadan living in Boston and practicing medicine), I think this article largely misses the mark. I think it is true that there is a diversity problem in SV, just like there is a diversity problem in medicine. It’s a problem, because there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields. But that’s probably the only point that resonates. Th…

There is no a priori reason that society feels comfortable acknowledging, but for anybody without those hangups, the reasons are actually quite obvious.

You are more than welcome to enlighten us.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#92

Post by WalterSear »

arkh wrote: post #69
gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how y…

Worse than useless: it can become spiteful and counterproductive.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#94

Post by eropple »

Spivak wrote: post #62
gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

This view is ridiculously out of touch with reality. What you're describing is borderline cartoonish levels of evil. You make it sound like white males get together with conferences to discuss new ways of oppressing people. The theory that explains this phenomenon needs to address how things still go wrong even when nobody has any dislike or prejudice.

> You make it sound like white males get together with conferences to discuss new ways of oppressing people.

Ahem. https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuc...

As usual: it's worse than you think.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#95

Post by jwn »

Clubber wrote: post #74
ivraatiems wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The criticism of Juicero and Theranos being emblematic of focusing on the wrong problems is not sensible. Companies fail, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes due to dishonest behavior, etc. If Theranos had the tech they claimed to have, it would have been richly rewarded (outshined only by the consumer surplus it would have created). The problem with Juciero and Theranos isn't that they failed. The problem with them…

>The problem with them is that Juciero was an immensely dumb idea that was never checked or questioned and thereby wasted tons of money Like bottled water. The idea of people paying 1600x markup for something they got essentially free while creating massive amounts of waste when sports bottles already existed. When bottled water came out, I remember thinking, "that's a friggin' joke." It sure worked out though.

Unlike the Juicero, bottled water provides added value in that I can have access to suitable drinking water when I otherwise would be forced to drink tap water.

Before someone replies that tap water is perfectly suitable for drinking: Sure it's safe, but I have never had municipal water that didn't taste bad. Never. Maybe I'm just spoiled because I have a well that provides tasteless water.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#96

Post by fancyfacebook »

RestlessMind wrote: post #43

The article is shallow and it would be easy to rip apart most of its arguments (eg. [1][2]). But the worrying trend is that such articles are now appearing very regularly, and at some point perception becomes reality. At this pace, SV will be the Wall Street in no time, if it is not already. [1] > You’re churning out companies that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and going bankrupt in literal satires of…

Google is not "deploying Loon" and Tesla is not "rebuilding the grid" out of the kindness of their heart, the problem is everyone already sees phase two coming and doesn't like it. It's not a media problem, it's pattern recognition.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#97

Post by KekDemaga »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #75
austenallred wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

> If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. "If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!" > Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc... "Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions hav…

>For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health.

>Facebook is toxic.

Or alternatively mentally ill people like Facebook.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#98

Post by eropple »

kelukelugames wrote: post #73
gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

You can't say "white males" on HN without getting slaughtered. I think a fairer way to phrase this is people with power discriminate. Consciously and unconsciously. Doesn't matter if they are white, non white, male, or female. We just happen to live in a society where most positions of power have been historically held by one group.

> You can't say "white males" on HN without getting slaughtered.

I say it pretty often, and I don't get "slaughtered". The commentariat here tends to be kinda gross at times (and, tbh, the proprietors should probably do something about it, but I kinda shrug at that one now) but the votes generally bear out that the crowd, at least, is reasonable.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#99

Post by unclebucknasty »

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

>People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t.

Respectfully, this may be a biased perspective. Are you in SV? Because there are many non-media people outside of SV who don't share your enthusiasm.

>I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money.

I think some consider it audacious and see a certain cynicism in it, especially given the context.

That is, we're living through an age of tremendous wealth/income disparity (on a relevant side-note, tech has played a not-insignificant role in that disparity). At the same time, we have massive national and global problems (climate change, rising nuclear regimes, terrorism, mass shootings, etc). Yet, all of this SV brainpower and capital is being deployed to make rich people richer off of over-priced trivialities like Juicero. The guys with the lifeboats are playing music for the people on the Titanic and charging them for the privilege.

When you really step back and look at it, it's a little nuts, really.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#100

Post by jes5199 »

jrs95 wrote: post #51
austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

I think some of the people that do have a problem with SV or tech in general also just have a problem with people they perceive as having lower social status succeeding. It's not anti-intellectualism exactly, but it sort of parallels it in my opinion.

people in SV aren’t “suceeding” - they’re making twice as much money as everyone else in exchange for creating systems of surveillance. I’m not surprised people are salty about it.
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