Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by Animats » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #122

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.

I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? SV really…

Facebook wasn't a first mover. It was more like the tenth large social network. Predecessors included AOL, Myspace, Orkut, Geocities...

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

#342

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #44

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.

>developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions Some who make this argument (and I'm not necessarily saying you're in this camp) are essentially saying that "nerd culture" is some oppressive sexist force. That's sort of ironic given that it's basically a subculture formed by social rejects. There are of course aspects of workplace culture which do this, but an appreciation of science…

But it's not the real nerds who run SV. It's the used car salesmen, itinerant bankers, and other various grifters who are only there because they follow the money from one industry to the next until they've bled it dry. Then they move on.

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

#343

Post by Caveman_Coder » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

bluetwo wrote: post #315

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warning: totally subjective opinions to follow... The PHX community is "much better" in my opinion because the people I meet at various Dev groups aren't doing it because they want to be "software-developer famous"...if you know what I mean. When I was in SV I went to tons of meetups where it seemed like the devs were just trying to create something to get themselves "likes/favs/PRs/followers/etc" on HN/GitHub/Twitte…

Thanks for the insight.

No problem, glad I could provide some insight. Also...

The whole "diversity-in-tech" is less of an issue here (from my anecdotal experience). My current team is 70/30 men/women and while we'll occasionally talk about the larger tech community, rarely does it devolve into talks about diversity/gender representation/social issues. My team cares about technology, solving problems related to the electric grid, and maintaining our systems so the operators can ensure power is restored quickly and promptly to our customers.

Its a pretty good gig in that respect. My lead is a Mexican-American female that if you asked her about it, she'd say she is an professional Electrical Engineer first and foremost. I like that kind of environment, as opposed to when I worked for Google and it was a constant barrage of "women/diversity candidate/veteran in tech." My wife is a software engineer as well and she likes the fact that her current company doesn't treat her as the token female developer, something that she experience all too much in SV.

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

#344

Post by rtx » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #240

bogomipz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates." No, your average non-techie consumer knows and cares very little about Silicon Valley. People like convenience and innovation that leads to convenience in their lives. There is no transitive property where if I "love" ride-sharing I "love" Uber's leadership, business tactics and company culture. >"Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Go…

That's exactly the truth. Well articulated. The companies came along and gave us things we needed. There are such events in history that would inevitably happen regardless of the person (or people) who started it. People needed electricity. People needed long-range quick communication. People needed places to form groups, physically or not, etc. Most of the corporations' products were inevitable. Thing is, they are a…

So who pays the cost and profits.

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

#345

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #203

reaperducer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Don't blame the messenger. "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. It tracks their lives in ways that companies like Google could only dream of, and is sitting on almost a cent…

> "The media" is a reflection of the people Relevance to this particular topic aside, I'd recommend looking into the corporate structure behind the "media" in the US before making that statement.

25 years in "the media" is my reference point. What's yours?

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

#346

Post by notthemessiah » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #115

Sincere question: what is problematic about the word "bodega"?

It's not just the word Bodega, it's the insult to injury added to the death of the American dream. Bodega's were ways that people could people of a community could pool their resources together and make a living for themselves while serving their community. Now some ambitious VC-backed firm not only wants to decimate that road to the American dream, but they also have to steal the name too? That's like killing your neighbor and wearing his skin while fucking his wife.

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

#347

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

api wrote: post #170

mschuster91 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well people can think of something like TNG but the (alt-)right will instantly crapstorm you for being a communist. Just look at how they're opposing healthcare for all, a society like TNG would be the ultimate enemy for them.

The alt-right is the logical endpoint. It kind of combines all the worst ideas from liberalism over the past 50 years (postmodernism, identity politics) with all the worst ideas from conservatism (nationalism, racism, biological determinism) in the previous century. I remember years ago having a discussion with a friend about "what's the worst ideology you can possibly imagine" and it kind of resembles what I came up…

All countercultural movements are trashy. The alt-right certainly have hit a certain watermark for going for cheap shocks and taboo-breaking transgressive behavior, but that's because they're attuned to the standards of the current generation. In the '70s, punk was countercultural and the Brits banned "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols just because the cover had Elizabeth II wearing a nose ring. What's considered trashy or taboo shifts with each generation.

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

#348

Post by balls187 » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #247

jklein11 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me what this difference is?

>ideas that seem dumb and ideas that are dumb. The first makes money, the second doesn't. :)

Agreed.

There are dumb ideas, and dumb ideas that are poorly executed.

Juciero is clearly the latter.

But just because an idea is dumb, doesn't mean it won't be successful in the market.

Two of my favorite satires on this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t28ZB1t6gg8

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDEL4Ty950Q

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

#349

Post by ernst_klim » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #103

ernst_klim wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft World without insane eulas, itunes, exploitation of drivers? Such an utopia.

Hate to break to you, but non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. And drivers were exploited before Uber/Lyft, as taxi companies already classified them as contractors.

>as taxi companies already classified them as contractors.

In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide.

>non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too.

Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about

>a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft

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

#350

Post by soundwave106 » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #287

crush-n-spread wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tone-deaf or not, you have to go where the work is. You might have to pick up a laptop and learn to code. Maybe that means uprooting your family and finding new friends. You have to make it work. To not find work is to not survive.

>You might have to pick up a laptop and learn to code. I'm sure you can't honestly believe this will work for the vast majority of people in the US. Either you don't value your trade, or you are simply unwilling to seriously discuss the issue.

Historically, that happened before.

There was large amounts of net migration in the late 19th century - early 20th century from rural areas (where work increasingly wasn't due to agriculture automation) to urban areas. [1]

As farms automated, it was often "flyover territories" that took the lead in creating the then-new high school movement. [2]

Heck, for technologies that were increasingly becoming indispensable to life, there was even strong government efforts to make sure access was available for that. (EG in 1936: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act)

So, "pick up a laptop and learn to code" is an acceptable answer to me. Of course, actually, there are a lot of other careers besides coding. The issue is that increasingly, former career paths like resource extraction and manufacturing are either getting automated away, or are getting shoved out by globalization. This leaves the service industry (including the knowledge economy). Your "standard" service job doesn't pay very good these days, and the current "career path" in America to obtain a good knowledge economy job is through a college degree (I know, not the best "signal" in many ways, but for now it is the signal) and rural participation rate is very low [3].

One frustration with the current political scene, which is so dominated by culture war anger, is that these concepts don't even really get aired. How to improve rural higher education, how to aid career transitions from manufacturing, how to improved wage standards for service workers (which are increasingly replacing manufacturing jobs), or even something like rural Internet initiatives? Seems far more interesting to discuss than what often passes for "political news" these days.

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-us-history/period-... [2] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624456/Goldin_E... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-ru...