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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

#441

Post by goatlover »

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…

> Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy.

I did used to the live in that world, and wasn't all that bad. There are times when I wish I still did. But better yet would be some reasonable compromise between the two where we had the convenience of smartphones and social media without Facebook, Google, etc and their massive surveillance, annoying advertising, and addictive practices.

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

#442

Post by goatlover »

eropple wrote: post #273
323454 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing wealth inequality in the United States in the last twenty years was caused mostly by globalisation, the offshoring of jobs that left huge numbers of people out of work and broke while making the owners and investors multiple times wealthier. Automation has played its role in generating inequality at times in history, but the wave we are currently experiencing is not predominantly due to automation: it is inst…

> Growing wealth inequality in the United States in the last twenty years was caused mostly by globalisation Which is caused by two major factors: easier shipping, easier communication--both of which the tech sector encourages, facilitates, and pushes forward. And yes, automation is a nontrivial part of wealth inequality's growth, especially over the last ten years rather than twenty--you don't move a secretary's job…

So all that cheap foreign labor doesn't count in the equation? There is automation, and there is moving operations overseas where the workforce is ten times cheaper.

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

#443

Post by romwell »

anonacct37 wrote: post #119
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…

> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. Me neither. Sometimes people get upset that the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation in San Francisco. Actually I live in a state that has spent a bunch of taxpayer money on a alt-coin currency based company that recently had an…

>the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation

I don't argue against your sentiment, but you could have picked a better example, or be more precise.

Services like public transport and food delivery benefit poor people the most (where in "food delivery", I include "grocery delivery", and by "transportation", I understand "public transport"). Building an infrastructure for people to live without cars is a good thing.

I say that as someone who could not afford a car, and depended on buses and online grocery shopping back in 2005 in NY.

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

#444

Post by emerged »

I'm praying for a day when SV has been replaced by largely remote and decentralized teams. Spreading the wealth and opportunity beyond the privilege bubble and exposing the industry to a more representative distribution of political preferences.

It may just be a dream, but I do feel hope as SV has been getting backlash for it's identity politics and new blockchain tech is looking to be a way to enable decentralized remote organizations.

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

#445

Post by ben_w »

Klockan wrote: post #296
ben_w wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they provide a valuable insight that is currently being systematically ignored, which can allow businesses to meaningful engage with and provide useful services to a currently poorly serviced market segment.

I haven't worked at a single team without at least one woman, why wouldn't people just ask them instead of going out of their way to get more? I mean, if we reduced the amount of sexism then the voices which are already in the field would suddenly be heard and we would no longer have the problem you are describing.

All of my teams, at at least one point during my time there, had zero women in them.

One of the teams eventually had two women, but at that point six of the men shared a name with another team member.

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

#446

Post by siquick »

austenallred wrote: post #65
gt_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It is not the classic anti-intellectualism, but I think a refined version of it.

It’s old money vs. new money. New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard. And because tech is printing money it doesn’t have to.

> New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard.

Can you expand on why this is a problem?

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

#447

Post by ajoy »

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…

You are right. I don't think there will be another social network like Facebook. But do not in any way assume facebook cannot be toppled. Already the younger generation is not using facebook as much. I have zero loyalty to the company and its product.

But the next big social network or software that connects may not look anything like Facebook. It will be most likely be unrecognizable as a social network even.

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

#449

Post by stale2002 »

arkh wrote: post #418
stale2002 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misinterpret what is causing the problem. It is not just a pipeline problem at the elementary school level where women aren't being given enough Legos to play with or something. It is a pipeline problem at the company level as well. As in, women in tech are very often driven out of the industry because of all the BS that they have to put up with. Fix the sexism problem at the company level and the industry stops…

If they don't want to join, then what is the problem? Their life, their choice. Do we see as many article about the lack of women in waste management? I think that's because seem like easy well-payed jobs. The reality is stupid hours, stupid management and no life. Only people who value money more than their time would choose to stay there. But hey! A possible solution would be to force women to learn to code then wo…

No, a better solution would be to fix the rampant problems of sexism in tech so that women aren't driven out of it.

Problem should be fixed. They should be fixed because they are problems that make lots of people unhappy and keep them out of high paying jobs.

Women aren't stupid for choosing to not subject themselves to rampant sexism. That's actually smart. But fixing a huge problem that effects lots and lots of people is objectively a good thing.

Your argument is equivalent to saying "hey, black people don't want to report things to the police, because they are afraid of the police (do to them being shot at a much higher rate), but that's THEIR problem because it is their life and their choice to not have access to the police system whenever a crime accures to them and they choice to not report it".

That argument would be a bad argument, because even though they are "choosing" to not report things to the police (and therefore have to way to not get justice for crimes committed against them), we should still work to fix the problem of them being RATIONALLY afraid of the police (perhaps by trying to convince police to shoot them less).

Look, if you really don't care about a major problem that is effecting lots of people, we could at least look at this from a purely selfish perspective for the company. When women leave an industry the company loses lots of money, because they have lost a high skilled worker.

Therefore it is an objectively good thing for the tech industry to solve this major problem that is causing the industry to lose so many highly skilled workers. Because that cost money.

The reason there are more articles about this than simply bad management is because a hostile work environment for lots of people is a much worse problem that effects people in worse ways.

How do I "know" that it is a worse problem? Well that's because women are being driven out in droves. Obviously it is a worse problem, as evidenced by the sheer number of people for whom it causes to leave their very high paying jobs.

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

#450

Post by Clubber »

jnbiche wrote: post #425
Clubber wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dare say the Russian fake news didn't do anything that Fox and Limbaugh and Brietbart haven't been doing for decades. I'd really like to see some samples of Russian planted news and comments. I wonder if they would even be detectable compared to "normal" stuff the aforementioned organizations produce.

Yes, but we don't give foreign governments and intelligence agencies unhampered access to our TV and radio airwaves to broadcast whatever the hell they want. There's a big difference between US nationals broadcasting bullshit and hostile foreign governments broadcasting bullshit. Neither is ideal, but the latter is completely unacceptable, at least to me, because it touches on sovereignty issues.

I agree, but I think broadcast is a misleading term. They were buying ads on websites. And their buy footprint is very small. To say, as the media has insinuated, the Russians swayed the election by buying $100K in Facebook ads is disingenuous and alarmist.
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