71–80 of 120 posts
There are few reasons why Silicon Valley is successful: 1) weather (no tornados, no super humid days, no snow) 2) proximity of great places (Lake Tahoe, Monterey, Napa valley, …) 3) good universities (Berkeley, standford, UCSF, …) 4) immigrants (especially south asian) are more welcome 5) big companies like Salesforce, Google, Facebook, etc. 6) support network: it is ok to be poor entrepreneur and hassle even you are…
7) diversity (not just about immigrants — age, culture, political, philosophical, work style, gender, ability) has unspoken benefits beyond the ones that are usually touted. The diversity of Silicon Valley is very enticing not only for companies who just repeat the word as a marketing buzzword while not necessarily comprehending what it gives them (a lot), but also for young engineers, male and female, in their socia…
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FTA : I believe that if America loses its way and ceases to be the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world, the most likely cause will be not having an immigration policy that is as welcoming to people as it has been for the past couple of centuries.
I doubt it. Look at the period from 1920-1960. Extremely entrepreneurial, extremely innovative, and tight immigration controls. The talent is largely already here.
It isn't black and white.
About 3 years ago I left Silicon Valley after being there for 15 years. I moved to the suburbs outside of another major US city, near where I grew up. I had already been working remote, and especially during the pandemic it felt like a relatively future-proof decision to be outside of the SV network. Frankly, now I'm not so sure I was right. No other place in the US (maybe in the world) has the amount and magnitude o…
The billboards in San Francisco off Hwy 80 and Hwy 101 never cease to surprise me. I'll ask my wife, who was a middle school teacher, what a "Datadog" or "Salesforce" is and she never knows (or cares, which is fair enough). The tech culture is so ingrained that even the non-techies are oblivious to how deeply rooted it is.
The only other place where I've seen something similar is in Washington, DC, where you'll get advertisements on the Metro for things like fighter jet engines, apparently aimed at congressional staffers and Defense Department executives.
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7) diversity (not just about immigrants — age, culture, political, philosophical, work style, gender, ability) has unspoken benefits beyond the ones that are usually touted. The diversity of Silicon Valley is very enticing not only for companies who just repeat the word as a marketing buzzword while not necessarily comprehending what it gives them (a lot), but also for young engineers, male and female, in their socia…
It's hard to look at typical Silicon Valley workplace or the broader society around it and say that there is diversity of culture, political viewpoints, and philosophy.
Socioeconomically - it's a wildly monolithic culture. Extremely capitalistic as well to where many people cannot fathom anything that doesn't fall outside the purview of capitalism because they've been taken so strongly by it and it's all they've ever known. You run into plenty of leftists/communists/socialists and what not too but they have no power or positions of authority... Usually just ICs or random people around Berkeley.
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Purdue is great, but it's in Indiana and the social policies will continue to disincentivize both workers and investors. a quick list of reasons not to locate in Indian: * abortion ban * no renter protection * strict non-compete's allowed * school funding keeps getting worse
Strict non-competes being allowed is probably the only factor that really matters there. Jurisdictions that favor renters almost universally have higher rents and a poorer experience for normal renters who don't cause damage and pay rent on time. If you compare the average rents in Indiana[0], which is well known to favor the rights of property owners, against some states with roughly comparable population densities…
And, honestly, while this can be a big deal in other states--especially if you want to start a competing business--there seems to sometimes be a belief that people don't change jobs in other states. I've worked pretty much my whole career in Massachusetts and non-competes have never been an issue. The one time I had to sign one after an acquisition, it was reasonably scoped.
Mass has very recently, over long-time resistance from some local large employers, put somewhat weak garden leave requirements in place, however. While not ideal, it does mean an employer has skin in the game if they really don't want someone to go to a competitor.
You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.
4-5 of the top 20 CS programs are in the Upper Midwest, depending on whether you count Western Pennsylvania (I personally do — politics are solidly Midwest conservative; manufacturing is a major industry; ethnicity is largely German-American rather than British; religion is largely Catholic and mainline Protestant rather than Quaker and Congregationalist; and so on. Pittsburgh looks and feels more like Columbus than…
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Austin is relatively close to California. Both Texas and California have huge populations. What does Indiana have?
Indianapolis is a three hour drive from Chicago which is the third most populous city in the US. Whereas Austin is over 1,000 miles from SF. (Once you're getting in a plane anyway, 1K miles vs. 2K miles doesn't make much of a difference.)
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It's hard to look at typical Silicon Valley workplace or the broader society around it and say that there is diversity of culture, political viewpoints, and philosophy.
Agree... The diversity runs about skin deep and that's it. Most people in their 20s and 30s are still children of rich/UMC parents. Very few people I have met in SV are from lower class families. Socioeconomically - it's a wildly monolithic culture. Extremely capitalistic as well to where many people cannot fathom anything that doesn't fall outside the purview of capitalism because they've been taken so strongly by i…
I'd agree that the diversity of economic backgrounds seems limited. Although I'd caution that people tend to attempt to hide parts of their background they feel will make others and themselves uncomfortable, so your perception may be skewed by that.