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Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

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Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#91

Post by AnimalMuppet »

riskneutral wrote: post #50
Panzer04 wrote: post #44

The weirdest part is how many people think depositors should actually take a haircut, or that is should be on the depositor to prove the financials of their chosen bank for bankruptcy risk. Not really a view of Silicon Valley though, unless people making said comments are from Silicon Valley.

How bank runs were historically handled in the US is that the depositors lost all of their money. Banks runs are a recurring problem that have a history going back hundreds of years. That's changing now though, the SVB depositors will be made whole by the government in order to avoid a wider banking crisis and what that means for everyone else is TBD but it looks like some form of insurance that's better than $250k.

"Historically" meaning "before the FDIC"; that is, before 1933.

Post FDIC, bank runs were historically handled by the FDIC either merging the bank with a solvent one, or taking it over. Depositors below a certain amount lost exactly $0, amounts above that were at risk. That amount was currently at $250,000.

What's new is that depositors above the threshold have been made whole.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#92

Post by hindsightbias »

Clubber wrote: post #36
HPMOR wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "titans" you speak of are Jerome Powell, and Janet Yellen. Not the schmucks that put Taxis on the internet, or effectively stole billions of dollars from SoftBank to build a rental company. These types of extremely competent people are far and few between in important parts of our society. So idk what the fuck you're talking about Yosemite? (from NewsRoom Intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk&ab_chann…

Good friends to have. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.

David Sacks took care oh him and made him whole.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#93

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

Nope. If you look at the whole cycle going back to Shockley nothing seems too odd to me, yet anyway - I'm still open to changing dynamics.

If you go back and read books like Hackers[0] or The Soul of The New Machine[1] even the cast of characters is weirdly similar. That piece of geography seems to really strongly attract both the Founder and Venture Capitalist personality, who really are misfits most other places.

I suspect the chaos of the last few days is healthy for the system overall because it makes it look risky and possibly not even a payoff. That's not the way it looked 3 years ago.

As a result I suspect people who hang around will build even cooler stuff than we've seen in the previous 3 years.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Le...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316...

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#94

Post by kreutz »

ghusto wrote: post #79
kreutz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is full of self-interested organizations and people building things that, at times, result in wider societal benefit.

This is an American sentiment. Please look abroad. Nobody anywhere would argue with "people do bad things", but people where I am would be puzzled if that was your only assessment. We do things here for the betterment of society not just because it's "the right thing" morally, but because it's the right thing practically. It benefits _us_. We're part of society. This kind of pragmatic morality is smeared as socialism…

Sounds like idealism to me. I think you'd have a hard time quantifying your perspective. It's not the only assessment. Just statistically likely that it's the majority.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#95

Post by [deleted] »

1attice wrote: post #90
gardenhedge wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I am missing some important context, that paragraph makes no sense and gives no insight. What are the benefits of breaking a trust? Did someone make billions of dollars from the SVB collapse?

The article explains it with game theory. In game theory, there's a big difference between a so-called "iterated prisoner's dilemma" and a one-shot prisoner's dilemma. Call these IPD and OPD. Basically under the conditions of the past couple of decades, you could model Silicon Valley as an IPD. Under an IPD it always makes most sense to remain loyal. But because of macroeconomic and technological changes (what author…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#96

Post by stcroixx »

gkoberger wrote: post #59

There's a Silicon Valley I see on the news and Twitter that I've still never once seen in real life. I moved to SF in 2008, and it was the most magical place on the planet. I met amazing people everywhere I went... smart, interesting people who just wanted to make cool things. I loved every second of it. And it's still that way to me. And I say this as a person who's been to my share of fancy VC parties. Sure, things…

I lived there for 10 years and worked startups, not FAANG. Place after place, all run by people I’d never trust. Shady, dishonest, near criminals. Was happy to leave. I feel like Stanford basically produces criminals.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#97

Post by ActorNightly »

gkoberger wrote: post #59

There's a Silicon Valley I see on the news and Twitter that I've still never once seen in real life. I moved to SF in 2008, and it was the most magical place on the planet. I met amazing people everywhere I went... smart, interesting people who just wanted to make cool things. I loved every second of it. And it's still that way to me. And I say this as a person who's been to my share of fancy VC parties. Sure, things…

The issue isn't with the people, its with the products.

Outside ML, there has literally been zero innovation on the tech front in the past decade or so. We all got our internet phones, and the tech shifted into how to extract money from people (or sell people in the context of advertising) through these phones.

The main goal became to do whatever it takes to get users, then monetize the user base, then sell to/get acquired by some random company with lots of cash to burn to expand their portfolio with another item that generates revenue.

Then, after some time, monetization of the user base wasn't even a goal anymore. It was sufficient to just get users, which translated to companies valuation, which then translated into stock price that you can take to a bigger company and let them pay for additional development once they acquire the company.

Ive met (and interviewed) plenty of smart people from SV as well. Most of their experience is something web adjacent. They talk about setting up distributed systems, building pipelines, automating stuff, all for a product that is in the end ultimately worthless to society - the value is all generated through hypothetical stock price in terms of how much someone would pay for this in the future.

So these people all just pawn in the game perpetuated by the finance sector that only gives a fuck about a number. And they participate in it because of another number. We could all have much better lives if SV was about tech instead of numbers.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#98

Post by ghusto »

kreutz wrote: post #94
ghusto wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an American sentiment. Please look abroad. Nobody anywhere would argue with "people do bad things", but people where I am would be puzzled if that was your only assessment. We do things here for the betterment of society not just because it's "the right thing" morally, but because it's the right thing practically. It benefits _us_. We're part of society. This kind of pragmatic morality is smeared as socialism…

Sounds like idealism to me. I think you'd have a hard time quantifying your perspective. It's not the only assessment. Just statistically likely that it's the majority.

> Sounds like idealism to me

I hear this a lot from Americans that haven't been here. But I'm talking about Europe _right now_, not some imaginary fairy tale land.

> I think you'd have a hard time quantifying your perspective

I can only talk of my own experiences of course, but the majority of Americans I've talked to who have stayed for more than a month (more than just a holiday) are amazed at how high the quality of life is here, and how friendly people are.

> It's not the only assessment. Just statistically likely that it's the majority.

Perhaps in America — and I'd believe it, I've visited a few times — but not here. Unfortunately, it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more you believe it, the truer it becomes.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#99

Post by kreutz »

ghusto wrote: post #98
kreutz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like idealism to me. I think you'd have a hard time quantifying your perspective. It's not the only assessment. Just statistically likely that it's the majority.

> Sounds like idealism to me I hear this a lot from Americans that haven't been here. But I'm talking about Europe _right now_, not some imaginary fairy tale land. > I think you'd have a hard time quantifying your perspective I can only talk of my own experiences of course, but the majority of Americans I've talked to who have stayed for more than a month (more than just a holiday) are amazed at how high the quality…

I didn’t say the quality of life was worse or equivalent to America. The improvements to quality of life in Europe are likely largely driven by government policy not for-profit organizations.

Re: Ask HN: Has your view of Silicon Valley changed in the last 72 hours?

#100

Post by punyearthling »

SVB on its own? Not much. But SVB coupled with the layoffs is making me feel very uneasy about the tech sector.

I know tech's seen bad days before (e.g. the dotcom bubble), but that was before I got into the industry. All these bad headlines are definitely making me worry about my own prospects for sure.

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