Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#91

Post by Kalium » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

metaphorm wrote: post #60

3pt14159 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of…

You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".

Sex and photo-sharing pays the bills. Thinking about "everyone" does not.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#92

Post by leoc » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:56 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

dalke wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not been following any of the discussion about this topic? Here are three frequently voiced objections: 1) If the city decided to put a new bus route outside of your house, with a bus every 10 minutes for the morning and evening rush hours, then you would expect there to be public meetings where people can voice concerns about the routing, increase in large traffic, noise, and so on. Why should private compa…

Those all seem like a reach, perhaps made up after the fact. For instance, who blockades a bus, commits violence on the riders and fakes a scene as a rider (pretending to be an entitled Google employee and yelling out the window while having it filmed)? Not somebody annoyed at a bus stop. It all smells like protester-chic, finding something semiplausible to complain about then faking a protest. They didn't have drone…

> It all smells like protester-chic, finding something semiplausible to complain about then faking a protest.

They're the torchbearers for the lawlessness and thuggery of the late-'60s "student revolutions" etc.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#93

Post by zanny » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:57 PM UTC

Vervious wrote: post #68

powera wrote: post #50

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?" - there was the cover article in Time Magazine not less than 2 weeks ago about these very engineers fixing healthcare.gov, and describing why they don't do it permanently (government procurement is awful and almost always unrelated to actual ski…

> The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise. I'm curious what facts you're talking about. The very problems you point out about healthcare.gov support part of the author's argument - that today's tech environment rewards the creation of a sexting app over more groundbreaking work, and therefore youth do the former. From my perspect…

Then blame consumers and investors that fund sexting over space travel or cancer cures, because that is why all the entrepreneurs jump on it. If there were monetary demand for a cancer cure, and I mean real billions a year in venture capital into R&D on the subject, that nobody was using - you would see a dearth of sexting apps, at least for a while, while that VC funding is consumed.

Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#94

Post by Kalium » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:58 PM UTC

jacobr1 wrote: post #36

melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't a bus near your house every 10 minutes be a good thing in most cities? Otherwise, it's a hassle to get anywhere that's not within walking distance.

except these aren't city busses but private shuttles for major companies. If the tech giants were providing funding for SFMTA rather than running a private fleet, then I suspect any objections would be quite different.

Yes. Then it would be "Our city buses shouldn't be for hire!".

Same song, different verse.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#95

Post by dkrich » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

I think there's a major flaw in the argument that "these people could be curing cancer!"

To have any hope of doing something as ambitious as curing cancer you presumably have to have an unusually large amount of interest in the subject. Like enough to devote your entire education and career to. By taking jobs at tech companies they are demonstrating that they don't possess this necessary quality. Few people do.

And as for the healthcare.gov debacle- being smart and a great programmer has absolutely no benefit when it comes to fixing that site. Yes there are likely major technical issues, but the main problems derive from layer upon layer of bureaucracy and policy that any project of that scope entails. I would advise smart young people to stay far, far away from any project of that nature, lest any will you had to do something meaningful will get sucked out of your body fairly quickly.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#96

Post by Kalium » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

king_jester wrote: post #27

raldi wrote: post #3

> The backlash in recent months against the self-involvement and frivolity of the new guard has actually been a long time coming. Instagram photos of opulent tech holiday parties have been lambasted, Google buses blockaded In what universe is a carpooling system that gets dozens of cars off the road and allows each passenger to reclaim ten working hours a week classified as frivolous?

The Google bus issue is more about the self-involvement and less about the frivolity. Backlash against Google buses is about gentrification and the fact that a well paid group of workers comes in from a variety of locations and then dominates local politics.

If Googlers were dominating local politics then there wouldn't be a housing shortage. I think that part isn't as true as you think.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#97

Post by sbierwagen » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

Man I hate the framing on that headline.

I hate silicon valley just as much as anyone else who doesn't live there, and I'd gladly upvote an anti-valley piece; but when an old media outlet blames it on Those Damn Millenials right in the title, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

EDIT:

  But that presumes that the talent at older companies is 
  somehow subpar, less technically proficient, than it is 
  at their younger counterparts. This seems unlikely if you 
  look at Cisco’s list of patents.

Ugghhhhh

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#98

Post by phaemon » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #81

metaphorm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".

Yeah, fuck that noise. "Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay. Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it. But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking i…

Upvoted for honest expression. But you're doing exactly the same thing you're criticising: you haven't kicked the bastards out either, or gotten healthcare sorted because you're too busy chasing sex and thinking about your own life.

In 20 years someone will be writing your post about you!

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#99

Post by jmsduran » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

powera wrote: post #50

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?" - there was the cover article in Time Magazine not less than 2 weeks ago about these very engineers fixing healthcare.gov, and describing why they don't do it permanently (government procurement is awful and almost always unrelated to actual ski…

I don't blame people choosing to work in other business areas rather than putting their efforts in fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc.

Why? Because it's honestly very hard work, often with little recognition and less pay. People trying to innovate or 'disrupt' these fields are up against deep rooted political institutions, large corporations with millions to spend on lobbying efforts, and a broken legal/patent system that favors those who exploit its many loopholes.

That said, I have great respect for people who devote their time and effort for the greater good.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#100

Post by angersock » Wed, Mar 12, 2014, 5:06 PM UTC

A big part of this, I think, has to do with the way the market is structured and the sorts of businesses that are getting rewarded.

Once upon a time, right, engineering was really sensitive to time. We had to wirewrap circuits together, we had to punch cards, and in general we had to plan out what we did. Some thought leaders existed, usually little labs embedded in much larger companies (we all genuflect at Bell Labs, or Xerox PARC, or what have you).

Nowadays the cost of prototyping something is super super low, even if it's hardware.

Now, combine that with the "lean" meme going around, once which basically says (arguably, quite rightly so) that engineering is four or five orders removed from being a successful business.

So, we see a lot of startups going for things which are not Big Ideas--and why should they, because Big Ideas are expensive to develop, because Big Ideas are hard to sell, and because Big Ideas are not profitable.

What does sell well, reliably? Bread and circuses. Communication, and advertising, and search. Any sort of business where you can be technologically lazy and "disrupt" a market. Those are the things being selected for--not Big Ideas.

Why don't you see these bright engineers working on public-sector stuff? Because .gov is insanely high barrier to entry, and in order to break into it you kind of have to assimilate. And it's a culture which is cynical, which isn't "lean" by any stretch, and which cares about tech even less than the next "X for Y with Z".

Public sector stuff invariably has a bunch of egos and bullshit that have to be taken into account to do business, almost all of which is orthogonal to actually solving any problems. So, little surprise that people don't want to work on it. It's a lot of effort, and it doesn't change much, and it'll backslide the very second you turn your back on it--maybe even before.

Medicine, incidentally, is exactly the same way--you've got to coddle a bunch of little snowflakes who are used to getting their way and who are (annoyingly enough) correct with enough frequency that they are considered elders on matters they know nothing about.