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Why Silicon Valley Works

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#211

Post by bistro »

azakai wrote: post #171
aantix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are. I've worked here in SF as a Rails consultant for the past four years. It's quite obvious that the work force skews younger. My best friend just became a CTO and his bosses are both 20. He's 41. :-0 When you look to start a family, the pressures of working in the valley are going to bubble to the surface. You can either endure a 60 minute drive (that should really only be 20 based on distance) to a c…

> or you shuttle a car seat to and from an Uber. Hmm, seems like a business opportunity here, for Uber/Lfyt etc. to offer a car seat as an extra (in which case the car arrives with seat all set up and ready).

Uber already does: http://blog.uber.com/uberfamilyfaq

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#212

Post by mempko »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #66

The premise here is that Silicon Valley "works". What do you mean by "works"? If you mean creating artificial wealth for a small group of already-rich folk, yes, it works. If you mean transforming one of the most naturally advantaged landscapes on earth into a traffic-choked sea of concrete where people do little more than work at creating new ways to buy and sell stuff, yes, it works. If you mean polluting what was…

Could not have said it better myself. I know because I tried.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#213

Post by Marazan »

WalterBright wrote: post #170
Balgair wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the living part: My folks live in Concord and their next door neighbor just moved into assisted living at 95. Her house sold within a week for 700k to a young couple. It's a 3 bed 1 bath single story in Concord with drainage problems, mind you. Lets do the math here shall we: What is the mortgage and taxes(thanks prop13) on a place like? Well, at 4.05%, good credit, and 15% down, it's 2857.80/month just on the loa…

> sold within a week for 700k > got the house for 70k in the 70's For perspective, the S&P 500 was at 68.56 in 1975 and began 2014 at 1848.36, a 27 fold gain. You also wouldn't be paying ongoing real estate taxes, etc. So the house bought in the 70's wasn't that great of an investment, long term. http://www.1stock1.com/1stock1_141.htm

Historically America residential property has been a zero return investment. It kept up with inflation and that was it. It's only recently that America has seen the boom and bust property cycles that affect other parts of the world

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#214

Post by david927 »

rgbrgb wrote: post #143
axavuj05 wrote: post #126

Throw-away account for obvious reasons: > "Silicon Valley works because there is such a high density of people working on start-ups and they are inclined to help each other" Bull shit. With all due respect to Sam--who no doubt knows what he's doing and saying and has become very successful--he is undoubtedly living in a bubble of his own. While I've found people generally open to the idea of chatting over a coffee, I…

I'm sorry you're having a bad time, but you sound like you're caught up in a few delusions. When someone gets coffee with a stranger they are "going out of their way to help". What more are you asking for in these conversations? Agreed, nobody's going to fund some random biz guy with no track record and "an idea" (my guess from your post, sorry if I'm wrong). Reading that as racism/elitism is counterproductive and mo…

some random biz guy with no track record and "an idea"?

Now that's delusional. Clearly you wish that to be the case. It is not. SV is all about the gate-keepers, and they are all about profiling, which they call "signaling". If you don't fit into that mold, you are not going to receive a warm welcome; I don't care how good you are.

Read Peter Thiel's Stanford class CS183 notes. Peter explicitly says this, "It's like getting a degree at Berkeley. Okay. It's not Stanford. You can [have] a complicated story about how you had to do it because your parents had a big mortgage or something. But it's a hard negative signal to get past."

If you are a white male, in your early 20's and went to Stanford, go for it. If you're not, don't even try to play the game; it's rigged to use you, not help you.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#215

Post by Dirlewanger »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #66

The premise here is that Silicon Valley "works". What do you mean by "works"? If you mean creating artificial wealth for a small group of already-rich folk, yes, it works. If you mean transforming one of the most naturally advantaged landscapes on earth into a traffic-choked sea of concrete where people do little more than work at creating new ways to buy and sell stuff, yes, it works. If you mean polluting what was…

>The one thing the Valley works very well at is self-congratulation, especially among the wealthy.

Yup, this is why everything that comes out of the Y Combinator's mouth should be inherently suspect: they have an incentive in romanticizing Silicon Valley because they profit off of your drinking the kool-aid.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#216

Post by shrikant »

cfallin wrote: post #84
wes-exp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree that the high cost of living is beneficial for startups. Keep in mind the very term Silicon Valley comes from chip companies (Fairchild, Intel, etc.) who came to SV because it was cheap, open farm land . There isn't a business in the world that doesn't want to optimize on costs. Take a look at a modern SV company now: Apple. It creates lots of jobs in SV, but far more in China . SV succeeds in spi…

> Keep in mind the very term Silicon Valley comes from chip companies (Fairchild, Intel, etc.) who came to SV because it was cheap, open farm land. It's funny you mention Intel here -- since the 70s/80s they've continued to expand in Hillsboro, Oregon (a suburb of Portland), where they bought a lot of cheap farmland. It's worked really well for them and the ~16k people they employ in the state. The only downside is a…

Back in 2005, I was accepted into Portland State for a grad CS programme, and I recall a large chunk of the accompanying leaflets read like a giant recruiting advert for Intel. I never gave it much thought back then because I wasn't going there anyway, but your point sort of explains it!

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#218

Post by michaelochurch »

dashboardfront wrote: post #114
michaelochurch wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finance is actually more meritocratic than software, these days. That may change. Right now, the douche factor is much higher in software startups that that clouds the game. Of course, many of those douches came from ( cough failed out of) finance and management consulting. Traders who top out at $500,000 per year are considered failures. Quants and programmers often get to (and, sometimes, past) that level, but more…

What did you do in finance? I'm guessing trading? It seems like it's a rather hard field to break into, as you've mentioned. I remember reading that even for people coming out of Harvard Business School only a few make it into trading. Regardless, that's a small subset of finance jobs, no? What I've read about the investment banker side is that the job is absolutely dreadful; if you get into private equity, it gets b…

Quant trader. It was fun. That said, I'm more suited for programming and quant work than for "guts and glory" trading, especially now that I'm older. I don't think I could ever work a floor.

I remember reading that even for people coming out of Harvard Business School only a few make it into trading.

Business school is about connections, but you need smarts to be a quant or a trader, and I'm still smarter than 99% of the people at HBS. I don't have the connections to get a Partner job at Sequoia, but I have the raw ability that most of those people don't have.

What I've read about the investment banker side is that the job is absolutely dreadful

Entry-level (analyst) jobs are pretty awful, and the hours are inhuman. It gets better as you move up the ranks. MDs work 9-to-6. VPs and EDs work 8-to-7, and there's enough status to the job (and the work is usually interesting, at that level) that it isn't so bad.

As you move up, your sales/pitch skills become more and more important, as your ability to win clients/deals for the firm is what brings in revenue, not your ability to use excel.

There's some of that everywhere. We failed at keeping politics out, at high levels, in the Valley. It's just hard to make merit matter more than being well-liked no matter what industry you're in. I don't know of any industry that has figured that problem out.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#219

Post by modifier »

owenmarshall wrote: post #151
Emphaticdotco wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic is atrocious. The driverless, grid-connected cars can't get here soon enough.

I don't think the cars are the problem, as much as the tech bubble driving real estate prices through the stratosphere. That's not going to be fixed by... more technology. In other words, this may be the HNest comment I've ever seen.

Driverless cars are going to automatically fix the problem of traffic, once and for all.

Yeah, right.

Re: Why Silicon Valley Works

#220

Post by cylinder »

mtrimpe wrote: post #188
WalterBright wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sold within a week for 700k > got the house for 70k in the 70's For perspective, the S&P 500 was at 68.56 in 1975 and began 2014 at 1848.36, a 27 fold gain. You also wouldn't be paying ongoing real estate taxes, etc. So the house bought in the 70's wasn't that great of an investment, long term. http://www.1stock1.com/1stock1_141.htm

You can't also live in the S&P 500 though.

Nor can you get 10:1 leverage to invest in SPX.
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