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Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

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141–150 of 302 posts

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#141
post #93

There is no place like Silicon Valley where taking a career risk to quit a job and start a company is normalized, understood, and encouraged.

Yet with the high rents and the lack of universal healthcare it takes a crazy person to take such a risk. I personally will start my startup from abroad when the time is right.

It kinda balances out when you're young and can easily get a seed $1M dollars to build a company with a very dubious (or non-existent) business plan

There's your salary. If the company works out or not later, well, you're a founder and has the experience, it's easier to get a job anywhere.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#142

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

> If there's anything that will kill Silicon Valley it's that people since 2010 have made too much money. Practically anyone at a FAANG is now a multi-millionaire no matter what you've worked on.

No they're not. A multi-thousandaire maybe.

You can get to millionaire status if you buy a house and pay off the loan, but for that you need more than 10 years of working in SV or an inheritance.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#143
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out. So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen. Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking sys…

Crappy payments isn't a tech problem, it's a market problem. Consumers and merchants can't be bothered to adopt contactless technologies that were introduced half a decade ago. Companies have tried QR codes and other payment schemes long before that (including the unfortunately named ISIS), but again, no traction.

Americans don’t like contactless payment?

Or (more Likely), unlike their Chinese counterparts, American banks are way more conservative with adopting new technologies. Hence why y’all still get paid with paper cheques :)

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#144
post #37

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

SV will exist for as long as the US is in the position it is in the world. Money will flow while USD is the worlds reserve currency. The US is however rotting from within. The political disfunction will eventually destroy everything.

The US has a lot of democratic risk but I have more hope for the country than Europe or Africa, because our economic policy is so much better. Europeans love their post-WW2 welfare states, but in practice their current governments react to everything with more austerity, and they're really anti-immigration.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#145

This overlooks the cybercrime crisis, which in 2020 did ~4x more financial damage than weather & climate disasters. And it's expected to get much worse this year. https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail/status/1372201054213787660 Silicon Valley probably has a role to play in suppressing cybercrime. References: Cybercrime, $945B: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/07/cybersecu... Climate, $258B: https://yaleclimat…

Comparing these two numbers doesn't make sense, because: 1) Cybercrime activity has an immediate impact, whereas the impact of climate-changing activity will be felt for many years, and 2) The impact of climate-changing activity results in actual destruction of value, whereas cybercrime results in only the transfer of value (from the victims to the perpetrators). Of course, the threat of cybercrime results in other v…

While I agree with the overall sentiment, crime is usually negative sum: the perpetrator gains less than the victim lost, thus some value is destroyed even before security spending.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah? On paper, 401k, or elsewhere? Where have they worked and for how long? Because in my experience, the “everyone who works at a FAANG is a multi-millionaire” meme is 100% bullshit. Especially when I read things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336029

What company uses the scale in this comment? (IC5 IC6 IC7 etc)

At least Apple does. I'm not sure if other companies use it as well.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#147

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

》But as long as more immigrants from other countries come to Silicon Valley because they've heard about how rich people come Why should I come to SV? Living standard, taxes, workforce cost, housing... I may get $5m funding, but that would only buy an office and couple of employees for a few years. And if I ever make it, VC and California taxes would eat 90% of my profit. And do not even let me start on family and chi…

California doesn't have a high tax burden. If you manage to get a house you're actually set, it's a feudal system where you essentially never have to pay taxes again, since your property tax will be below inflation forever.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out. So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen. Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking sys…

QR codes are Japanese not Chinese. Contactless payment systems are everywhere now, the big push being COVID. Taiwan isn't China, any Taiwanese will tell you that. Taiwan did a lot of things right when it came to the COVID response, but it's easy to do when you have a population of 23 million on a tiny island. I have several friends who are living in Taiwan and I've been jealous of them throughout the pandemic because…

I never said Taiwan was part of China... in fact I mentioned them both separately by name... which would be weird if I was saying they were the same right? #strawman

>biggest creator of wealth in the world

Amazon you mean? Or do you mean Tesla? Or Microsoft?... oh wait... none of them are from SV.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've listed literally 4 things. You can't really believe that compares to the innovations to come out of Silicon Valley, right?

Sorry, your right: - largest electric vehicle manufacturer and adoption - 5G (still no SV grown solution there) - Most advanced solar manufacture - biggest investor in renewable energy and nuclear - biggest investor in space based technology and delivery If you’d like more I can keep going. I was responding to: “they steal everything”... I pointed out the most widely used social network that was homegrown and unique.

> - 5G (still no SV grown solution there)

Is this a real thing that anyone cares about? There was a lot of marketing from Samsung and Supermicro for a few months about how everyone needed "5G AI cloud infrastructure", but it seemed like an especially bad strain of bullshit. I certainly haven't figured out what it was supposed to mean yet.

Selling infrastructure to ISPs is not an amazingly high margin business.

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