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If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

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Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#321

Post by autokad »

ibudiallo wrote: post #300

A few months ago I wrote a certain story here and to my surprise I received a call from Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show. We had long discussions about silicon valley and his new book coming out (I'm featured in it). A few weeks ago he was in LA and we had another long discussion about the show. Silicon Valley is the show most startup founders will refuse to watch. My startup was featured on TechCrunch Disru…

That's some really interesting insights from a founder, thanks!

I'm a huge fan of the show, but one thing I would like to point out is that I don't think everything of the show is negative. sometimes it makes me wish I was developing (data science here). my favorite moments of the show is when they overcome some huge challenge (spoiler like with 2 days of the condor)

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#322

Post by dilyevsky »

dlivingston wrote: post #225
blocked_again wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance but what did big bang theory got wrong?

Watch a video of Big Bang Theory without a laugh track and all of your questions will be answered: https://youtu.be/jKS3MGriZcs

I’m just as much of a bbt hater as the next guy but ftr - messing up with timing will render most jokes not working

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#323

Post by autokad »

ramraj07 wrote: post #115
coleifer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use this simple litmus test: if it has a laugh-track, then it's for dumb people.

The it crowd is one of my absolute favorite shows. Maybe it will work better without a laugh track but there are a lot of British shows id rather have with a track than without the show in my life.

I can never get over how ahead of its time the IT crowd was. I just went back and watched a couple episodes and it still nails many things right on the head

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#324

Post by titanomachy »

r00fus wrote: post #308
eanzenberg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just free concert but free food and booze. BTW the whole renaming of NIPS to NeurIPS could be an episode of SV, where a board of directors are all offended by names of body parts!

Let's just ignore the racial epithet part shall we?

"Nip" used to be a somewhat common perjorative term for Japanese (i.e. Nipponese; the Japanese word for Japan is Nippon). In case anyone else was confused by this comment.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#325

Post by Fricken »

freehunter wrote: post #320
Fricken wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In office space Peter Gibbons, our white Alpha, and the only guy with any sense, tries to stay sane and hold it together in a world that has gone haywire. In King of the Hill, our white Alpha, Hank Hill, the only guy with any common sense, tries to stay sane and keep it from all falling apart in a world that has gone Haywire. In Idiocracy, our White Alpha, Joe Bauer, the only guy with any sense, tries to stay sane an…

Yeah it's really easy to overgeneralize if you boil it down to nothing and ignore everything that isn't convenient to your point.

And it's easy to say things like Mike Judge has breadth if you're in a circle jerk thread and oblivious to storytellers who actually exhibit breadth. Judge doesn't have breadth he has bread. White bread. White wonder bread. There's no rye, no baguettes, no sourdough, no pita. Just white bread.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#326

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ng12 wrote: post #28

I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ). It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's unsettling.

Yeah I couldn't get watch it for this reason -- at the time it came out I was just emerging from the process of an acquisition into a BigCorp, and it was just too real. I found I hated the characters on screen as much as I found I hated their equivalents in real life.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#327

Post by Apocryphon »

edoceo wrote: post #303
cknoxrun wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would highly suggest checking out Halt and Catch Fire. It's a period piece, but I think it captures the spirit of Northern California. The first 2 seasons are in Texas before they jump ship to San Francisco.

I thought that show went off the rails when spoiler the dude set the van full of hardware on fire

That's at the end of the first season, which was weaker than the subsequent ones, really.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#328

Post by pj_mukh »

ibudiallo wrote: post #300

A few months ago I wrote a certain story here and to my surprise I received a call from Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show. We had long discussions about silicon valley and his new book coming out (I'm featured in it). A few weeks ago he was in LA and we had another long discussion about the show. Silicon Valley is the show most startup founders will refuse to watch. My startup was featured on TechCrunch Disru…

"show most startup founders will refuse to watch"

Hah! Anecdotally, I've had the opposite experience watching the show and running a startup in the valley. Most of my co-founder friends have seen it and see it as a sort of catharsis.

"We aren't the only ones, this happens to everyone, so much so, there's a show about it"

And then there's the inspirational, "Let's have the team coalesce around a deadline and jam out something that's never been done before", episodes. Also very real.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#329

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

revscat wrote: post #140
komali2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the yogurt scene that did it for me. When one of the main characters yells at the other about how all the small spoons are missing, and he can't get the big spoons into the greek yogurt jam section. Not only did I have that exact same conversation with my coworker the day previously about the exact brand of yogurt, on post-analysis we're pretty sure our company has stocked the exact same spoons they used in th…

For me, it was the episode where they were doing agile development complete with story cards. I had been in so many of those exact same meetings. It was hysterical but also... refreshing? Someone got it , the ridiculousness of it all wrapped up in earnest desire to implement A Better Process.

Yup. After we had broken out the first Scrum project, my HR Manager came by specifically to tell me he had learned all about Scrum watching Silicon Valley.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#330

Post by eanzenberg »

r00fus wrote: post #308
eanzenberg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just free concert but free food and booze. BTW the whole renaming of NIPS to NeurIPS could be an episode of SV, where a board of directors are all offended by names of body parts!

Let's just ignore the racial epithet part shall we?

I've never heard it used in this context, but I guess people can get offended by pretty much anything these days.
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