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This Is Silicon Valley

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Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#41

Post by JesseObrien »

erulabs wrote: post #5

Weird flex, but okay. But seriously, it’s hard to read “look how tough we have it” about getting a 6 figure job out of school. You didn’t get into Harvard. That’s not a life defining tragedy... hoping this is parody. The vast vast vast majority of the world works harder for less. We should be thankful, not weirdly bragging about how hard our childhoods were. Try Detroit or Bangladesh....

Checking out your profiles on other social media, looks like the only thing you ever do is code related, so of course this article goes over your head.

Nothing in this article says "look how tough we have it". It's a thought provoking piece on how broken an entire city is, and just how tone deaf people like you are to all of it. You're so busy worrying about code and lack any sort of empathy with others that you can't possibly understand the perspective of anyone else.

If you paid attention to what's going on you'd see that a "6 figure job" equates to much less buying power in SF than living in other parts of the country because the cost of living in SF is out of control.

Detroit and Bangladesh have different problems, in different severity and scale, but their existence does not discount the perspective of others in their own situations.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#43

Post by crushcrashcrush »

conanbatt wrote: post #11

Its a rant but I'm also surprised at how she writes "people's perfect life". Whats perfect about San Francisco, that has such a low demographic representation of family, the city is super dirty, people live with 6 figure salaries live in terrible housing conditions. Maybe google gets to shelter their employees from a lot of the cruft of SF, but walk 2 blocks away from the google offices in SF and you'll get yelled at…

I also look at this as - individuals have so much wealth, along with these companies, yet no one is doing a single fucking thing to help the homeless.

Facebook and Google could reverse their negative PR so quickly if they actually put some money meaningfully toward the problem, not into fake tax shelters for their founders.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#44

Post by gpsx »

Wow. I'm shocked by the comments here. If the author reads these I am sure she will give up all hope for the area. Of course a number of commenters didn't actually finish the article.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#45

Post by thedz »

Para2016 wrote: post #26

I had to stop reading this. The complaints of a wealthy narcissist and her wonderful childhood are absurd, despicable even.

Did... you read the same article I did? The author describes a hyper competitive childhood that explicit took a mental and physical toll on the student body

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#46

Post by crushcrashcrush »

JesseObrien wrote: post #41
erulabs wrote: post #5

Weird flex, but okay. But seriously, it’s hard to read “look how tough we have it” about getting a 6 figure job out of school. You didn’t get into Harvard. That’s not a life defining tragedy... hoping this is parody. The vast vast vast majority of the world works harder for less. We should be thankful, not weirdly bragging about how hard our childhoods were. Try Detroit or Bangladesh....

Checking out your profiles on other social media, looks like the only thing you ever do is code related, so of course this article goes over your head. Nothing in this article says "look how tough we have it". It's a thought provoking piece on how broken an entire city is, and just how tone deaf people like you are to all of it. You're so busy worrying about code and lack any sort of empathy with others that you can'…

The problem is that there's so many people like the commenter you're replying to, I'm convinced it's why this area feels completely and utterly culturally broken.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#47

Post by rdiddly »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #23

I totally bought into the Silicon Valley dream. I moved to the bay area to work at Netflix and launch a startup. I bootstrapped my first company because I didn't know how to raise VC money. That was pretty great. For my second company I raised millions of dollars from VCs. I went to exclusive parties, did press interviews and had a huge net-worth (on paper). I became the person I always envied. It was HUGELY disappoi…

The best things in life are free. Sometimes old aphorisms are right on the money, no pun intended.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#48

Post by crushcrashcrush »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #23

I totally bought into the Silicon Valley dream. I moved to the bay area to work at Netflix and launch a startup. I bootstrapped my first company because I didn't know how to raise VC money. That was pretty great. For my second company I raised millions of dollars from VCs. I went to exclusive parties, did press interviews and had a huge net-worth (on paper). I became the person I always envied. It was HUGELY disappoi…

I had a mild exit and bought a sports car. I thought it would make me happy, it didn't.

Good luck on your quest for true meaning. You won't find it here.

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#49

Post by thedz »

Did some of y'all stop reading at half of the first sentence?

The article isn't a parody, and is expressly saying that SF/Silicon Valley can be a pretty bad place to live, specifically with regards to the author mental health.

I'm not sure how people are getting from this piece that SF is a great place with no problems

Re: This Is Silicon Valley

#50

Post by smacktoward »

cpr wrote: post #6

So moving away in the hopes that SV will magically get better while you're away? Doesn't sound like a practical plan.

The only alternative is the one Mario Savio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio) famously described at Berkeley in 1964:

> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

The only way change happens is when people go that way instead. But putting your body "upon the gears" is a really hard thing to do; it means a life spent fighting mostly losing battles and foregoing most of the conventional consolations life offers, like family and social acceptance and material comfort.

In other words it's asking someone to be a hero, and while I wish we had more heroes, I can't blame anyone for not leaping up to volunteer for the job.

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