18 ms·

Uncanny Valley

431 points by kawera 11y ago

derwiskinator 11y ago
I'm in love with this article, and my SO is reading it right now. It reminds me perfectly of books like J-Pod and MicroSerfs, as well as some of the recent Gibson novels. I work at a company that has just morphed out of "startup" and into "contender". I didn't start early, I was hired by the guys who were hired by the founders (so that makes me a 'C' I guess by some old adage), and I've seen the company change so much even in my short time there. But this article nails so many perfect details. The plastic tubs of goldfish and trailmix, the Mid Century modern-esque furniture. Also, the bar referenced is probably OddJob.
felix_thursday 11y ago
Are there any other articles in this same vein that people would recommend?
phantom_package 11y ago
That was phenomenal. I constantly struggle with a lot of this - trying to distance myself from many aspects of the culture, without getting too cynical about it. I think most of all, I just appreciate knowing that there is someone else kicking around in this city that feels the same way I do.
danbmil99 11y ago
That really hits home. It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated the degree to which one's identity becomes wrapped up in the startup. It sometimes feels like it has its own mind and soul.
- alanh 11y ago
  It's also difficult to explain the corollary: When work is life, your boss telling you that maybe it wasn’t a good “culture fit” anymore / after all is a little like dying. That’s melodramatic, but losing such a big part of your identity is disorienting and depressing.
SocksCanClose 11y ago
Morozov would say, "I told you so".
hendzen 11y ago
Great writing. Reads like a memoir, but with the depth of an ethnography. I believe the company described here is Mixpanel FWIW.
- enahs-sf 11y ago
  Rip sticks and dftc. Dead giveaway.
  - alanh 11y ago
    I had to look DFTC up. From their job descriptions: > • We are down for the cause (“DFTC”). We’re all here to make Mixpanel a success. There is no job too big or too small for us. “That’s not my job” is not in our vocabulary.
- rrdharan 11y ago
  I had the same guess: both the huge number of sales people and the explanation of user analytics as the company's focus were giveaways. For what it's worth Google shows e.g. some LinkedIn results that seem to now have been redacted, confirming that the author was formerly working in Customer Support at MixPanel. You can also find a few support forum posts written by the author which confirm it.
keyle 11y ago
I'm not from the valley or the US and don't know the accuracy of those words, but it feels really real. If anything, it's stunningly well written. Great post.
machrider 11y ago
Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZEnixcQJ:https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZE...
- rshaban 11y ago
  Thanks for this – it seems to be back up now.
- alanh 11y ago
  Does anyone know why this article was unreachable yesterday? Was it "just" an outage of the entire n+1 magazine?
  - machrider 11y ago
    I got an "error connecting to the database" type of message. I think the entire site was having trouble with the HN traffic spike.
Gaessaki 11y ago
Fantastic writing. Reminds me a bit of "Microserfs", but somewhat more focused.
- arethuza 11y ago
  Ah - I made that association this morning when I read it over breakfast then thought I was being crazy. No references to flat food though!
markbnj 11y ago
Great piece. Love her style. It hit home with me as well for several reasons.
chezhead 11y ago
Wow. That hooked me from the beginning to end. Thanks for posting this
jryan49 11y ago
Fantastic writing!
bpchaps 11y ago
Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly, without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming there is no actual "it" there.
  - bpchaps 11y ago
    I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel-good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive. Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean. I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry, that was my fault. I misused the general "you".
      - bpchaps 11y ago
        Gotcha. No worries, sorry for blowing up like that.. :(
kough 11y ago
I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.
- neilk 11y ago
  At one startup I was in, I said to a coworker, "It's like we're all the kids, and daddy drinks" and she had a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
  - simonebrunozzi 11y ago
    I actually just had a small laughter right now by reading it. That's how good it is. Still smiling after a good minute. Thanks for sharing it.
roghummal 11y ago
>“I feel sorry,” he says, his breath moist against my neck. “Everyone’s going to hit on her.”
sdrothrock 11y ago
Since the site seems to be down, here's a Readability mirror I made using the Google cache version: https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn
frenchie4111 11y ago
This is fucking amazing
nickstefan12 11y ago
The article form of "Silicon Valley" HBO... I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM. Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim. This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book like this... Favorite line: > The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I’ve never met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.
Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes it herself: > "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR’s idea of fun and a 23-year-old’s idea of work-life balance." I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life" living ever again.
hkmurakami 11y ago
It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture. Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse"). Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this contrast interesting. Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider spectrum.
- dasil003 11y ago
  I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style. If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today. The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn to them by their nature. The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering, and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path. I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a different vibe than what it used to be. At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.
  - 11y ago
ivanca 11y ago
So, what is this? A rambling of everything around you portrayed in a negative light; I'm sure it's a formula that could work in a about any other city or any other job. Heck, I was sure at the end of it she would tell us she joined a fight club and has an imaginary alter ego called Tyler. If we discarded every item you mentioned for being juvenile or immature the office of your dreams would look like this: http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cubicles.jpg http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cub... But that's not the office of your dreams right? To know the office of your dreams you would have to tell me _what you want_, not what you-do-not-want, which is missing in every paragraph of this piece.
dcposch 11y ago
Great writing. It definitely hits on some truth and calls out hypocrisies and absurdities that deserve to be called out. Overall, though, I think this is unnecessarily negative. I think you've got to keep some perspective. There are about eight billion people in the world. 7.9 billion of them would probably give almost anything to enjoy the lifestyle she so eloquently disparages. > I lean in and go to a panel on big data. There are two venture capitalists onstage, dressed identically. They are exceptionally sweaty. [...] It’s like watching two ATMs in conversation. > The food is served in sturdy tinfoil troughs, and people race to be first in line for self-serve. [It's] well worth someone else’s money, and every afternoon I shovel it into my body So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks. > My roommate works down on the Peninsula, for a website that everyone loathes but no one can stop using. So you also dislike Facebook, and you assume the other billion people using Facebook dislike it as well. You disapprove of your roommate's choice of job, you think they're wasting their time working on "a website that everyone loathes". Everything is terrible. -- Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.
- twooster 11y ago
  Just because it's a lifestyle that many people would kill to have doesn't mean it's actually worthwhile. It just means it's well marketed. Like living and working in Hollywood, or being a banker in London. If you drink the koolaid AND you get really lucky, you get to have a profitable business that changes the world for the better. For most, it's actually a job like anything else, just with the added expectation of utter devotion and unwavering belief. I think her point is that despite the perks, she's just "shoveling it into her body", all of it, and can't quite get over the uncanniness of it all. Also, I thought Facebook at first too, and thought it was a bit strong, then realized she was talking about LinkedIn.
- dingdingdang 11y ago
  > Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress. Yup, similar problem with "Debt" by David Graeber, it's eloquent and well argued up until the point where he gradually slips into blaming just about all thinkable ills on money and harkens back to a more 'fair' past where people from different tribes simply killed and raped each other instead of selling one another off as slaves [sic].
seekingcharlie 11y ago
Is it because we were the nerds in high school? Is it because we were the kids who had to explain differential equations to our classmates more than once? Is that why we now feel this incessant need to fabricate startups/tech as being "cool"? Is that why we write grandiose tales of how "difficult" life is, moving from CRUD app to CRUD app? Sorry, author. I feel your pain, believe me I do. To me, this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  >this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently... I very much enjoyed this article, but I had that BEE thought as well! My theory is that a lot of us human beings manufacture strife and struggle, because that is the Hero's Journey that everyone wants to be able to tell to their grandchildren. In the absence of "real" conflict (war, poverty, abuse), we shine the dark light on things like this. "I have a well paying job with great benefits and live in an awesome city...but I'm sad because, like, what does this all mean, man?" I'm not discounting the deep sadness that existential crises can saddle your daily life with, but I've seen this trend time and time again. Just pay attention to modern rap music, like Kanye. Listen to his lyrics. That dude has minimal "real world" problems in his life right now, from what I can tell, yet his music is one of "me against the world." That's because he knows what a story arc is supposed to be like, so he'll play that out for us, regardless of its actual truth. /random rant
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey was, I think, partly inspired by the myth of the Buddha, whose problem was (excuse me) the same as Kanye's: he had everything, yet he was unhappy.
    - sanderjd 11y ago
      Never thought a comment comparing Kanye to Buddha would make so much sense. Well played!
_98fj 11y ago
<Sarcasm> StartUps were the boys' loophole for not having to learn to deal with their fathers. (/fathers' companies, structures, power games) </Sarcasm>
MuncleUscles 11y ago
Reading this made me profoundly sad, in the best possible way
venomsnake 11y ago
Are modern teambuildings really that lame as she described them? Glad I didn't choose big corporate as career.
- alanh 11y ago
  I had to laugh. I think I applied to be the roommate of the folks behind the teambuilding exercise company she mentioned. http://ClashSF.com http://ClashSF.com
moron4hire 11y ago
That is, after all, the conceit of utopian stories: they are all dystopian.
jtfairbank 11y ago
“Oakland,” one of them says. “That’s where we want to invest.” “Too dangerous,” says another. “My wife would never go for it.” “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.” I live in Oakland. So glad these people aren't coming here.
- rrdharan 11y ago
  Even if they're not gonna be your neighbors, from the last quote it sounds like they'll be your landlords. Not sure if that's much better?
  - jtfairbank 11y ago
    They already are my landlords... :( Actually my landlords are pretty dope. They're techies (me too) but they live upstairs so they're ok by me. But yeah, the absentee landlord for profit thing kinda sucks. I get a bit of schadenfreude when chinese investors buy their appartment complex in the city and raise their rents.
    - alanh 11y ago
      Are you saying you saw absentee landlords themselves experience a rent hike at the hands of foreign investors? That would indeed be a nice bit of schadenfreude…
- scelerat 11y ago
  Those people are the next generation of property flippers.
altotrees 11y ago
Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on. What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it could and would change the world. Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the 90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use. At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an entire novel like this.
- drumdance 11y ago
  I'm ~14 years older than you. I built a Geocities page when I was 26 and started my first company shortly thereafer. I remember there was a site called the Internet Millionaires List that had a list of all the people who had gotten rich off the Internet. It was still quite short. I think Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were at the top of the list. eBay had not gone public yet. Anyway, I love that I can remember "before the Internet" as an adult. And I still get excited about all the new technologies that continue to emerge. Companies, being run by people, are inherently flawed. I feel like the writer has low-level depression and uses that to paint everything in a negative light.
- kough 11y ago
  Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school, moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have had, definitely not the same inspirations. All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.
whatever_dude 11y ago
Beautiful.
pcmaffey 11y ago
We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our jobs to be our next day care... We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world always finds its way in. Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly, than to judge. Anna's story would make a great movie, btw.
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rotskoff 11y ago
I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif Bars." At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1]. Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication. 1. http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF
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neilk 11y ago
Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO. At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace. She's not wrong. But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.
- kenko 11y ago
  Man, those workplace disappointments sure aren't "predictable" except in a larger workplace ecosystem that's 100% fucked up.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
scelerat 11y ago
> “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.” This quip about investing in property in Oakland hits home. I had some reservations about crossing the Bay a few years ago to buy a home, but one I did not have was about moving to a place where people who had attitudes like this were uncommon. Several months ago I ran into an ex-coworker who triumphantly told me how he had cashed out some of his options to buy some units in Oakland, evicted the existing tenants under some owner/family move-in loophole, vacated, remodeled, and was now raking in the rent. All the while explaining that he would never actually live there. I wanted to vomit. I'm a lucky dummy romantic, I moved to SF because I like trains, and LA didn't have any. I have some skills which have helped me land excellent jobs. I don't hide my disgust for baloney very well and this has enabled me to walk away from some jobs. My brushes with the proto-corporate startup world have been fleeting, but proportionally every bit as soul-sucking as the author makes it out to be. Excellent piece.
kafkaesq 11y ago
A MEETING IS DROPPED MYSTERIOUSLY onto our calendars, and at the designated time we shuffle warily into a conference room. The last time this happened, we were given forms that asked us to rate various values on a scale of 1 to 5: our desire to lead a team; the importance of work-life balance. I gave both things a 4 and was told I didn’t want it enough. Clearly, the only acceptable answers to this question (if indeed one wants that team leader position) are the numbers 5 and 1. And if you don't implicitly understand this, then this definitely isn't the right industry for you.

431 points by kawera 11y ago

I'm in love with this article, and my SO is reading it right now. It reminds me perfectly of books like J-Pod and MicroSerfs, as well as some of the recent Gibson novels. I work at a company that has just morphed out of "startup" and into "contender". I didn't start early, I was hired by the guys who were hired by the founders (so that makes me a 'C' I guess by some old adage), and I've seen the company change so much even in my short time there. But this article nails so many perfect details. The plastic tubs of goldfish and trailmix, the Mid Century modern-esque furniture. Also, the bar referenced is probably OddJob.

felix_thursday 11y ago

Are there any other articles in this same vein that people would recommend?

phantom_package 11y ago

That was phenomenal. I constantly struggle with a lot of this - trying to distance myself from many aspects of the culture, without getting too cynical about it. I think most of all, I just appreciate knowing that there is someone else kicking around in this city that feels the same way I do.

danbmil99 11y ago

That really hits home. It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated the degree to which one's identity becomes wrapped up in the startup. It sometimes feels like it has its own mind and soul.

alanh 11y ago
It's also difficult to explain the corollary: When work is life, your boss telling you that maybe it wasn’t a good “culture fit” anymore / after all is a little like dying. That’s melodramatic, but losing such a big part of your identity is disorienting and depressing.

SocksCanClose 11y ago

Morozov would say, "I told you so".

hendzen 11y ago

Great writing. Reads like a memoir, but with the depth of an ethnography. I believe the company described here is Mixpanel FWIW.

enahs-sf 11y ago
Rip sticks and dftc. Dead giveaway.
- alanh 11y ago
  I had to look DFTC up. From their job descriptions: > • We are down for the cause (“DFTC”). We’re all here to make Mixpanel a success. There is no job too big or too small for us. “That’s not my job” is not in our vocabulary.
rrdharan 11y ago
I had the same guess: both the huge number of sales people and the explanation of user analytics as the company's focus were giveaways. For what it's worth Google shows e.g. some LinkedIn results that seem to now have been redacted, confirming that the author was formerly working in Customer Support at MixPanel. You can also find a few support forum posts written by the author which confirm it.

keyle 11y ago

I'm not from the valley or the US and don't know the accuracy of those words, but it feels really real. If anything, it's stunningly well written. Great post.

machrider 11y ago

Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZEnixcQJ:https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZE...

rshaban 11y ago
Thanks for this – it seems to be back up now.
alanh 11y ago
Does anyone know why this article was unreachable yesterday? Was it "just" an outage of the entire n+1 magazine?
- machrider 11y ago
  I got an "error connecting to the database" type of message. I think the entire site was having trouble with the HN traffic spike.

Gaessaki 11y ago

Fantastic writing. Reminds me a bit of "Microserfs", but somewhat more focused.

arethuza 11y ago
Ah - I made that association this morning when I read it over breakfast then thought I was being crazy. No references to flat food though!

markbnj 11y ago

Great piece. Love her style. It hit home with me as well for several reasons.

chezhead 11y ago

Wow. That hooked me from the beginning to end. Thanks for posting this

jryan49 11y ago

Fantastic writing!

bpchaps 11y ago

Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.

moron4hire 11y ago
Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly, without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming there is no actual "it" there.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel-good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive. Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean. I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry, that was my fault. I misused the general "you".
    - bpchaps 11y ago
      Gotcha. No worries, sorry for blowing up like that.. :(

kough 11y ago

I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.

neilk 11y ago
At one startup I was in, I said to a coworker, "It's like we're all the kids, and daddy drinks" and she had a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
- simonebrunozzi 11y ago
  I actually just had a small laughter right now by reading it. That's how good it is. Still smiling after a good minute. Thanks for sharing it.

roghummal 11y ago

>“I feel sorry,” he says, his breath moist against my neck. “Everyone’s going to hit on her.”

sdrothrock 11y ago

Since the site seems to be down, here's a Readability mirror I made using the Google cache version: https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn

frenchie4111 11y ago

This is fucking amazing

nickstefan12 11y ago

The article form of "Silicon Valley" HBO... I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM. Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim. This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book like this... Favorite line: > The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I’ve never met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.

Johnny_Brahms 11y ago

The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes it herself: > "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR’s idea of fun and a 23-year-old’s idea of work-life balance." I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life" living ever again.

hkmurakami 11y ago

It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture. Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse"). Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this contrast interesting. Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider spectrum.

dasil003 11y ago
I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style. If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today. The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn to them by their nature. The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering, and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path. I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a different vibe than what it used to be. At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.
- 11y ago

ivanca 11y ago

So, what is this? A rambling of everything around you portrayed in a negative light; I'm sure it's a formula that could work in a about any other city or any other job. Heck, I was sure at the end of it she would tell us she joined a fight club and has an imaginary alter ego called Tyler. If we discarded every item you mentioned for being juvenile or immature the office of your dreams would look like this: http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cubicles.jpg http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cub... But that's not the office of your dreams right? To know the office of your dreams you would have to tell me _what you want_, not what you-do-not-want, which is missing in every paragraph of this piece.

dcposch 11y ago

Great writing. It definitely hits on some truth and calls out hypocrisies and absurdities that deserve to be called out. Overall, though, I think this is unnecessarily negative. I think you've got to keep some perspective. There are about eight billion people in the world. 7.9 billion of them would probably give almost anything to enjoy the lifestyle she so eloquently disparages. > I lean in and go to a panel on big data. There are two venture capitalists onstage, dressed identically. They are exceptionally sweaty. [...] It’s like watching two ATMs in conversation. > The food is served in sturdy tinfoil troughs, and people race to be first in line for self-serve. [It's] well worth someone else’s money, and every afternoon I shovel it into my body So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks. > My roommate works down on the Peninsula, for a website that everyone loathes but no one can stop using. So you also dislike Facebook, and you assume the other billion people using Facebook dislike it as well. You disapprove of your roommate's choice of job, you think they're wasting their time working on "a website that everyone loathes". Everything is terrible. -- Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.

twooster 11y ago
Just because it's a lifestyle that many people would kill to have doesn't mean it's actually worthwhile. It just means it's well marketed. Like living and working in Hollywood, or being a banker in London. If you drink the koolaid AND you get really lucky, you get to have a profitable business that changes the world for the better. For most, it's actually a job like anything else, just with the added expectation of utter devotion and unwavering belief. I think her point is that despite the perks, she's just "shoveling it into her body", all of it, and can't quite get over the uncanniness of it all. Also, I thought Facebook at first too, and thought it was a bit strong, then realized she was talking about LinkedIn.
dingdingdang 11y ago
> Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress. Yup, similar problem with "Debt" by David Graeber, it's eloquent and well argued up until the point where he gradually slips into blaming just about all thinkable ills on money and harkens back to a more 'fair' past where people from different tribes simply killed and raped each other instead of selling one another off as slaves [sic].

seekingcharlie 11y ago

Is it because we were the nerds in high school? Is it because we were the kids who had to explain differential equations to our classmates more than once? Is that why we now feel this incessant need to fabricate startups/tech as being "cool"? Is that why we write grandiose tales of how "difficult" life is, moving from CRUD app to CRUD app? Sorry, author. I feel your pain, believe me I do. To me, this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...

Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
>this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently... I very much enjoyed this article, but I had that BEE thought as well! My theory is that a lot of us human beings manufacture strife and struggle, because that is the Hero's Journey that everyone wants to be able to tell to their grandchildren. In the absence of "real" conflict (war, poverty, abuse), we shine the dark light on things like this. "I have a well paying job with great benefits and live in an awesome city...but I'm sad because, like, what does this all mean, man?" I'm not discounting the deep sadness that existential crises can saddle your daily life with, but I've seen this trend time and time again. Just pay attention to modern rap music, like Kanye. Listen to his lyrics. That dude has minimal "real world" problems in his life right now, from what I can tell, yet his music is one of "me against the world." That's because he knows what a story arc is supposed to be like, so he'll play that out for us, regardless of its actual truth. /random rant
- mbrock 11y ago
  Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey was, I think, partly inspired by the myth of the Buddha, whose problem was (excuse me) the same as Kanye's: he had everything, yet he was unhappy.
  - sanderjd 11y ago
    Never thought a comment comparing Kanye to Buddha would make so much sense. Well played!

_98fj 11y ago

<Sarcasm> StartUps were the boys' loophole for not having to learn to deal with their fathers. (/fathers' companies, structures, power games) </Sarcasm>

MuncleUscles 11y ago

Reading this made me profoundly sad, in the best possible way

venomsnake 11y ago

Are modern teambuildings really that lame as she described them? Glad I didn't choose big corporate as career.

alanh 11y ago
I had to laugh. I think I applied to be the roommate of the folks behind the teambuilding exercise company she mentioned. http://ClashSF.com http://ClashSF.com

moron4hire 11y ago

That is, after all, the conceit of utopian stories: they are all dystopian.

jtfairbank 11y ago

“Oakland,” one of them says. “That’s where we want to invest.” “Too dangerous,” says another. “My wife would never go for it.” “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.” I live in Oakland. So glad these people aren't coming here.

rrdharan 11y ago
Even if they're not gonna be your neighbors, from the last quote it sounds like they'll be your landlords. Not sure if that's much better?
- jtfairbank 11y ago
  They already are my landlords... :( Actually my landlords are pretty dope. They're techies (me too) but they live upstairs so they're ok by me. But yeah, the absentee landlord for profit thing kinda sucks. I get a bit of schadenfreude when chinese investors buy their appartment complex in the city and raise their rents.
  - alanh 11y ago
    Are you saying you saw absentee landlords themselves experience a rent hike at the hands of foreign investors? That would indeed be a nice bit of schadenfreude…
scelerat 11y ago
Those people are the next generation of property flippers.

altotrees 11y ago

Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on. What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it could and would change the world. Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the 90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use. At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an entire novel like this.

drumdance 11y ago
I'm ~14 years older than you. I built a Geocities page when I was 26 and started my first company shortly thereafer. I remember there was a site called the Internet Millionaires List that had a list of all the people who had gotten rich off the Internet. It was still quite short. I think Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were at the top of the list. eBay had not gone public yet. Anyway, I love that I can remember "before the Internet" as an adult. And I still get excited about all the new technologies that continue to emerge. Companies, being run by people, are inherently flawed. I feel like the writer has low-level depression and uses that to paint everything in a negative light.
kough 11y ago
Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school, moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have had, definitely not the same inspirations. All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.

whatever_dude 11y ago

Beautiful.

pcmaffey 11y ago

We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our jobs to be our next day care... We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world always finds its way in. Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly, than to judge. Anna's story would make a great movie, btw.

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rotskoff 11y ago

I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif Bars." At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1]. Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication. 1. http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF

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neilk 11y ago

Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO. At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace. She's not wrong. But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.

kenko 11y ago
Man, those workplace disappointments sure aren't "predictable" except in a larger workplace ecosystem that's 100% fucked up.
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scelerat 11y ago

> “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.” This quip about investing in property in Oakland hits home. I had some reservations about crossing the Bay a few years ago to buy a home, but one I did not have was about moving to a place where people who had attitudes like this were uncommon. Several months ago I ran into an ex-coworker who triumphantly told me how he had cashed out some of his options to buy some units in Oakland, evicted the existing tenants under some owner/family move-in loophole, vacated, remodeled, and was now raking in the rent. All the while explaining that he would never actually live there. I wanted to vomit. I'm a lucky dummy romantic, I moved to SF because I like trains, and LA didn't have any. I have some skills which have helped me land excellent jobs. I don't hide my disgust for baloney very well and this has enabled me to walk away from some jobs. My brushes with the proto-corporate startup world have been fleeting, but proportionally every bit as soul-sucking as the author makes it out to be. Excellent piece.

kafkaesq 11y ago

A MEETING IS DROPPED MYSTERIOUSLY onto our calendars, and at the designated time we shuffle warily into a conference room. The last time this happened, we were given forms that asked us to rate various values on a scale of 1 to 5: our desire to lead a team; the importance of work-life balance. I gave both things a 4 and was told I didn’t want it enough. Clearly, the only acceptable answers to this question (if indeed one wants that team leader position) are the numbers 5 and 1. And if you don't implicitly understand this, then this definitely isn't the right industry for you.