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Silicon Foo is a meme for non-technical types used to communicate some sort of software renaissance by a city. It makes them picture the AmaGooFaceSofts of the
by rubiquity 9y ago
Silicon Foo is a meme for non-technical types used to communicate some sort of software renaissance by a city. It makes them picture the AmaGooFaceSofts of the world opening up offices to rescue their economy. Or maybe they picture the next UberLyftAirbnb will happen in Fooville.
Of course it makes us want to vomit because we take it literally and know that isn't what's going to happen.
The Bay Area[0] is the Emperor of building software (business and consumer) and it will always be that way. The Bay Area's primary business is the building of software and thus software is created there for software companies as well.
At the rest of the Silicon Hopefuls, just getting a handful of legit tech companies that want to build software specific to that city's primary economies (oil, real estate, defense contracting, lumber, etc.) would do A LOT of good.
Disclaimer: I don't live in the Bay Area. I live in Silicon Foo where talented software builders either run away or work remote for Bay Area companies.
0 - Citizens of other very large cities: please don't have your egos bruised. Your cities matter, too. Ok, you know I'm really just talking to New Yorkers who have a hard time not being the best at everything.
- acchow 9y agoNot pertaining to OP's article, but when reading fluff pieces about some "next silicon valley", it's always strange seeing them use the opening of a Google or Amazon satellite office as some kind of validation of their claim. Do they really not understand what the valley is about?
- wamatt 9y agoExactly. Just like Detroit will always be the global epicenter of the automotive industry /s. A lot can change in 50 years.
- dwyerm 9y agoRelated: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... Maybe this is just a lot of lying with graphics, but it has always bothered me that Colorado has been a tech center on and off for decades, while California is nothing but truck drivers and secretaries. Yet it seems like Colorado is the last place people look for tech talent.
- jcfiala 9y agoHaving worked here for the last two decades, since I arrived in '94, I've never had real trouble finding a computer programming job. (I don't count the time period when all I knew was Visual Basic and was re-training in another language while job-hunting, because really, that was on me.)
- CPLX 9y agoNew Yorker here. We are, in fact, the best at everything. Just FYI. My life is a veritable cornucopia of remarkable urban experiences so I have to get back to that now.
- nerfhammer 9y agoHistorically speaking silicon valley so named for hardware: HP, Fairchild, Intel, AMD, SGI, etc. Not sure what % of the economy is hardware vs. software these days.