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TLDR: writer with "a bunch of half-baked ideas" whose plan is to "pitch a tech startup and get obscenely rich while writing a book about how to pitch a tech sta

TLDR: writer with "a bunch of half-baked ideas" whose plan is to "pitch a tech startup and get obscenely rich while writing a book about how to pitch a tech startup and get obscenely rich – the Silicon Valley way" moves to "Hacker Condo" in San Francisco, conflates it (SoMA) with Silicon Valley, does other cliche tech bro things, namedrops an incoherent sequence of tech brands (Soylent, TaskRabbit, and then LifeHacker??), claims startup communities such as Hacker News are shovel merchants, reminds us that "profit-hunger, philistinism and misanthropy are and always have been at the core of the enterprise" and concludes "new breed of Silicon Valley billionaires knew exactly what they were doing. The plan was to take all the money and run – to Mars, if necessary" This is what the author had to say about job security for programmers: many programmers who had “made it” in Silicon Valley were scrambling to promote themselves from coder to “founder” ... the programmers knew that their own ladder to prosperity was on fire and disintegrating fast. They knew that well-paid programming jobs would also soon turn to smoke and ash, as the proliferation of learn-to-code courses around the world lowered the market value of their skills, and as advances in artificial intelligence allowed for computers to take over more of the mundane work of producing software. This seems to be a plug for their book "Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon." Here's one of the Amazon reviews and I quote, "If you don't have any ideas and can't succeed, write a book about it"

derrida 9y ago
"If you don't have any ideas and can't succeed, write a book about it" would be an awesome blurb for a book... As for your TL:DR; i thought it was a bit unfair to the author... they write really well and I think there is a huge shadow side in terms of tech capitals impact on the culture that, by definition, if you're in it, you're going to see as them as "out group" ... "obviously they aren't a good X... they failed"... ah, the fallacy of ad failuralum non VC-ium. :) ;) :) What sort of cultural valuea are there where the notion of being "uninvestible" can get your ideas crushed without question? Is not a culture that values high technology, reason or the plethora of values that make something worthwhile and good
candiodari 9y ago
All while insulting the actual businesses and San Franciscans they want to imitate at every turn. "Now the tower’s largest tenant was a website that allows anonymous semi-literates to post critiques of local establishments." "there were not enough applicants to fill all the openings for “Java Legends, Python Badasses, Hadoop Heroes”, and other gratingly childish classifications describing various programming specialities." Very classy. Although I must say, I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe.
- dx034 9y ago
  > Although I must say, I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe. Really? Haven't noticed that. There is a lot of mistrust of some companies because of privacy (Google, Facebook, Twitter) and market disruption (Amazon). But SF appears popular as a tourist destination and I haven't heard of anyone here in Europe hating SV as such. I think Wall Street still has a far worse reputation than SV.
- newfoundglory 9y ago
  How are those quotes insulting? Maybe if you came up with the term "Hadoop Heroes" and thought it was amazingly clever?
- return1 9y ago
  > I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe. Where it exists, its mostly schadenfreude/jealousy. SV culture is probably closer to european than a lot of the US.
tomc1985 9y ago
That's a little harsh, no? It's an outsiders' take on what seems to have grown into a disconnected, insular culture. While under most circumstances one could dismiss such commentary as "he doesn't understand us and made little effort to get to know us," when that culture exists primarily to make stuff (products, software) for the masses it would do well to pay heed to its criticism, don't you think?
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  Well, sort of, I think. The thing is that these 'outsiders' don't have a fresh or independent take. They come packed full of previously established ideas and ways of thinking. I don't just mean preconceptions; I mean something like how ethnographies were found to employ very common tropes, or how so-called science documentaries misrepresent research by making a story look like a primetime detective show. Why do think so many of these outside stories seem the same? The short answer is tropes. These don't only concern the forms any story can take, but also actually shape how one conceives of things. Besides, the Bay Area employs more than 1M people just in sw/hw connected roles (engineers, product managers, project managers, operations, and testing). The outsiders look at a subgroup that represents less than 5% and equate that the tech industry out here.
  - alephnan 9y ago
    Yes. Thank you. It’s not just the message or sentiment. It’s that it’s unoriginal and not introducing anything new worth debating
- mseebach 9y ago
  Except it's (mis)representing itself as an insiders view. Kind of reminds me of The Circle, iirc the author made a point out of not researching how Google/Facebook works when writing it, instead preferring to indulge his fantasies. At least The Circle didn't pretend not to be fiction, this seems like it wants to be journalism. And that's, frankly, a problem.
- lucozade 9y ago
  > That's a little harsh, no? I don't think it's harsh. If anything it's falling for the author's narrative. The author was clearly there solely to write a hatchet job on the SV startup culture. The stuff about getting rich is just there to make him sound a bit less parasitical. I'm sure some of what he says is valid but the dystopia is just as fake as the idea that SV is paved with gold. I'd go further and, given these kinds of articles usually follow a template, it's quite interesting what he didn't say. Usually the author will find people who are disillusioned/downtrodden to interview i.e. show the rotten underbelly. It's noticeable that the only negative commentary came from a barman and a musician, and they were of the basic change is bad variety. As a consequence, he's stuck with painting everyone as a witless man-child. So either he's an incompetent journalist or he didn't find a rotten underbelly. As I've never been to SV, I can't comment on which it is but I can be pretty confident that this article won't help me find out.
mvindahl 9y ago
> "[..]and as advances in artificial intelligence allowed for computers to take over more of the mundane work of producing software" Sounds like a brill idea. We could cut those pesky developers out of the loop. I imagine that the AI would need some kind of detailed specification to guide it. To avoid ambiguity, the spec should have a very clear syntax. We'd need people to translate from human language to spec language, of course. And to remove unforeseen consequences, and to change the spec as business requirements evolve. And when unsupervised, these people would argue over indentation or write comments on HN ... Hey, wait ... :^)
- majewsky 9y ago
  I love how arguing over indentation is an essential part of being a programmer according to this descrpition.
dhab 9y ago
The author may be wrong in some areas, but I think he is also right elsewhere. I don't think your TLDR is accurate.
watwut 9y ago
Isnt the last quote true, actually? I have seen a lot of people complaining about job market in SV and articles about people who struggle to get jobs for various reasons. (And also different people having good time, but that does not cancel out others.) > They knew that well-paid programming jobs would also soon turn to smoke and ash, as the proliferation of learn-to-code courses around the world lowered the market value of their skills, The complains about outsourcing are complains about exactly this. And complains about jobs going to cheaper young people. And the complains about young people not being as awesome or passionate or obsessed natural geniuses or whatever as we all supposedly were. And complains about people who went to school and have degree, but don't have experience yet. There seems to be a lot of insecurity going around. And logically, learn-to-code courses that makes it easier to learn to people who would not even know where to start or that it is possible to learn programming easily are bound to lower the marker value of our skill.
shanghaiaway 9y ago
Hacker News is part of YC's lead generation funnel (deal flow), so the part about shovel merchant is correct.
- alephnan 9y ago
  The HackerNews shovels costs me nothing but leisure time
north_east_dev 9y ago
It's the Guardian. They have a serious axe to grind with SV/tech in general. Their bias in this area is laughable but gotta play to the home crowd I guess.
- numismatex 9y ago
  Being a few hours away from California, I no longer see this as bias. Scum. Scum, everywhere.
xkcd-sucks 9y ago
Writing blog posts is the get-rich-slowly plan :)
netsharc 9y ago
Googling his name, he seems to have always been an author, my interpretation is that his "half baked idea(s)" is just a fictional premise he's made up, so he can experience what it would be like to try to get into the tech scene. If he were writing about Hollywood he'd say he's trying to be an actor. And well duh it's a plug for his book, it's adapted from it. But his criticism is valid, IMO. It's not like Silicon Valley is a concentration of brains trying to solve the world's problems, it's a concentration of brains doing silly shit, like the billionth app that will let you order pizza or some algorithm so your video stream loads faster, or as he quoted: "what is my mother no longer doing for me?". What's their (SVers') goal? Success, within monetary terms? If that's your religion, and you're in IT, of course SV is your mecca. I wrote "solving the world's problems" above, I'm inspired by this TEDx criticizing the shallowness of TED Talks (video is embedded: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-nee...), why are we just making the next pizza delivery app instead of thinking how to fix problems like climate change or food shortage?

derrida 9y ago

"If you don't have any ideas and can't succeed, write a book about it" would be an awesome blurb for a book... As for your TL:DR; i thought it was a bit unfair to the author... they write really well and I think there is a huge shadow side in terms of tech capitals impact on the culture that, by definition, if you're in it, you're going to see as them as "out group" ... "obviously they aren't a good X... they failed"... ah, the fallacy of ad failuralum non VC-ium. :) ;) :) What sort of cultural valuea are there where the notion of being "uninvestible" can get your ideas crushed without question? Is not a culture that values high technology, reason or the plethora of values that make something worthwhile and good

candiodari 9y ago

All while insulting the actual businesses and San Franciscans they want to imitate at every turn. "Now the tower’s largest tenant was a website that allows anonymous semi-literates to post critiques of local establishments." "there were not enough applicants to fill all the openings for “Java Legends, Python Badasses, Hadoop Heroes”, and other gratingly childish classifications describing various programming specialities." Very classy. Although I must say, I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe.

dx034 9y ago
> Although I must say, I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe. Really? Haven't noticed that. There is a lot of mistrust of some companies because of privacy (Google, Facebook, Twitter) and market disruption (Amazon). But SF appears popular as a tourist destination and I haven't heard of anyone here in Europe hating SV as such. I think Wall Street still has a far worse reputation than SV.
newfoundglory 9y ago
How are those quotes insulting? Maybe if you came up with the term "Hadoop Heroes" and thought it was amazingly clever?
return1 9y ago
> I have noticed that there is a great deal of Silicon Valley hate in many places in Europe. Where it exists, its mostly schadenfreude/jealousy. SV culture is probably closer to european than a lot of the US.

tomc1985 9y ago

That's a little harsh, no? It's an outsiders' take on what seems to have grown into a disconnected, insular culture. While under most circumstances one could dismiss such commentary as "he doesn't understand us and made little effort to get to know us," when that culture exists primarily to make stuff (products, software) for the masses it would do well to pay heed to its criticism, don't you think?

apotheothesomai 9y ago
Well, sort of, I think. The thing is that these 'outsiders' don't have a fresh or independent take. They come packed full of previously established ideas and ways of thinking. I don't just mean preconceptions; I mean something like how ethnographies were found to employ very common tropes, or how so-called science documentaries misrepresent research by making a story look like a primetime detective show. Why do think so many of these outside stories seem the same? The short answer is tropes. These don't only concern the forms any story can take, but also actually shape how one conceives of things. Besides, the Bay Area employs more than 1M people just in sw/hw connected roles (engineers, product managers, project managers, operations, and testing). The outsiders look at a subgroup that represents less than 5% and equate that the tech industry out here.
- alephnan 9y ago
  Yes. Thank you. It’s not just the message or sentiment. It’s that it’s unoriginal and not introducing anything new worth debating
mseebach 9y ago
Except it's (mis)representing itself as an insiders view. Kind of reminds me of The Circle, iirc the author made a point out of not researching how Google/Facebook works when writing it, instead preferring to indulge his fantasies. At least The Circle didn't pretend not to be fiction, this seems like it wants to be journalism. And that's, frankly, a problem.
lucozade 9y ago
> That's a little harsh, no? I don't think it's harsh. If anything it's falling for the author's narrative. The author was clearly there solely to write a hatchet job on the SV startup culture. The stuff about getting rich is just there to make him sound a bit less parasitical. I'm sure some of what he says is valid but the dystopia is just as fake as the idea that SV is paved with gold. I'd go further and, given these kinds of articles usually follow a template, it's quite interesting what he didn't say. Usually the author will find people who are disillusioned/downtrodden to interview i.e. show the rotten underbelly. It's noticeable that the only negative commentary came from a barman and a musician, and they were of the basic change is bad variety. As a consequence, he's stuck with painting everyone as a witless man-child. So either he's an incompetent journalist or he didn't find a rotten underbelly. As I've never been to SV, I can't comment on which it is but I can be pretty confident that this article won't help me find out.

mvindahl 9y ago

> "[..]and as advances in artificial intelligence allowed for computers to take over more of the mundane work of producing software" Sounds like a brill idea. We could cut those pesky developers out of the loop. I imagine that the AI would need some kind of detailed specification to guide it. To avoid ambiguity, the spec should have a very clear syntax. We'd need people to translate from human language to spec language, of course. And to remove unforeseen consequences, and to change the spec as business requirements evolve. And when unsupervised, these people would argue over indentation or write comments on HN ... Hey, wait ... :^)

majewsky 9y ago
I love how arguing over indentation is an essential part of being a programmer according to this descrpition.

dhab 9y ago

The author may be wrong in some areas, but I think he is also right elsewhere. I don't think your TLDR is accurate.

watwut 9y ago

Isnt the last quote true, actually? I have seen a lot of people complaining about job market in SV and articles about people who struggle to get jobs for various reasons. (And also different people having good time, but that does not cancel out others.) > They knew that well-paid programming jobs would also soon turn to smoke and ash, as the proliferation of learn-to-code courses around the world lowered the market value of their skills, The complains about outsourcing are complains about exactly this. And complains about jobs going to cheaper young people. And the complains about young people not being as awesome or passionate or obsessed natural geniuses or whatever as we all supposedly were. And complains about people who went to school and have degree, but don't have experience yet. There seems to be a lot of insecurity going around. And logically, learn-to-code courses that makes it easier to learn to people who would not even know where to start or that it is possible to learn programming easily are bound to lower the marker value of our skill.

shanghaiaway 9y ago

Hacker News is part of YC's lead generation funnel (deal flow), so the part about shovel merchant is correct.

alephnan 9y ago
The HackerNews shovels costs me nothing but leisure time

north_east_dev 9y ago

It's the Guardian. They have a serious axe to grind with SV/tech in general. Their bias in this area is laughable but gotta play to the home crowd I guess.

numismatex 9y ago
Being a few hours away from California, I no longer see this as bias. Scum. Scum, everywhere.

xkcd-sucks 9y ago

Writing blog posts is the get-rich-slowly plan :)

netsharc 9y ago

Googling his name, he seems to have always been an author, my interpretation is that his "half baked idea(s)" is just a fictional premise he's made up, so he can experience what it would be like to try to get into the tech scene. If he were writing about Hollywood he'd say he's trying to be an actor. And well duh it's a plug for his book, it's adapted from it. But his criticism is valid, IMO. It's not like Silicon Valley is a concentration of brains trying to solve the world's problems, it's a concentration of brains doing silly shit, like the billionth app that will let you order pizza or some algorithm so your video stream loads faster, or as he quoted: "what is my mother no longer doing for me?". What's their (SVers') goal? Success, within monetary terms? If that's your religion, and you're in IT, of course SV is your mecca. I wrote "solving the world's problems" above, I'm inspired by this TEDx criticizing the shallowness of TED Talks (video is embedded: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-nee...), why are we just making the next pizza delivery app instead of thinking how to fix problems like climate change or food shortage?