13 ms·

Silicon Valley's Keystone Problem: A Monoculture of Thought

122 points by Gimpei 8y ago

40acres 8y ago
From the outside (Portland, OR) looking in, it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue (which I DO believe can drive different thoughts, look at a map of where most black Americans live -- spoiler alert: it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south) but also a diversity of industry problem. I grew up in New York, which has a pretty big tech sector, but also has fashion, finance, publishing as major industries as well. There are folks who work for the big tech companies in New York who have also worked on Wall Street and I think that helps to prevent monoculture from growing out of control.
- dmode 8y ago
  Of all the things you can blame, diversity of race is not. SV is majority Indians and Asians in engineering roles. Of course it could do better to have more white, black and Hispanic engineers
- asabjorn 8y ago
  You are correct. It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area, and the social sanctions against being different affect all aspects of your life including loosing friends and jobs. What is the wrong way of thinking is largely defined by people that seem to believe they know the truth and will do anything including lying about how you are different to further their agenda.
  - adgasf 8y ago
    Examples?
    - will_brown 8y ago
      Sorry, you’re just not a good fit for the company culture.
    - throwaway5250 8y ago
      Read Exhibit B of the Damore lawsuit. It's a virtual catalog of this sort of thing.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        No, it's not. The Damore case is a textbook example of someone who thinks they're the smartest person in the room, and how "I can't be bigoted/misogynistic, cause science!" despite the fact that much of the quoted science was debunked, or his use of it was wildly out of what those that actually wrote the papers he quoted meant.
        dx87 8y ago
        Look at the lawsuit, not just the paper he wrote. He provides evidence of managers colluding to prevent conservative employees from getting promoted, examples of employees booing when the number of white male managers is listed, etc.
        throwaway5250 8y ago
        I'm not discussing what Damore wrote here. Everything in Exhibit B was written by Google employees. Everyone should read it.
      - mcguire 8y ago
        https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Google-Class-Action-Lawsuit https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Go... Search for "Exhibit B". P.S. From which I learn that many Googlers have far too much time on their hands. Or need to go for a walk or something.
    - dx87 8y ago
      You can look at the lawsuits filed by James Damore and others that provides evidence of managers at Google sharing an internal blacklist of politically conservative employees so they can collude to keep them from advancing in the company.
      - mrfredward 8y ago
        I searched "Exhibit B Damore lawsuit," and the first link is dead because it belonged to a subreddit that got banned. Of course, I can guess by the subreddit title alone, "sjwhate", that reddit had sound reasons for the ban. Nevertheless, I'm ticked to see the thing I'm looking for get censored by the monoculture.
  - cwzwarich 8y ago
    > It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area, and the social sanctions against being different affect all aspects of your life including loosing friends and jobs. Is there actually a uniform definition of the "wrong way"? I doubt circumstances are the same for someone in SV who is originally from the Midwest and someone who is from Andhra Pradesh.
    - asabjorn 8y ago
      There have for a few decades been a progressive activist sub-culture in the bay area, mostly springing out of berkeley social science departments, and they seem through brute force and bullying tactics to define what is "rightspeak" as what furthers their activist agenda. Their agenda is to fight for their in-group. If you look you'll notice what is defined as the in-group not changing much, while what is defined as the target for change does change and expand over time. The goal seems to be to have their in-group win at whatever cost necessary. https://quillette.com/2018/10/11/do-advocacy-groups-belong-in-academia/ https://quillette.com/2018/10/11/do-advocacy-groups-belong-i...
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area Nobody blinks twice if you dye your hair blue, wear flip flops to the office, commute on a unicycle and microdose LSD. God help you if you put a mossy oak patterned lunch box in the break room fridge because from then on you're redneck white trash.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south A reasonable number, actually. Hell, Apple is run by southerners (Tim Cook is from Alabama). I happen to work with a number of folks from North Carolina and Virginia.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    That's like going to a town meeting in 1630 and saying "ok, everyone who's a witch raise your hand." A few people will admit to being from cities in the south. Nobody is going to admit to being from the rural south.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      Not really true; I've got three friends from the rural South here, and one from the farm belt. They don't make any big secret about where they're from.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  > it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south If we look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-American_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African... and sort by population, many of the states with the largest number of black Americans aren't in the south anymore (though they are large states, so don't rank as much percentage wise). But having lived in the midwest, south, and west, and living in places with many black Americans (Vicksburg, Toledo) at that, the south has a very poor handle on diversity in general. Self segregation is very common even when integration has been mandated.
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    I'm not sure how you got that read on the situation. Georgia is top, and then if you add together FL, TX, NC, MS, the south is still the population-center (and arguably the current cultural center, via ATL) of black people in the US. Add in the fact that we're seeing trends of migration of more black people back to south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Great_Migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Great_Migration ) and there's no escaping the fact that companies which exclude the south are effectively excluding many black people, including some of the most educated ones (Lookup the states with the most HBCUs, they're all in the South). The south is a big place though, and those places you named are not typical of the places that are growing now (ie, "New South" cities). Charlotte is my home town, and if you look at maps comparing the degrees of segregation there, vs places like Philadelphia, there's no competition. There's one expensive neighborhood area with mostly white peope, but on average people in CLT are FAR more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods than people in most other cities. Add in the fact that southern cities (including Charlotte) have historically practiced school busing for diversity, and you'll find that the handle on diversity in many Southern metros is actually pretty good. Check it out yourself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segregation-us-cities/?utm_term=.6844fafbce67 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segreg...
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      To say California doesn't have many black people still isn't correct, it is in the top 5, and most of those people are concentrated in two regions (LA and Bay Area). New York is #2, and many of those are in the NYC area. And obviously, Detroit, Chicago, .... There are lots of places of diversity outside of the south. There is a huge difference between the south and the deep south (the other city I lived in was midwest near Detroit with different issues completely). Mississippi is going to have much larger problems than North Carolina or Georgia. Still, being forced into busing doesn't mean you have a leg up in handling diversity, it means quite the opposite actually. Places like Boston have had similar conflicts, but I guess I wouldn't call them peachy either.
- ummonk 8y ago
  I’m visiting Manhattan and coming to realize that the global citizens here are disconnected from the rest of America to an extent that even people in the SF Bay Area aren’t.
  - airstrike 8y ago
    I'm not sure if you mean that in a positive or negative way. As someone who lives in Manhattan, I would love to know.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Probably trending negative. On the one hand it really feels great to experience a global capital where people from around the world have come together. On the other hand, this explains how the print media (centered in NYC) seems to have a lot of articles talking about American issues where journalists seem to be from another world. E.g. the belief that undocumented workers do jobs no one else would be willing to do.
  - 40acres 8y ago
    Can you provide more info on what you mean?
    - ummonk 8y ago
      So both are diverse and have large foreign populations. But SV’s diversity largely comes from immigrants in search of the American Dream, most of whom tend to have affinity with the rest of America as well. Manhattan in contrast has a lot of global citizens who would have more affinity with other cosmopolitan cities like London and Paris than with the rest of America.
    - francisofascii 8y ago
      This is a huge generalization and a guess on what it means. If you are in tech, looking to live in the US from abroad, some really only consider moving to NYC or maybe SF, LA or DC. Then once in the US, you don't really ever get a feel for living anywhere else in America. Whereas US born citizens living in NY or SF probably grew up somewhere else, so they have more of a connection with the rest of America.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  "it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue" Asian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic are races too y'know (well, technically Hispanic is a linguistic category). On that front SV is a lot more diverse than most American cities. Take a look at the San Jose race map and compare to Portland: https://goo.gl/images/gQsj9j https://goo.gl/images/gQsj9j https://goo.gl/images/HYkX13 https://goo.gl/images/HYkX13 Totally agree on the lack of industry diversity, though. SV = tech the same way that Detroit = autos, and it will likely go the same way once the tech industry is in the same place as the auto industry.
  - 40acres 8y ago
    True, California in general is pretty diverse. I believe it's "majority-minority", but what about the folks who make up the "culture" of the valley? The workers, VCs, professors, etc. Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. Even when it comes to female engineers there is a lack of representation. I remember a twitter thread a few weeks ago that lamented the fact that activity trackers did not have a "pregnant mode" to account for the extra calories and (perhaps) lesser physical activity of pregnant women.
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      > Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. Lacking compared to what? When comparing to the diversity of the U.S. or even California, most tech companies way over-index.
    - ThrowawayR2 8y ago
      > ...what about the folks who make up the "culture" of the valley? The workers, VCs, professors, etc. Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. How so? Asians and Indians are very well represented among those categories in SV and the other tech hubs as well.
    - nilkn 8y ago
      What's the "correct" level of diversity, out of curiosity? The US is ~75% phenotypically white (including white Americans with Hispanic or Latin heritage) and about ~62% white of European descent.
- mr_tristan 8y ago
  Kind of funny that the Portlander mentions racial diversity. Portland remains one of the whitest cities in the US. (https://priceonomics.com/how-diverse-is-your-city/ https://priceonomics.com/how-diverse-is-your-city/) (NOTE: I'm also a Portland-er.) The bay area actually is one of the _most_ diverse in the country, which does include San Jose: https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-most-diverse-in-u-s https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-mos... The issue isn't racial _diversity_, it's racial _inequality_: the economic gains made in the Bay Area aren't including everyone across the racial spectrum. (https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-urgency-to-achieve-an-inclusive-economy-in-the-bay-area/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-urgency-to-achieve-an...) (I do agree about the commercial diversity argument though, but that's mostly my own anecdotal experience.)
  - 40acres 8y ago
    Totally agree about Portland, I'm aiming my critique more at the institutions that make up "silicon valley" rather than California as a whole though. Maybe that wasn't clear.
  - mesozoic 8y ago
    Come to Portland, Oregon! The white guilt capital of the world!
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Maybe we should stop trying to judge things by the color of skin? I don't know, it seems like a good idea. I think a pretty famous guy suggested it before.
- mbesto 8y ago
  > but also a diversity of industry problem Which is great for the market. Borrow all of the good ideas that SV has and bring them to markets that they are blind about. I see this as a huge opportunity.
ng12 8y ago
> engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture Gee, a company who's business is data is obsessed with engineering and data? Color me shocked. Snark aside, technology is hard. If you've worked in consulting for any amount of time you've probably realized that outside of a few pockets (SF, NYC, Austin, etc) most of the world is really, really bad at technology. Many of the biggest, most important institutions in the world really have no idea what they're doing. The biggest problem in my mind is that technical know-how is not distributed evenly. I don't know why that is, but I don't think diversity has very much to do with it.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I disagree heavily. Many people worldwide are incredibly good at working with the technology in their environments. In fact, I would say most Silicon Valley engineers do not actually understand the environments they develop products for. Probably one of the best historical examples was when Facebook had to force employees to use low end Android phones so their developers could figure out how badly the experience sucked. Silicon Valley tells us to connect everything to the cloud while 10 meg Internet and wireless devices that costs us far more to stream than to store locally are common. Security is another good example: Silicon Valley engineers are often worried about side channel attacks, arcane sandbox escapes, discussion about how to jump an airgapped PC using a speaker or something. Meanwhile, it's 2018, and Google just realized Chrome extensions are full of malware and is finally taking baby steps towards fixing that. We've had an ironclad solution over here in Chicago for years: We disable all Chrome extensions. The technologies developed and the solutions created in Silicon Valley are rarely good solutions for the rest of the world. Silicon Valley is very good at fixing very first world problems, like the constant attempts to make travel data easier to find in your email box or your assistant, while failing to recognize that most people can't afford to travel often enough for a feature like that to matter.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    I'd have to agree. From what I've seen, the SV reality distortion bubble makes it difficult for its occupants to understand the practical reality of people outside of it. There's that old expression, that when all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail? SV seems to be almost entirely populated by hammers.
jseliger 8y ago
Broadly, Ms. Powell suggests that many of Silicon Valley’s problems can be laid at the feet of an engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture that invites little input from people outside the bubble. Zoning has a lot to do with this: https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh. Zoning lets cities dramatically restrict the supply of housing, thus favoring incumbent owners; by now, the only people who will move to SF / SV are those who want to start a startup (or "play the startup lottery" if you prefer a different set of emotional valences). The city almost can't help become a monoculture, because everyone else has been priced out. Unfortunately, Farhad Manjoo, the author, does not seem good at attending to alternate hypotheses: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust-the-media-claire-cain-miller-and-farhad-manjoo-get-things-wrong-in-the-new-york-times https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust....
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I don't know man? Everyone's been priced WAY out of Manhattan too, but I don't know that I would call it a "monoculture". (Tribeca/Greenwich Village area is very different than the Upper East Side for instance. Very different cultures. But only 0.0001% of Americans could ever really afford to live in either place.) That's why I'm not sure that the affordability of housing is what's causing the monoculture? In fact, I'd wager that with greater affordability in SF, the only thing you would really buy yourself is MORE monoculture. I don't think there is a massive wave of NON-tech people waiting to move into SF.
  - jseliger 8y ago
    Reasonable points. The NYC comparison is useful because there are some similar dynamics going on. That said, some rents have been falling for a while: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-new-york-city-borough-rents-are-falling-there-and-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-ne... or http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/12/13/rents_are_falling_in_new_york_city_is_this_a_crash.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/12/13/rents_are_fal..., as NYC's supply response, while inadequate, has still been better than SF's. In addition, living without a car in NYC is common and normal, while cars cost $8,500/year TCO on average: https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to-own-and-operate-a-car https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to..., and, while SF / SV is making some progress in the mass-transit area, it's still much harder to be without a car. And NYC's absolute market rent levels appear to be lower than SF's.
olivermarks 8y ago
'In short, Silicon Valley’s problem is sameness, stupid — and in Ms. Powell’s telling, we are not going to get a better, more responsible tech industry until we get a more intellectually diverse one.' Can't argue with that. Pretty concerned about the impact of the tsunami of Chinese venture money that is going to take this thinking globally, I suspect SV is still kinder and gentler than the rest despite shortcomings... https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92914 https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92... SoftBank: inside the ‘Wild West’ $100bn fund shaking up the tech world (The Vision Fund is changing the rules for investing but will its whirlwind decision-making lead to bad bets?)
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I'm no expert, but you're calling SoftBank money Chinese - aren't they a Japanese firm mostly funded by Saudi oil money?
  - olivermarks 8y ago
    Yes you're right - I typed Chinese meaning Japanese
cmrdporcupine 8y ago
Reminds me of this classic article from the 90s: http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-ideology-2/ http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-i...
conceptpad 8y ago
It is orthogonal to the Times article, but George Gilder's recent book "Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy" [1] offers a valuable perspective. His recent interview at the Stanford Hoover Institute [2] is compelling. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NYKG2G/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NYKG2G/ [2] https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-computing-blockchain-future https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-c...
- ucaetano 8y ago
  Cloud computing continues to boom, and blockchain continues to go nowhere. So far, he's wrong.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Blockchain has got to be the biggest hype and no-show that I've seen since the original AI winter.
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tomc1985 8y ago
Silicon Valley culture could use a large dose of empathy. For such a customer-focused industry, folks' unwillingness to 'walk a mile in their shoes' is eye-opening
- whamlastxmas 8y ago
  Everyone could use a large dose of empathy. Either you're a Nazi fascist or a spineless socialist. Everyone is so quick to dehumanize each other and have zero tolerance for thoughts outside their circle. This isn't unique to SV, but it's definitely more apparent there.
gaahrdner 8y ago
The first time I visited Mountain View, I was absolutely blown away by the "sameness" of the people living there. Racially, it is much more diverse than my hometown of Austin, but I could never escape the feeling, after talking to random people, that I was stuck in a scene from "The Stepford Wives."
- gaius 8y ago
  If everyone is a 20-something graduate of the same handful of universities then of course there will be a monoculture.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    OK, that's a descriptive explanation. That doesn't mean it should be normative.
pinewurst 8y ago
This refers to an awful "novel" IMHO - I read a few chapters before I started to cut myself. I'm confident that if the author didn't have a magic Google resume entry, it wouldn't have been published, much less hyped in the NYT as a Great Statement.
slvconserv 8y ago
The New York Times is unable to write the truth here for fear of offending their readers: The monoculture in Silicon Valley is that of hyper liberal people. This is so obviously the case and they are going so far out of their way here to not mention it one can only conclude that they are attempting to mislead deliberately. The reason the New York Times can’t say “Silicon Valley is completely 100% liberal and that is a serious problem” is because most Liberal people genuinely believe they are the disruptive punk rockers who are fighting against the evil forces of darkness. In reality, being Liberal is highly homogenous and unoriginal. But if you write that down as the Times, you immediately become a target for political attack. So they take the easy road here which is vaguely mentioning some foggy, abstract term “monoculture.” We know what monoculture means. It isn’t a conservative republican monoculture. I work in this industry, 90% of my coworkers and colleagues universally agree and emphatically support diversity of all types. They talk about it all the time, hold diversity workshops etc. nothing much has changed. So get out of here with this fake monoculture Orwellian nonsense.
- gcb0 8y ago
  some americans have really weird meanings for some words. such as left to mean center-right, and liberal to mean companies employing dozens of lobbyists trying to influence a very strong State. oh! and "decadent" as a praise for chocolate. that is the worst.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    some americans have really weird meanings for some words. such as left to mean center-right Political Compass put me at center-left. Some people in the Bay Area have tried to call me a Republican. Differing Points of View can be weird. That's what Diversity is all about.
    - hef19898 8y ago
      Come to Europe to get a different perpective. I would guess Bay Area liberals would be placed somewhere slightly left / liberal of center over here. And neo-cons in terms on capatalism. I can only guess what I would be called in the US. Perspective is everything I guess.
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ravenstine 8y ago
Oh, the irony. Silicon Valley is the way it is in large part because the media keeps a close eye on everything that it does. Naturally, groups of people are going to behave in whatever way allows them to best survive under prevailing conditions. If the media, including NYT, hadn't spend the last 10+ years both salivating over and strongly critiquing Silicon Valley, there wouldn't be so much of a need for conformity. Just do a Google search and you'll find opinion pieces, as well as ones published by the New York Times, about how Silicon Valley is misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Why would it be any surprise that people in the industry are paranoid of not being perceived as ultra liberal and diverse? A strong monoculture is a survival mechanism from environmental pressure.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
  Hah, that explains why I get the impression that they've sworn fealty.
bilbo0s 8y ago
I think the comments here, at least the popular ones, kind of reinforce the article's point about the existence of a monoculture. Or herd-like thinking. Just a quick, back of the envelope, tally of the responses here shows a real tendency to focus on, let's call them "familiar" subjects. Vast majority of people are talking about left-right politics for instance. Or sex, race, sexual orientation type things. Or inequality. (ie-Housing affordability.) But none of these really contribute in any real way to the lack of diversity of ideas present when brainstorming, say, new uses for nanotech. We do have a monoculture of beliefs. Everyone believes, for instance, that diversity only means political diversity. Or gender diversity. Or religious diversity. Etc. And so, that becomes the center of our focus. But political diversity, for example, is not even terribly valuable when brainstorming solutions. Gather some Stanford/Berkeley grads along with some impoverished, but clever Africans and Asians, and I'd bet you'd be able to hit on more innovative solutions to more problems than you ever would with a room full of political liberals and conservatives parroting their respective dogma. Diversity of thought like that is difficult to achieve because, ironically, of our belief that diversity of thought means diversity of political thought. Or diversity of race. Or diversity of gender. Etc. (All of which are next to useless. Especially since all of that diversity is coming from the same overall culture and socioeconomic class in most cases.) If you want the benefits that diversity of thought conveys, you can't look for comfortable substitutes for it, like religion, race, politics, sexual orientation, or gender. Going to find a religiously diverse team, which inevitably thinks like you, or a politically diverse team, which is even worse in terms of sameness, won't work. You have to go all the way. Not only should their thoughts be diverse, the fundamental way they think should be diverse if that makes sense? (I once gave a presentation at Halliburton, and I can tell you, having someone around who thought about logistics in terms of donkeys was extremely helpful in terms of solution finding and problem solving.) If you're not willing to go all the way with diversity of thought, you're not going to get the benefits of diversity of thought. You can hire more women, or conservatives, or muslims, or hispanics, but it won't really get you anywhere. You need people who think fundamentally differently than other team members. And you might even need people who think fundamentally differently to even identify people who think fundamentally differently. You don't FILL the team with those people, (you have to be able to get work done), but you should make sure a few of them are at the table if you want to reap those benefits.
httpz 8y ago
Everyone loves to talk about the problems Silicon Valley has but I honestly want to know what harm is Silicon Valley causing to the world? It's not like it caused a global financial crisis like Wall Street. Yes, there are the whole privacy issues with companies who's main business is selling ads but that's the nature of their business. If Silicon Valley was more diverse or if those companies were located in a different city, would there be any difference?
- amelius 8y ago
  Where to begin ... if you follow HN, you see harm caused by SV companies every day. Sometimes it's privacy infringements; sometimes it's companies and investors making huge piles of money to take over entire markets; and sometimes it's SaaS companies deliberately locking in users, the list goes on.
- Aloha 8y ago
  It's less about what problems Silicon Valley is causing the world, and more, that problems that Silicon Valley cant solve because of its own ideological limitations. Though I'd suggest that Social Media is causing some very real problems - but I don't see an easy answer that doesn't involve changing the fundamental constructs of social media.
  - tareqak 8y ago
    Could you please detail specific examples of what these ideological limitations are? I see different kinds of limitations that are driven by blindly chasing profit, attempting externalize everything that doesn't affect the bottom line, and insistent refusal to accept even partial responsibility for creating tools when said tools are misused until public opinion is overwhelming against them. I don't think that the limitations that I listed are ideological though.
    - tomatotomato37 8y ago
      I guess one example would be the ideological push for dense urbanization. It makes sense from the perspective of a city jammed between mountains or packed on an island, but not so much for a prairie city that could survive quite well with low density development if it’s competent enough at managing its sprawl.
mesozoic 8y ago
It's so funny/interesting only a decade ago no one would listen to the engineers and the business types would just screw up everything and do whatever they want. Now the engineers built billion/trillion dollar companies and those types are crying that they've lost the power. Sometimes trying to regain it through political games.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Wow, that was not well researched. I suppose if they had titled it Google's Keystone problem it wouldn't have gotten as many clicks./cynicism Lets take the article though for what it purports to be, a review of Medium's first online book, which happens to be a piece of fiction that pilloried Google's culture because the author felt unheard at a company driven by engineering. It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are." Does that point to any deep regional insights? No. Does it point out that people running companies are human and have blind spots? Well, yeah it does but that isn't exactly startling news. My suggestion for folks reading the book and this comment are to take away one thing; "Learning how to communicate with the corporate hive mind is an excellent skill to cultivate." and the more practical corollary, "You can't tell someone anything they are unwilling to hear." You just can't. Get over it. I have had the experience of telling the CEO of a startup that their blind spot was hiding a train coming at them, and that it would take down the company. They couldn't hear it, they rejected my analysis as fanciful and guesswork. And when the company was destroyed by that very train wreck? They were mad at me! Not the situation, not their inability to hear what they needed to hear. No the messenger was the problem, not the situation. What I learned was that you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear, and if you force them to hear it and are correct, they can end up hating you for it. It is better to ask gently if they are open to alternate views and if they are not, just stop. Let them learn these lessons in their own way and be supportive of them once they fall down and are working their way back up. There is a theme in "Bad Blood" where they start falsifying their test results because they believe that they are close to having things working and they just need a bit more time. I am sure more than one person said, "Wait, this isn't the right way to deal with this." But to hear that, you had to accept that maybe the whole test with only a drop of blood was not a practical idea. And to hear that, you had to consider the idea that the whole idea was not going to work. Net result, ignore the 'haters' and move on.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are." I'm always struck by how readily people equate "heard and understood" with "agreed with". It's very possible that a person can be heard, listened to, understood, and then the actions they want not be taken. Just because a person is heard is not the same as that person being agreed with. My advice for people is to take on board the difficult lesson that someone failing to do as you wish isn't the same as them refusing to listen to you. That your wishes or warnings are not acted upon is not the same as them falling on deaf ears.
curun1r 8y ago
This kind of stuff annoys me to no end. I think everyone realizes that Silicon Valley and the overall tech world has a diversity problem. There are aspects of our society that systematically under-develop and discourage minorities and women from following the path to becoming an engineer. It's a problem and it's one that our entire society needs to address. But do we have an "engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture" problem? Hell no! We've got a whiny, non-tech contingent that is frustrated that engineers aren't willing to be high-level abstractions on top of computers problem, which is only a problem for those people who are shut out of guiding the direction of the tech industry by their lack of ability to actually do the things the tech industry does. The notion that we'd magically arrive at better decisions if we allowed more non-tech people to make those decisions is ludicrous and insulting. There's no reason to think that without the benefit of hindsight, those people would have made better decisions than were actually made. It's the same specious thinking that leads non-tech "idea" people to approach tech people and generously offer 5% of their sure-to-succeed company in exchange for the mere trifle of actually building it. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Execution beats opinions every time. People who are actually capable of doing the work don't give seats at the table just because "diversity." There's no reason to allow a PR person, like the one discussed in this article, to have outsized influence at a tech company. Engineers seek out engineering-focused cultures because they want a greater degree of autonomy in their work and they want to have a larger influence on the success of their company. Changing that would just mean that the best engineers would choose to work elsewhere, even starting their own companies if need be. That's why we have engineering-focused cultures...because these companies need people that can actually do the work. They've proven that it's not hard to find the non-technical talent, so there's no need to put as much emphasis on that when it comes to the culture and leadership of the company. The one exception to that that proves the point is the current demand for enterprise tech salespeople. We're reaching a point where that talent is in just as high a demand as technical people. And to the companies that need enterprise tech sales, the cultures are adapting to value those employees alongside engineers. But when I read articles like this one from the NYT, it just feels naive and entitled. If you want to be involved in determining the direction of the tech industry, provide a reason and a value proposition based in reality or your going to be ignored.
badcede 8y ago
No way! That's the New York Times' keystone problem as well!
fmajid 8y ago
Tech needs to accept accountability and transparency, but these jealous attacks from old-media has-beens are no less tedious for being so unpredictable.
gwbas1c 8y ago
> If you have a hierarchy where engineers are at the very top and the people who are interfacing with the outside world are a couple rungs below that, you really miss something when those people don’t have an equal voice at the table. As an engineer, I've always found that I'm quite far from the top rung, and that my voice is frequently not the loudest at the table. What may give the illusion that my voice is strong is that I only support ideas that I know I can build or are practical. I find that the people who make complaints like that are usually the people who don't realize that their voices are just as equal as mine at the table. They just need to work on their credibility in order to make their voice stronger. Edit: Credibility often comes from knowing what ideas to support, and when to stop pushing an idea. The term "idea person" comes to mind here.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  That was an especially grating accusation coming from the “director of public relations” who probably had a private office, an assistant, a parking spot, and meaningful equity. Unlike anybody who knows how computers actually work.
  - gwbas1c 8y ago
    In all honesty, without context it's hard to know if it's a credible argument or just sour grapes.
ummonk 8y ago
To;dr: female liberal arts majored marketer says Silicon Valley has too many male nerds at the top and is too engineering and data driven.
- fizwhiz 8y ago
  Came to the comments section for this. Cheers!
SansoyeA 8y ago
Sounds like Anahata could do with Includio! And so could Sillicon Valley if there is a lot of truth behind the book. Looking forward to reading it!
solidsnack9000 8y ago
Ms. Powell smartly recognizes a truth that many in the industry elide: A lack of diversity is not just one of several issues for Silicon Valley to fix, but is instead the keystone problem — the source of much else that ails tech, from its recklessly expansionist zeal to the ways its brightest companies keep stepping in problems of their own making. This article is working from a presumption that companies should be subject to a standard of political representation; and if they aren’t then they don’t — and can’t — function. Where did this idea come from, I wonder? It seems at odds both with recent history (many non-representative companies have done a lot of good) and it seems to not admit of any distinction between business institutions and political ones. Even if Google had broader representation of identity-related protected classes, it would not be a representative sample of the US or the world when considering things like education or other life history factors. What kind of diversity is the author talking about, and what relationship does it have to any legitimate standard of representativeness?

122 points by Gimpei 8y ago

From the outside (Portland, OR) looking in, it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue (which I DO believe can drive different thoughts, look at a map of where most black Americans live -- spoiler alert: it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south) but also a diversity of industry problem. I grew up in New York, which has a pretty big tech sector, but also has fashion, finance, publishing as major industries as well. There are folks who work for the big tech companies in New York who have also worked on Wall Street and I think that helps to prevent monoculture from growing out of control.

dmode 8y ago
Of all the things you can blame, diversity of race is not. SV is majority Indians and Asians in engineering roles. Of course it could do better to have more white, black and Hispanic engineers
asabjorn 8y ago
You are correct. It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area, and the social sanctions against being different affect all aspects of your life including loosing friends and jobs. What is the wrong way of thinking is largely defined by people that seem to believe they know the truth and will do anything including lying about how you are different to further their agenda.
- adgasf 8y ago
  Examples?
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Sorry, you’re just not a good fit for the company culture.
  - throwaway5250 8y ago
    Read Exhibit B of the Damore lawsuit. It's a virtual catalog of this sort of thing.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      No, it's not. The Damore case is a textbook example of someone who thinks they're the smartest person in the room, and how "I can't be bigoted/misogynistic, cause science!" despite the fact that much of the quoted science was debunked, or his use of it was wildly out of what those that actually wrote the papers he quoted meant.
      - dx87 8y ago
        Look at the lawsuit, not just the paper he wrote. He provides evidence of managers colluding to prevent conservative employees from getting promoted, examples of employees booing when the number of white male managers is listed, etc.
      - throwaway5250 8y ago
        I'm not discussing what Damore wrote here. Everything in Exhibit B was written by Google employees. Everyone should read it.
    - mcguire 8y ago
      https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Google-Class-Action-Lawsuit https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Go... Search for "Exhibit B". P.S. From which I learn that many Googlers have far too much time on their hands. Or need to go for a walk or something.
  - dx87 8y ago
    You can look at the lawsuits filed by James Damore and others that provides evidence of managers at Google sharing an internal blacklist of politically conservative employees so they can collude to keep them from advancing in the company.
    - mrfredward 8y ago
      I searched "Exhibit B Damore lawsuit," and the first link is dead because it belonged to a subreddit that got banned. Of course, I can guess by the subreddit title alone, "sjwhate", that reddit had sound reasons for the ban. Nevertheless, I'm ticked to see the thing I'm looking for get censored by the monoculture.
- cwzwarich 8y ago
  > It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area, and the social sanctions against being different affect all aspects of your life including loosing friends and jobs. Is there actually a uniform definition of the "wrong way"? I doubt circumstances are the same for someone in SV who is originally from the Midwest and someone who is from Andhra Pradesh.
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    There have for a few decades been a progressive activist sub-culture in the bay area, mostly springing out of berkeley social science departments, and they seem through brute force and bullying tactics to define what is "rightspeak" as what furthers their activist agenda. Their agenda is to fight for their in-group. If you look you'll notice what is defined as the in-group not changing much, while what is defined as the target for change does change and expand over time. The goal seems to be to have their in-group win at whatever cost necessary. https://quillette.com/2018/10/11/do-advocacy-groups-belong-in-academia/ https://quillette.com/2018/10/11/do-advocacy-groups-belong-i...
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area Nobody blinks twice if you dye your hair blue, wear flip flops to the office, commute on a unicycle and microdose LSD. God help you if you put a mossy oak patterned lunch box in the break room fridge because from then on you're redneck white trash.
electricslpnsld 8y ago
> I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south A reasonable number, actually. Hell, Apple is run by southerners (Tim Cook is from Alabama). I happen to work with a number of folks from North Carolina and Virginia.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  That's like going to a town meeting in 1630 and saying "ok, everyone who's a witch raise your hand." A few people will admit to being from cities in the south. Nobody is going to admit to being from the rural south.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Not really true; I've got three friends from the rural South here, and one from the farm belt. They don't make any big secret about where they're from.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
> it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south If we look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-American_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African... and sort by population, many of the states with the largest number of black Americans aren't in the south anymore (though they are large states, so don't rank as much percentage wise). But having lived in the midwest, south, and west, and living in places with many black Americans (Vicksburg, Toledo) at that, the south has a very poor handle on diversity in general. Self segregation is very common even when integration has been mandated.
- sudosteph 8y ago
  I'm not sure how you got that read on the situation. Georgia is top, and then if you add together FL, TX, NC, MS, the south is still the population-center (and arguably the current cultural center, via ATL) of black people in the US. Add in the fact that we're seeing trends of migration of more black people back to south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Great_Migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Great_Migration ) and there's no escaping the fact that companies which exclude the south are effectively excluding many black people, including some of the most educated ones (Lookup the states with the most HBCUs, they're all in the South). The south is a big place though, and those places you named are not typical of the places that are growing now (ie, "New South" cities). Charlotte is my home town, and if you look at maps comparing the degrees of segregation there, vs places like Philadelphia, there's no competition. There's one expensive neighborhood area with mostly white peope, but on average people in CLT are FAR more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods than people in most other cities. Add in the fact that southern cities (including Charlotte) have historically practiced school busing for diversity, and you'll find that the handle on diversity in many Southern metros is actually pretty good. Check it out yourself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segregation-us-cities/?utm_term=.6844fafbce67 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segreg...
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    To say California doesn't have many black people still isn't correct, it is in the top 5, and most of those people are concentrated in two regions (LA and Bay Area). New York is #2, and many of those are in the NYC area. And obviously, Detroit, Chicago, .... There are lots of places of diversity outside of the south. There is a huge difference between the south and the deep south (the other city I lived in was midwest near Detroit with different issues completely). Mississippi is going to have much larger problems than North Carolina or Georgia. Still, being forced into busing doesn't mean you have a leg up in handling diversity, it means quite the opposite actually. Places like Boston have had similar conflicts, but I guess I wouldn't call them peachy either.
ummonk 8y ago
I’m visiting Manhattan and coming to realize that the global citizens here are disconnected from the rest of America to an extent that even people in the SF Bay Area aren’t.
- airstrike 8y ago
  I'm not sure if you mean that in a positive or negative way. As someone who lives in Manhattan, I would love to know.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Probably trending negative. On the one hand it really feels great to experience a global capital where people from around the world have come together. On the other hand, this explains how the print media (centered in NYC) seems to have a lot of articles talking about American issues where journalists seem to be from another world. E.g. the belief that undocumented workers do jobs no one else would be willing to do.
- 40acres 8y ago
  Can you provide more info on what you mean?
  - ummonk 8y ago
    So both are diverse and have large foreign populations. But SV’s diversity largely comes from immigrants in search of the American Dream, most of whom tend to have affinity with the rest of America as well. Manhattan in contrast has a lot of global citizens who would have more affinity with other cosmopolitan cities like London and Paris than with the rest of America.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    This is a huge generalization and a guess on what it means. If you are in tech, looking to live in the US from abroad, some really only consider moving to NYC or maybe SF, LA or DC. Then once in the US, you don't really ever get a feel for living anywhere else in America. Whereas US born citizens living in NY or SF probably grew up somewhere else, so they have more of a connection with the rest of America.
nostrademons 8y ago
"it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue" Asian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic are races too y'know (well, technically Hispanic is a linguistic category). On that front SV is a lot more diverse than most American cities. Take a look at the San Jose race map and compare to Portland: https://goo.gl/images/gQsj9j https://goo.gl/images/gQsj9j https://goo.gl/images/HYkX13 https://goo.gl/images/HYkX13 Totally agree on the lack of industry diversity, though. SV = tech the same way that Detroit = autos, and it will likely go the same way once the tech industry is in the same place as the auto industry.
- 40acres 8y ago
  True, California in general is pretty diverse. I believe it's "majority-minority", but what about the folks who make up the "culture" of the valley? The workers, VCs, professors, etc. Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. Even when it comes to female engineers there is a lack of representation. I remember a twitter thread a few weeks ago that lamented the fact that activity trackers did not have a "pregnant mode" to account for the extra calories and (perhaps) lesser physical activity of pregnant women.
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    > Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. Lacking compared to what? When comparing to the diversity of the U.S. or even California, most tech companies way over-index.
  - ThrowawayR2 8y ago
    > ...what about the folks who make up the "culture" of the valley? The workers, VCs, professors, etc. Based on the diversity reports from the big tech companies it seems like they are still lacking. How so? Asians and Indians are very well represented among those categories in SV and the other tech hubs as well.
  - nilkn 8y ago
    What's the "correct" level of diversity, out of curiosity? The US is ~75% phenotypically white (including white Americans with Hispanic or Latin heritage) and about ~62% white of European descent.
mr_tristan 8y ago
Kind of funny that the Portlander mentions racial diversity. Portland remains one of the whitest cities in the US. (https://priceonomics.com/how-diverse-is-your-city/ https://priceonomics.com/how-diverse-is-your-city/) (NOTE: I'm also a Portland-er.) The bay area actually is one of the _most_ diverse in the country, which does include San Jose: https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-most-diverse-in-u-s https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-mos... The issue isn't racial _diversity_, it's racial _inequality_: the economic gains made in the Bay Area aren't including everyone across the racial spectrum. (https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-urgency-to-achieve-an-inclusive-economy-in-the-bay-area/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-urgency-to-achieve-an...) (I do agree about the commercial diversity argument though, but that's mostly my own anecdotal experience.)
- 40acres 8y ago
  Totally agree about Portland, I'm aiming my critique more at the institutions that make up "silicon valley" rather than California as a whole though. Maybe that wasn't clear.
- mesozoic 8y ago
  Come to Portland, Oregon! The white guilt capital of the world!
- superkuh 8y ago
  Maybe we should stop trying to judge things by the color of skin? I don't know, it seems like a good idea. I think a pretty famous guy suggested it before.
mbesto 8y ago
> but also a diversity of industry problem Which is great for the market. Borrow all of the good ideas that SV has and bring them to markets that they are blind about. I see this as a huge opportunity.

ng12 8y ago

> engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture Gee, a company who's business is data is obsessed with engineering and data? Color me shocked. Snark aside, technology is hard. If you've worked in consulting for any amount of time you've probably realized that outside of a few pockets (SF, NYC, Austin, etc) most of the world is really, really bad at technology. Many of the biggest, most important institutions in the world really have no idea what they're doing. The biggest problem in my mind is that technical know-how is not distributed evenly. I don't know why that is, but I don't think diversity has very much to do with it.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I disagree heavily. Many people worldwide are incredibly good at working with the technology in their environments. In fact, I would say most Silicon Valley engineers do not actually understand the environments they develop products for. Probably one of the best historical examples was when Facebook had to force employees to use low end Android phones so their developers could figure out how badly the experience sucked. Silicon Valley tells us to connect everything to the cloud while 10 meg Internet and wireless devices that costs us far more to stream than to store locally are common. Security is another good example: Silicon Valley engineers are often worried about side channel attacks, arcane sandbox escapes, discussion about how to jump an airgapped PC using a speaker or something. Meanwhile, it's 2018, and Google just realized Chrome extensions are full of malware and is finally taking baby steps towards fixing that. We've had an ironclad solution over here in Chicago for years: We disable all Chrome extensions. The technologies developed and the solutions created in Silicon Valley are rarely good solutions for the rest of the world. Silicon Valley is very good at fixing very first world problems, like the constant attempts to make travel data easier to find in your email box or your assistant, while failing to recognize that most people can't afford to travel often enough for a feature like that to matter.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  I'd have to agree. From what I've seen, the SV reality distortion bubble makes it difficult for its occupants to understand the practical reality of people outside of it. There's that old expression, that when all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail? SV seems to be almost entirely populated by hammers.

jseliger 8y ago

Broadly, Ms. Powell suggests that many of Silicon Valley’s problems can be laid at the feet of an engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture that invites little input from people outside the bubble. Zoning has a lot to do with this: https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh. Zoning lets cities dramatically restrict the supply of housing, thus favoring incumbent owners; by now, the only people who will move to SF / SV are those who want to start a startup (or "play the startup lottery" if you prefer a different set of emotional valences). The city almost can't help become a monoculture, because everyone else has been priced out. Unfortunately, Farhad Manjoo, the author, does not seem good at attending to alternate hypotheses: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust-the-media-claire-cain-miller-and-farhad-manjoo-get-things-wrong-in-the-new-york-times https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust....

bilbo0s 8y ago
I don't know man? Everyone's been priced WAY out of Manhattan too, but I don't know that I would call it a "monoculture". (Tribeca/Greenwich Village area is very different than the Upper East Side for instance. Very different cultures. But only 0.0001% of Americans could ever really afford to live in either place.) That's why I'm not sure that the affordability of housing is what's causing the monoculture? In fact, I'd wager that with greater affordability in SF, the only thing you would really buy yourself is MORE monoculture. I don't think there is a massive wave of NON-tech people waiting to move into SF.
- jseliger 8y ago
  Reasonable points. The NYC comparison is useful because there are some similar dynamics going on. That said, some rents have been falling for a while: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-new-york-city-borough-rents-are-falling-there-and-fast https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/pick-a-ne... or http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/12/13/rents_are_falling_in_new_york_city_is_this_a_crash.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/12/13/rents_are_fal..., as NYC's supply response, while inadequate, has still been better than SF's. In addition, living without a car in NYC is common and normal, while cars cost $8,500/year TCO on average: https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to-own-and-operate-a-car https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to..., and, while SF / SV is making some progress in the mass-transit area, it's still much harder to be without a car. And NYC's absolute market rent levels appear to be lower than SF's.

olivermarks 8y ago

'In short, Silicon Valley’s problem is sameness, stupid — and in Ms. Powell’s telling, we are not going to get a better, more responsible tech industry until we get a more intellectually diverse one.' Can't argue with that. Pretty concerned about the impact of the tsunami of Chinese venture money that is going to take this thinking globally, I suspect SV is still kinder and gentler than the rest despite shortcomings... https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92914 https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92... SoftBank: inside the ‘Wild West’ $100bn fund shaking up the tech world (The Vision Fund is changing the rules for investing but will its whirlwind decision-making lead to bad bets?)

skrebbel 8y ago
I'm no expert, but you're calling SoftBank money Chinese - aren't they a Japanese firm mostly funded by Saudi oil money?
- olivermarks 8y ago
  Yes you're right - I typed Chinese meaning Japanese

cmrdporcupine 8y ago

Reminds me of this classic article from the 90s: http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-ideology-2/ http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-i...

conceptpad 8y ago

It is orthogonal to the Times article, but George Gilder's recent book "Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy" [1] offers a valuable perspective. His recent interview at the Stanford Hoover Institute [2] is compelling. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NYKG2G/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NYKG2G/ [2] https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-computing-blockchain-future https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-c...

ucaetano 8y ago
Cloud computing continues to boom, and blockchain continues to go nowhere. So far, he's wrong.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Blockchain has got to be the biggest hype and no-show that I've seen since the original AI winter.

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tomc1985 8y ago

Silicon Valley culture could use a large dose of empathy. For such a customer-focused industry, folks' unwillingness to 'walk a mile in their shoes' is eye-opening

whamlastxmas 8y ago
Everyone could use a large dose of empathy. Either you're a Nazi fascist or a spineless socialist. Everyone is so quick to dehumanize each other and have zero tolerance for thoughts outside their circle. This isn't unique to SV, but it's definitely more apparent there.

gaahrdner 8y ago

The first time I visited Mountain View, I was absolutely blown away by the "sameness" of the people living there. Racially, it is much more diverse than my hometown of Austin, but I could never escape the feeling, after talking to random people, that I was stuck in a scene from "The Stepford Wives."

gaius 8y ago
If everyone is a 20-something graduate of the same handful of universities then of course there will be a monoculture.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  OK, that's a descriptive explanation. That doesn't mean it should be normative.

pinewurst 8y ago

This refers to an awful "novel" IMHO - I read a few chapters before I started to cut myself. I'm confident that if the author didn't have a magic Google resume entry, it wouldn't have been published, much less hyped in the NYT as a Great Statement.

slvconserv 8y ago

The New York Times is unable to write the truth here for fear of offending their readers: The monoculture in Silicon Valley is that of hyper liberal people. This is so obviously the case and they are going so far out of their way here to not mention it one can only conclude that they are attempting to mislead deliberately. The reason the New York Times can’t say “Silicon Valley is completely 100% liberal and that is a serious problem” is because most Liberal people genuinely believe they are the disruptive punk rockers who are fighting against the evil forces of darkness. In reality, being Liberal is highly homogenous and unoriginal. But if you write that down as the Times, you immediately become a target for political attack. So they take the easy road here which is vaguely mentioning some foggy, abstract term “monoculture.” We know what monoculture means. It isn’t a conservative republican monoculture. I work in this industry, 90% of my coworkers and colleagues universally agree and emphatically support diversity of all types. They talk about it all the time, hold diversity workshops etc. nothing much has changed. So get out of here with this fake monoculture Orwellian nonsense.

gcb0 8y ago
some americans have really weird meanings for some words. such as left to mean center-right, and liberal to mean companies employing dozens of lobbyists trying to influence a very strong State. oh! and "decadent" as a praise for chocolate. that is the worst.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  some americans have really weird meanings for some words. such as left to mean center-right Political Compass put me at center-left. Some people in the Bay Area have tried to call me a Republican. Differing Points of View can be weird. That's what Diversity is all about.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    Come to Europe to get a different perpective. I would guess Bay Area liberals would be placed somewhere slightly left / liberal of center over here. And neo-cons in terms on capatalism. I can only guess what I would be called in the US. Perspective is everything I guess.

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ravenstine 8y ago

Oh, the irony. Silicon Valley is the way it is in large part because the media keeps a close eye on everything that it does. Naturally, groups of people are going to behave in whatever way allows them to best survive under prevailing conditions. If the media, including NYT, hadn't spend the last 10+ years both salivating over and strongly critiquing Silicon Valley, there wouldn't be so much of a need for conformity. Just do a Google search and you'll find opinion pieces, as well as ones published by the New York Times, about how Silicon Valley is misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Why would it be any surprise that people in the industry are paranoid of not being perceived as ultra liberal and diverse? A strong monoculture is a survival mechanism from environmental pressure.

0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
Hah, that explains why I get the impression that they've sworn fealty.

bilbo0s 8y ago

I think the comments here, at least the popular ones, kind of reinforce the article's point about the existence of a monoculture. Or herd-like thinking. Just a quick, back of the envelope, tally of the responses here shows a real tendency to focus on, let's call them "familiar" subjects. Vast majority of people are talking about left-right politics for instance. Or sex, race, sexual orientation type things. Or inequality. (ie-Housing affordability.) But none of these really contribute in any real way to the lack of diversity of ideas present when brainstorming, say, new uses for nanotech. We do have a monoculture of beliefs. Everyone believes, for instance, that diversity only means political diversity. Or gender diversity. Or religious diversity. Etc. And so, that becomes the center of our focus. But political diversity, for example, is not even terribly valuable when brainstorming solutions. Gather some Stanford/Berkeley grads along with some impoverished, but clever Africans and Asians, and I'd bet you'd be able to hit on more innovative solutions to more problems than you ever would with a room full of political liberals and conservatives parroting their respective dogma. Diversity of thought like that is difficult to achieve because, ironically, of our belief that diversity of thought means diversity of political thought. Or diversity of race. Or diversity of gender. Etc. (All of which are next to useless. Especially since all of that diversity is coming from the same overall culture and socioeconomic class in most cases.) If you want the benefits that diversity of thought conveys, you can't look for comfortable substitutes for it, like religion, race, politics, sexual orientation, or gender. Going to find a religiously diverse team, which inevitably thinks like you, or a politically diverse team, which is even worse in terms of sameness, won't work. You have to go all the way. Not only should their thoughts be diverse, the fundamental way they think should be diverse if that makes sense? (I once gave a presentation at Halliburton, and I can tell you, having someone around who thought about logistics in terms of donkeys was extremely helpful in terms of solution finding and problem solving.) If you're not willing to go all the way with diversity of thought, you're not going to get the benefits of diversity of thought. You can hire more women, or conservatives, or muslims, or hispanics, but it won't really get you anywhere. You need people who think fundamentally differently than other team members. And you might even need people who think fundamentally differently to even identify people who think fundamentally differently. You don't FILL the team with those people, (you have to be able to get work done), but you should make sure a few of them are at the table if you want to reap those benefits.

httpz 8y ago

Everyone loves to talk about the problems Silicon Valley has but I honestly want to know what harm is Silicon Valley causing to the world? It's not like it caused a global financial crisis like Wall Street. Yes, there are the whole privacy issues with companies who's main business is selling ads but that's the nature of their business. If Silicon Valley was more diverse or if those companies were located in a different city, would there be any difference?

amelius 8y ago
Where to begin ... if you follow HN, you see harm caused by SV companies every day. Sometimes it's privacy infringements; sometimes it's companies and investors making huge piles of money to take over entire markets; and sometimes it's SaaS companies deliberately locking in users, the list goes on.
Aloha 8y ago
It's less about what problems Silicon Valley is causing the world, and more, that problems that Silicon Valley cant solve because of its own ideological limitations. Though I'd suggest that Social Media is causing some very real problems - but I don't see an easy answer that doesn't involve changing the fundamental constructs of social media.
- tareqak 8y ago
  Could you please detail specific examples of what these ideological limitations are? I see different kinds of limitations that are driven by blindly chasing profit, attempting externalize everything that doesn't affect the bottom line, and insistent refusal to accept even partial responsibility for creating tools when said tools are misused until public opinion is overwhelming against them. I don't think that the limitations that I listed are ideological though.
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    I guess one example would be the ideological push for dense urbanization. It makes sense from the perspective of a city jammed between mountains or packed on an island, but not so much for a prairie city that could survive quite well with low density development if it’s competent enough at managing its sprawl.

mesozoic 8y ago

It's so funny/interesting only a decade ago no one would listen to the engineers and the business types would just screw up everything and do whatever they want. Now the engineers built billion/trillion dollar companies and those types are crying that they've lost the power. Sometimes trying to regain it through political games.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Wow, that was not well researched. I suppose if they had titled it Google's Keystone problem it wouldn't have gotten as many clicks./cynicism Lets take the article though for what it purports to be, a review of Medium's first online book, which happens to be a piece of fiction that pilloried Google's culture because the author felt unheard at a company driven by engineering. It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are." Does that point to any deep regional insights? No. Does it point out that people running companies are human and have blind spots? Well, yeah it does but that isn't exactly startling news. My suggestion for folks reading the book and this comment are to take away one thing; "Learning how to communicate with the corporate hive mind is an excellent skill to cultivate." and the more practical corollary, "You can't tell someone anything they are unwilling to hear." You just can't. Get over it. I have had the experience of telling the CEO of a startup that their blind spot was hiding a train coming at them, and that it would take down the company. They couldn't hear it, they rejected my analysis as fanciful and guesswork. And when the company was destroyed by that very train wreck? They were mad at me! Not the situation, not their inability to hear what they needed to hear. No the messenger was the problem, not the situation. What I learned was that you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear, and if you force them to hear it and are correct, they can end up hating you for it. It is better to ask gently if they are open to alternate views and if they are not, just stop. Let them learn these lessons in their own way and be supportive of them once they fall down and are working their way back up. There is a theme in "Bad Blood" where they start falsifying their test results because they believe that they are close to having things working and they just need a bit more time. I am sure more than one person said, "Wait, this isn't the right way to deal with this." But to hear that, you had to accept that maybe the whole test with only a drop of blood was not a practical idea. And to hear that, you had to consider the idea that the whole idea was not going to work. Net result, ignore the 'haters' and move on.

Kalium 8y ago
> It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are." I'm always struck by how readily people equate "heard and understood" with "agreed with". It's very possible that a person can be heard, listened to, understood, and then the actions they want not be taken. Just because a person is heard is not the same as that person being agreed with. My advice for people is to take on board the difficult lesson that someone failing to do as you wish isn't the same as them refusing to listen to you. That your wishes or warnings are not acted upon is not the same as them falling on deaf ears.

curun1r 8y ago

This kind of stuff annoys me to no end. I think everyone realizes that Silicon Valley and the overall tech world has a diversity problem. There are aspects of our society that systematically under-develop and discourage minorities and women from following the path to becoming an engineer. It's a problem and it's one that our entire society needs to address. But do we have an "engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture" problem? Hell no! We've got a whiny, non-tech contingent that is frustrated that engineers aren't willing to be high-level abstractions on top of computers problem, which is only a problem for those people who are shut out of guiding the direction of the tech industry by their lack of ability to actually do the things the tech industry does. The notion that we'd magically arrive at better decisions if we allowed more non-tech people to make those decisions is ludicrous and insulting. There's no reason to think that without the benefit of hindsight, those people would have made better decisions than were actually made. It's the same specious thinking that leads non-tech "idea" people to approach tech people and generously offer 5% of their sure-to-succeed company in exchange for the mere trifle of actually building it. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Execution beats opinions every time. People who are actually capable of doing the work don't give seats at the table just because "diversity." There's no reason to allow a PR person, like the one discussed in this article, to have outsized influence at a tech company. Engineers seek out engineering-focused cultures because they want a greater degree of autonomy in their work and they want to have a larger influence on the success of their company. Changing that would just mean that the best engineers would choose to work elsewhere, even starting their own companies if need be. That's why we have engineering-focused cultures...because these companies need people that can actually do the work. They've proven that it's not hard to find the non-technical talent, so there's no need to put as much emphasis on that when it comes to the culture and leadership of the company. The one exception to that that proves the point is the current demand for enterprise tech salespeople. We're reaching a point where that talent is in just as high a demand as technical people. And to the companies that need enterprise tech sales, the cultures are adapting to value those employees alongside engineers. But when I read articles like this one from the NYT, it just feels naive and entitled. If you want to be involved in determining the direction of the tech industry, provide a reason and a value proposition based in reality or your going to be ignored.

badcede 8y ago

No way! That's the New York Times' keystone problem as well!

fmajid 8y ago

Tech needs to accept accountability and transparency, but these jealous attacks from old-media has-beens are no less tedious for being so unpredictable.

gwbas1c 8y ago

> If you have a hierarchy where engineers are at the very top and the people who are interfacing with the outside world are a couple rungs below that, you really miss something when those people don’t have an equal voice at the table. As an engineer, I've always found that I'm quite far from the top rung, and that my voice is frequently not the loudest at the table. What may give the illusion that my voice is strong is that I only support ideas that I know I can build or are practical. I find that the people who make complaints like that are usually the people who don't realize that their voices are just as equal as mine at the table. They just need to work on their credibility in order to make their voice stronger. Edit: Credibility often comes from knowing what ideas to support, and when to stop pushing an idea. The term "idea person" comes to mind here.

commandlinefan 8y ago
That was an especially grating accusation coming from the “director of public relations” who probably had a private office, an assistant, a parking spot, and meaningful equity. Unlike anybody who knows how computers actually work.
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  In all honesty, without context it's hard to know if it's a credible argument or just sour grapes.

ummonk 8y ago

To;dr: female liberal arts majored marketer says Silicon Valley has too many male nerds at the top and is too engineering and data driven.

fizwhiz 8y ago
Came to the comments section for this. Cheers!

SansoyeA 8y ago

Sounds like Anahata could do with Includio! And so could Sillicon Valley if there is a lot of truth behind the book. Looking forward to reading it!

solidsnack9000 8y ago

Ms. Powell smartly recognizes a truth that many in the industry elide: A lack of diversity is not just one of several issues for Silicon Valley to fix, but is instead the keystone problem — the source of much else that ails tech, from its recklessly expansionist zeal to the ways its brightest companies keep stepping in problems of their own making. This article is working from a presumption that companies should be subject to a standard of political representation; and if they aren’t then they don’t — and can’t — function. Where did this idea come from, I wonder? It seems at odds both with recent history (many non-representative companies have done a lot of good) and it seems to not admit of any distinction between business institutions and political ones. Even if Google had broader representation of identity-related protected classes, it would not be a representative sample of the US or the world when considering things like education or other life history factors. What kind of diversity is the author talking about, and what relationship does it have to any legitimate standard of representativeness?