3 ms·

I grew up in a rural area near Sacramento. Culture is your big problem; when I was there, reading in public was "gay" and grounds for a (light) beating/physi

by lsc 8y ago

I grew up in a rural area near Sacramento. Culture is your big problem; when I was there, reading in public was "gay" and grounds for a (light) beating/physical humiliation. Of course, I was in high school at the time, and high school is terrible everywhere; I'm sure it's different for adults. But, point being, at least in the '90s, it was not a place that encourages you to study or engage in intellectual pursuits.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
Culture can be one of the challenges, and it is different once you get out of high school. This area (Nevada County) is far less hostile overall.
- lsc 8y ago
  One of the reasons why I love the bay area so much is that not only is it not hostile, it's actively supportive. Like people talk about their favorite tech companies the way people talk about football teams in other parts of the country. Moving from Yolo County to Santa Clara county, for me, was going from a place where being what I am made me an outcast, to a place where being what I am made me... valued to an irrational degree. Like I am not saying the bay area is better for everyone, I've talked to some people who find it really unfriendly here, but... for someone like me? it was really amazing to go from being treated irrationally badly to being treated.. irrationally well. I think that and the fact that this is home for so many people who grew up with parents in the tech industry is really the advantage the bay area has for tech industry work. I think everything else would follow, if you could move those things elsewhere. Getting good internet connectivity, even to a farm, really isn't that difficult or expensive, compared to the cost of a decent Engineer.
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    I grew up in the east bay, and my experience at school wasn't great, despite being lucky enough to go to one of the most technologically advanced school districts in the state at the time. Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment. Bend, Oregon has a great craft beer and outdoor culture that is the result of having Mount Hood and other features nearby, and being close enough to some metropolitan areas to get supplies but far enough away from them to retain its own identity. Moab, Utah has a strong outdoors identity but little economy outside of that, because while they're one of the top destinations for mountain bikers, offroaders, hikers, and canyoneers, they're hours away from anything that anyone on HN would consider "a city". Seattle's culture is largely the result of its location and history as a sea port and lumber area, and then a home to Boeing before Microsoft and the rest arrived. (And coffee for suffering through the winter.) San Jose was a vast agricultural area when one side of my family settled in it a hundred years ago. Vast acres of easy-to-transform land, loose environmental regulations, nearby Stanford University, then Hewlett-Packard all transformed the culture there from agricultural to tech-driven. So this is what I'm getting at: you don't set out to change the culture in an area. I don't think it works that way. I think the culture is an emergent effect of the conditions, and maybe you can change a few of the conditions a little bit, but mostly they work like natural processes. It's not economically feasible to just create a tech culture in a rural area, nor can you simply "change the culture" to make a rural area more tech-friendly. There are a handful of people here who've had enough money to pay the $50k or more to get fiber lit up on their property. Doing that didn't make them more successful; they were already successful enough to be able to do it, and that success came from elsewhere.
    - lsc 8y ago
      >Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment. my argument is that history and values are culture. "everything else" is just physical infrastructure, which is comparatively easy to build, compared to getting people who value the things that need to be valued if you want a tech hub.

by lsc 8y ago

thaumaturgy 8y ago

Culture can be one of the challenges, and it is different once you get out of high school. This area (Nevada County) is far less hostile overall.

lsc 8y ago
One of the reasons why I love the bay area so much is that not only is it not hostile, it's actively supportive. Like people talk about their favorite tech companies the way people talk about football teams in other parts of the country. Moving from Yolo County to Santa Clara county, for me, was going from a place where being what I am made me an outcast, to a place where being what I am made me... valued to an irrational degree. Like I am not saying the bay area is better for everyone, I've talked to some people who find it really unfriendly here, but... for someone like me? it was really amazing to go from being treated irrationally badly to being treated.. irrationally well. I think that and the fact that this is home for so many people who grew up with parents in the tech industry is really the advantage the bay area has for tech industry work. I think everything else would follow, if you could move those things elsewhere. Getting good internet connectivity, even to a farm, really isn't that difficult or expensive, compared to the cost of a decent Engineer.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  I grew up in the east bay, and my experience at school wasn't great, despite being lucky enough to go to one of the most technologically advanced school districts in the state at the time. Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment. Bend, Oregon has a great craft beer and outdoor culture that is the result of having Mount Hood and other features nearby, and being close enough to some metropolitan areas to get supplies but far enough away from them to retain its own identity. Moab, Utah has a strong outdoors identity but little economy outside of that, because while they're one of the top destinations for mountain bikers, offroaders, hikers, and canyoneers, they're hours away from anything that anyone on HN would consider "a city". Seattle's culture is largely the result of its location and history as a sea port and lumber area, and then a home to Boeing before Microsoft and the rest arrived. (And coffee for suffering through the winter.) San Jose was a vast agricultural area when one side of my family settled in it a hundred years ago. Vast acres of easy-to-transform land, loose environmental regulations, nearby Stanford University, then Hewlett-Packard all transformed the culture there from agricultural to tech-driven. So this is what I'm getting at: you don't set out to change the culture in an area. I don't think it works that way. I think the culture is an emergent effect of the conditions, and maybe you can change a few of the conditions a little bit, but mostly they work like natural processes. It's not economically feasible to just create a tech culture in a rural area, nor can you simply "change the culture" to make a rural area more tech-friendly. There are a handful of people here who've had enough money to pay the $50k or more to get fiber lit up on their property. Doing that didn't make them more successful; they were already successful enough to be able to do it, and that success came from elsewhere.
  - lsc 8y ago
    >Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment. my argument is that history and values are culture. "everything else" is just physical infrastructure, which is comparatively easy to build, compared to getting people who value the things that need to be valued if you want a tech hub.