8 ms·

There are few reasons why Silicon Valley is successful: 1) weather (no tornados, no super humid days, no snow) 2) proximity of great places (Lake Tahoe, Monte

by tlogan 4y ago

There are few reasons why Silicon Valley is successful: 1) weather (no tornados, no super humid days, no snow) 2) proximity of great places (Lake Tahoe, Monterey, Napa valley, …) 3) good universities (Berkeley, standford, UCSF, …) 4) immigrants (especially south asian) are more welcome 5) big companies like Salesforce, Google, Facebook, etc. 6) support network: it is ok to be poor entrepreneur and hassle even you are bad at that. I do not know …

lotsofpulp 4y ago
California’s non compete ban and laws protecting personal IP from employer’s claims.
natch 4y ago
7) diversity (not just about immigrants — age, culture, political, philosophical, work style, gender, ability) has unspoken benefits beyond the ones that are usually touted. The diversity of Silicon Valley is very enticing not only for companies who just repeat the word as a marketing buzzword while not necessarily comprehending what it gives them (a lot), but also for young engineers, male and female, in their social lives, and having a huge diverse pool of potential partners to meet and mix with is something that appeals to our strongest drives as humans, and no dreary place is going to compete. It also creates a comfort zone for creative people of all types and backgrounds, not only for their work, but also for their life outside of work and the lives of their family members, some of whom may actually have opinions about where they want to live.
- prottog 4y ago
  It's hard to look at typical Silicon Valley workplace or the broader society around it and say that there is diversity of culture, political viewpoints, and philosophy.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Agree... The diversity runs about skin deep and that's it. Most people in their 20s and 30s are still children of rich/UMC parents. Very few people I have met in SV are from lower class families. Socioeconomically - it's a wildly monolithic culture. Extremely capitalistic as well to where many people cannot fathom anything that doesn't fall outside the purview of capitalism because they've been taken so strongly by it and it's all they've ever known. You run into plenty of leftists/communists/socialists and what not too but they have no power or positions of authority... Usually just ICs or random people around Berkeley.
    - natch 4y ago
      Young engineers don't move here because they want to date someone in a position of power or authority. They move here because they can work with, and date, interesting and attractive people. I'd agree that the diversity of economic backgrounds seems limited. Although I'd caution that people tend to attempt to hide parts of their background they feel will make others and themselves uncomfortable, so your perception may be skewed by that.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        They most likely move there either because some company offered them a pile of money or they want to start a company and there's more funding there.
        prottog 4y ago
        Precisely. "It's the economy, stupid". Among the employed and single in Silicon Valley, estimates are that there are three men for every two. It's an awful place to date, even beside the fact that nobody moves anywhere for the dating pool.
        ghaff 4y ago
        If there were a ton of high-paying tech jobs in Chicago that needed people to be local, a whole lot of people would buy a down coat and gloves and just deal with the weather, lack of nearby mountains etc. I like the Bay Area. I'm even going there on a trip in a couple of days. But, at the end of the day, most people aren't basing where they live on the climate and recreational options (though those may make a difference at the margin).
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yeah I would say so. South Asian immigrants are very welcome, huge respect (fear even) for IIT graduates. Like yes the H1B visa system sucks, but it's indentured servitude essentially (not slavery, I ate at a restaurant with literal slaves like they stole their passports human trafficking, it was a rip-off too, that owner was shit to everybody in sight). H1B is akin to actual indentured servitude where whites paid for travel to America (like traveling to the Moon) and then committed to working for 7 years for the privilege. And there were rules on both sides, there were obligations for both, subordination for one but liability for the other, not very different from apprenticeship (it could be an apprenticeship), huge opportunity, and frankly not that many complaints overall, given the circumstances. Never heard horror stories, though obviously there are some. H1B is that. There are H1B horror stories, but come on they're more sought after than American citizens generally. Well in the military-industrial complex, there is a priority on citizenship, but somehow I never applied for a job there. Just didn't occur to me...well one time, they shunned because my resume got destroyed in a lynching and subsequent torture. In particular standing up to torture, employers sense that like veteran discrimination basically. But I applied to very few jobs, because of being like conditioned or something not to. Not capable, guess I should have spammed. Despite applying to many universities (not crazy for the time, but 7, on the high end, more work), and having good game in the dating market. I still can't transfer good game into actual money like eg sales, or networking, no idea why...can't make the necessary adjustments, at least not yet. I'm looking back on any discrimination against South Asians...I don't know. Well for one thing, one interesting loophole in discrimination, is that there is white guilt about discrimination, as a group they know it to be wrong and they don't like carrying it out in abstract. When there is a stereotype-breaker, they go for it completely. So Asia lies north of the equator, meaning South Asians lie closest to the equator, more light but also more heat meaning less clothing more exposure to light, so what do you get? Darker skin, particularly in Sri Lanka. Born under an equatorial sun, as Harriet Beecher Stowe put it in Uncle Tom's Cabin. So the deal is they are dermatologically dark, like Fitsch type 5 (a scale from 1 to 6 measuring skin darkness and tanning in response to sunlight, not truly synonymous but close enough to be useful), but they're Indoeuropean, always known to be the same language group as eg the English and Norse. Known kinship, and the intent was to accept them, and they invented 0 come on, super smart great at chess invented that too. So by now the desire in principle to accept them in combination with them working like crazy--the most basic way to hack discrimination--and in addition, outpacing other minorities in certain fields--like there was a blogger on Wall Street who talked about being East Asian on Wall Street, and compared it to being South Asian saying it was rough because there were I think no managing directors (MD's as they're called) on Wall Street that were breakaway successes. Whereas there were South Asians there were. (I think Indians, the article said BSD Big Swinging Desi, meaning Indian, vulgar yes Wall Street can be vulgar, dude it's all about alpha), and it maps out to what I saw when I was picking which tournament I would enter (another option was chess, I chose algorithms instead). It's a way for whites to not judge based on the color of people's skins. And further in Freakonomics an Indian sociologist did some polls in housing projects, ended up not getting killed because while not African he was dark too, not black, like in a gray area. OK they considered him gray. So that's how he was privy to the economics of the street drug market, and the tournament aspect of it.
bart_spoon 4y ago
It's basically 1 and 5. Plenty of places have 2, 3, 4 (despite what people on the West coast tell themselves), and I'm not even sure what 6 is supposed to mean. For all the soul-searching about why Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, the overwhelming reason is because once you have a successful base for an up and coming industry, you will win by default moving forward. Once Silicon Valley became the initial bed for tech, tech talent moved there for the jobs, and new tech companies move their to follow the tech talent. Its a virtuous (or vicious for everyone else) cycle. That's it. Virtually every other reason is looking for patterns where non-exists. The weather certainly helps, but I feel like that is more of a post-fact justification than an actual cause. People want to tell themselves that paying out the nose for a closet with 4 roommates in San Francisco is worth it because the rest of the US is a hellscape with weather unfit for human life. It's not, and with climate change, the California weather is becoming less and less attractive. There may never be an "next" Silicon Valley other that Silicon Valley. But it won't be for any reason other than being a Mecca for an industry is reason enough to sustain itself.
- tlogan 4y ago
  Can you please tell me which places have 2, 3, and 4? Im just trying expland my views and maybe visit them.
  - bart_spoon 4y ago
    North Carolina easily fits the bill. Great outdoors, proximity to good universities, fairly diverse, at least in some of the major metros. A lot of places in the Great Lakes region are similar. Some of the nations best universities are in and around Chicago, Michigan, Pittsburgh, etc. Particularly in the cities, diversity is fair to high (Chicago, Minneapolis, etc). And much of the Great Lakes region is highly underrated from an outdoor perspective, particularly Michigan, and support year-round outdoor activities like beaches, hiking, skiing/snowboarding, sailing, biking, etc.
    - tlogan 4y ago
      I knew you will mentioned North Carolina :) Will definetelly try to visit it. Regarding Chicago and Michigan: I have to say “nope”. California is way way nicer to visit. There nothing even remotely similar to Palm Springs. Or Monterey bay. Or Joshua Tree. And I did have a couple of ackward situations with people saying “go back to your country” as way to start some disagreement.
RestlessMind 4y ago
After staying in SV for close to 2 decades and evaluating various other places to move to, I have ultimately chosen to remain in SV for the following reasons: 1. Decent weather - no snow, wind, storms. This is changing recently with wildfires, so may not last for long. 2. Density of tech talent - no matter what niche tech you are interested in, you will always find techies interested in that niche in SF - San Jose - Oakland triangle. 3. Job opportunities - there are actually 4 subfactors here. One is cultural - if your current gig fails for whatever reason, no one will look down upon you. Second - a new job can be found very soon, since you can compete with remote-first jobs with the added advantage of having exclusive access to companies insisting on RTO. Third - you have a variety of opportunities available, from pre-seed stage startups to behemoths. Fourth - if you are married to a non-techie like me, your partner can also find a new job relatively easily if they have to, compared to a lot of cheaper places where there were no non-tech lucrative jobs available. This was actually a surprising bottleneck for us when evaluating different places. 4. Immigration friendly - as a non-white immigrant, SFBA is a very welcoming place. That is not an exclusive advantage since any big city can compete on that front these days, but it also rules out a lot of cheaper places for us where it will be hard to integrate socially. 5. Non-competes - seriously, this is one of the biggest advantage of California for employees. I do not want additional constraints on my job mobility.

by tlogan 4y ago

lotsofpulp 4y ago

California’s non compete ban and laws protecting personal IP from employer’s claims.

natch 4y ago

7) diversity (not just about immigrants — age, culture, political, philosophical, work style, gender, ability) has unspoken benefits beyond the ones that are usually touted. The diversity of Silicon Valley is very enticing not only for companies who just repeat the word as a marketing buzzword while not necessarily comprehending what it gives them (a lot), but also for young engineers, male and female, in their social lives, and having a huge diverse pool of potential partners to meet and mix with is something that appeals to our strongest drives as humans, and no dreary place is going to compete. It also creates a comfort zone for creative people of all types and backgrounds, not only for their work, but also for their life outside of work and the lives of their family members, some of whom may actually have opinions about where they want to live.

prottog 4y ago
It's hard to look at typical Silicon Valley workplace or the broader society around it and say that there is diversity of culture, political viewpoints, and philosophy.
- bradlys 4y ago
  Agree... The diversity runs about skin deep and that's it. Most people in their 20s and 30s are still children of rich/UMC parents. Very few people I have met in SV are from lower class families. Socioeconomically - it's a wildly monolithic culture. Extremely capitalistic as well to where many people cannot fathom anything that doesn't fall outside the purview of capitalism because they've been taken so strongly by it and it's all they've ever known. You run into plenty of leftists/communists/socialists and what not too but they have no power or positions of authority... Usually just ICs or random people around Berkeley.
  - natch 4y ago
    Young engineers don't move here because they want to date someone in a position of power or authority. They move here because they can work with, and date, interesting and attractive people. I'd agree that the diversity of economic backgrounds seems limited. Although I'd caution that people tend to attempt to hide parts of their background they feel will make others and themselves uncomfortable, so your perception may be skewed by that.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      They most likely move there either because some company offered them a pile of money or they want to start a company and there's more funding there.
      - prottog 4y ago
        Precisely. "It's the economy, stupid". Among the employed and single in Silicon Valley, estimates are that there are three men for every two. It's an awful place to date, even beside the fact that nobody moves anywhere for the dating pool.
        ghaff 4y ago
        If there were a ton of high-paying tech jobs in Chicago that needed people to be local, a whole lot of people would buy a down coat and gloves and just deal with the weather, lack of nearby mountains etc. I like the Bay Area. I'm even going there on a trip in a couple of days. But, at the end of the day, most people aren't basing where they live on the climate and recreational options (though those may make a difference at the margin).

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Yeah I would say so. South Asian immigrants are very welcome, huge respect (fear even) for IIT graduates. Like yes the H1B visa system sucks, but it's indentured servitude essentially (not slavery, I ate at a restaurant with literal slaves like they stole their passports human trafficking, it was a rip-off too, that owner was shit to everybody in sight). H1B is akin to actual indentured servitude where whites paid for travel to America (like traveling to the Moon) and then committed to working for 7 years for the privilege. And there were rules on both sides, there were obligations for both, subordination for one but liability for the other, not very different from apprenticeship (it could be an apprenticeship), huge opportunity, and frankly not that many complaints overall, given the circumstances. Never heard horror stories, though obviously there are some. H1B is that. There are H1B horror stories, but come on they're more sought after than American citizens generally. Well in the military-industrial complex, there is a priority on citizenship, but somehow I never applied for a job there. Just didn't occur to me...well one time, they shunned because my resume got destroyed in a lynching and subsequent torture. In particular standing up to torture, employers sense that like veteran discrimination basically. But I applied to very few jobs, because of being like conditioned or something not to. Not capable, guess I should have spammed. Despite applying to many universities (not crazy for the time, but 7, on the high end, more work), and having good game in the dating market. I still can't transfer good game into actual money like eg sales, or networking, no idea why...can't make the necessary adjustments, at least not yet. I'm looking back on any discrimination against South Asians...I don't know. Well for one thing, one interesting loophole in discrimination, is that there is white guilt about discrimination, as a group they know it to be wrong and they don't like carrying it out in abstract. When there is a stereotype-breaker, they go for it completely. So Asia lies north of the equator, meaning South Asians lie closest to the equator, more light but also more heat meaning less clothing more exposure to light, so what do you get? Darker skin, particularly in Sri Lanka. Born under an equatorial sun, as Harriet Beecher Stowe put it in Uncle Tom's Cabin. So the deal is they are dermatologically dark, like Fitsch type 5 (a scale from 1 to 6 measuring skin darkness and tanning in response to sunlight, not truly synonymous but close enough to be useful), but they're Indoeuropean, always known to be the same language group as eg the English and Norse. Known kinship, and the intent was to accept them, and they invented 0 come on, super smart great at chess invented that too. So by now the desire in principle to accept them in combination with them working like crazy--the most basic way to hack discrimination--and in addition, outpacing other minorities in certain fields--like there was a blogger on Wall Street who talked about being East Asian on Wall Street, and compared it to being South Asian saying it was rough because there were I think no managing directors (MD's as they're called) on Wall Street that were breakaway successes. Whereas there were South Asians there were. (I think Indians, the article said BSD Big Swinging Desi, meaning Indian, vulgar yes Wall Street can be vulgar, dude it's all about alpha), and it maps out to what I saw when I was picking which tournament I would enter (another option was chess, I chose algorithms instead). It's a way for whites to not judge based on the color of people's skins. And further in Freakonomics an Indian sociologist did some polls in housing projects, ended up not getting killed because while not African he was dark too, not black, like in a gray area. OK they considered him gray. So that's how he was privy to the economics of the street drug market, and the tournament aspect of it.

bart_spoon 4y ago

It's basically 1 and 5. Plenty of places have 2, 3, 4 (despite what people on the West coast tell themselves), and I'm not even sure what 6 is supposed to mean. For all the soul-searching about why Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, the overwhelming reason is because once you have a successful base for an up and coming industry, you will win by default moving forward. Once Silicon Valley became the initial bed for tech, tech talent moved there for the jobs, and new tech companies move their to follow the tech talent. Its a virtuous (or vicious for everyone else) cycle. That's it. Virtually every other reason is looking for patterns where non-exists. The weather certainly helps, but I feel like that is more of a post-fact justification than an actual cause. People want to tell themselves that paying out the nose for a closet with 4 roommates in San Francisco is worth it because the rest of the US is a hellscape with weather unfit for human life. It's not, and with climate change, the California weather is becoming less and less attractive. There may never be an "next" Silicon Valley other that Silicon Valley. But it won't be for any reason other than being a Mecca for an industry is reason enough to sustain itself.

tlogan 4y ago
Can you please tell me which places have 2, 3, and 4? Im just trying expland my views and maybe visit them.
- bart_spoon 4y ago
  North Carolina easily fits the bill. Great outdoors, proximity to good universities, fairly diverse, at least in some of the major metros. A lot of places in the Great Lakes region are similar. Some of the nations best universities are in and around Chicago, Michigan, Pittsburgh, etc. Particularly in the cities, diversity is fair to high (Chicago, Minneapolis, etc). And much of the Great Lakes region is highly underrated from an outdoor perspective, particularly Michigan, and support year-round outdoor activities like beaches, hiking, skiing/snowboarding, sailing, biking, etc.
  - tlogan 4y ago
    I knew you will mentioned North Carolina :) Will definetelly try to visit it. Regarding Chicago and Michigan: I have to say “nope”. California is way way nicer to visit. There nothing even remotely similar to Palm Springs. Or Monterey bay. Or Joshua Tree. And I did have a couple of ackward situations with people saying “go back to your country” as way to start some disagreement.

RestlessMind 4y ago

After staying in SV for close to 2 decades and evaluating various other places to move to, I have ultimately chosen to remain in SV for the following reasons: 1. Decent weather - no snow, wind, storms. This is changing recently with wildfires, so may not last for long. 2. Density of tech talent - no matter what niche tech you are interested in, you will always find techies interested in that niche in SF - San Jose - Oakland triangle. 3. Job opportunities - there are actually 4 subfactors here. One is cultural - if your current gig fails for whatever reason, no one will look down upon you. Second - a new job can be found very soon, since you can compete with remote-first jobs with the added advantage of having exclusive access to companies insisting on RTO. Third - you have a variety of opportunities available, from pre-seed stage startups to behemoths. Fourth - if you are married to a non-techie like me, your partner can also find a new job relatively easily if they have to, compared to a lot of cheaper places where there were no non-tech lucrative jobs available. This was actually a surprising bottleneck for us when evaluating different places. 4. Immigration friendly - as a non-white immigrant, SFBA is a very welcoming place. That is not an exclusive advantage since any big city can compete on that front these days, but it also rules out a lot of cheaper places for us where it will be hard to integrate socially. 5. Non-competes - seriously, this is one of the biggest advantage of California for employees. I do not want additional constraints on my job mobility.