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Here's one that I don't see discussed much: The tech meetup culture isn't that great. In other cities with moderately sized tech communities (Seattle, Portland

by jes5199 14y ago

Here's one that I don't see discussed much: The tech meetup culture isn't that great. In other cities with moderately sized tech communities (Seattle, Portland, Austin...) the user group communities are a strong social force - it's how people collaborate, and how they share skill and technology news. In SF, people are too busy working late at their well-funded post-startup jobs to go hang out and talk about code as a craft. So everything is siloed by company, and you get the Google Way and the Apple Way and whatever from the various places that people worked together, and knowledge only moves as quickly as people can get poached from one company and brought into another.

bherms 14y ago
Also meetups here suck because most of the people in the tech scene aren't really that fun to be around. I've been to a few launches and it was nothing but the following: 1) people inflating their egos talking about worthless metrics, how many exits they've been a part of, and how what they're doing now is changing the world (guess what, it's not), 2) people just looking to be a part of the "it" crowd of SV, 3) people looking to find some engineer dumb enough to be their tech guy and execute the idea they have for a paltry equity stake.
lnanek2 14y ago
I've definitely noticed that. It's strange going from talking to a bunch of Java meetup people who are well versed in the history of the language and know how Spring and dependency injection took Java by storm and a ton of other things like that - to talking to Googlers who often don't even know what it is, don't know the benefits, and fight to keep it out of projects.
samstave 14y ago
There used to be very regular meetups - like SFBeta, SVASE meetups, etc. These were actually lively before YC got huge - I believe that this is in part YCs fault in that people are really focued on getting into YC, as opposed to the meetup networking that people went after. It would be great if YC threw a monthly meetup at 111 Minna.

by jes5199 14y ago

bherms 14y ago

Also meetups here suck because most of the people in the tech scene aren't really that fun to be around. I've been to a few launches and it was nothing but the following: 1) people inflating their egos talking about worthless metrics, how many exits they've been a part of, and how what they're doing now is changing the world (guess what, it's not), 2) people just looking to be a part of the "it" crowd of SV, 3) people looking to find some engineer dumb enough to be their tech guy and execute the idea they have for a paltry equity stake.

lnanek2 14y ago

I've definitely noticed that. It's strange going from talking to a bunch of Java meetup people who are well versed in the history of the language and know how Spring and dependency injection took Java by storm and a ton of other things like that - to talking to Googlers who often don't even know what it is, don't know the benefits, and fight to keep it out of projects.

samstave 14y ago

There used to be very regular meetups - like SFBeta, SVASE meetups, etc. These were actually lively before YC got huge - I believe that this is in part YCs fault in that people are really focued on getting into YC, as opposed to the meetup networking that people went after. It would be great if YC threw a monthly meetup at 111 Minna.