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Silicon Valley is high on innovation. And pot
- cwilson 14y agoLike many others will likely comment, I'm a huge advocate of the legalization of marijuana. I smoked quite a bit of it in my younger years. I could go as far as saying I was a connoisseur. These days I find it cripples productivity and turns me into a zombie. I stay away from it. This leads me to conclude that this article is total shit. I honestly can't name a single engineer, designer, or writer I know who regularly smokes pot. Yet this article ends with the following line: "There is a raging culture of marijuana use among tech workers in Silicon Valley." How this was allowed to be published is beyond me. Edit: A better story would have been "How Silicon Valley is high on innovation. And Adderall."
- ubojan 14y agothat's because you smoked indica instead of sativa.
- TillE 14y agoIndeed, cannabis can have a wide range of effects because it's not just one chemical. It's multiple cannabinoids which interact with each other. A classic sativa variety will contain almost nothing except THC, which produces an "up" high on its own. Higher concentrations of CBD and CBN, as commonly found in indica varieties (eg, "kush" in California) and weed that has been harvested too late, cause a more "stoned" effect and sleepiness.
- rdl 14y agoI think I know more silicon valley tech people who smoke marijuana once or more per month than who smoke tobacco, but the primary drugs of use (and abuse) are clearly caffeine and other stimulants, followed by alcohol.
- lcc_tn 14y agoYou've reminded me of this video talking about coffee now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg Is there really any good reason why I shouldn't be drinking a lot of coffee? It seems I see as many researches claiming I shouldn't drink much coffee as I see researches claiming I should. I'm not sure what to think about coffee at this point.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- fzzzy 14y agoDoctors also used to recommend that people smoke cigarettes.
- wglb 14y agoAt one period of my life, I drank enormous amounts of coffee. One weekend, I found myself yelling at every member of my family. I decided to totally stop. This was painful with headaches and irritability for about a week. Then, once that was all out of my system, I noticed that my sleep was different. More calm, somehow. The last bit convinced me to continue not drinking coffee. I now do perhaps one cup a week, or less.
- samstave 14y agoThere was a time, maybe two years ago, when I did a mental survey of about ~75 people who I knew closely in tech and ~90% of them all smoked pot. I worked with a guy, who was literally on his A-game at work (meaning he had absolutely stellar performance, owned his role and pretty much his whole department) and he smoked every single day on the way IN TO the office. He even used to go and smoke at lunch. Even recently, working with a client, we sat in a conf room and the conversation turned to how much the staff of my client smoke pot.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoSo because you don't like it and don't know anyone who does... no one does? On the contrary, I know half a dozen and I was only out there for a summer (and I'm returning in a month). And regarding the sibling comment, my caffeine withdrawl is (for me) worse than cannabis withdrawl (ie: nearly non-existent, from smoking daily 2 years -> cold turkey results in a caffeine headache for a few hours on the third day or so and that's about it, minus any sleeping trouble depending on your habits). Plus, really, using in the evenings has zero affect on me at work the next morning other than a weird sense of calmness generally). edit: For anyone curious, and for full disclosure, it can muck with your falling asleep for a few weeks if you are used to using it in the evenings before bed. Camomile tea, melatonin and increasing exercise in the evening can help clear that up much faster and is probably not that bad of an idea for me anyway.
- throwaway25173 14y agoAs a frequent smoker, I'm very curious about this. I'm a grad student but I've interned at Google Mountain View a couple times. At Google I had a couple intern friends who also smoked but I would absolutely NEVER consider admitting to being a frequent user among coworkers I wasn't outside-of-work friends with, as none of them ever seemed to talk about having drug experiences (other than alcohol/caffeine) so I feared they'd think less of me for it. I'm sure most were likely in favor of marijuana legalization as most of their politics seemed to go that way, but none of them would ever openly admit to using it regularly. (This seems similar to the attitude on HN, hence why I'm on a throwaway account while admitting to be a frequent smoker.) As such, I found myself agreeing with GP, that the article seemed quite off-base. But of course this is definitely all anecdotal evidence - I wouldn't be surprised if there were teams even at Google where people openly admit to smoking weed regularly.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoYes, I still fear stigma. Having a more carefree friend (roommate in college) that had the same internship as me helped me meet others, though I keep the actual act of consumption to myself. I fear being judged, but I think that will dull with time, especially in places like CA, WA, CO. Long story shorter and more relevant: I've picked up a knack for knowing what "hot topics" I can talk about with certain coworkers or friends (or most of all, family). I certainly err conservatively. As for HN: I've noticed the same trend here. It seems really mixed and it is kind of enjoyable that people still feel comfortable expressing themselves. Reddit has it's dissenters but most people don't say much beyond "I support legalization" even if they disagree with cannabis usage. I've come into more contact with "pot makes you waste your life" types around here, and I'm okay with that. I don't need anyone to judge me, finding happiness in life is an extreme priority for me, so "haters gonna hate" I guess. (But you'll note that my username here on HN is not attached to my real name in anyway as far as I know). But more directly to the point, if it were to come up at work, I wouldn't have a problem with admitting to using or conversing about legalization. Via my internship my team knows that they can rely on me and I think my work stands for itself. And most of all, I'm really hopeful that my employer isn't interested in my personal life beyond my work. Frankly, if anything else, I've noticed a shocking amount of presumption that I must have smoked because I'd been to college...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- argonaut 14y agoThe vast majority of the engineers/designers I meet are young twenty-somethings doing startup, and I've met a significant proportion of pot smokers among them. In fact, in almost any meetup I attend, I will usually meet several people who smell like pot. Several times at house parties I see people coming inside (from outside) and I'll make a joke about what they were doing outside, and almost every time they will tell me they were smoking pot.
- dguaraglia 14y agoThat's interesting. I know a bunch of people involved in startups (engineers and otherwise) and I can say that every single one of them I haven't met in a professional environment smokes pot at a level I had never seen before. The amount of expensive smoking paraphernalia I've seen laying around (and being carried around, which I found quite interesting) is phenomenal.
- eliasmacpherson 14y agohttp://steve-yegge.blogspot.ie/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ie/2009/04/have-you-ever-legaliz... "I have smoked marijuana (and inhaled it, deeply) on more occasions than I can count." Steve Yegge seems to have been a pot smoker. Most in my circle of friends stopped smoking pot before their finals in university. Just about anything other than a good night's sleep and a nice glass of water cripples my productivity and turns me in to a zombie, and this wasn't always the case.
- Evenjos 14y agoIn my experience, very few productive people are regular pot smokers.
- nonamegiven 14y agoYou may not know many people who regularly smoke pot because you "find it cripples productivity and turns me into a zombie. I stay away from it." You may be seen by users as either hostile, or at least not obviously friendly to their activity, so they self select you out of that information. I think similarly, people who are anti-gay don't seem to know a lot of gay people, despite the fact that N% of the population are gay.
- jwoah12 14y agoExcellent explanation of the confirmation bias, and I suspect this is exactly what's at work here.
- bluekeybox 14y agoCompletely concur with your observation, except your analogy with gay people (something beyond one's power of choice) is somewhat uncalled for.
- nonamegiven 14y agoBut in both cases one can choose to let it be known or not. You can choose to share that you smoke or not, and you can choose to share that you're gay or not. It's that choice to share information or not that I'm talking about.
- flywheel 14y agoYou don't know how to use Marijuana. You don't need to get completely baked to have positive benefits while working. It's really all about dosage and the way you consume it. I don't smoke it anymore, but I take THC pills that I either make or buy at a dispensary. It is a very clean and useful way to consume Marijuana that doesn't need you to get "baked" and out-of-your-mind stoned.
- tobylane 14y agoSo is Jennifer Lawrence, an award winning actress. There's groups who could benefit a lot more from this kind of pain relief just in the states it's legal in, while programmers and actors are the main groups of California.
- sharkweek 14y agoI see far more people abusing "focus" drugs like ritalin as opposed to smoking pot. I guess I have a few friends who still smoke on a regular basis, but most of my social circle pretty much stopped after college. I personally can't stand being high. It gave me minor panic attacks and made me super anti-social. Not my thing, but I'm all for adults making their own decisions. I can't imagine any top tech company ever enforcing an anti-drug policy, especially outside of work.
- lcc_tn 14y agoI found myself surprised yesterday reading the thread about Harvard[1] when 2 people brought up how much Adderall is abused there, how easy it is to acquire, etc. Can you remark on exactly how much medicine otherwise prescribed for ADHD is abused by people in the valley? Is it 1 out of every 10 employee at Google, for example? Is it mostly concentrated in startup settings? [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311168 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311168
- loeg 14y agoMight not have very good data from self-reporting, especially in the workplace.
- raverbashing 14y agos/Silicon Valley/California/ If you want to do it fine, I don't do it, but I'm ok with people doing it. I'm even ok with decriminalizing it. But don't pretend it's for your wrist pain. Edit: What about this map "proving" dispensaries are mixed with their "customers". A simple machine learning algo can split the two and point some outliners there...
- lcc_tn 14y ago> But don't pretend it's for your wrist pain. I don't think people would pretend it's for physical pain if it were simply legal.
- raverbashing 14y agoYou've got a point
- drivebyacct2 14y ago>But don't pretend it's for your wrist pain. Yeah, this is a real dilemma. I'm moving soon to somewhere where I could get a medical card. I feel guilty about wanting to get a card because if I were to use it less than 100% medically, it could give people fuel to ban it for ALL, including those with debilitating pain.
- pjscott 14y agoWhen faced with a dilemma, always look for third options. In this case, that option is to lie: keep up a pretense, to everyone except your friends, that you're using it for strictly medical purposes. In this case, the people who really need to be lied to probably don't deserve honesty.
- sev 14y agoWhy pretend if that's the real reason someone is using it? someone might want it for that reason, and not want a medical card, just to not be in some database. not saying this is a good reason or not, just stating a fact.
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- revelation 14y agoIt seems we have finally solved the mystery that is Adobe Systems Incorporated. That said, this article seems to be heavily biased by what is simply local proximity and highly educated clientele.
- rdl 14y agoAlso, the San Jose dispensaries are so badly run as a legal experiment -- way too many, shadiness, etc. Oakland has done a much better job. No one in the pot industry holds up San Jose as a model.
- Myrmornis 14y agoVery silly article. Yes lots of programmers, good and bad, smoke pot. No, there are not very many good programmers who think they can write good code while high.
- dougk16 14y agoFor me it's not a matter of coding while high, but pot does make me a more effective programmer overall. When stuck with a hard problem, smoking allows my creative side to come out more, and attack the problem from angles that I couldn't even consider while sober. Sometimes that doesn't work, and I go for a run. Sometimes that doesn't work, and I just need time. But pot remains a primary tool in my toolbox for tackling difficult programming challenges.
- yesimahuman 14y agoI call it an "abstraction-enabler" and also appreciate its ability to help me understand complexity. It's not something I find effective while pounding out code (alcohol neither): that's what caffeine is for.
- Myrmornis 14y agodougk16, yesimahuman -- you're right, I didn't mean to imply that it couldn't sometimes be good for thinking about things, including hard things.
- Stratoscope 14y agoI think you will be interested to know what we called it in the 70's: Programmer's Fuel
- jhonovich 14y ago"The long hours sitting at a keyboard can cause back and wrist pain." Is this really a common problem?
- qompiler 14y agoOnly if you have a really bad chair and computer desk. On a side note, drugs are for drug dealers and losers. Only one benefits.
- djcapelis 14y ago> On a side note, drugs are for drug dealers and losers. Only one benefits. So I take it you don't drink alcohol or use caffeine?
- qompiler 14y agoI did a while, it only gives me trouble like headaches for coffee and mood swings with alcohol.
- veemjeem 14y agoIt's weird how marijuana gets grouped with all the hard drugs when it's far less toxic than alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine. You can die with less than 250ml of 200 proof alcohol (about 1 cup), 60mg of nicotine (around 60 cigarettes), or 3 grams of caffeine (around 15 bottles of the 5 hour energy drinks). However, you'd need to consume around 1000lbs of marijuana to kill yourself. 1000lbs would probably bankrupt most people -- it's around $4M. I doubt anyone in the modern age can claim they have never used drugs before. Most of the OTC drugs at the pharmacy can be more damaging to your health than alcohol. The only people who can probably claim to be drug free are those who claim to heal with prayer.
- pyre 14y agoMarijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance in the US (the most restricted set), while cocaine is a Schedule II controlled substance. The US government considers marijuana to be a harder drug than cocaine. There is no logic to this stuff other than: - Drugs Are Bad Mmkay(tm) - I don't need no 'scientists' to do 'studies,' because everyone knows that Drugs Are Bad Mmkay(tm). - Since Drugs Are Bad Mmkay(tm), I can't allow a drug to go down in the rankings, only up! - If a drug were to go down in the rankings, it would be political suicide. Political/religious/etc opportunists would come out of the wood-work to ply their silver tongues and attempt to get the general public to tar-and-feather those responsible (while benefiting the opportunists immensely, of course). - Even if I wanted to allow a drug to go down in the rankings, it would be political suicide
- seanp2k2 14y agoWhat this map doesn't highlight: all the ghetto / somewhat ghetto areas on the map with multiple families living in a 1br apt because that's the only way they can afford the $2k/month rent. I'm sure none of those people smoke trees, though.
- hack_edu 14y agoI'm sure they do, and at the same frequency of most all income brackets. The rate of usage across classes is pretty flat.
- gobengo 14y agoFuck this article and all of the instances of New York trivializing the tech industry. Seriously. Bravo comes in and creates the most ridiculously inaccurate depiction of creating a tech company one could ever imagine. And Bloomberg, which owns Businessweek, is writing articles like this. This is getting ridiculous.
- roflcoptar 14y agodude im over new york. i'm over this all we can choose to be the new wave. <3
- beatpanda 14y agoEpisode three million of "People With Money Are Somehow Still Surprised The Bay Area Is Weird". See also: the Priceonomics blog post that was shocked to discover that hippy street kids in Golden Gate Park are pretty content with their lives. Next up: "Sex Parties? Isn't that dangerous?"
- nikcub 14y agoIn my experience (that is, anecdotally) i'd say the rate of pot use in Silicon Valley (that is, the tech community) is lower than average. I've seen one startup where employees openly smoked pot in the office, and i've seen pot smoked at parties etc. and a handful of friends smoke every now and then, but it isn't anything near how prevalent pot smoking is in other parts of the USA and the world. The big one is smart drugs - Modafinil/Provigil and Nuvegil. I met a sales rep at a party who told me the bay area was one of the highest selling areas for Modafinil. That is a bit better than anecdotal evidence that there is something there. On top of that I know[0] that a lot of users are importing it from India using online stores. There are then the pharma stimulants, adderall and ritalin, spread out through the colleges, where usage rates are high. I knew one person who couldn't wait for each years batch of interns to show up at his company because he knew at least some would have a connect to get Adderall. Then you get the standard illegal class A stimulants, which I don't think are used any more or less in the tech community than in most other communities of similar social-economic standing (that is to say, quiet a bit). [0] Techcrunch wrote about Modafinil in 2008, I was at TC at the time: http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/15/how-many-of-our-startup-executives-are-hopped-up-on-provigil/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/15/how-many-of-our-startup-exe... There were a lot of interesting follow-up comments and conversations after it was published, least not the intro to the sales exec.
- lutusp 14y ago> In my experience (that is, anecdotally) i'd say the rate of pot use in Silicon Valley is lower than average. For an average of all Californians, probably true. For an average of the entire country, probably false.
- brd 14y agoI'd be surprised if Silicon Valley wasn't leading the charge on contraband use of nootropics. I'd imagine that the only populations with a higher frequency of use would be students at top tier law schools and other rigorous academic programs.
- rdl 14y agoTangentially, I've been messing around with aniracetam + choline for the past week or so. It did seem to disrupt my sleep cycle (but maybe that was RSA Conference and a higher-than-usual level of stress and human interaction), but made me feel more focused. It's entirely possible it was psychosomatic. I figure I'll give it a month. Modafinil, nicotine patches, and other stimulants seemed superior. Modafinil enough that I'd seriously consider getting an Rx at some point -- virtually no downside as far as I could tell. High-dose caffeine and other stimulants had far higher negative effects, and wouldn't be worth it long term.
- franze 14y agoabout the UX of that site: did anybody else experience (latest chrome stable) the * "scroll blocking" JS execution on first pageview * jump back up after all JS was loaded for me it's unbelievable that we finally have really, really, really powerful JS engines in our browsers, and all we can think of is to make the UX experience of users who want simple things (like reading an article) worse.
- claudius 14y ago"on first pageview" at least seems to imply that you can scroll at all. On Opera (with Ghostery and AdBlock), it doesn’t work at all and I can read as far as ‘you can drop by the Palliate’. So, uh, it's a great article, albeit a little short…
- throwaway1024 14y agoAnother throwaway here. As a random anecdotes, I was an opiate addict (Heroin mainly) for the last six years, while working as an engineer. Not in the Bay area mind you. As weird as it sounds, opiates help(ed) me focus. I was a very functional addict. Nowadays I'm clean (have been for the past 9 months), well sort of. I'm on suboxone. It still helps me focus, helps with my severe depression, and is legal and literally 50 times cheaper per day. I have weird brain chemistry however; opiates don't perk most people up. It makes me laser sharp. However, Heroin has so many other negative effects, it's not worth it financially and legally. I don't suggest others follow my path, it's too dangerous and a consequence of my idiot 16yo self. But I'm doing great nowadays. Just wanted to add my odd anecdote to the pile.
- BSousa 14y agoJust wanted to say good job on being clean for 9 months. Keep at it.
- danabramov 14y agoI know this is silly but is SHA-1 of your StackExchange username 28a0b3fe0e151fefc417ad7d526b99d726d0f319?
- lern_too_spel 14y agoDon't answer this question. This is trivial to reverse.
- throwaway04583 14y agoGood job on the opiate sobriety! Suboxone is a miracle for opiate addicts. I took it for 15 months after I got clean, and I really enjoyed the extra energy and antidepressant effect. I experienced minor difficulties adjusting to life without it, but it was nothing compared to real opiate withdrawals, which I'm sure you vividly remember. I've been off suboxone for nearly 18 months now, and I don't have cravings for opiates any more. I think this is partially due to knowing exactly where I will end up if I do them again. I have considered going back on suboxone, but I found that adderall gives me the same type of effects without being an opiod itself. Adderall does have more negative side effects than suboxone though.
- DannoHung 14y agoI'm in favor of legalization, but I'm very much against public pot smoking being a thing. Pot smells about 10 times worse than tobacco smoke and tobacco smoke already smelt awful.
- TillE 14y agoI've never seen anyone else with this opinion. Cigarette smoke is bad. Stale cigarette smoke is worse. Cheap cigar smoke is disgustingly awful. But pot smoke? It's not especially bad, and it's not especially strong. Very distinct, but on the scale of offensiveness fairly low. Maybe you've been around people smoking with cheap tobacco blunt wraps? I dunno.
- arbuge 14y ago"Marijuana use is “extremely common” among tech workers, says Mark Johnson, 34, chief executive officer of Zite, based in San Francisco." I've been in tech for 20 years now and never came across anybody on pot or any other drugs for that matter. Maybe I'm living in some kind of bubble or something, but my reaction to the above comment is that he's got a drug problem in his company.
- jlgreco 14y agoMost people who smoke don't tattoo it across their forehead you know.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago“The Silicon Valley data support recent news reports citing some employers who say they are having a hard time finding candidates that can pass the preemployment drug test,” I never lived in North America but I want to say that if I wanted to get a job and the employer would suggest me to pass a drug test, I would be extremelly offended and my human rights violated, and I'll tell them to eff off right away. It's just so humiliating in my opinion. I'm a software developer not an airplane pilot.
- Zuph 14y agoIn most job markets in the US, refusing a pre-employment drug test would make you literally unemployable, from the crummiest fast-food/retail job, to middle/upper-level management.
- sneak 14y ago> In most job markets in the US, refusing a pre-employment drug test would make you literally unemployable, from the crummiest fast-food/retail job, to middle/upper-level management. Not in programming or consulting, thank deus. I'd tell a prospective employer to take a flying fuck at the sun if they tried that shit with me.
- jes5199 14y agoPeople I know in industries that require drug tests get panicky when they have to take one, but somehow they never fail them. Apparently the tests aren't very sensitive, and mostly screen out only those who refuse to take them.
- ferrouswheel 14y agoYup, and you definitely don't want those annoying people who actually value their privacy and restriction on employer control over their lives! Drug tests are an effective filter to ensure you have a compliant work force.
- hack_edu 14y agoThis is an incredibly popular sentiment in the Valley as a whole. Job applications often ask about a history of arrests/etc but that will say "except marijuana related arrests." Very few people care anymore around here, and those who do more or less know not to step into the debate. I almost beg interviewers to ask me so I can just say "sure, I can take that test but I'll fail it. Is that a problem?" I doubt many would tell me to walk, except Big Blue and the most old fashioned of firms, and I'm not even that talented.
- edw519 14y agoWow. I had no idea. I have been to college and have had many great times since then with all sorts of artificial stimulation. To this day, I really look forward to weekends and can't imagine a world without (my drug of choice) beer. But I have never done any of this while working. No drugs, no alchohol, no medication, just a rare cup of coffee. I have been programming for 34 years in startups, small businesses, and enterprises. And I'm doing my best work ever right now. And I've done all of it naturally; I don't think I would have made it this long any other way. If my back or wrists hurt, I get up and move. If I'm sleepy, I sleep. If I'm hungry, I eat. If I can't figure something out, I either knock off or work on something else. The idea of popping the artificial help cherry has always terrified me. I never wanted to sacrifice my natural soul for the sake of any project. I also have this strange Newtonian belief when it comes to personal energy: "What goes up, must come down." (And never without a price.) My most important tools are my mind and my body, so they always come first, before any emergency, deadline, or impasse. The crisis du jour will soon be gone, but I'll still be cranking along like the Energizer Bunny. What I do is a marathon, not a sprint. I want to be doing this for the rest of my life, so natural is really the best way for me to go. Just something to think about before you reach for <whatever>.
- c1u 14y ago> What I do is a marathon, not a sprint The problem I see is that all the other top marathon runners around me are taking nootropics (adderal etc) to stay in the lead. Not everyone is born Kenyan. :P
- chrischen 14y agoHey's saying these drugs only help you sprint, because what goes up must come down.
- anonthistime 14y ago> The most important tools I have are my mind and my body Alcohol gives you a buzz by destroying your brain cells. There are better (and smarter) ways to enjoy yourself.
- lubujackson 14y agoI love that Bloomberg Businessweek includes a TLDR for their one page article. Right at the bottom, too, so you don't know it's there.