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Silicon Valley Is Now Public Enemy No. 1, And We Only Have Ourselves To Blame

59 points by ssclafani 13y ago

briandh 13y ago
> That has been a fair assessment historically, but that is no longer the case. Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services The automobile destroyed the value of existing companies, too.
cylinder 13y ago
This is hyperbolic drivel; obviously TC is trying to create something out of nothing to drive clicks. Average lay people don't know about the stories referenced in this article and could not care less. Step out of the echo chamber!
- je_bailey 13y ago
  I concur with this assessment. There are people outside of silicon valley who care about silicon valley. Much like there are a ton of people who watch reality tv and think that it's real. Since this is HN there are probably a larger then average number of readers who would fall into this camp. But for the most part. Nobody outside of that region cares. I'm on the east coast, SV isn't in the news, it's not a concern, nobody here that I am aware of here can be bothered to care what happens.
smoorman1024 13y ago
Anyone else notice that the anchors at the beginning of the paragraph don't have a reference: <a>attacks on private buses</a> <a>stalkers of Google executives</a>
segmondy 13y ago
Nah, Incompetent Politicians, Wallstreet/Banks are still public enemy No. 1. Perhaps people that live in the SV area who are not in the industry consider the tech industry an enemy because they have been priced outside of homes and are feeling left behind. Those outside of SV don't consider SV an enemy or even think about them.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I think much of the vilification of the political system and Wall Street is unwarranted and driven by lack of understanding. That said, folks in Silicon Valley will very soon join the club and see for themselves what it is like, because as automation and technology continues to eat away at jobs, they are not far behind these industries as far as vilification goes.
- 27182818284 13y ago
  They are #1, but it is safe to say that SV is trending. I've heard bad shit from people that live in Oakland, people in the Midwest that have never been to SF or Oakland, and increasingly on the net I see grumpiness building. All anecdotal, of course, but I do see it.
alecco 13y ago
The level of denial of the problem in this thread is astounding. It will only exacerbate the issue. We are not heroes out of an Ayn Rand novel. We don't live in a bubble, we live within a rich and complex society. We better learn empathy towards the rest if we don't expect to get forced to give back. There are many social issues, youth unemployment being one of the worst. And we, techies, are in a great position to promote social development instead of short-sighted and selfish corporate profits, to promote a free internet where users are in charge, to help out others who don't have our talents. A lot of technologies we use (Internet, Web, Unix/BSD) were financed in good part by the public. Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  What a convincing post.
- smtddr 13y ago
  The future: http://i.imgur.com/lkdFZMi.png http://i.imgur.com/lkdFZMi.png It's just like another comment(can't find it right now) said in an earlier story. Techies are turning into the new Bank execs. Greed[1] is taking over; screw anyone/anything that tries to stop us. At this rate, tech people will be in high-security gated communities while everyone outside suffers from being displaced with no plan on how to keep them busy & happy. All the denial & excuses you're reading I'm sure also exist in the minds of Bank/Oil/megacorp execs too. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067812
- corresation 13y ago
  This growing strategy of doing a top post that purports to respond to caricatures of other people is tiring, but is increasingly common (I would wager that an average depth query for HN posts would show a strong trend towards decreasing). Yes, someone said the post is hyperbolic drivel. You can argue subjectively whether that is true or not, but simply calling it "denial" is not a credible way of responding to it. And FWIW...public enemy #1? Linkbait garbage. The "hero tech genius of SV" remains an absolutely common media story, and SV companies remain among the most respected and adored names. Comparing them with banks, or claiming that they're perceived as a public enemy, is indeed, hyperbolic drivel. Some people protested a bus in San Francisco. Cue hysterics and gross-overreactions.
cyphunk 13y ago
These articles that treat each section heading as it's own poetic moment, as if each were meant to be a haiku, are getting old.
justinzollars 13y ago
Another poorly written argument in a string of media narratives.
nostrademons 13y ago
Two things came to mind reading this: 1. Marc Andreesen's "Software is eating the world" investment theory. 2. The history of the robber baron era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Technologies like steamboats, steel, railroads, oil, etc. also arose first in industries where they were "strictly beneficial" and let people do things they couldn't otherwise do. But by the early 1900s, they'd started eating other industries. The automobile eliminated the professions of carriage drivers and horseback riders. Oil eliminated the whaling industry. Textile manufacturing moved from water-power mills in New England to steam & oil-powered mills in the South. The largest single occupation in 1900 was "domestic servant" - by the 1950s, it no longer existed, because home appliances had completely replaced the job. All of these involved significant dislocation of workers, and the corresponding political blowback. There was a large anarcho-communist movement in the U.S. from the 1890s to 1920s [1], including violence and bomb scares [2]. We almost became a fascist country in 1933 [3], a "counterrevolution" of sorts to FDR's New Deal. But that doesn't mean we'd want to return to a world where we didn't have cars, horseshit lines the streets, whales are extinct, everybody sleeps at dusk, and the bulk of the population works in textiles or domestic service. The process of getting here wasn't easy, but all of the political upheaval and human dislocation was very necessary to build the world we have now. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#Early_American_anarcho-communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bo... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
- twoodfin 13y ago
  I think you're strongly overstating the significance of the "Business Plot" when you say it "almost" made the U.S. a fascist country. Certainly your Wikipedia citation does not back that claim.
- Crito 13y ago
  Famously, in the early part of the 19th century there was civil unrest caused by the continued mechanization of looms (a process that started in the 18th century): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
rayiner 13y ago
The article lacks surprising self-awareness in a lot of respects, but I want to focus on one specifically: "Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services." It's not just that people are mad at Silicon Valley companies for competing with existing industries. It's that they're mad about Silicon Valley companies riding roughshod over the web of compromises and understandings that exist between these industries and the people affected by these industries. And summarily dismissing all of these concerns as merely political protection for existing players, as libertarian leaning people are wont to do, doesn't cut it. As Silicon Valley companies leave cyberspace to enter meat space, the biggest realization they will have is that managing interactions with other humans becomes tremendously more important. On the internet, websites are sandboxes. In real life, every thing a company does has effects on other people. E.g. AirBnB can't do whatever they want on their website, but the rentals they broker are real apartments in real buildings with real neighbors, who have their own concerns that have nothing to do with AirBnB's profit motive.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Underwhelming article. There is some value in it. The focus of the current crop of VC darlings is competitive. Instead of "let's build something new", it's "let's use VC rocket fuel to blow up something old, and get rich amid the chaos". That culture exists because of the VCs' emotional need to feel superior; it's not the fault of the engineers. The overarching theme of betrayal and decline in Silicon Valley is worth noting. California used to represent a Middle Path between the historical extremes of class warfare (culminating in violent revolt) and acceptance of subordination (culminating in persistent, generational slavery). You could Go West, find clean air and cheap land, build something awesome, and win just by outperforming. You didn't have to fight or cower, you could walk away and do your own thing and be really good at it. You weren't trying to destroy or humiliate or "disrupt" incumbents. You just went to a place where they were irrelevant and (to borrow from Havel) lived in truth. That living in truth probably ended around 1990. Now, Valley startups are the new face of status quo assholes, except with several times the arrogance and hubris. Let's make one comparison based on how departing employees are treated. Banks (and law firms) give severance when they fire people, and consider those who leave to be alumni. VC darlings ruin the reputations of those who part them. Banks have honest layoffs when business is bad. VC startups have bullshit PIPs. That's just one example. On external and internal matters, whether your focus is on customers or employees or the environment, Wall Street is far more ethical than any of these VC darlings are. It's not even close. And unless you end up as an architect or data scientist or in R&D, the work in tech proper isn't actually any more interesting than what's in finance (and the latter is compensated much better). Most software engineers end up as drones churning tickets they don't care about, which is far worse than being a quant at a hedge fund. (The work in finance isn't inspiring in the "I'm changing the world" sense, but it's tolerable and often fun.) Wall Street also is not afraid to reward excellence, while Valley companies form no-poach pacts that put a ceiling on engineer compensation and force the best ones either into management or into hedge funds once they have kids. What is Silicon Valley now? It's a finishing school for the spoiled, snot-nosed, spawn of the old establishment, whose parents pull connections to make it look like their mediocre progeny actually built something while all the work was done by H1-B indentured servants and clueless 22-year-olds getting 0.01% equity while working 90 hours per week. Silicon Valley deserves to be Public Enemy #1 (although, in fact, I don't think it is; it's not nearly as hated as we in the HN bubble believe) but the reasons are far more numerous and much deeper than what the OP describes.
alecco 13y ago
How come this story doesn't get above the fold? 23rd and clearly more upvotes than several older stories. Is this a technical issue or a mod issue? http://i.imgur.com/peD9gk2.png http://i.imgur.com/peD9gk2.png
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  That's the effect of flagging a story, which I have no doubt many people are doing.
- vellum 13y ago
  Techcrunch is probably one of the sites that gets automatically penalized. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
goggles99 13y ago
There seems to be a lot of people here who think that technology ate up all the jobs. Actually the largest number of jobs that have disappeared are from the manufacturing industry. There is a few reasons behind this. Trade agreements, heavy regulation of pollution and over demanding unions made it far cheaper to have China (and the rest of the world) manufacture everything for us. The other reason is that people in the US have changed. They don't want to do these jobs anymore. They are lazy and feel entitled to better jobs (though they aren't qualified for them). People would rather go an permanent disability or welfare. There are literally thousands of labor and manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US today. Jobs that US citizens used to do. Couple this with the lost jobs that illegal Mexicans do today (jobs that "American's won't do"), and we have found 3/4 of these mysteriously disappearing jobs. This has nothing to do with Silicon Valley or technology in general. It is about policy and attitude. It is ridiculous to make claims that Technology has displaced 18-20% of American workers in the last 15-20 years. Why do I say 18-20%? Because the true unemployment today (by more traditional US counting) is currently at 30%. I'll, give you 10-12% for being in a bad economy - thus a loss of 18-20%. Show me how this is the fault of technology (and I don't mean from a sociological standpoint - that is a whole other argument).
- Crito 13y ago
  My understanding (I have seen this stated before on HN, but don't have a source at the moment), is that there is currently more manufacturing in America than ever before. It is just of the more mechanized sort, it does not require nearly as many unskilled or low-skilled laborers as it once did.
  - mikeyouse 13y ago
    This chart (standardized to 1973 peak = 100) shows what you're saying: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=rrU http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=rrU We're doing 2.5x the manufacturing with 40% fewer employees.
    - goggles99 13y ago
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
If we have the audacity to disrupt entire industries, we should have the audacity to take on the most pressing problems facing our communities this.
- Crito 13y ago
  Just because Uber wants to disrupt the Taxi industry does not mean that they have any obligation or ability to also fight malaria, human trafficking, stop world hunger and terrorism, or house the homeless. By all means, it would be ideal if the people getting rich would devote some of their wealth and, after retirement, perhaps some of their time, to tackling these problems. Bill Gates has been doing great work advocating this sort of philanthropy and we should all encourage that. Uber isn't a charity though, their mission statement isn't fighting these problems. If they want to make corporate donations to charities, that is fantastic, but they are not a charity themselves. Expecting solutions from them to these problems is unfair.
snowwrestler 13y ago
It's another step forward in the maturation of the Internet technology industry, which grew up, with the Internet itself, under a regime of benign neglect. That time is over, as evidenced by the growing impingement of regulations, taxes, law enforcement, spying, and now populism on what Internet technology companies are trying to do. I don't see any reason to believe that Internet technologies are somehow unique or special enough to avoid these sorts of interactions and conflicts with the rest of broader society. Many CEOs and investors of Internet companies seem to think of themselves as self-made and self-contained leaders who are naturally free from the constraints of other industries. The leaders of railroads, steel mills, oil companies, car companies, real estate, etc. once saw themselves the same way. Now those industries are tightly hemmed with regulations at the local, state, national, and in some cases international levels. Internet companies will be too--especially as they tread onto these turfs. I'm not saying this is good--I'm just saying it's reality. To fight back, the Internet industry will need a strong presence in Washington and in politics. But that goes against the pseudo-libertarian culture, so they don't have one, aside from the few biggest companies like Google and Facebook. The hardest part is that there is no natural political home for the Internet company mindset today. The Democratic Party, while in line with the social leanings of Internet leaders, is also home to the populist movements taking aim at Silicon Valley's riches and entitlement. And while part of the Republican Party is in line with the economic and regulatory mindset of Internet companies, it does not hold the reigns of the party. It is at least sharing them with Tea Party and religious grassroots movements that most Internet company leaders are personally uncomfortable with.
bonemachine 13y ago
Am curious as to what the "public beaches" thing is in reference to (being as the links don't seem to be working in the original article): Some of the blows have been self-inflicted, like venture capitalists who compare progressivism to Nazism or who block access to public beaches. I mean, I know that libertarian types (in SV and elsewhere) don't seem to put much stock in this "public property" concept, generally, but is there some particular local controversy they're alluding to here?
- diogenescynic 13y ago
  Here's the story and discussion from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135206 Vinod Khosla, a billionaire investor, is trying to keep Martins Beach access private.
  - bonemachine 13y ago
    Yep, pretty creepy. But thanks for the tip!
deleted 13y ago
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JohnTHaller 13y ago
This is, honestly, a pretty silly article since it is cherry picking certain bad apples and setting it against the backdrop of the bus protests in San Francisco (mostly the last round of gentrification protesting against this round of gentrification). Yes, SF's housing market is crap, which is a combination of absurd laws and regulations plus demand. Tech workers wanting to live there are helping on the demand side, but that's about it. As for disruptive industries, cherrypicking AirBnb and Uber isn't representative of the vast majority of the industry. Airbnb enables about 1/2 of its users to illegally sublet their apartments in cities like NYC. And its annoying a lot of the folks out here. But does that make other tech companies bad? Uber, from various anecdotal insider reports, seems like a pretty shady company that tried to operate illegally in multiple cities but is being reigned in. Does that make other tech companies bad? King.com got absurd trademarks for their game designed to extract money from unsuspecting players and is now using those trademarks to inhibit competition. But does that make other tech companies bad? Yes, Apple price fixed the whole book publishing industry and Google bought and killed off multiple products people liked and Adobe costs too much and all three of them conspired to keep tech wages down. And Facebook is an immense privacy-gobbling behemoth that won't let you install their Android app unless you let them read your SMS messages. But does that make ALL other tech companies bad? Realistically, it's a combination of the fact that some companies are now big enough to actually throw their weight around money/size wise the way other industries do -- Industries that get kickbacks, govt handouts, etc on things like corn and oil that most of America hates -- and the fact that the bad actors are getting a decent amount of press for their bad actions. But that doesn't make all tech companies bad. Nor does it make the actors engaging in these actions all bad. And it certainly doesn't make the average wage earner at a company working for a living worthy of harassment.
- S4M 13y ago
  I honestly find it hard to know if your comment is ironic or not.
  - kremlin 13y ago
    I was thinking the same. "99% of tech companies make the rest of us look bad" is how I was reading it.
deleted 13y ago
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ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
Really? You think people elsewhere in the USA care about the Echo Chamber's opinions of itself? If anything tech companies are public enemy no. 2 (no. 1 being the NSA) because they don't respect users' privacy. If Silicon Valley was located anywhere else in the USA and not in the San Francicso Bay Area would things ever have gotten this bad? How much of the problem can be blamed on the tech industry and how much of it can be blamed on the area's notorious politics (beg Twitter to stay within city limits, invest 10 billion dollars for the high speed rail link to downtown San Francisco, refuse to build more housing to meet demands, complain about tax paying tech workers forcing the poor out of the area).
ForHackernews 13y ago
Wow, check out the comments on that article. Are we sure this isn't a parody? > Scott Johnson · Managing Director at New Atlantic Ventures > Like the Yankees, and Patriots, Harvard, and Oracle, Siilicon Valley has a swagger that comes from repeated success. So of course there is growing resentment toward the region. Bask in it. The resentment is just admiration manifested as envy.
kremlin 13y ago
Kind of annoying that the first paragraph's links don't actually link to anything, I was interested in those would-be links.
argumentum 13y ago
> Silicon Valley Is Now Public Enemy No. 1 No, it isn't. For evidence, watch the Daily Show (a fairly mainstream liberal show) take on the Google bus incidents.* Yes, there is animosity, some of which is deserved, towards rich people, some of whom are in the "tech industry". But very few people without an agenda to push hold anywhere near the level of vitriol promulgated by the "tech press" (really a euphemism for crappy tabloids). Keeping a sense of proportion is not denial .. * http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-23-2014-anjan-sundaram http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-23-201...
dancric 13y ago
There are lots of good comments here, and as the writer, I do appreciate all of them. One element of this story, which was hard to really spend the time on, is the public's difference in perception regarding disruption of other technology companies, compared to its perception of industrial and service based industries. The public doesn't seem to care when a company like Intel takes on a company like Fairchild Semiconductor. Part of the issue is a lack of technical sophistication, so it is difficult to separate competitors based on their products. The more important reason, though, is that technology devouring technology is easily understood as progress. 500 engineers lost their job at one firm, but a new firm is hiring 500. Now take a look at the service disrupters like AirBnB, Uber, etc. First, unlike technical disruption, the public understands the businesses here very well. It's a hotel. It's a taxi. It's a laundromat. Second, there is a distinct feel that these new companies are not playing by the rules, whatever those rules might be (it doesn't help that these companies publicly flaunt the rules either). Third, and most importantly, there is far more perception of the people losing their jobs, rather than the gain these companies are making in terms of labor flexibility. There are plenty of greenfield companies out there (Nest, DeepMind, Climate Corporation are acquisitions in the last month that come to mind). But the region is not exclusively doing that kind of progress anymore, and so we shouldn't be surprised when people aren't immediately positive about the changes taking place anymore.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  I think that you're painting "the public" with a very broad brush. A more accurate model might be that people are happy when new options become available to them, ambivalent when stuff goes on that doesn't impact them, annoyed when people speak negatively about what's important to them, and angry when what is important to them is taken away from them. This is a pretty universal model, but the specifics differ depending on what is important to a person. My girlfriend and I love AirBnB. It's allowed us to visit some pretty remote locations on very short notice at very reasonable prices. I have a friend who is surviving off the income from AirBnBing out her apartment. Probably, her neighbors don't like it. The hotel industry certainly doesn't like it. I have friends in SF who similarly love having Uber available, because it's got them home late at night after a night at a few bars. As part of the yuppie tech demographic in the Mission, they are also hated by some of their neighbors. What's changed isn't what's going on in the world, it's who is now angry enough to speak to the media. Somebody who finds a great weekend getaway on AirBnB isn't going to write a story about it or talk to a TechCrunch reporter; they will write a review on the site so that other people can have a similarly great experience. Somebody who loses their job because their hotel can't compete against AirBnB is both plenty angry and now has plenty of time to complain to the media. I'm reminded here of reading Foucault in college, and specifically the role of the discourse in society. Foucault's central theory was that control of what can be said in the public sphere reflects power dynamics in a society. When public mindspace like the media starts leaning in a certain direction, it doesn't necessarily mean that reality has changed underneath. Rather, it means that certain interests have organized and care deeply enough about a certain issue that they're willing to spend time making sure that public belief swings a certain way on that issue.
wavefunction 13y ago
It's pretty rough out there right now if you're not a techie, something that's easy to forget. The people responsible for this are the political and lobbying business class who have driven a larger share of the nation's wealth towards that same lobbying business class in a feedback loop that seems to have no end to its rapaciousness. So you've got a bunch of people who work service or working-class jobs feeling the squeeze even more than the middle-class which is rapidly disappearing. We are the 'available' symbols of their real targets. Maybe it's time to pick sides, or encourage 'both' sides to work something else out. Otherwise it will be plenty of techie cannon-fodder for the mobs while the private helicopters make like Saigon. There is so much lifestyle media shoving wealth and opulence in everyone's face 24/7. It's one thing when it seems like maybe you might access that at some point in your life, and another where it seems to be there to taunt you.
computerslol 13y ago
"This is an exceptional period for the most exceptional region in the country." wow.
iterative 13y ago
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -- Robert A. Heinlein

59 points by ssclafani 13y ago

> That has been a fair assessment historically, but that is no longer the case. Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services The automobile destroyed the value of existing companies, too.

cylinder 13y ago

This is hyperbolic drivel; obviously TC is trying to create something out of nothing to drive clicks. Average lay people don't know about the stories referenced in this article and could not care less. Step out of the echo chamber!

je_bailey 13y ago
I concur with this assessment. There are people outside of silicon valley who care about silicon valley. Much like there are a ton of people who watch reality tv and think that it's real. Since this is HN there are probably a larger then average number of readers who would fall into this camp. But for the most part. Nobody outside of that region cares. I'm on the east coast, SV isn't in the news, it's not a concern, nobody here that I am aware of here can be bothered to care what happens.

smoorman1024 13y ago

Anyone else notice that the anchors at the beginning of the paragraph don't have a reference: <a>attacks on private buses</a> <a>stalkers of Google executives</a>

segmondy 13y ago

Nah, Incompetent Politicians, Wallstreet/Banks are still public enemy No. 1. Perhaps people that live in the SV area who are not in the industry consider the tech industry an enemy because they have been priced outside of homes and are feeling left behind. Those outside of SV don't consider SV an enemy or even think about them.

rayiner 13y ago
I think much of the vilification of the political system and Wall Street is unwarranted and driven by lack of understanding. That said, folks in Silicon Valley will very soon join the club and see for themselves what it is like, because as automation and technology continues to eat away at jobs, they are not far behind these industries as far as vilification goes.
27182818284 13y ago
They are #1, but it is safe to say that SV is trending. I've heard bad shit from people that live in Oakland, people in the Midwest that have never been to SF or Oakland, and increasingly on the net I see grumpiness building. All anecdotal, of course, but I do see it.

alecco 13y ago

The level of denial of the problem in this thread is astounding. It will only exacerbate the issue. We are not heroes out of an Ayn Rand novel. We don't live in a bubble, we live within a rich and complex society. We better learn empathy towards the rest if we don't expect to get forced to give back. There are many social issues, youth unemployment being one of the worst. And we, techies, are in a great position to promote social development instead of short-sighted and selfish corporate profits, to promote a free internet where users are in charge, to help out others who don't have our talents. A lot of technologies we use (Internet, Web, Unix/BSD) were financed in good part by the public. Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.

BlackDeath3 13y ago
What a convincing post.
smtddr 13y ago
The future: http://i.imgur.com/lkdFZMi.png http://i.imgur.com/lkdFZMi.png It's just like another comment(can't find it right now) said in an earlier story. Techies are turning into the new Bank execs. Greed[1] is taking over; screw anyone/anything that tries to stop us. At this rate, tech people will be in high-security gated communities while everyone outside suffers from being displaced with no plan on how to keep them busy & happy. All the denial & excuses you're reading I'm sure also exist in the minds of Bank/Oil/megacorp execs too. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067812
corresation 13y ago
This growing strategy of doing a top post that purports to respond to caricatures of other people is tiring, but is increasingly common (I would wager that an average depth query for HN posts would show a strong trend towards decreasing). Yes, someone said the post is hyperbolic drivel. You can argue subjectively whether that is true or not, but simply calling it "denial" is not a credible way of responding to it. And FWIW...public enemy #1? Linkbait garbage. The "hero tech genius of SV" remains an absolutely common media story, and SV companies remain among the most respected and adored names. Comparing them with banks, or claiming that they're perceived as a public enemy, is indeed, hyperbolic drivel. Some people protested a bus in San Francisco. Cue hysterics and gross-overreactions.

cyphunk 13y ago

These articles that treat each section heading as it's own poetic moment, as if each were meant to be a haiku, are getting old.

justinzollars 13y ago

Another poorly written argument in a string of media narratives.

nostrademons 13y ago

Two things came to mind reading this: 1. Marc Andreesen's "Software is eating the world" investment theory. 2. The history of the robber baron era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Technologies like steamboats, steel, railroads, oil, etc. also arose first in industries where they were "strictly beneficial" and let people do things they couldn't otherwise do. But by the early 1900s, they'd started eating other industries. The automobile eliminated the professions of carriage drivers and horseback riders. Oil eliminated the whaling industry. Textile manufacturing moved from water-power mills in New England to steam & oil-powered mills in the South. The largest single occupation in 1900 was "domestic servant" - by the 1950s, it no longer existed, because home appliances had completely replaced the job. All of these involved significant dislocation of workers, and the corresponding political blowback. There was a large anarcho-communist movement in the U.S. from the 1890s to 1920s [1], including violence and bomb scares [2]. We almost became a fascist country in 1933 [3], a "counterrevolution" of sorts to FDR's New Deal. But that doesn't mean we'd want to return to a world where we didn't have cars, horseshit lines the streets, whales are extinct, everybody sleeps at dusk, and the bulk of the population works in textiles or domestic service. The process of getting here wasn't easy, but all of the political upheaval and human dislocation was very necessary to build the world we have now. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#Early_American_anarcho-communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bo... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

twoodfin 13y ago
I think you're strongly overstating the significance of the "Business Plot" when you say it "almost" made the U.S. a fascist country. Certainly your Wikipedia citation does not back that claim.
Crito 13y ago
Famously, in the early part of the 19th century there was civil unrest caused by the continued mechanization of looms (a process that started in the 18th century): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

rayiner 13y ago

The article lacks surprising self-awareness in a lot of respects, but I want to focus on one specifically: "Today’s companies are increasingly destroying the value of existing companies to create the next generation of products and services." It's not just that people are mad at Silicon Valley companies for competing with existing industries. It's that they're mad about Silicon Valley companies riding roughshod over the web of compromises and understandings that exist between these industries and the people affected by these industries. And summarily dismissing all of these concerns as merely political protection for existing players, as libertarian leaning people are wont to do, doesn't cut it. As Silicon Valley companies leave cyberspace to enter meat space, the biggest realization they will have is that managing interactions with other humans becomes tremendously more important. On the internet, websites are sandboxes. In real life, every thing a company does has effects on other people. E.g. AirBnB can't do whatever they want on their website, but the rentals they broker are real apartments in real buildings with real neighbors, who have their own concerns that have nothing to do with AirBnB's profit motive.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Underwhelming article. There is some value in it. The focus of the current crop of VC darlings is competitive. Instead of "let's build something new", it's "let's use VC rocket fuel to blow up something old, and get rich amid the chaos". That culture exists because of the VCs' emotional need to feel superior; it's not the fault of the engineers. The overarching theme of betrayal and decline in Silicon Valley is worth noting. California used to represent a Middle Path between the historical extremes of class warfare (culminating in violent revolt) and acceptance of subordination (culminating in persistent, generational slavery). You could Go West, find clean air and cheap land, build something awesome, and win just by outperforming. You didn't have to fight or cower, you could walk away and do your own thing and be really good at it. You weren't trying to destroy or humiliate or "disrupt" incumbents. You just went to a place where they were irrelevant and (to borrow from Havel) lived in truth. That living in truth probably ended around 1990. Now, Valley startups are the new face of status quo assholes, except with several times the arrogance and hubris. Let's make one comparison based on how departing employees are treated. Banks (and law firms) give severance when they fire people, and consider those who leave to be alumni. VC darlings ruin the reputations of those who part them. Banks have honest layoffs when business is bad. VC startups have bullshit PIPs. That's just one example. On external and internal matters, whether your focus is on customers or employees or the environment, Wall Street is far more ethical than any of these VC darlings are. It's not even close. And unless you end up as an architect or data scientist or in R&D, the work in tech proper isn't actually any more interesting than what's in finance (and the latter is compensated much better). Most software engineers end up as drones churning tickets they don't care about, which is far worse than being a quant at a hedge fund. (The work in finance isn't inspiring in the "I'm changing the world" sense, but it's tolerable and often fun.) Wall Street also is not afraid to reward excellence, while Valley companies form no-poach pacts that put a ceiling on engineer compensation and force the best ones either into management or into hedge funds once they have kids. What is Silicon Valley now? It's a finishing school for the spoiled, snot-nosed, spawn of the old establishment, whose parents pull connections to make it look like their mediocre progeny actually built something while all the work was done by H1-B indentured servants and clueless 22-year-olds getting 0.01% equity while working 90 hours per week. Silicon Valley deserves to be Public Enemy #1 (although, in fact, I don't think it is; it's not nearly as hated as we in the HN bubble believe) but the reasons are far more numerous and much deeper than what the OP describes.

alecco 13y ago

How come this story doesn't get above the fold? 23rd and clearly more upvotes than several older stories. Is this a technical issue or a mod issue? http://i.imgur.com/peD9gk2.png http://i.imgur.com/peD9gk2.png

JoshTriplett 13y ago
That's the effect of flagging a story, which I have no doubt many people are doing.
vellum 13y ago
Techcrunch is probably one of the sites that gets automatically penalized. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

goggles99 13y ago

There seems to be a lot of people here who think that technology ate up all the jobs. Actually the largest number of jobs that have disappeared are from the manufacturing industry. There is a few reasons behind this. Trade agreements, heavy regulation of pollution and over demanding unions made it far cheaper to have China (and the rest of the world) manufacture everything for us. The other reason is that people in the US have changed. They don't want to do these jobs anymore. They are lazy and feel entitled to better jobs (though they aren't qualified for them). People would rather go an permanent disability or welfare. There are literally thousands of labor and manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US today. Jobs that US citizens used to do. Couple this with the lost jobs that illegal Mexicans do today (jobs that "American's won't do"), and we have found 3/4 of these mysteriously disappearing jobs. This has nothing to do with Silicon Valley or technology in general. It is about policy and attitude. It is ridiculous to make claims that Technology has displaced 18-20% of American workers in the last 15-20 years. Why do I say 18-20%? Because the true unemployment today (by more traditional US counting) is currently at 30%. I'll, give you 10-12% for being in a bad economy - thus a loss of 18-20%. Show me how this is the fault of technology (and I don't mean from a sociological standpoint - that is a whole other argument).

Crito 13y ago
My understanding (I have seen this stated before on HN, but don't have a source at the moment), is that there is currently more manufacturing in America than ever before. It is just of the more mechanized sort, it does not require nearly as many unskilled or low-skilled laborers as it once did.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  This chart (standardized to 1973 peak = 100) shows what you're saying: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=rrU http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=rrU We're doing 2.5x the manufacturing with 40% fewer employees.
  - goggles99 13y ago

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

If we have the audacity to disrupt entire industries, we should have the audacity to take on the most pressing problems facing our communities this.

Crito 13y ago
Just because Uber wants to disrupt the Taxi industry does not mean that they have any obligation or ability to also fight malaria, human trafficking, stop world hunger and terrorism, or house the homeless. By all means, it would be ideal if the people getting rich would devote some of their wealth and, after retirement, perhaps some of their time, to tackling these problems. Bill Gates has been doing great work advocating this sort of philanthropy and we should all encourage that. Uber isn't a charity though, their mission statement isn't fighting these problems. If they want to make corporate donations to charities, that is fantastic, but they are not a charity themselves. Expecting solutions from them to these problems is unfair.

snowwrestler 13y ago

It's another step forward in the maturation of the Internet technology industry, which grew up, with the Internet itself, under a regime of benign neglect. That time is over, as evidenced by the growing impingement of regulations, taxes, law enforcement, spying, and now populism on what Internet technology companies are trying to do. I don't see any reason to believe that Internet technologies are somehow unique or special enough to avoid these sorts of interactions and conflicts with the rest of broader society. Many CEOs and investors of Internet companies seem to think of themselves as self-made and self-contained leaders who are naturally free from the constraints of other industries. The leaders of railroads, steel mills, oil companies, car companies, real estate, etc. once saw themselves the same way. Now those industries are tightly hemmed with regulations at the local, state, national, and in some cases international levels. Internet companies will be too--especially as they tread onto these turfs. I'm not saying this is good--I'm just saying it's reality. To fight back, the Internet industry will need a strong presence in Washington and in politics. But that goes against the pseudo-libertarian culture, so they don't have one, aside from the few biggest companies like Google and Facebook. The hardest part is that there is no natural political home for the Internet company mindset today. The Democratic Party, while in line with the social leanings of Internet leaders, is also home to the populist movements taking aim at Silicon Valley's riches and entitlement. And while part of the Republican Party is in line with the economic and regulatory mindset of Internet companies, it does not hold the reigns of the party. It is at least sharing them with Tea Party and religious grassroots movements that most Internet company leaders are personally uncomfortable with.

bonemachine 13y ago

Am curious as to what the "public beaches" thing is in reference to (being as the links don't seem to be working in the original article): Some of the blows have been self-inflicted, like venture capitalists who compare progressivism to Nazism or who block access to public beaches. I mean, I know that libertarian types (in SV and elsewhere) don't seem to put much stock in this "public property" concept, generally, but is there some particular local controversy they're alluding to here?

diogenescynic 13y ago
Here's the story and discussion from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135206 Vinod Khosla, a billionaire investor, is trying to keep Martins Beach access private.
- bonemachine 13y ago
  Yep, pretty creepy. But thanks for the tip!

deleted 13y ago

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JohnTHaller 13y ago

This is, honestly, a pretty silly article since it is cherry picking certain bad apples and setting it against the backdrop of the bus protests in San Francisco (mostly the last round of gentrification protesting against this round of gentrification). Yes, SF's housing market is crap, which is a combination of absurd laws and regulations plus demand. Tech workers wanting to live there are helping on the demand side, but that's about it. As for disruptive industries, cherrypicking AirBnb and Uber isn't representative of the vast majority of the industry. Airbnb enables about 1/2 of its users to illegally sublet their apartments in cities like NYC. And its annoying a lot of the folks out here. But does that make other tech companies bad? Uber, from various anecdotal insider reports, seems like a pretty shady company that tried to operate illegally in multiple cities but is being reigned in. Does that make other tech companies bad? King.com got absurd trademarks for their game designed to extract money from unsuspecting players and is now using those trademarks to inhibit competition. But does that make other tech companies bad? Yes, Apple price fixed the whole book publishing industry and Google bought and killed off multiple products people liked and Adobe costs too much and all three of them conspired to keep tech wages down. And Facebook is an immense privacy-gobbling behemoth that won't let you install their Android app unless you let them read your SMS messages. But does that make ALL other tech companies bad? Realistically, it's a combination of the fact that some companies are now big enough to actually throw their weight around money/size wise the way other industries do -- Industries that get kickbacks, govt handouts, etc on things like corn and oil that most of America hates -- and the fact that the bad actors are getting a decent amount of press for their bad actions. But that doesn't make all tech companies bad. Nor does it make the actors engaging in these actions all bad. And it certainly doesn't make the average wage earner at a company working for a living worthy of harassment.

S4M 13y ago
I honestly find it hard to know if your comment is ironic or not.
- kremlin 13y ago
  I was thinking the same. "99% of tech companies make the rest of us look bad" is how I was reading it.

deleted 13y ago

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ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

Really? You think people elsewhere in the USA care about the Echo Chamber's opinions of itself? If anything tech companies are public enemy no. 2 (no. 1 being the NSA) because they don't respect users' privacy. If Silicon Valley was located anywhere else in the USA and not in the San Francicso Bay Area would things ever have gotten this bad? How much of the problem can be blamed on the tech industry and how much of it can be blamed on the area's notorious politics (beg Twitter to stay within city limits, invest 10 billion dollars for the high speed rail link to downtown San Francisco, refuse to build more housing to meet demands, complain about tax paying tech workers forcing the poor out of the area).

ForHackernews 13y ago

Wow, check out the comments on that article. Are we sure this isn't a parody? > Scott Johnson · Managing Director at New Atlantic Ventures > Like the Yankees, and Patriots, Harvard, and Oracle, Siilicon Valley has a swagger that comes from repeated success. So of course there is growing resentment toward the region. Bask in it. The resentment is just admiration manifested as envy.

kremlin 13y ago

Kind of annoying that the first paragraph's links don't actually link to anything, I was interested in those would-be links.

argumentum 13y ago

> Silicon Valley Is Now Public Enemy No. 1 No, it isn't. For evidence, watch the Daily Show (a fairly mainstream liberal show) take on the Google bus incidents.* Yes, there is animosity, some of which is deserved, towards rich people, some of whom are in the "tech industry". But very few people without an agenda to push hold anywhere near the level of vitriol promulgated by the "tech press" (really a euphemism for crappy tabloids). Keeping a sense of proportion is not denial .. * http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-23-2014-anjan-sundaram http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-23-201...

dancric 13y ago

There are lots of good comments here, and as the writer, I do appreciate all of them. One element of this story, which was hard to really spend the time on, is the public's difference in perception regarding disruption of other technology companies, compared to its perception of industrial and service based industries. The public doesn't seem to care when a company like Intel takes on a company like Fairchild Semiconductor. Part of the issue is a lack of technical sophistication, so it is difficult to separate competitors based on their products. The more important reason, though, is that technology devouring technology is easily understood as progress. 500 engineers lost their job at one firm, but a new firm is hiring 500. Now take a look at the service disrupters like AirBnB, Uber, etc. First, unlike technical disruption, the public understands the businesses here very well. It's a hotel. It's a taxi. It's a laundromat. Second, there is a distinct feel that these new companies are not playing by the rules, whatever those rules might be (it doesn't help that these companies publicly flaunt the rules either). Third, and most importantly, there is far more perception of the people losing their jobs, rather than the gain these companies are making in terms of labor flexibility. There are plenty of greenfield companies out there (Nest, DeepMind, Climate Corporation are acquisitions in the last month that come to mind). But the region is not exclusively doing that kind of progress anymore, and so we shouldn't be surprised when people aren't immediately positive about the changes taking place anymore.

nostrademons 13y ago
I think that you're painting "the public" with a very broad brush. A more accurate model might be that people are happy when new options become available to them, ambivalent when stuff goes on that doesn't impact them, annoyed when people speak negatively about what's important to them, and angry when what is important to them is taken away from them. This is a pretty universal model, but the specifics differ depending on what is important to a person. My girlfriend and I love AirBnB. It's allowed us to visit some pretty remote locations on very short notice at very reasonable prices. I have a friend who is surviving off the income from AirBnBing out her apartment. Probably, her neighbors don't like it. The hotel industry certainly doesn't like it. I have friends in SF who similarly love having Uber available, because it's got them home late at night after a night at a few bars. As part of the yuppie tech demographic in the Mission, they are also hated by some of their neighbors. What's changed isn't what's going on in the world, it's who is now angry enough to speak to the media. Somebody who finds a great weekend getaway on AirBnB isn't going to write a story about it or talk to a TechCrunch reporter; they will write a review on the site so that other people can have a similarly great experience. Somebody who loses their job because their hotel can't compete against AirBnB is both plenty angry and now has plenty of time to complain to the media. I'm reminded here of reading Foucault in college, and specifically the role of the discourse in society. Foucault's central theory was that control of what can be said in the public sphere reflects power dynamics in a society. When public mindspace like the media starts leaning in a certain direction, it doesn't necessarily mean that reality has changed underneath. Rather, it means that certain interests have organized and care deeply enough about a certain issue that they're willing to spend time making sure that public belief swings a certain way on that issue.

wavefunction 13y ago

It's pretty rough out there right now if you're not a techie, something that's easy to forget. The people responsible for this are the political and lobbying business class who have driven a larger share of the nation's wealth towards that same lobbying business class in a feedback loop that seems to have no end to its rapaciousness. So you've got a bunch of people who work service or working-class jobs feeling the squeeze even more than the middle-class which is rapidly disappearing. We are the 'available' symbols of their real targets. Maybe it's time to pick sides, or encourage 'both' sides to work something else out. Otherwise it will be plenty of techie cannon-fodder for the mobs while the private helicopters make like Saigon. There is so much lifestyle media shoving wealth and opulence in everyone's face 24/7. It's one thing when it seems like maybe you might access that at some point in your life, and another where it seems to be there to taunt you.

computerslol 13y ago

"This is an exceptional period for the most exceptional region in the country." wow.

iterative 13y ago

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -- Robert A. Heinlein