6 ms·

Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anythin

Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush.

thoman23 12y ago
The more I read about Thiel, the more I wonder how someone so smart can be so dumb.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Most people don't question views that justify their wealth.
  - rodgerd 12y ago
    Which wouldn't be so bad, but Thiel, Andressen, et al, seem determined to foist their flavour of "smart stupid" on everyone else.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      Admittedly, I can kinda-sorta understand becoming a libertarian if you grew up in Northern California: its local/municipal/regional governments are a special kind of stupid that you only get when combining lower-class reaction with landowner chauvinism with new money elitism.
- melipone 12y ago
  Is that him who wants students to drop out of college? And he went to Stanford ... What a hypocrite!
- lectrick 12y ago
  The more I read words by people who have read about Thiel, the more I wonder how armchair critics without much achievement on their resume can expend so much hater energy. Since when was success only deserved by those who could do, or think, no wrong?
rayiner 12y ago
Whenever you call something "meritocratic" it's almost always a circular definition. How do you define "merit" in Silicon Valley and how do you know the "most meritorious" are the ones winning? If you don't have an independent objective measure of "merit" other than "success in Silicon Vallay" your assertion is merely tautological.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  I'd agree, although refine your criticism further: it's not so much a tautology as that "success in SV" selects for "people who appeal to VCs" which may or may not have anything to do with any other forms of merit (like the intelligence or technical merit people love to claim as being the underpinnings of "meritocracy".
ulfw 12y ago
The ones who 'sell' the best and who have the most connections and resources get ahead in today's Silicon Valley. It's as simple as that. Nothing 'meritocratic' about that. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocracy-trap.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocr...
- escherize 12y ago
  Unless you define merit as selling.
  - snlacks 12y ago
    Which in improving technology, it is not.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  It's the 5th Paper Belt hub: the financial center of technology. Silicon Valley itself is dying, but Stanford is going to remain a top university, so it'll generate the MDs and VPs of this new increasingly IB-like industry, and tradition is strong, so San Francisco has at least 50 years (in my estimation) at the lead of the finance-of-technology business. It'll also house a lot of management consultants specializing in outsourcing, an industry that's not going to go away until labor arbitrages disappear (at least 30 years). As for where technology itself will "go" next, I have no earthly idea. But you're right that in 2014, the Valley is a salesman's world. If you can raise funding, the balance of power between tech talent and fundraising has never been better for you.
michaelochurch 12y ago
I'm inclined to agree but, honestly, Peter Thiel is one of the better and more thoughtful ones within that set. Closed networks like "the Paypal Mafia" are really, really bad for the world and Thiel is at least showing some interest in looking outside of it. In general, I think he's less elitist than most of them are. One thing to remember about Silicon Valley is that it's still suburban California. It's fucking provincial. It has orders of magnitude more money (and the house prices reflect it) but it's even more like that "Agrestic" suburb in Weeds than anything in contemporary Southern California. I still remember, in the 1990s, Northern California thought of itself as "the Good California" because it wasn't the norm for 16-year-old boys to get Ferraris and 16-year-old girls to get boob jobs as birthday presents. In 2014, any perception that Northern California is culturally better in any way is false. Silicon Valley is a lot more brash than Hollywood is. I actually like most Southern Californians that I meet. I'm finding, as I get older, that West Coast privilege is more irksome and obnoxious to me than the East Coast variety. Most Harvard and Yale grads are down to earth and, to be honest, most Stanford graduate (except MBA, which is sociologically Undergrad++) students that I meet, I like... but this Stanford Welfare that produces Snapchats and Clinkles has got to fucking stop before it brings humiliation to the very idea of technology and sets us back 25 years. As I get older I hate the hypocritical pseudo-liberal privilege of tech more than the stuffy, blue-blooded East Coast variety. People are surprised by this, but those supposedly stodgy and "conservative" investment banks are far better places to be a woman, or minority, or just over 40, than VC-funded tech in the Valley. Silicon Valley is just a depressingly dysfunctional society and, over time, I think people are catching on to the fact and are starting to say, "I don't want anything to do with that shit". That's a real problem, because there are a lot of people doing great work (inside and outside of Silicon Valley) in technology, and I'd hate for their efforts to be hindered or set back by these stupid distractions coming from a few bad Stanford apples.
- monksy 12y ago
  Have you been on the east coast very much. For a lot of it. It's dog eat dog. The attitude in DC is "your car is worth less than my deductable." There is a reason for the term Massholes, it's not even contested. NYC is priced out because of the finance sector, geography, and the fact that there are too many people there. I'm not trying to take away from your critcisms of the west coast. But claiming that the Ivy league universities are more humble on the east coast is just blatantly incorrect. It's a status token. Prestige is a big deal. Personally, I found that Chicago tends to be more blue collar. They bring in a lot of the homeliness of the Midwest. It also connects transport, infrastructure, and manufacturing. The more I read about Peter Thiel the more I see him as incredibly smart and incredibly anti-competitive. He is open to admitting to it, but it's not a healthy business strategy to do that. (As how we've seen Redhat and others succeeded with an open business)
brighteyes 12y ago
> It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush. Fair point. Sports may indeed be fairer and more objective than other industries - results are easily measured, and are objective. And it's clear that the tech industry is far from perfect. However, tech does have several things that make it fairer than other industries: * You don't need a degree to get into tech. Sure, it can help - the article here is about Stanford, one of the best places to study at - but the industry also has plenty of self-taught people. To at least some extent, talent can rise despite not having e.g. parents that can pay for college. * The tools you need to self-teach are cheap, and getting cheaper. Personal computers are common these days. For comparison, some sports require almost no tools, but some do (e.g. skiing). Music is similar (some instruments are cheap, others not so much). But most careers don't work that way. You can't be a self-taught lawyer or doctor or soldier or social worker. * Talent has the opportunity to present itself in an abstract way. You can create an anonymous github account and prove your skills, and no one would know any demographic information about you. Something similar has happened in classical music, with people performing behind curtains so as to remove any bias due to their gender or race, and it was very helpful there. For comparison, sports doesn't work that way - you have to see people when they compete, so racial prejudice etc. might still have an impact. In tech and classical music, while things aren't perfect, there is a fairly natural way to diminish such effects, simply let people only see the abstract result of their work. * Some fields absolutely require a strong mentor, like in academia (perhaps also in sports? I don't know). This disadvantages people that have a hard time finding such mentors, either due to prejudice on the part of potential mentors, or just a lack of connections, or weak social skills. In tech, some people benefit from mentors, but there are also lots of examples of people that have never had a mentor and do very well. * Telecommuting is much more common in tech than other fields, even if it isn't ubiquitous there. We have the technical capability to let people work from home in tech, in most roles, and it makes things fairer in many ways. * You make a valid point that industries that depend on getting funding are less fair than others, all things being equal. However, tech has been driving down the amount of necessary funding, through open source software, things like AWS, etc. Again, tech is far from perfect, and has many flaws. Still, it's worth mentioning the good aspects.
foobarqux 12y ago
Unless you include genetic pre-disposition as meritous athletics is probably one of the most anti-meritocratic fields.
- sheensleeves 12y ago
  A claim from a blogger on these issues: performance enhancing drugs in athletics widen the gap between the genetically gifted and the less so. Seems reasonable, but not intuitive.
- rgoberstein 12y ago
  Of course physical genetics give many athletes an advantage, but any athlete will tell you that training - both mental and physical - are the only things that will make an athlete or team win and can frequently make up for predisposed characteristics that may be disadvantageous (shorter stature, smaller frame, etc). As far as meritocratic environments go, sports is certainly among the top.
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    "Natural advantage" and "merit" are essentially antonyms.
    - SamReidHughes 12y ago
      Maybe if you're some silly person that believes in free will it is.

thoman23 12y ago

The more I read about Thiel, the more I wonder how someone so smart can be so dumb.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Most people don't question views that justify their wealth.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  Which wouldn't be so bad, but Thiel, Andressen, et al, seem determined to foist their flavour of "smart stupid" on everyone else.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Admittedly, I can kinda-sorta understand becoming a libertarian if you grew up in Northern California: its local/municipal/regional governments are a special kind of stupid that you only get when combining lower-class reaction with landowner chauvinism with new money elitism.
melipone 12y ago
Is that him who wants students to drop out of college? And he went to Stanford ... What a hypocrite!
lectrick 12y ago
The more I read words by people who have read about Thiel, the more I wonder how armchair critics without much achievement on their resume can expend so much hater energy. Since when was success only deserved by those who could do, or think, no wrong?

rayiner 12y ago

Whenever you call something "meritocratic" it's almost always a circular definition. How do you define "merit" in Silicon Valley and how do you know the "most meritorious" are the ones winning? If you don't have an independent objective measure of "merit" other than "success in Silicon Vallay" your assertion is merely tautological.

rodgerd 12y ago
I'd agree, although refine your criticism further: it's not so much a tautology as that "success in SV" selects for "people who appeal to VCs" which may or may not have anything to do with any other forms of merit (like the intelligence or technical merit people love to claim as being the underpinnings of "meritocracy".

ulfw 12y ago

The ones who 'sell' the best and who have the most connections and resources get ahead in today's Silicon Valley. It's as simple as that. Nothing 'meritocratic' about that. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocracy-trap.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocr...

escherize 12y ago
Unless you define merit as selling.
- snlacks 12y ago
  Which in improving technology, it is not.
michaelochurch 12y ago
It's the 5th Paper Belt hub: the financial center of technology. Silicon Valley itself is dying, but Stanford is going to remain a top university, so it'll generate the MDs and VPs of this new increasingly IB-like industry, and tradition is strong, so San Francisco has at least 50 years (in my estimation) at the lead of the finance-of-technology business. It'll also house a lot of management consultants specializing in outsourcing, an industry that's not going to go away until labor arbitrages disappear (at least 30 years). As for where technology itself will "go" next, I have no earthly idea. But you're right that in 2014, the Valley is a salesman's world. If you can raise funding, the balance of power between tech talent and fundraising has never been better for you.

michaelochurch 12y ago

I'm inclined to agree but, honestly, Peter Thiel is one of the better and more thoughtful ones within that set. Closed networks like "the Paypal Mafia" are really, really bad for the world and Thiel is at least showing some interest in looking outside of it. In general, I think he's less elitist than most of them are. One thing to remember about Silicon Valley is that it's still suburban California. It's fucking provincial. It has orders of magnitude more money (and the house prices reflect it) but it's even more like that "Agrestic" suburb in Weeds than anything in contemporary Southern California. I still remember, in the 1990s, Northern California thought of itself as "the Good California" because it wasn't the norm for 16-year-old boys to get Ferraris and 16-year-old girls to get boob jobs as birthday presents. In 2014, any perception that Northern California is culturally better in any way is false. Silicon Valley is a lot more brash than Hollywood is. I actually like most Southern Californians that I meet. I'm finding, as I get older, that West Coast privilege is more irksome and obnoxious to me than the East Coast variety. Most Harvard and Yale grads are down to earth and, to be honest, most Stanford graduate (except MBA, which is sociologically Undergrad++) students that I meet, I like... but this Stanford Welfare that produces Snapchats and Clinkles has got to fucking stop before it brings humiliation to the very idea of technology and sets us back 25 years. As I get older I hate the hypocritical pseudo-liberal privilege of tech more than the stuffy, blue-blooded East Coast variety. People are surprised by this, but those supposedly stodgy and "conservative" investment banks are far better places to be a woman, or minority, or just over 40, than VC-funded tech in the Valley. Silicon Valley is just a depressingly dysfunctional society and, over time, I think people are catching on to the fact and are starting to say, "I don't want anything to do with that shit". That's a real problem, because there are a lot of people doing great work (inside and outside of Silicon Valley) in technology, and I'd hate for their efforts to be hindered or set back by these stupid distractions coming from a few bad Stanford apples.

monksy 12y ago
Have you been on the east coast very much. For a lot of it. It's dog eat dog. The attitude in DC is "your car is worth less than my deductable." There is a reason for the term Massholes, it's not even contested. NYC is priced out because of the finance sector, geography, and the fact that there are too many people there. I'm not trying to take away from your critcisms of the west coast. But claiming that the Ivy league universities are more humble on the east coast is just blatantly incorrect. It's a status token. Prestige is a big deal. Personally, I found that Chicago tends to be more blue collar. They bring in a lot of the homeliness of the Midwest. It also connects transport, infrastructure, and manufacturing. The more I read about Peter Thiel the more I see him as incredibly smart and incredibly anti-competitive. He is open to admitting to it, but it's not a healthy business strategy to do that. (As how we've seen Redhat and others succeeded with an open business)

brighteyes 12y ago

> It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush. Fair point. Sports may indeed be fairer and more objective than other industries - results are easily measured, and are objective. And it's clear that the tech industry is far from perfect. However, tech does have several things that make it fairer than other industries: * You don't need a degree to get into tech. Sure, it can help - the article here is about Stanford, one of the best places to study at - but the industry also has plenty of self-taught people. To at least some extent, talent can rise despite not having e.g. parents that can pay for college. * The tools you need to self-teach are cheap, and getting cheaper. Personal computers are common these days. For comparison, some sports require almost no tools, but some do (e.g. skiing). Music is similar (some instruments are cheap, others not so much). But most careers don't work that way. You can't be a self-taught lawyer or doctor or soldier or social worker. * Talent has the opportunity to present itself in an abstract way. You can create an anonymous github account and prove your skills, and no one would know any demographic information about you. Something similar has happened in classical music, with people performing behind curtains so as to remove any bias due to their gender or race, and it was very helpful there. For comparison, sports doesn't work that way - you have to see people when they compete, so racial prejudice etc. might still have an impact. In tech and classical music, while things aren't perfect, there is a fairly natural way to diminish such effects, simply let people only see the abstract result of their work. * Some fields absolutely require a strong mentor, like in academia (perhaps also in sports? I don't know). This disadvantages people that have a hard time finding such mentors, either due to prejudice on the part of potential mentors, or just a lack of connections, or weak social skills. In tech, some people benefit from mentors, but there are also lots of examples of people that have never had a mentor and do very well. * Telecommuting is much more common in tech than other fields, even if it isn't ubiquitous there. We have the technical capability to let people work from home in tech, in most roles, and it makes things fairer in many ways. * You make a valid point that industries that depend on getting funding are less fair than others, all things being equal. However, tech has been driving down the amount of necessary funding, through open source software, things like AWS, etc. Again, tech is far from perfect, and has many flaws. Still, it's worth mentioning the good aspects.

foobarqux 12y ago

Unless you include genetic pre-disposition as meritous athletics is probably one of the most anti-meritocratic fields.

sheensleeves 12y ago
A claim from a blogger on these issues: performance enhancing drugs in athletics widen the gap between the genetically gifted and the less so. Seems reasonable, but not intuitive.
rgoberstein 12y ago
Of course physical genetics give many athletes an advantage, but any athlete will tell you that training - both mental and physical - are the only things that will make an athlete or team win and can frequently make up for predisposed characteristics that may be disadvantageous (shorter stature, smaller frame, etc). As far as meritocratic environments go, sports is certainly among the top.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  "Natural advantage" and "merit" are essentially antonyms.
  - SamReidHughes 12y ago
    Maybe if you're some silly person that believes in free will it is.