6 ms·

How to Game Silicon Valley’s System

68 points by hugs 12y ago

bpatel576 12y ago
click bate
martinkl 12y ago
The article is essentially arguing that entrepreneurs should be contrarian: not set up shop in the same place as everyone else, not try to hire the same people as everyone else, not have the same office setup as everyone else, etc. Of course, to win, it's not sufficient to be contrarian — you have to be both contrarian and right. Whether or not these choices are right for you is probably highly dependent on what you're doing. But the idea of being contrarian, and not always following the received wisdom, is sound.
lettergram 12y ago
I find phrases like: "It [the tech industry] often shuns women, minorities, and others who don’t fit into the rising “brogrammer” culture." down right distasteful and a generalization that is pretty outrageous. I would go out on a limb and say most of the tech industry isn't racist, sexist, or anything else. I'm petty sure the number of women in "tech" reflect the number of women graduating with C.S. degrees. If anything, women seem to get an unfair advantage just because they are women and "under represented." I'm not saying that there aren't issues, but the author of the article pretty much calls everyone in tech a racists and sexist. Then goes on to write an article that these "techies" are suppose to read.
- pcl 12y ago
  I'm petty sure the number of women in "tech" reflect the number of women graduating with C.S. degrees. If anything, women seem to get an unfair advantage just because they are women and "under represented." The education system is part of the tech industry as a whole, and, of course, there's a feedback loop at play that reinforces the tech stereotypes over time. So even if no one person in the tech industry is consciously trying to discriminate against women, the industry in aggregate can play that role. I would argue that the numbers alone demonstrate a gender bias. The women in tech who I've talked with about this issue certainly don't feel that they have an unfair advantage, and I've heard some pretty interesting criticisms. A couple examples: - senior technical talent hiring practices are typically defined by men (since the industry is predominantly male), so the selection criteria for career progression is likely to have male-oriented biases. - it's more socially awkward for a man and woman to get together for a drink after work in a career capacity, so it's correspondingly harder for a woman to share in the bonding experiences that build career-long relationships. (And no, I'm not just referring to our common "brogrammer" after-work partying stereotype -- the ritual of meeting up after work for a drink is probably as old as work itself.) the author of the article pretty much calls everyone in tech a racists and sexist I certainly didn't get that from the article. The article quoted someone who thinks that Silicon Valley investment scene is an "old boy's club", and says: "The tech industry is notoriously ageist. It often shuns women, minorities, and others who don’t fit into the rising “brogrammer” culture." I don't really buy into the last clause of that sentence, but IMO the percentage of women and certain minorities speaks for itself. I also believe (hope?) that, as I mentioned above, this bias can be attributed to unconscious bias in the industry as a whole, rather than overt -isms. I think that this is something we can help to fix, but a critical first step is to acknowledge that the diversity profile of the tech industry doesn't match up to the population as a whole, and that at a certain point that leads to practices that are self-reinforcing.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    I can't speak for Silicon Valley, but I have one verified datum wherein I interviewed for a position and received an offer. I wanted to negotiate on the offer because I objected to the expectation for a 45-hour work week at the same pay as that prevailing for similar jobs with 40-hour weeks. There was no negotiation. I literally did nothing more than question the 45-hour week. They didn't even withdraw the offer; they just cut off all contact. No call was answered or returned. No e-mail received a reply. During the interview, they had mentioned that they were having trouble expanding at their headquarters due to lack of available qualified employees. Gee. I wonder why. Weekly hour expectations for salaried exempt workers is already a suspect practice, in my view, but expecting work outside of normal business hours is definitely selecting against candidates who are not unmarried and childless. Schools, preschools, and day care businesses operate based on normal business hours. Generally, if your spouse works, you want to come and go at the same times of day. You don't want to live the rest of your life in cubicle farms. Maybe the tech industry is not racist. Maybe there is just one particular demographic that just cares less about exploitative work arrangements. Maybe that demographic has historically had less reason to distrust authority. Maybe the quality selected for is not age, race, or sex, but sheer naivete.
- neilk 12y ago
  There's a difference between being structurally racist, and viciously, personally racist. The tech industry isn't filled with KKK members or open chauvinists (and anyone expressing such sentiments in public would be ejected immediately). On the other hand there are a lot of barriers in place, of access and unconscious bias, which cause some very different outcomes. How else would you explain the wide disparities? There are hardly any women or non-white non-Asians in technology in North America. And it's way out of line with comparable disciplines like mathematics or other sorts of engineering. CS is the only discipline where the number of women is actually going down. http://flowingdata.com/2014/10/30/decline-of-women-in-computer-science/ http://flowingdata.com/2014/10/30/decline-of-women-in-comput...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
nakedrobot2 12y ago
The main idea of this article is that you should hire normal "older" (aka people over 30 with children, and women, and minorities? really!?) people and allow them to have a life. Crap like this is why I stay far away from silicon valley. The saddest part is, it is mostly true.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  There are a lot of companies that hire these people in silicon valley, including startups! Usually the founders are older. Or the work is harder / involves a whole bunch of C & C++.
PaulHoule 12y ago
My experience is that there are two places where you can't sell remote work: the bay area and NYC. In both of these areas people refuse to believe that the best talent (or the best talent that will work form them) doesn't come from next door.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  Exactly. The Bay Area in particular bitches and moans about "lack of talent" but has such hiring myopia that only a few companies can see talent that is more than 50 miles away.
  - hugs 12y ago
    I once had a co-worker (who lives inside the San Francisco city limits) say: "San Jose? Why would I ever drive that far south?! As for as I'm concerned, San Jose is Southern California." He was serious.
    - dalvdalv 12y ago
      It could take 2+ hours to commute from SF to SJ during rush hour.
    - chubot 12y ago
      So? Nobody who lives in SF would drive themselves to San Jose every day. The traffic is insane. You would kill 3-4 hours a day easily. Hence the point that companies (say in San Jose) should allow remote work to attract employees in SF.
      - hugs 12y ago
        Sorry, I should have connected the dots to the parent comment. It means he wasn't interested in recruiting new hires from San Jose or anywhere else that wasn't a short commute into the city... unless of course, they agreed to move.
        12y ago
michaelochurch 12y ago
“Cultural fit” is one of the most corrosive ideas in the tech industry. Culture is super-important-- in large part, to help make sure that the 47-year-old female Haskell badass and the 22-year-old male Ruby rockstar work well together-- but "cultural fit" is often used as an excuse for shitty behavior and exclusionist hiring practices. Older developers, for example, bring a lot to the table. One study found that developers actually get better with age. Very true. But people who've been around the block aren't going to carry a pager except for a project that is absolutely career-making for them (with both internal and external credibility as rewards) or when they're owners (and 0.05% ain't ownership). I hate the age discrimination culture but I know why it's there: there's a fear that older developers will "poison" the young with, you know, real world experience and knowledge about the industry and how it actually works, and of the games often played against politically inept engineers. People often say that tech companies must be near other tech companies in order to succeed. The Valley's about funding, not other tech companies. The west coast of the US is the easiest place in the world to raise VC. It's still difficult, and the process takes a long time and is generally obnoxious, but it's easier there than elsewhere. Also, don't downplay "managed outcomes" (e.g. acqui-fails) that are bad for employees but good for founders' careers. Bay Area VCs can call in a favor they're owed, have the thing bought, and get the founders popped into executive positions at Google or Facebook. Harder to do that in Utah. This doesn't matter to employees but it's important for many VC-funded founders, especially since the VCs will push you to take on a much higher degree of risk than most founders would otherwise want. They want privacy. “They say they work in an open office plan and wish they could go back to a cubicle,” he tells us. Cubicles suck, too. Private or semi-private (i.e. two people) offices are the way to go. They're not that expensive. If you must use an open-ish plan, then give engineers booth-style seating where they have walls at their back. Open-back visibility is borderline abusive. Don’t have the money for Swedish massages or an in-office coffee bar? There are less expensive perks. Google's "free massage" perk is overstated. When I was there, you got one (for free) per year. Any more, and you have to pay for it. (That said, the price is quite fair.) This is not to nick Google-- I don't think that any company should be expected to pay for unlimited massage-- but just to point out that the competition ain't that stiff on the massage front. One 60-minute massage per year? That's about $80. Many of those perks are cheap insofar as they're effective marketing expenditures. For $80 per employee, Google gets "free massage" out there. Still, as a cynical 31-year-old, I'd rather have few of the "cute" perks and more salary. 401k matching and health benefits are important; massage, I can get on the market. Finally, for one item that was missed... Rethink equity. Personally, I think finance-style profit-sharing (even if the bonus system can be really political) is superior. Also, equity has an uncanny valley. The amounts that non-executive employees get in startups are, quite often, so insignificant that I'd rather have it all in cash. If you are going to make equity part of the package, cut out slices that will make people actually care. This means 3-5% for employee #10 and 0.5-1% for employee #50... the actual numbers seem to be closer to 0.3% and 0.04%, which are in the "who gives a fuck" range. People gripe about Wall Street's bonus system (in which profits are shared but employees, except for upper-tier executives, are not expected to acquire stock in the company) but it's a much better and fairer model of profit-sharing than what Silicon Valley does.
bpatel576 12y ago
I remember watching an interview of Jack Ma with Charlie Rose during Davos. Charlie asked him about his experience wit Tai Chi and Jack immediately related the art with his practice in business, which boiled down to something like, "for every misstep, there is an opportunity." The current startup world has been successful at recruiting talent because they separated themselves from traditional corporations by providing a better atmosphere to work. Startup 2.0 will figure out something. It's the nature of evolution.
bovermyer 12y ago
At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we hire almost entirely based on "cultural fit." And that culture has only two requirements - you must be really excited by development, and you must really like to learn. There are no technical questions in the interview process, and beyond a cursory glance to see if the candidate's got an active Github account, not much in the way of code review. We'll ask about hobbies, but it's totally OK if they're not the same things everyone else is into - it's mostly because we're curious. This has resulted in one of the most diverse and fun developer groups I've ever worked with. We all love code, and we're a mix of ethnicities, genders, and ages. I imagine that Silicon Valley is missing out by not following a similar path.
- geebee 12y ago
  That's interesting. I'm not a huge fan of the technical interview either. I'd really like to see the industry find a way to assess technical ability without forcing developers to re-take their data structures and algorithms exam every time they interview for a new job. So if you've been successful without this ritual, you have my attention. But what (if anything) are you doing to see if someone is good at writing software. Do you know the candidates you interview already, by reputation?
  - bovermyer 12y ago
    The first couple months tell us whether they can write good code or not. We're not going to get a good sense of their coding skill from how well they can spout off buzzwords, or even from a code test. Only by giving them tasks we'd expect one of our devs to do and seeing how they interact with other devs, use information-gathering tools (Google, books, coworkers, etc.), and solve complex problems in a social scenario (no dev is an island) do we really get a sense for whether they can write good software.
csbrooks 12y ago
I always took "cultural fit" to mean stuff like, do you prefer to work only with Big Design Up Front, or are you cool with a more Agile process? Are you more comfortable at a big company, or a small one? Do you take yourself seriously, or are you willing to joke around a bit? How do you deal with changing requirements? Not something like "what kind of music do you like". That shouldn't be a factor in hiring. Right?
rcarrigan87 12y ago
This article is trying to apply startup advice to massive tech companies. "Culture fit" is actually really important when you have 5-10 people working on a new company. It's better to have hegemony than a diverse set of opinions when your runway is 6-12 mths and you need to make concise decisions to survive. The reverse is true for huge tech companies. Lack of diversity hurts their business in many ways. Pretty much everything this article says is startup advice misapplied to major tech companies who are well beyond startups.
neilk 12y ago
I've been thinking about Moneyball as a metaphor for how we should hire, for quite a while. In my opinion there's just a vast amount of talent out there that the tech industry is discarding. It's not like you have to take the dregs, it's the wine that the rest of the industry is pouring into the gutter. It's true that socially isolated young live-for-work white males are the most prepared to crank out code. But if we were just a little better at supporting different kinds of people, we'd have far more productive and healthy workplaces, while still being fun and weird. My company is getting there. Interviewing more for values and velocity versus having all the geek merit badges. Plus we're getting more geographically distributed.
- x0x0 12y ago
  I think you'd be stunned whom you can hire (and for how much money) in any area where a basic middle class home doesn't go for over $1m and a 500 ft^2 apartment in soma reasonably close to offices for $2.6k/mo, ie the first $52k of pretax income is solely for rent.

68 points by hugs 12y ago

click bate

The article is essentially arguing that entrepreneurs should be contrarian: not set up shop in the same place as everyone else, not try to hire the same people as everyone else, not have the same office setup as everyone else, etc. Of course, to win, it's not sufficient to be contrarian — you have to be both contrarian and right. Whether or not these choices are right for you is probably highly dependent on what you're doing. But the idea of being contrarian, and not always following the received wisdom, is sound.

lettergram 12y ago

I find phrases like: "It [the tech industry] often shuns women, minorities, and others who don’t fit into the rising “brogrammer” culture." down right distasteful and a generalization that is pretty outrageous. I would go out on a limb and say most of the tech industry isn't racist, sexist, or anything else. I'm petty sure the number of women in "tech" reflect the number of women graduating with C.S. degrees. If anything, women seem to get an unfair advantage just because they are women and "under represented." I'm not saying that there aren't issues, but the author of the article pretty much calls everyone in tech a racists and sexist. Then goes on to write an article that these "techies" are suppose to read.

pcl 12y ago
I'm petty sure the number of women in "tech" reflect the number of women graduating with C.S. degrees. If anything, women seem to get an unfair advantage just because they are women and "under represented." The education system is part of the tech industry as a whole, and, of course, there's a feedback loop at play that reinforces the tech stereotypes over time. So even if no one person in the tech industry is consciously trying to discriminate against women, the industry in aggregate can play that role. I would argue that the numbers alone demonstrate a gender bias. The women in tech who I've talked with about this issue certainly don't feel that they have an unfair advantage, and I've heard some pretty interesting criticisms. A couple examples: - senior technical talent hiring practices are typically defined by men (since the industry is predominantly male), so the selection criteria for career progression is likely to have male-oriented biases. - it's more socially awkward for a man and woman to get together for a drink after work in a career capacity, so it's correspondingly harder for a woman to share in the bonding experiences that build career-long relationships. (And no, I'm not just referring to our common "brogrammer" after-work partying stereotype -- the ritual of meeting up after work for a drink is probably as old as work itself.) the author of the article pretty much calls everyone in tech a racists and sexist I certainly didn't get that from the article. The article quoted someone who thinks that Silicon Valley investment scene is an "old boy's club", and says: "The tech industry is notoriously ageist. It often shuns women, minorities, and others who don’t fit into the rising “brogrammer” culture." I don't really buy into the last clause of that sentence, but IMO the percentage of women and certain minorities speaks for itself. I also believe (hope?) that, as I mentioned above, this bias can be attributed to unconscious bias in the industry as a whole, rather than overt -isms. I think that this is something we can help to fix, but a critical first step is to acknowledge that the diversity profile of the tech industry doesn't match up to the population as a whole, and that at a certain point that leads to practices that are self-reinforcing.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I can't speak for Silicon Valley, but I have one verified datum wherein I interviewed for a position and received an offer. I wanted to negotiate on the offer because I objected to the expectation for a 45-hour work week at the same pay as that prevailing for similar jobs with 40-hour weeks. There was no negotiation. I literally did nothing more than question the 45-hour week. They didn't even withdraw the offer; they just cut off all contact. No call was answered or returned. No e-mail received a reply. During the interview, they had mentioned that they were having trouble expanding at their headquarters due to lack of available qualified employees. Gee. I wonder why. Weekly hour expectations for salaried exempt workers is already a suspect practice, in my view, but expecting work outside of normal business hours is definitely selecting against candidates who are not unmarried and childless. Schools, preschools, and day care businesses operate based on normal business hours. Generally, if your spouse works, you want to come and go at the same times of day. You don't want to live the rest of your life in cubicle farms. Maybe the tech industry is not racist. Maybe there is just one particular demographic that just cares less about exploitative work arrangements. Maybe that demographic has historically had less reason to distrust authority. Maybe the quality selected for is not age, race, or sex, but sheer naivete.
neilk 12y ago
There's a difference between being structurally racist, and viciously, personally racist. The tech industry isn't filled with KKK members or open chauvinists (and anyone expressing such sentiments in public would be ejected immediately). On the other hand there are a lot of barriers in place, of access and unconscious bias, which cause some very different outcomes. How else would you explain the wide disparities? There are hardly any women or non-white non-Asians in technology in North America. And it's way out of line with comparable disciplines like mathematics or other sorts of engineering. CS is the only discipline where the number of women is actually going down. http://flowingdata.com/2014/10/30/decline-of-women-in-computer-science/ http://flowingdata.com/2014/10/30/decline-of-women-in-comput...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

nakedrobot2 12y ago

The main idea of this article is that you should hire normal "older" (aka people over 30 with children, and women, and minorities? really!?) people and allow them to have a life. Crap like this is why I stay far away from silicon valley. The saddest part is, it is mostly true.

mahyarm 12y ago
There are a lot of companies that hire these people in silicon valley, including startups! Usually the founders are older. Or the work is harder / involves a whole bunch of C & C++.

PaulHoule 12y ago

My experience is that there are two places where you can't sell remote work: the bay area and NYC. In both of these areas people refuse to believe that the best talent (or the best talent that will work form them) doesn't come from next door.

vonmoltke 12y ago
Exactly. The Bay Area in particular bitches and moans about "lack of talent" but has such hiring myopia that only a few companies can see talent that is more than 50 miles away.
- hugs 12y ago
  I once had a co-worker (who lives inside the San Francisco city limits) say: "San Jose? Why would I ever drive that far south?! As for as I'm concerned, San Jose is Southern California." He was serious.
  - dalvdalv 12y ago
    It could take 2+ hours to commute from SF to SJ during rush hour.
  - chubot 12y ago
    So? Nobody who lives in SF would drive themselves to San Jose every day. The traffic is insane. You would kill 3-4 hours a day easily. Hence the point that companies (say in San Jose) should allow remote work to attract employees in SF.
    - hugs 12y ago
      Sorry, I should have connected the dots to the parent comment. It means he wasn't interested in recruiting new hires from San Jose or anywhere else that wasn't a short commute into the city... unless of course, they agreed to move.
      - 12y ago

michaelochurch 12y ago

“Cultural fit” is one of the most corrosive ideas in the tech industry. Culture is super-important-- in large part, to help make sure that the 47-year-old female Haskell badass and the 22-year-old male Ruby rockstar work well together-- but "cultural fit" is often used as an excuse for shitty behavior and exclusionist hiring practices. Older developers, for example, bring a lot to the table. One study found that developers actually get better with age. Very true. But people who've been around the block aren't going to carry a pager except for a project that is absolutely career-making for them (with both internal and external credibility as rewards) or when they're owners (and 0.05% ain't ownership). I hate the age discrimination culture but I know why it's there: there's a fear that older developers will "poison" the young with, you know, real world experience and knowledge about the industry and how it actually works, and of the games often played against politically inept engineers. People often say that tech companies must be near other tech companies in order to succeed. The Valley's about funding, not other tech companies. The west coast of the US is the easiest place in the world to raise VC. It's still difficult, and the process takes a long time and is generally obnoxious, but it's easier there than elsewhere. Also, don't downplay "managed outcomes" (e.g. acqui-fails) that are bad for employees but good for founders' careers. Bay Area VCs can call in a favor they're owed, have the thing bought, and get the founders popped into executive positions at Google or Facebook. Harder to do that in Utah. This doesn't matter to employees but it's important for many VC-funded founders, especially since the VCs will push you to take on a much higher degree of risk than most founders would otherwise want. They want privacy. “They say they work in an open office plan and wish they could go back to a cubicle,” he tells us. Cubicles suck, too. Private or semi-private (i.e. two people) offices are the way to go. They're not that expensive. If you must use an open-ish plan, then give engineers booth-style seating where they have walls at their back. Open-back visibility is borderline abusive. Don’t have the money for Swedish massages or an in-office coffee bar? There are less expensive perks. Google's "free massage" perk is overstated. When I was there, you got one (for free) per year. Any more, and you have to pay for it. (That said, the price is quite fair.) This is not to nick Google-- I don't think that any company should be expected to pay for unlimited massage-- but just to point out that the competition ain't that stiff on the massage front. One 60-minute massage per year? That's about $80. Many of those perks are cheap insofar as they're effective marketing expenditures. For $80 per employee, Google gets "free massage" out there. Still, as a cynical 31-year-old, I'd rather have few of the "cute" perks and more salary. 401k matching and health benefits are important; massage, I can get on the market. Finally, for one item that was missed... Rethink equity. Personally, I think finance-style profit-sharing (even if the bonus system can be really political) is superior. Also, equity has an uncanny valley. The amounts that non-executive employees get in startups are, quite often, so insignificant that I'd rather have it all in cash. If you are going to make equity part of the package, cut out slices that will make people actually care. This means 3-5% for employee #10 and 0.5-1% for employee #50... the actual numbers seem to be closer to 0.3% and 0.04%, which are in the "who gives a fuck" range. People gripe about Wall Street's bonus system (in which profits are shared but employees, except for upper-tier executives, are not expected to acquire stock in the company) but it's a much better and fairer model of profit-sharing than what Silicon Valley does.

bpatel576 12y ago

I remember watching an interview of Jack Ma with Charlie Rose during Davos. Charlie asked him about his experience wit Tai Chi and Jack immediately related the art with his practice in business, which boiled down to something like, "for every misstep, there is an opportunity." The current startup world has been successful at recruiting talent because they separated themselves from traditional corporations by providing a better atmosphere to work. Startup 2.0 will figure out something. It's the nature of evolution.

bovermyer 12y ago

At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we hire almost entirely based on "cultural fit." And that culture has only two requirements - you must be really excited by development, and you must really like to learn. There are no technical questions in the interview process, and beyond a cursory glance to see if the candidate's got an active Github account, not much in the way of code review. We'll ask about hobbies, but it's totally OK if they're not the same things everyone else is into - it's mostly because we're curious. This has resulted in one of the most diverse and fun developer groups I've ever worked with. We all love code, and we're a mix of ethnicities, genders, and ages. I imagine that Silicon Valley is missing out by not following a similar path.

geebee 12y ago
That's interesting. I'm not a huge fan of the technical interview either. I'd really like to see the industry find a way to assess technical ability without forcing developers to re-take their data structures and algorithms exam every time they interview for a new job. So if you've been successful without this ritual, you have my attention. But what (if anything) are you doing to see if someone is good at writing software. Do you know the candidates you interview already, by reputation?
- bovermyer 12y ago
  The first couple months tell us whether they can write good code or not. We're not going to get a good sense of their coding skill from how well they can spout off buzzwords, or even from a code test. Only by giving them tasks we'd expect one of our devs to do and seeing how they interact with other devs, use information-gathering tools (Google, books, coworkers, etc.), and solve complex problems in a social scenario (no dev is an island) do we really get a sense for whether they can write good software.

csbrooks 12y ago

I always took "cultural fit" to mean stuff like, do you prefer to work only with Big Design Up Front, or are you cool with a more Agile process? Are you more comfortable at a big company, or a small one? Do you take yourself seriously, or are you willing to joke around a bit? How do you deal with changing requirements? Not something like "what kind of music do you like". That shouldn't be a factor in hiring. Right?

rcarrigan87 12y ago

This article is trying to apply startup advice to massive tech companies. "Culture fit" is actually really important when you have 5-10 people working on a new company. It's better to have hegemony than a diverse set of opinions when your runway is 6-12 mths and you need to make concise decisions to survive. The reverse is true for huge tech companies. Lack of diversity hurts their business in many ways. Pretty much everything this article says is startup advice misapplied to major tech companies who are well beyond startups.

neilk 12y ago

I've been thinking about Moneyball as a metaphor for how we should hire, for quite a while. In my opinion there's just a vast amount of talent out there that the tech industry is discarding. It's not like you have to take the dregs, it's the wine that the rest of the industry is pouring into the gutter. It's true that socially isolated young live-for-work white males are the most prepared to crank out code. But if we were just a little better at supporting different kinds of people, we'd have far more productive and healthy workplaces, while still being fun and weird. My company is getting there. Interviewing more for values and velocity versus having all the geek merit badges. Plus we're getting more geographically distributed.

x0x0 12y ago
I think you'd be stunned whom you can hire (and for how much money) in any area where a basic middle class home doesn't go for over $1m and a 500 ft^2 apartment in soma reasonably close to offices for $2.6k/mo, ie the first $52k of pretax income is solely for rent.