I grew up in the bay, went to a top 15 school and work at a tech company and this is an incredibly biased piece bordering on #fakenews.
You don’t mention any of the benefits that’s come out of SV. Uber lets my grandparents quickly/cheaply get around their city. Google Maps is incredibly useful on a day to day basis, or when traveling in a foreign country. SMB’s can now compete with bigger businesses on Google/FB. Google has invested a ton of money into Waymo (which should save thousands of lives and millions of human hours) and expanding into health. Also there’s a TON of google products that have nothing related to ads. Google translate, google drive, docs, slides, sheets, snapseed, photos, maps (somewhat), trips, etc.
Why are you ignoring all this awesome work? I agree that there’s real negatives (social media on teenage mental health, data privacy, etc.) but it’s hard to take this article seriously when you mention ONLY the negatives.
On my floor at work, at a company that puts so many resources into diversity and inclusion, there are no black or Latinx engineers.
This is mostly a pipeline issue. Why is the blame on SV that black and latinx kids aren’t CS majors? This is a national issue that for some reason you’re blaming on SV.
The lack of diversity doesn’t stop at work — it permeates every aspect of life. Everyone wears Patagonia and North Face, everyone has AirPods hanging from their ears, and everyone goes to Lake Tahoe on weekends
Imagine if someone said this about a black neighborhood in the 90s “everyone sags their pants, wears chains and listens to rap”. That’s racist.
Somehow you feel like this type of generalization is okay about. SV is decently diverse unless we consider pakistani, indian, chinese, vietnamese, korean, japanese, russian people all the same? Once again what are you comparing this to? Hollywood? Wall Street?
Also this would make a bit more sense if even the majority of people had AirPods. Apple is probably super happy for the free advertising and people thinking AirPods are ‘in’.
(And yes, Silicon Valley has an alcohol and drug problem, too)
And NY /LA has a cocaine problem. Are we seriously saying there’s a bigger drug problem here than any other major city? And we’re doing that by quoting a NY Times Opinion article that’s a bunch of quotes and no real statistics/studies? This is laughable.
In Silicon Valley, few people find things like climate change important enough to talk about at length, and even fewer find it important enough to work on.It’s not where the money is at. It’s not where “success” is at.
Great writing, but I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. These are companies…they are trying to make money… Is wall street trying to save the planet? Are food companies trying to help the public and advertise how bad coke/pepsi are? Is hollywood making another billion dollar marvel franchise or promoting a documentary on global warming? Why are you expecting SV people to be better than everyone else or act like a charity?
influx of fake, self-serving, status-seeking “friends” and acquaintances.
That’s unfortunate and I hope you find better friends, but this sounds like a personal problem.
Attempts to hold discussions about social issues are often met with bored faces and are quickly terminated.
This again sounds like a personal problem. One thing to note is that talking about social issues at work can be hard. Also once again are wall street brokers talking about politics at work? or are agents in LA talking about going to the soup kitchen on the weekend?
