“Not-So-Glamorous Silicon Valley”
“People in the Valley, historically, just haven’t dropped a lot of money on toys. Look how its most famous executive, Mark Zuckerberg, dresses — hoodie and jeans. For some, the startup mentality dominates: better to pour your cash back into a venture than to splurge on a Hamptons estate. “In Silicon Valley, showing your friends your big house is not as important as showing you were one of the first investors in Facebook,” says consulting Stanford associate professor Steve Blank, who also co-founded four startups and was named by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential people in tech. “The people who founded it institutionalized a culture of not showing off: it’s anti-glitz.””
This is accurate. So accurate. although I think it’s changing now that a lot of people are moving into the area. Growing up, it was sometimes sort of rude to look too nice.
Now that I think about it, this also makes it easy to stick out, if you aren’t a t-shirt/hoodie/jeans kind of person. If you like to wear bright colors, dresses, accessories, non-Western clothing, long hair that isn’t in a ponytail, …
