Silicon Valley has turned into the place it hates the most | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley has turned into the place it hates the most

businessinsider.com

60 pointsKapura40 comments

This is a PR piece for Kairos Fund, whatever that is. For fun, you can compare with PG's formula[1]. I'd give it a B-.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

We've updated the headline to the document title, which is far more substantive and less bait-ey.

You should change the title back or remove the link entirely. This isn't the right way to handle what you consider "bait-ey"

It certainly seems like a PR piece given the title change. Bad form, HN.

The title was changed back! Much better.

The author conflates several things into the label "SV": the private capital, the founders, the startup execs and so on. but surprisingly it barely mentions the engineers that are perhaps SV's most defining characteristic.

Now to address the article, the current ecosystem of companies in SV and the people it attracts is the byproduct of what venture capitalists are willing to invest in, which is itself a consequence of what the economy wants and the kind of ventures regulators allow to succeed.

So, if you want to point fingers asking why aren't tough problems solved you should start by asking yourself why is it that those are so much more capital-intensive to solve in the first place. And more importantly, what could be done to make them more attractive to private capital.

Of course, there's a narrow category of problems that are intrinsically capital intense. But many more are just artificial moonshots i.e problems that aren't that hard if not for the many roadblocks and hoops one would need to go through to formulate even a basic answer.

How long would it take to get a railroad network going in 2017 v. 1830s?

tl;dr: the entities influencing the incentive structure are more to blame than the individual agents trying to optimize for their own KPIs.

Your railroad question made me think... back in 1830s there was a huge need by both the public and industry for a railroad network. These days transport is a mess in some ways but it’s not a huge need for anyone. On the other hand the issues of what can we use smart phones for, what should social networks look like and how to advertise on these new mediums were actual problems of our day that companies and engineers had to solve. Hopefully we can move on to more interesting problems soon though.

There's also just more things in the way. It may have been difficult to tunnel through a mountain but it's several times more difficult now to both deal with getting the rights to land with all the people in your path _and_ tunnel through the mountain

I don't think that was the point of the article. If we take a look at the structure of the Valley, and point the finger at Venture Capitalists, then what we really need to ask is why Venture Capitalists brand themselves as revolutionary do-gooders when the movers of capital in the finance industry don't. It's become an almost Orwellian caricature.

> So, if you want to point fingers asking why aren't tough problems solved you should start by asking yourself why is it that those are so much more capital-intensive to solve in the first place. And more importantly, what could be done to make them more attractive to private capital.

I think this is a convenient way of oversimplifying the issue. The issue at its most fundamental is why VC does not invest as frequently in issues that help the middle-class. The explanation could have a variety of reasons, from corrupt VCs, to a broken incentive system (our implementation of capitalism), all the way to artificial bureaucratic inflation (inefficient/corrupt government).

There's no need to worship at the altar of capitalism until we strangle ourselves in our zealotry.

It's much easier to build an attention app, pull demographic info, sell advertising, than it is to build a product that adds bottom-line value to society. It also seems over the last 10 years or so, there has been lots of "small cash" sloshing around. Early stage employees from the first wave of successful internet companies write small cheques to fund questionable ideas. Taken together with the continued commoditization of the software developer as a job segment and the ability to deploy easily and it's not surprising people don't try particularly hard anymore. It feels like one of the main issues in the valley these days is insular intellectual dishonesty. Sadly, I feel like the same thing is about to happen to tech here in New York.

So then the question is: Where did the innovators and hackers go? And why aren't they doing that anymore? Where are the next generation of hackers and innovators, and where are they going? And why aren't the lot of them trying to add bottom-line value to society?

In a corporate open space office? According to the article, this is where they are.

Sure, but my question was really aimed at something deeper. I agree that they're in the corporate open space office. But that doesn't answer the question of why they're there, on the whole, and leaves the question of getting the hackers working on societal problems instead of attention problems.

You have a bit of idealism in your understanding of how things are made , created adopted and maintained. Weather the problem is societal or not these are the attributes that need to be solved.

1) what is the problem and how much money can we make from solving it? 2) how much will it cost the enginners to solve the problem (we are not your slaves) 3) If problem is solved at a profit is it still viable/worth to approach , is it a $5 profit or a $50,000,000 (business men/women/pick a gender are not our slaves either) 4)Is it legal? The more money to be made the more the masses and dems feel its evil even if it good for all , we cant have anyone being successful off of hard work now can we, so any kind of far reaching societal solution will have gov red tape (this is a good thing I believe, better to be safe than sorry)

we are all in this together, its no super smart guy overlords that tell us what to do, and if you think that is the answer you should look up the idea of "euthanization". Elite , intelligent people are not always kind , but they are always efficient. They sometimes have very cold ways of solving your "societal" problems.

I'm sorry, but you have completely missed the mark here.

I think about that a lot. I suspect unfortunately the quick and dirty startup is both cool and lucrative for young people with privilege. I've talked with a lot of VCs who won't look at startups that can't see revenue within 18 months, yet they will take propped up or bought revenue with metrics that look good but have no hope of ever reaching profitability. I suspect the next wave of real businesses that make many truly useful products will come out of places like Detroit, Cincinnati, Boston.

I wonder this a lot. To me it seems that a lot of that "hacker" mentality and the radicalism that follows with it kind of died down a bit. The maker movement is one of the only things I can think of in recent times that was a slight push in the right direction of advancing an industry. Some neat stuff has come out of that such as 3D printing and IoT devices; it's questionable if those are really helping society though. I think another thing to think about is if we've, in a way, maxed out physical product based value adds. SV seems to be stuck in a feedback loop with services rather than physical products.

You think software developers are commoditized? In what way? Just curious

The abstractions are becoming good enough that many types of people can do it, and many types of people are doing it: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

> America's business hero has become Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Is this accurate? I feel like more people look to Musk than Bezos. However, I realize I have a sheltered "internet only" view, so pardon my ignorance.

>> I feel like more people look to Musk than Bezos.

Businessman? Bezos for sure. He's the Sam Walton of our generation.

Inventor/technologist? Musk. I'd guess that most people would believe Musk if he said he was going to start building a car that ran on water.

Honestly I don't think most Americans make that distinction.

Tbh if most of the time that you talk to people they either know exactly the plausablity of what Musk is saying or they just read a headline. Most of the time it is the later but there are a lot of advocates in the former that call him out on his plans.

In my groups it's def Musk, however I can see how Bezos would do well with a business crowd since he started on Wall Street (although, not like they did).

I agree with a lot of the author's points, but the "big problems" facing the American middle class that Kairos is aiming to solve just cannot be solved by tech alone. They are political, legal, and social problems.

Student debt is largely a consequence of easy loans for low-return degrees and laws that prevent those loans from being released (pretty much ever), combined with a generation that pushed kids to go to the "best" school they could, regardless of cost. High housing cost is a problem of zoning laws, NIMBYism, and lethargic construction. Retirement income is a problem of an entire generation just not saving any money (financial irresponsibility) combined with jobs that don't pay pensions anymore and a strained national retirement system. Etc.

SV isn't falling down on producing tech to solve problems, it's falling down on using its wealth and influence to actually change laws, opinions, and behaviors that would have a broad impact.

this is just marketing for the fund. How does a new fund differentiate itself if the founders were to announce that they plan do the same old thing that every other fund does.

> Student debt is largely a consequence of easy loans for low-return degrees and laws that prevent those loans from being released (pretty much ever), combined with a generation that pushed kids to go to the "best" school they could, regardless of cost.

Tech might be able to solve that by making the "best" school an online and low-cost one.

> High housing cost is a problem of zoning laws, NIMBYism, and lethargic construction.

Tech might be able to solve that one by increasing the availability of remote work.

Fair points, but I would argue that both of those possibilities hinge on social/psychological issues. Companies typically hire from prestigious schools because there's an implicit faith in pedigree and the pre-selection criteria of admissions panels at traditional institutions. You would need to shift that view before anyone would consider an online degree of any kind the "best" qualifier for employees. Same with remote work - you need to shift the perception that butts-in-seats and long hours in an office are favorable things before the technology even has a chance of making a solid impact.

Look up how Ankur Jain's family made their money. That and this obvious PR-piece article are both enough to make not feel like eating my lunch today.

I love the fact that at the very end of the article, there's a link to see Google's stock price.

The title of the article is, "Silicon Valley has turned into the place it hates the most", not whatever this watered down title is. I saw this post earlier with the original title and I'm curious why it was changed? Is this too sensitive of a topic for HN?

Maybe it hits a little close to home. From my experience, there's a bit of a disdain for SV in the other US tech hubs (Austin, Atlanta, Raleigh, Boulder, et Al) and maybe rightfully so.

That isn't a good reason to change the title. Seems like it should hit close to home if it is accurate.

I agree and I'm disappointed HN would change the title. They claim it is a PR piece for Kairos but it certainly doesn't read that way to me.

If this was truly a heartfelt article, I doubt it would have cast Kairos as the only do-gooder in this industry. The focus on helping the US Midwest is straight from Kairos’ thesis.

Most honest articles about SV’s shortfalls focus on bigger problems, like global war, famine, or extreme poverty.

OK, we've reverted it from the document title of “Kairos Fund raises fund focusing on middle class problems” to the main headline for now, but could someone please suggest a non-clickbait and informative title from the article that we can use instead?

> Now I don't cover Silicon Valley. But I do cover Wall Street. I know Wall Street.

Stopped reading after this statement.

She's not all wrong, but this feels like an ad/promotion piece for Kairos -- not an opinion piece.

edit: The original post title was much more sensationalist -- it has been changed.

The article is good. I do not "cover" silicon valley, nor do I live there. But I share the author's thoughts. Rather than solve real/bigger problems, startups are being over-funded for services made to create a market and sell user data, opening doors to misuse without serious monitoring. What a waste.

Why?

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