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Comment by supahfly_remix | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this type of book before, a liberal arts major's take on Silicon Valley. I'm sure it has clever prose, literary references, overrought descriptions of excess, etc. written with a mild sense of superiority but I wonder if it covers new ground.

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Why don't you try to read a sample of her work before commenting?

For example here's a recent piece by Wiener on the new Salesforce Park in San Francisco: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

It's simply beautiful prose.

What good is your uninformed dismissal, here? You're not even judging the book by its own cover!

The essay that was precursor to the book lacks literary references, and if anything is infused with a sense of inferiority.

"Judging the book by its own cover"? I understand what this phase means, but don't see how it applies.

> It’s easy for me to dissociate from the inferiority of my job because I’ve never been particularly proud of my customer-service skills.

Clearly she looks down on her job.

> well-groomed social animals with good posture and dress shoes, men who chuckle and smooth their hair back when they can’t connect to our VPN

Try to tell me with a straight face that this isn't full of judgement.

Judgment? Of course. That's one of the main things we ask writers to do. But that's not the same as superiority – especially the shallow thoughtless sort that you expected from the author.

You're not even trying to give this an honest go. Look at the context for your quote:

> Our soft skills are a necessary inconvenience. We bloat payroll; we dilute conversation; we create process and bureaucracy; we put in requests for yoga classes and Human Resources. We’re a dragnet — though we tend to contribute positively to diversity metrics. There is quiet pity for the MBAs.

The "inferiority" isn't the author looking down on her job. It's Silicon Valley looking down on her job. And if you keep reading you'll see how much she appreciates her skill at something necessary, even though the business culture forces her into subservience:

> I’m good at subservience, but it isn’t what I would lead with on a first date. I enjoy translating between the software and the customers. I like breaking down information, demystifying technical processes, being one of few with this specific expertise. I like being bossy. People are interesting — unpredictable, emotional — when their expensive software product doesn’t behave as expected.

You prejudged this, looked for some easy pull quotes, and haven't even bothered to read.

It doesn't read as a sense of inferiority to me. It reads as a sense of being in danger, like living under a repressive regime. Which, since that's something that Silicon Valley, for all its flaws, manifestly isn't, is a deliberate choice.

Are you sure that it isn't, for women?

My question is what does this book offer that others don't? What's your answer?

Well, given all of your assumptions are straight up incorrect, it obviously would provide great enlightenment to you in particular.

> I've seen this type of book before, a liberal arts major's take on Silicon Valley.

Which particular undergraduate field of study do you prefer when it comes to authorship? Maybe we should also get her high school Chemistry final grade before cracking open the cover.

> written with a mild sense of superiority

I like how this perfectly describes your own comment

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

Comments like yours here lead to petty bickering and worse. We're trying for at least a little better than that on this site, so please stick to the guidelines when posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What is your take on the show Silicon Valley? Do you think it's accurate, despite being satire?

The creator, Mike Judge, was actually a Silicon Valley software engineer, albeit very briefly and in the 80s. That’s where some of the ideas for Office Space came from as well.

My take is that it’s accurate enough. They touch on thing a that are real and then blow them out of proportion for humor.

the author of this book worked at github for years. She's not an outsider.

Saw that too and was worried folks would think I was implying otherwise, like GP. Just commenting on Judge.

It’s pretty accurate but my biggest problem with it is that it’s not funny. It might be funny to people outside Silicon Valley itself but it’s so close to real life I don’t find it funny at all.

This is what I've heard. I didn't watch Girls because I knew too many women that behaved like them, and I couldn't watch Silicon Valley because my few experiences with SV people/companies were very similar.

I don't want to spend time with those people in real life, so the humor has to be very absurd to get me past my initial feeling of repulsion.

It was comedy, and I took it as such. The writers did a good job of poking fun at Silicon Valley while making relatable characters. I can't speak to its accuracy, since I haven't worked in Silicon Valley for a long time.

What did you think of it?

The author of the book had more experience in Silicon Valley than the creators of Silicon Valley did...

I haven't lived/worked in SV, but have hated my limited experiences dealing with the culture there.

I have been told (and seen many times on HN) that the show is closer to a documentary than a satire. That's anecdata, obviously.

It reminds me of the (satirical) show Veep, which had to rewrite an entire season because it was too similar to what the actual US White House had done.

The article makes me suspect (and the n+1 piece only raises my suspicion that) this is all very Valley-approved criticism of the Valley. The new cultural train chasing the old one out.

All the new ground I've read comes from places that are easier just to ignore. Mostly bloggers removed enough that they don't care about surrounding a potentially-uncomfortable message with prose that accommodates the sensibilities of the valley. They manage to drive readers away before getting to the point. The ideas have to travel like a meme among the disillusioned until the sharp edges are sanded down enough for the general-purpose cynics, who refine it into something suitable for consumption.

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