The Age of the Silicon Valley ‘Moonshot’ Is Over | Hacker News Reader

The Age of the Silicon Valley ‘Moonshot’ Is Over

washingtonpost.com

16 pointsandrewl10 comments

There’s tens of thousands of laid off engineers making all kinds of moonshots right now. We’re gonna have more moonshots than we’ve had in decades.

These layoffs suck on an individual level, but they may be the best thing to happen to technology in years.

This is my thinking as well. A Cambrian explosion of new disruptive tech.

Not if intellectual property law has a say in it. Big tech is here to stay because they have amassed so much IP that it's almost impossible to create something they can't pull a patent for. If we are to have true innovation, we need to start revoking patents not in use.

Having read the article, it struck me that the projects seemed to involve daft ideas, solutionism, or fad-chasing.

For example, I knew right from the outset that delivering packages via drones was a dumb idea. A moment's thought would have told you that the economics of it just don't make sense.

AI. That's something that EVERYONE is on about right now. It's fad-chasing.

UPDATE: There's an interesting article in the Atlantic from 2020 "Silicon Valley Abandons the Culture That Made It the Envy of the World" [0]

They write: "You worked for Silicon Valley, and working for Silicon Valley often meant striking out on your own, not only to make your name, but because innovation itself required small firms with new visions. That’s how disruption happened, no?"

"Then the post-dot-com generation of companies became the most ubiquitous and valuable corporations in the world, and Silicon Valley’s rhetoric began to change. Over time, the leaders of Facebook and Google, specifically, began to argue a new line: The most innovative, competitive companies are not small and nimble, but big and rich with user data."

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/why-s...

I guess what this means is “in a bull market there’s so much fucking money everywhere that companies don’t know how to optimally allocate to revenue growth” so a ton of smart people get hired in a way where it doesn’t even matter if they produce value.

In a bear market accountably starts existing again.

there are companies out there literally shooting things to the moon in the next two months

https://spacenews.com/ula-announces-may-launch-of-first-vulc...

plus as others have pointed out, in times of mass layoffs all kinds of companies are created when out of work people band together. I'm optimistic for our future.

JS-free archive link:

https://archive.today/ANnmi

Edit: This is not an endorsement to spending time reading this .. article .. or whatever you want to call it.

The Moonshot has been done and dusted well over 50 years ago.

The time is now for the Silicon Valley Marshot.

Jeff B should let crusty WaPo go.

Moonshot is over... until the next time interest rates drop and/or a breakthrough in tech happens.

Let’s prove them wrong

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