Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back.

This part of choosing where to live is so important and hard to articulate. I remember when I moved from small town to small town, then finally out to Silicon Valley. The first thing I noticed was the billboards by the side of 101. They were about programming frameworks, iPhones, hackerspaces, development tools and so on... Where I came from, the billboards along the highway said things like "Don't Shake Your Baby" and "Jesus Hates Sinners" and "Lift Kits For Your Truck". The vibe of the Valley and the general interest in intellectual things made me think for the first time in my life "I'm among my own people now!"

Since then, as we all know, the vibe has changed, and I've moved away, but for a very brief special period of time, my quality of life was greatly enhanced just by being in this nexus of people who's values and interests aligned with my own.

Hmm, tangentially related, but how would you say SF changed? Where would you get this feeling of SF back then nowadays? Thought about giving SF a visit in summer as an aspiring software engineer & entrepreneur but curious to what you think about it.

Hard to say, and it's highly subjective. It just feels like Silicon Valley is no longer about building cool things and making the world better through technology. It's become about exploitation and extraction, instead of building. It's about capturing and controlling users rather than serving them. It's about "crushing it in the market, bro." It's grindset, hustle culture, performative work. It's about phony tech chops and faking everything until you make it financially or crash and burn. Maybe it's always been this way and I just didn't see it when I moved there.

In terms of respect for intellectual pursuits and expertise and institutions that respect these things, the place is still head and shoulders above most of the USA, but it feels like every part of the valley has been utterly corrupted by hustle and greed.

I came out here expecting Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, but lately the place has morphed into Theranos, FTX, and innumerable Fintech, AI and crypto scams. Not to mention GiantTech capturing and gatekeeping everything else that's not a scam.

As I was reading your comment I was thinking “this feels just like the time of Silicon Graphics and SUN”. Glad I got to experience that time in the valley, even though I started to feel the influx of people who were just there for the money, not the passion, starting around 2002/2003.

>It's become about exploitation and extraction, instead of building.

What if I told you it always has been about that.

As a former SF resident who visits frequently, I still think it’s a unique and wonderful city. I would move back in a heartbeat if the weather were not so foggy and cold compared to southern California. Visit! And explore the whole bay area. Berkeley especially.

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