What has Silicon Valley become?

Bah. Good sentiment, bad blog post.

If you watched a documentary about Silicon Valley, and came away thinking that Noyce invented the transistor.... either you have a listening problem, or PBS has a fact-checking problem. Noyce was 21 and still a junior at Grinnell.

Also, just because YOUR attention is on silly little so/mo/lo startups doesn't mean they're the focus of Silicon Valley. Seriously, how many people are employed by all the Y-Combinator companies put together? Now, how many people are employed just by Google, in the Bay Area alone? And it's not like Google is the only company doing worthwhile things, but even if it were, that'd be sufficient to disprove your catastrophizing.

There are lots of awesome companies, large (e.g. Google) through small (e.g. Khan Academy), doing awesome world-changing things. In some cases they're hiring PhDs, in other cases they're hiring passionate dropouts, whoever can make the awesome happen. Just because a bunch of illiterate idiots write a lot of smoke-and-heat-but-no-light articles about faddish "apps" doesn't mean that's really where all the action is.

Ignore the idiocy; keep your eye on the stuff of value. Of course, if what you value is hype, then I take it all back.