Silicon Valley Is Now Public Enemy No. 1, And We Only Have Ourselves To Blame

We are not heroes out of an Ayn Rand novel. We don't live in a bubble, we live within a rich and complex society. We better learn empathy towards the rest if we don't expect to get forced to give back. There are many social issues, youth unemployment being one of the worst.

And we, techies, are in a great position to promote social development instead of short-sighted and selfish corporate profits, to promote a free internet where users are in charge, to help out others who don't have our talents.

A lot of technologies we use (Internet, Web, Unix/BSD) were financed in good part by the public.

Or you can keep aiming for 6-figure salaries with a sports car. And a bottle of anti-depressants.

It's not just that people are mad at Silicon Valley companies for competing with existing industries. It's that they're mad about Silicon Valley companies riding roughshod over the web of compromises and understandings that exist between these industries and the people affected by these industries. And summarily dismissing all of these concerns as merely political protection for existing players, as libertarian leaning people are wont to do, doesn't cut it.

As Silicon Valley companies leave cyberspace to enter meat space, the biggest realization they will have is that managing interactions with other humans becomes tremendously more important. On the internet, websites are sandboxes. In real life, every thing a company does has effects on other people. E.g. AirBnB can't do whatever they want on their website, but the rentals they broker are real apartments in real buildings with real neighbors, who have their own concerns that have nothing to do with AirBnB's profit motive.

1. Marc Andreesen's "Software is eating the world" investment theory.

2. The history of the robber baron era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Technologies like steamboats, steel, railroads, oil, etc. also arose first in industries where they were "strictly beneficial" and let people do things they couldn't otherwise do. But by the early 1900s, they'd started eating other industries. The automobile eliminated the professions of carriage drivers and horseback riders. Oil eliminated the whaling industry. Textile manufacturing moved from water-power mills in New England to steam & oil-powered mills in the South. The largest single occupation in 1900 was "domestic servant" - by the 1950s, it no longer existed, because home appliances had completely replaced the job.

All of these involved significant dislocation of workers, and the corresponding political blowback. There was a large anarcho-communist movement in the U.S. from the 1890s to 1920s [1], including violence and bomb scares [2]. We almost became a fascist country in 1933 [3], a "counterrevolution" of sorts to FDR's New Deal.

But that doesn't mean we'd want to return to a world where we didn't have cars, horseshit lines the streets, whales are extinct, everybody sleeps at dusk, and the bulk of the population works in textiles or domestic service. The process of getting here wasn't easy, but all of the political upheaval and human dislocation was very necessary to build the world we have now.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bo...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

As for disruptive industries, cherrypicking AirBnb and Uber isn't representative of the vast majority of the industry. Airbnb enables about 1/2 of its users to illegally sublet their apartments in cities like NYC. And its annoying a lot of the folks out here. But does that make other tech companies bad? Uber, from various anecdotal insider reports, seems like a pretty shady company that tried to operate illegally in multiple cities but is being reigned in. Does that make other tech companies bad? King.com got absurd trademarks for their game designed to extract money from unsuspecting players and is now using those trademarks to inhibit competition. But does that make other tech companies bad? Yes, Apple price fixed the whole book publishing industry and Google bought and killed off multiple products people liked and Adobe costs too much and all three of them conspired to keep tech wages down. And Facebook is an immense privacy-gobbling behemoth that won't let you install their Android app unless you let them read your SMS messages. But does that make ALL other tech companies bad?

Realistically, it's a combination of the fact that some companies are now big enough to actually throw their weight around money/size wise the way other industries do -- Industries that get kickbacks, govt handouts, etc on things like corn and oil that most of America hates -- and the fact that the bad actors are getting a decent amount of press for their bad actions. But that doesn't make all tech companies bad. Nor does it make the actors engaging in these actions all bad. And it certainly doesn't make the average wage earner at a company working for a living worthy of harassment.

No, it isn't.

For evidence, watch the Daily Show (a fairly mainstream liberal show) take on the Google bus incidents.*

Yes, there is animosity, some of which is deserved, towards rich people, some of whom are in the "tech industry".

But very few people without an agenda to push hold anywhere near the level of vitriol promulgated by the "tech press" (really a euphemism for crappy tabloids).

Keeping a sense of proportion is not denial ..

* http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-january-23-201...

That time is over, as evidenced by the growing impingement of regulations, taxes, law enforcement, spying, and now populism on what Internet technology companies are trying to do.

I don't see any reason to believe that Internet technologies are somehow unique or special enough to avoid these sorts of interactions and conflicts with the rest of broader society.

Many CEOs and investors of Internet companies seem to think of themselves as self-made and self-contained leaders who are naturally free from the constraints of other industries. The leaders of railroads, steel mills, oil companies, car companies, real estate, etc. once saw themselves the same way. Now those industries are tightly hemmed with regulations at the local, state, national, and in some cases international levels. Internet companies will be too--especially as they tread onto these turfs.

I'm not saying this is good--I'm just saying it's reality.

To fight back, the Internet industry will need a strong presence in Washington and in politics. But that goes against the pseudo-libertarian culture, so they don't have one, aside from the few biggest companies like Google and Facebook.

The hardest part is that there is no natural political home for the Internet company mindset today. The Democratic Party, while in line with the social leanings of Internet leaders, is also home to the populist movements taking aim at Silicon Valley's riches and entitlement.

And while part of the Republican Party is in line with the economic and regulatory mindset of Internet companies, it does not hold the reigns of the party. It is at least sharing them with Tea Party and religious grassroots movements that most Internet company leaders are personally uncomfortable with.

> Scott Johnson · Managing Director at New Atlantic Ventures

> Like the Yankees, and Patriots, Harvard, and Oracle, Siilicon Valley has a swagger that comes from repeated success. So of course there is growing resentment toward the region. Bask in it. The resentment is just admiration manifested as envy.

this.

If Silicon Valley was located anywhere else in the USA and not in the San Francicso Bay Area would things ever have gotten this bad? How much of the problem can be blamed on the tech industry and how much of it can be blamed on the area's notorious politics (beg Twitter to stay within city limits, invest 10 billion dollars for the high speed rail link to downtown San Francisco, refuse to build more housing to meet demands, complain about tax paying tech workers forcing the poor out of the area).

<a>attacks on private buses</a> <a>stalkers of Google executives</a>

One element of this story, which was hard to really spend the time on, is the public's difference in perception regarding disruption of other technology companies, compared to its perception of industrial and service based industries. The public doesn't seem to care when a company like Intel takes on a company like Fairchild Semiconductor. Part of the issue is a lack of technical sophistication, so it is difficult to separate competitors based on their products. The more important reason, though, is that technology devouring technology is easily understood as progress. 500 engineers lost their job at one firm, but a new firm is hiring 500.

Now take a look at the service disrupters like AirBnB, Uber, etc. First, unlike technical disruption, the public understands the businesses here very well. It's a hotel. It's a taxi. It's a laundromat. Second, there is a distinct feel that these new companies are not playing by the rules, whatever those rules might be (it doesn't help that these companies publicly flaunt the rules either). Third, and most importantly, there is far more perception of the people losing their jobs, rather than the gain these companies are making in terms of labor flexibility.

There are plenty of greenfield companies out there (Nest, DeepMind, Climate Corporation are acquisitions in the last month that come to mind). But the region is not exclusively doing that kind of progress anymore, and so we shouldn't be surprised when people aren't immediately positive about the changes taking place anymore.

So you've got a bunch of people who work service or working-class jobs feeling the squeeze even more than the middle-class which is rapidly disappearing. We are the 'available' symbols of their real targets. Maybe it's time to pick sides, or encourage 'both' sides to work something else out. Otherwise it will be plenty of techie cannon-fodder for the mobs while the private helicopters make like Saigon.

There is so much lifestyle media shoving wealth and opulence in everyone's face 24/7. It's one thing when it seems like maybe you might access that at some point in your life, and another where it seems to be there to taunt you.

23rd and clearly more upvotes than several older stories. Is this a technical issue or a mod issue?

http://i.imgur.com/peD9gk2.png

   Some of the blows have been self-inflicted,
   like venture capitalists who compare progressivism
   to Nazism or who block access to public beaches.

wow.

Actually the largest number of jobs that have disappeared are from the manufacturing industry. There is a few reasons behind this. Trade agreements, heavy regulation of pollution and over demanding unions made it far cheaper to have China (and the rest of the world) manufacture everything for us. The other reason is that people in the US have changed. They don't want to do these jobs anymore. They are lazy and feel entitled to better jobs (though they aren't qualified for them). People would rather go an permanent disability or welfare. There are literally thousands of labor and manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US today. Jobs that US citizens used to do.

Couple this with the lost jobs that illegal Mexicans do today (jobs that "American's won't do"), and we have found 3/4 of these mysteriously disappearing jobs. This has nothing to do with Silicon Valley or technology in general. It is about policy and attitude.

It is ridiculous to make claims that Technology has displaced 18-20% of American workers in the last 15-20 years. Why do I say 18-20%? Because the true unemployment today (by more traditional US counting) is currently at 30%. I'll, give you 10-12% for being in a bad economy - thus a loss of 18-20%.

Show me how this is the fault of technology (and I don't mean from a sociological standpoint - that is a whole other argument).

There is some value in it. The focus of the current crop of VC darlings is competitive. Instead of "let's build something new", it's "let's use VC rocket fuel to blow up something old, and get rich amid the chaos". That culture exists because of the VCs' emotional need to feel superior; it's not the fault of the engineers.

The overarching theme of betrayal and decline in Silicon Valley is worth noting. California used to represent a Middle Path between the historical extremes of class warfare (culminating in violent revolt) and acceptance of subordination (culminating in persistent, generational slavery). You could Go West, find clean air and cheap land, build something awesome, and win just by outperforming. You didn't have to fight or cower, you could walk away and do your own thing and be really good at it. You weren't trying to destroy or humiliate or "disrupt" incumbents. You just went to a place where they were irrelevant and (to borrow from Havel) lived in truth.

That living in truth probably ended around 1990. Now, Valley startups are the new face of status quo assholes, except with several times the arrogance and hubris. Let's make one comparison based on how departing employees are treated. Banks (and law firms) give severance when they fire people, and consider those who leave to be alumni. VC darlings ruin the reputations of those who part them. Banks have honest layoffs when business is bad. VC startups have bullshit PIPs. That's just one example. On external and internal matters, whether your focus is on customers or employees or the environment, Wall Street is far more ethical than any of these VC darlings are. It's not even close. And unless you end up as an architect or data scientist or in R&D, the work in tech proper isn't actually any more interesting than what's in finance (and the latter is compensated much better). Most software engineers end up as drones churning tickets they don't care about, which is far worse than being a quant at a hedge fund. (The work in finance isn't inspiring in the "I'm changing the world" sense, but it's tolerable and often fun.)

Wall Street also is not afraid to reward excellence, while Valley companies form no-poach pacts that put a ceiling on engineer compensation and force the best ones either into management or into hedge funds once they have kids.

What is Silicon Valley now? It's a finishing school for the spoiled, snot-nosed, spawn of the old establishment, whose parents pull connections to make it look like their mediocre progeny actually built something while all the work was done by H1-B indentured servants and clueless 22-year-olds getting 0.01% equity while working 90 hours per week.

Silicon Valley deserves to be Public Enemy #1 (although, in fact, I don't think it is; it's not nearly as hated as we in the HN bubble believe) but the reasons are far more numerous and much deeper than what the OP describes.

The automobile destroyed the value of existing companies, too.