I left the valley two years ago specifically because I was losing my sense of perspective; there is a culture and mindset that is found nowhere else in the world. Overall, it's probably a good thing; and I'd go back there if I needed to start a tech company from scratch again. But, it also leads to a very limited worldview, and I think it's risky even for startup founders to buy too heavily into the reality distortion one finds in the valley.
The number of people who are making clones (with slight differences) of companies no one outside of the valley has ever heard of just blows my mind. Sometimes I'd meet two or three people at one party working on the same stupid idea in different startups. It's too easy to lose connection with your customers when you spend so much time in an echo chamber.
As a native, I couldn't agree more. I've witnessed a transition from heavy hardware-based long-haul investment thinking to short-term low risk internet investment. Sure this is totally logical, but the hive mind of VCs who follow every buzz word (social -> big data, etc) is pathetic. These VCs should be the most creative, ahead of the curve investers in the world. Instead they're more often followers excited to be on the cutting edge, but too risk-averse to invest in anything meaningful. It's like another iteration of the quarterly-oriented corporate mindset. Sad. All the hardware is moving to East Asia...
Schmidt's comment doesn't seem to be attacking their effectiveness, though; he seems to instead be arguing that there's no problem in the first place, because the economy is doing great, everyone is hiring, etc. Which, as the article notes, is only true in a very specific segment of the economy. Schmidt presumably just doesn't talk to anyone outside of that bubble.
I don't think Schmidt is saying that. I think he's saying there's a specific section of tech where there are different economic conditions at play - he seems perfectly well aware of how the rest of the world is.
And I agree with him. Talk to any startup about how hard it is to hire people and the insane sign-on bonuses/perks/referral bonuses some folks are having to resort to. Or look at the number of LinkedIn messages most people on HN probably get. It's a very small part of the 'big picture' but it definitely exists here in the SF Bay Area.
he seems to instead be arguing that there's no problem in the first place, because the economy is doing great, everyone is hiring, etc
He doesn't seem to say that at all. In the article he recognizes that he and SV are in a bubble. He points out that the OWS reality is not his reality. In fact anyone who is good in tech has a completely different reality than OWS. It's not just SV where finding good people is hard.
Exactly. I'm broadly supportive of Occupy, but couldn't bring myself to support the Vancouver branch. The only people hurting here are the perennial hurters; the only ones protesting are the rent-a-crowds who show up at every protest. We never had a housing crunch, or an employment crunch. It's still a great place to live and work, so the rank and file simply don't think about the issues that concern OWS. I recognize the serious issues they are fighting against globally, but locally they just don't exist.
Note that I'm saying "exactly" to the problems being localized, not that they don't exist.
There's a also a hidden message - why don't the legions of unemployed/underpaid go into tech? Or why don't occupy wall street people join the 1 percent, ie. get trained in finance/tech and compete in that sphere, take some of the rich folks money from them.
I don't think people are equally good at all things. I mean, I'm good at tech, but I'm not that good at music. If suddenly violinists were the hot commodity, I'm not sure I could transition. I'd probably just keep doing tech for lower pay. Similarly, if writing well became a big thing in 10 years, I'm not sure what percentage of Google engineers could successfully transition. Not sure why we'd expect the other direction to be more doable. Google in particular I think goes out of their way to only hire people who are really techies through-and-through.
As for the latter point, I think the perception is that the 1% overall is about old-boys' networks, scamming, crony capitalism, corporate/government entanglement, and general under-the-table sort of business. Nobody wants to go into that; they want it gone.
Right, we actually had that problem in the .com boom where a guy with a month of Flash training was commanding 100k, the problem was when it popped those guys did not just flush out of the industry in a few months and managers are notoriously bad at spotting talent. It lead to some tough times for many developers while the market corrected. Eventually those 1 month Flash in the pans got their real estate licenses and moved on, but not until it dealt some real damage to the industry. One of which was it gutted the CS programs which has created some of the supply deficiencies we see now.
I keep hearing that - most people won't have the intelligence to do tech/finance etc. However, a recent datapoint, the stanford ai class had over 1000 brilliant students, but only a handful in class at stanford itself. Watch the recent video chat sebastian thrun, peter norvig, and salman khan had on this topic.
Also, you could go back in history and say the same thing. 200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work. The implied "genetic potential" arguments on intelligence are all wrong i believe, though i have no data to back it up.
Relative differences matter of course - there can only be one chess world champion - but most of tech or even finance is not in that winner-take-all space yet.
200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work.
The parent commenter was speaking about making a transition in one's own career. Like him, I have doubts about my ability to become a top-notch violinist, especially since you have to find the tone centers by ear for that instrument. I don't know of anybody ever developing perfect pitch as an adult. Similarly, I doubt my grandmother, who even now is an extremely talented cellist with perfect pitch, could ever become a good programmer.
However, her son did become an excellent programmer, I am confident that my own children could become excellent programmers, musicians, visual artists or speakers of any language... if they start as children or adolescents. Yes people can change an learn... but drastic changes rarely happen after a certain age.
It's not about intelligence as much as the kind of intelligence you have. I don't really consider myself a stupid person, but I don't know if I could go into, say, finance, even finance-related programming. I particularly doubt I could do a decent job and stay sane.
Writing a post on this idea soon coincidentally.