"Startup culture” is a vague shibboleth that exists to justify labor abuse in exchange for a theoretical massive payday in the future, with the hollow premise that there is something more noble about writing code or “working at an early-stage company” than there is any other job."
Ed - you nailed it again. You are bringing back my faith in humanity.
Basically the thought experiment posited to viewers in Breaking Bad was always: what would it be like if Todd - a psychopath who whole heartedly believed in Walt’s ethos, even more than Walt himself - got away with it and bagged the cash buried in the desert. The answer is he would be one of Wall Street’s most beloved Silicon Valley founders and would likely be on CNBC and TechCrunch panels with an earpiece.
There is real life improving research and investment happening out there in the world, it's just nowhere near the headquarters of the rotters in the American Southwest. There's new types of eye lens replacement that improved my own father's life significantly, if I recall correctly the research was done in Canada far away from the 'tech hubs'.
Cities are redesigning themselves to put in place real genuine fixes for the climate crisis, in Europe, while tech billionaires double down on trying to create a car (pods are just cars, but dumber) centric sprawling exurb outside San Francisco, or in the US Southwest in the midst of a water crisis.
Biotech research is going in amazing directions, in the Midwest centered around Madison Wisconsin, where stem cell research was discovered at UW Madison.
Most of the software projects that genuinely seem to be trying to make people's lives better, like by automating away human drudgery, started far far away from Silly Valley. But when the venture capitalists and big corporations get their claws into a genuinely useful technology and research they poison and destroy it. Though dull useful things like process automation, network security, and document management don't seem to be sexy enough to grab the rotter's attention.
Witness what Elon Musk has done to Mindlink, a company that wanted to give the paralyzed their bodies and voices back. Another company from New York with an actual medical researcher as CEO, Synchron, has probably beaten them to a solution to that problem.
This is a hardhitting but brilliantly written piece. For example
"Musk is cruel, capricious, and joyless, a “builder” who doesn’t build anything, an “operator” who loans himself money from his own companies, and the true symbol of what Silicon Valley has become: a hollow culture that simply demands “more.” Silicon Valley’s leaders no longer write academic papers about the things they’re building or think about the societal implications of tech itself outside of whether it can raise venture funding or grow into something they can sell."
While ad hominem, there is a deeper critique here which I find very much worth pursuing. Given the power that Silicon Valley yields over our everyday lives (and over our future) I would welcome more serious criticism and discussion about the direction SV is taking.
How timely that Ed drops this piece midweek while I’m Ubering Dreamforce attendees around SF. Just this afternoon I had a guy on a conference call telling someone that a certain company wasn’t growing fast enough to be worth adding to their portfolio just to “eke out a 5x”. Not a word about what this outfit actually did or sold. (Quality conversation tends to be scarce when tech conferences hit town.)🙄🤡
What's the solution for Twitter? Get rid of Musk, re-instate all the people who were in charge of "Trust and Safety"? How is that not going to end up like Meta/Facebook Threads?
I would propose to add an "App Store" to Twitter. You can then use the "Trust & Safety" App of your choice that hides Tweets/Users you don't like and perhaps also adjusts the weight of content that gets boosted, much like an Adblocker in the browser. Build your own bubble. I think advertisers already get to pick and choose on most platforms.
Huge part of the problem is that a lot of Western economies have become zero-sum with wealth transfers going from poor and middle-class to large corporations and their wealthy owners. The classic American dream of working a reasonable amount and being able to afford a home and kids and retirement is gone. It's either survival with a declining standard of living or attempting to achieve escape velocity to join the receiving class of the wealth transfer economy. Also explains why a lot of people take to Bitcoin or risky IPOs or e.g. trying to become an influencer. It's similar to the trope of the kid from the hood who dreams about becoming a rapper or pro athlete instead of something more attainable.
In the USA, 17.8% of GDP goes to healthcare industry, 20.2% of GDP goes to the financial industry. That's mostly wealth transfer, very little wealth creation. Throw in rents and the government and you have an economy that's mostly zero-sum.
Silicon Valley's Slaughterhouse
"Startup culture” is a vague shibboleth that exists to justify labor abuse in exchange for a theoretical massive payday in the future, with the hollow premise that there is something more noble about writing code or “working at an early-stage company” than there is any other job."
Ed - you nailed it again. You are bringing back my faith in humanity.
Basically the thought experiment posited to viewers in Breaking Bad was always: what would it be like if Todd - a psychopath who whole heartedly believed in Walt’s ethos, even more than Walt himself - got away with it and bagged the cash buried in the desert. The answer is he would be one of Wall Street’s most beloved Silicon Valley founders and would likely be on CNBC and TechCrunch panels with an earpiece.
There is real life improving research and investment happening out there in the world, it's just nowhere near the headquarters of the rotters in the American Southwest. There's new types of eye lens replacement that improved my own father's life significantly, if I recall correctly the research was done in Canada far away from the 'tech hubs'.
Cities are redesigning themselves to put in place real genuine fixes for the climate crisis, in Europe, while tech billionaires double down on trying to create a car (pods are just cars, but dumber) centric sprawling exurb outside San Francisco, or in the US Southwest in the midst of a water crisis.
Biotech research is going in amazing directions, in the Midwest centered around Madison Wisconsin, where stem cell research was discovered at UW Madison.
Most of the software projects that genuinely seem to be trying to make people's lives better, like by automating away human drudgery, started far far away from Silly Valley. But when the venture capitalists and big corporations get their claws into a genuinely useful technology and research they poison and destroy it. Though dull useful things like process automation, network security, and document management don't seem to be sexy enough to grab the rotter's attention.
Witness what Elon Musk has done to Mindlink, a company that wanted to give the paralyzed their bodies and voices back. Another company from New York with an actual medical researcher as CEO, Synchron, has probably beaten them to a solution to that problem.
This is a hardhitting but brilliantly written piece. For example
"Musk is cruel, capricious, and joyless, a “builder” who doesn’t build anything, an “operator” who loans himself money from his own companies, and the true symbol of what Silicon Valley has become: a hollow culture that simply demands “more.” Silicon Valley’s leaders no longer write academic papers about the things they’re building or think about the societal implications of tech itself outside of whether it can raise venture funding or grow into something they can sell."
While ad hominem, there is a deeper critique here which I find very much worth pursuing. Given the power that Silicon Valley yields over our everyday lives (and over our future) I would welcome more serious criticism and discussion about the direction SV is taking.
How timely that Ed drops this piece midweek while I’m Ubering Dreamforce attendees around SF. Just this afternoon I had a guy on a conference call telling someone that a certain company wasn’t growing fast enough to be worth adding to their portfolio just to “eke out a 5x”. Not a word about what this outfit actually did or sold. (Quality conversation tends to be scarce when tech conferences hit town.)🙄🤡
What's the solution for Twitter? Get rid of Musk, re-instate all the people who were in charge of "Trust and Safety"? How is that not going to end up like Meta/Facebook Threads?
I would propose to add an "App Store" to Twitter. You can then use the "Trust & Safety" App of your choice that hides Tweets/Users you don't like and perhaps also adjusts the weight of content that gets boosted, much like an Adblocker in the browser. Build your own bubble. I think advertisers already get to pick and choose on most platforms.
Huge part of the problem is that a lot of Western economies have become zero-sum with wealth transfers going from poor and middle-class to large corporations and their wealthy owners. The classic American dream of working a reasonable amount and being able to afford a home and kids and retirement is gone. It's either survival with a declining standard of living or attempting to achieve escape velocity to join the receiving class of the wealth transfer economy. Also explains why a lot of people take to Bitcoin or risky IPOs or e.g. trying to become an influencer. It's similar to the trope of the kid from the hood who dreams about becoming a rapper or pro athlete instead of something more attainable.
In the USA, 17.8% of GDP goes to healthcare industry, 20.2% of GDP goes to the financial industry. That's mostly wealth transfer, very little wealth creation. Throw in rents and the government and you have an economy that's mostly zero-sum.
Insanely good.
Many people in the industry need to be aware of this shift. The tide is rolling back. What remains is questionable.
Ed, this is pure fire—thanks for posting it.
Brilliant, timely, and true.