I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif Bars."
At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1].
Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication.
I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.
Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on.
What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it could and would change the world.
Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the 90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use.
At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an entire novel like this.
Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school, moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have had, definitely not the same inspirations.
All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.
I'm ~14 years older than you. I built a Geocities page when I was 26 and started my first company shortly thereafer.
I remember there was a site called the Internet Millionaires List that had a list of all the people who had gotten rich off the Internet. It was still quite short. I think Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were at the top of the list. eBay had not gone public yet.
Anyway, I love that I can remember "before the Internet" as an adult. And I still get excited about all the new technologies that continue to emerge.
Companies, being run by people, are inherently flawed. I feel like the writer has low-level depression and uses that to paint everything in a negative light.
Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.
Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly, without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming there is no actual "it" there.
I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel-good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive. Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean.
I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".
I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM. Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim. This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book like this...
Favorite line:
> The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I’ve never met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.
The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes it herself:
> "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR’s idea of fun and a 23-year-old’s idea of work-life balance."
I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life" living ever again.
Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO.
At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace. She's not wrong.
But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.
I had the same guess: both the huge number of sales people and the explanation of user analytics as the company's focus were giveaways.
For what it's worth Google shows e.g. some LinkedIn results that seem to now have been redacted, confirming that the author was formerly working in Customer Support at MixPanel.
You can also find a few support forum posts written by the author which confirm it.
I had to look DFTC up. From their job descriptions:
> • We are down for the cause (“DFTC”). We’re all here to make Mixpanel a success. There is no job too big or too small for us. “That’s not my job” is not in our vocabulary.
It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture.
Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse").
Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this contrast interesting.
Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider spectrum.
I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style.
If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today. The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn to them by their nature.
The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering, and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path. I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a different vibe than what it used to be.
At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.
> Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path.
Very true. At even the most elite of schools, CS degree -> engineering career has joined Econ degree -> banking and High GPA -> Consulting as a top choice high flying career choice for bright students who aren't sure of what they want to do for their careers.
I started college in 2003, when as college applicants we were going through the deepest troughs of the dotcom crash. The number of entering CS students was about 20. The dean called them "the true believers" (I was studying EE). I believe that this number is now well north of 100.
>Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.
I am constantly questioning my own opinion of this latest trend, as I'm keenly aware of my own such biases.
> Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.
The old days were better. We were naive, we cared, this was Going To Be Big. I dropped out of HS the same year to start web dev as well. I never felt gross or used or like anything was fake. It was exciting, maybe irrationally exuberant but it was real. I don't recognize the valley now. It's just a slot machine with young peoples dreams painted on the side.
It's also difficult to explain the corollary: When work is life, your boss telling you that maybe it wasn’t a good “culture fit” anymore / after all is a little like dying. That’s melodramatic, but losing such a big part of your identity is disorienting and depressing.
Is it because we were the nerds in high school? Is it because we were the kids who had to explain differential equations to our classmates more than once?
Is that why we now feel this incessant need to fabricate startups/tech as being "cool"? Is that why we write grandiose tales of how "difficult" life is, moving from CRUD app to CRUD app?
Sorry, author. I feel your pain, believe me I do. To me, this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...
>this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...
I very much enjoyed this article, but I had that BEE thought as well! My theory is that a lot of us human beings manufacture strife and struggle, because that is the Hero's Journey that everyone wants to be able to tell to their grandchildren. In the absence of "real" conflict (war, poverty, abuse), we shine the dark light on things like this. "I have a well paying job with great benefits and live in an awesome city...but I'm sad because, like, what does this all mean, man?" I'm not discounting the deep sadness that existential crises can saddle your daily life with, but I've seen this trend time and time again. Just pay attention to modern rap music, like Kanye. Listen to his lyrics. That dude has minimal "real world" problems in his life right now, from what I can tell, yet his music is one of "me against the world." That's because he knows what a story arc is supposed to be like, so he'll play that out for us, regardless of its actual truth.
If you're, say, a programmer in SF right now, the first two are definitely taken care of for you. Love/Belonging can be present as a result of your job, but it's also possible that you "stop drinking the kool-aid" at some point (as the author did), so it's not a given. Esteem is really person-to-person, but it's probably not coming from your work as much as what you get in exchange for your work.
Self-actualization is the one you're referring to when you say "what does this all mean, man?". In other words, am I doing what I should be doing? It's definitely the hardest of the bunch, and it's hard to work on that one if any of the others aren't rock-solid (hence the pyramid shape). Only some people nail it down before they die.
Working in tech, I've never felt like I was doing what I should be doing. I'm just lucky enough to be able to make good money while figuring out what that is. I find that that approach to work (I'm trading my time for money) feels (to me) the most honest, and leaves me in the best headspace. It doesn't exactly fit with the startup office culture we have here in SF, so I do consulting, which is a comical situation - I charge a higher hourly rate to interact with this culture less often.
Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey was, I think, partly inspired by the myth of the Buddha, whose problem was (excuse me) the same as Kanye's: he had everything, yet he was unhappy.
For an outsider, the current culture in Silicon Valley described in the piece reminds me of Wall Street in the 80s. I see a lot of parrelels with American Psycho.
Great writing. It definitely hits on some truth and calls out hypocrisies and absurdities that deserve to be called out.
Overall, though, I think this is unnecessarily negative.
I think you've got to keep some perspective. There are about eight billion people in the world. 7.9 billion of them would probably give almost anything to enjoy the lifestyle she so eloquently disparages.
> I lean in and go to a panel on big data. There are two venture capitalists onstage, dressed identically. They are exceptionally sweaty. [...] It’s like watching two ATMs in conversation.
> The food is served in sturdy tinfoil troughs, and people race to be first in line for self-serve. [It's] well worth someone else’s money, and every afternoon I shovel it into my body
So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks.
> My roommate works down on the Peninsula, for a website that everyone loathes but no one can stop using.
So you also dislike Facebook, and you assume the other billion people using Facebook dislike it as well. You disapprove of your roommate's choice of job, you think they're wasting their time working on "a website that everyone loathes". Everything is terrible.
--
Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.
Just because it's a lifestyle that many people would kill to have doesn't mean it's actually worthwhile. It just means it's well marketed. Like living and working in Hollywood, or being a banker in London.
If you drink the koolaid AND you get really lucky, you get to have a profitable business that changes the world for the better. For most, it's actually a job like anything else, just with the added expectation of utter devotion and unwavering belief.
I think her point is that despite the perks, she's just "shoveling it into her body", all of it, and can't quite get over the uncanniness of it all.
Also, I thought Facebook at first too, and thought it was a bit strong, then realized she was talking about LinkedIn.
>>So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks.
>>Everything is terrible.
Hey man, life is complicated. People are complicated. Winning is losing. Peace is war. Love is hate.
The author does an absolutely riveting job of evoking all of the mixed-feelings that make up our day-to-day lives. Kudos to her for doing it in such a lovely piece: personal and vulnerable and at the same time so clinical and cynical. Beautifully written.
> Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.
Yup, similar problem with "Debt" by David Graeber, it's eloquent and well argued up until the point where he gradually slips into blaming just about all thinkable ills on money and harkens back to a more 'fair' past where people from different tribes simply killed and raped each other instead of selling one another off as slaves [sic].
I personally saw it as the author sharing experiences they found humourous/absurd rather making value judgements. At least, that's the impression I got from the writing style.
> “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.”
This quip about investing in property in Oakland hits home. I had some reservations about crossing the Bay a few years ago to buy a home, but one I did not have was about moving to a place where people who had attitudes like this were uncommon.
Several months ago I ran into an ex-coworker who triumphantly told me how he had cashed out some of his options to buy some units in Oakland, evicted the existing tenants under some owner/family move-in loophole, vacated, remodeled, and was now raking in the rent. All the while explaining that he would never actually live there. I wanted to vomit.
I'm a lucky dummy romantic, I moved to SF because I like trains, and LA didn't have any. I have some skills which have helped me land excellent jobs. I don't hide my disgust for baloney very well and this has enabled me to walk away from some jobs. My brushes with the proto-corporate startup world have been fleeting, but proportionally every bit as soul-sucking as the author makes it out to be.
Actually my landlords are pretty dope. They're techies (me too) but they live upstairs so they're ok by me. But yeah, the absentee landlord for profit thing kinda sucks. I get a bit of schadenfreude when chinese investors buy their appartment complex in the city and raise their rents.
Are you saying you saw absentee landlords themselves experience a rent hike at the hands of foreign investors? That would indeed be a nice bit of schadenfreude…
That was phenomenal. I constantly struggle with a lot of this - trying to distance myself from many aspects of the culture, without getting too cynical about it.
I think most of all, I just appreciate knowing that there is someone else kicking around in this city that feels the same way I do.
We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our jobs to be our next day care...
We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world always finds its way in.
Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly, than to judge.
So, what is this? A rambling of everything around you portrayed in a negative light; I'm sure it's a formula that could work in a about any other city or any other job. Heck, I was sure at the end of it she would tell us she joined a fight club and has an imaginary alter ego called Tyler.
If we discarded every item you mentioned for being juvenile or immature the office of your dreams would look like this: http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cub...
But that's not the office of your dreams right? To know the office of your dreams you would have to tell me _what you want_, not what you-do-not-want, which is missing in every paragraph of this piece.
I'm in love with this article, and my SO is reading it right now. It reminds me perfectly of books like J-Pod and MicroSerfs, as well as some of the recent Gibson novels.
I work at a company that has just morphed out of "startup" and into "contender". I didn't start early, I was hired by the guys who were hired by the founders (so that makes me a 'C' I guess by some old adage), and I've seen the company change so much even in my short time there.
But this article nails so many perfect details. The plastic tubs of goldfish and trailmix, the Mid Century modern-esque furniture.
A MEETING IS DROPPED MYSTERIOUSLY onto our calendars, and at the designated time we shuffle warily into a conference room. The last time this happened, we were given forms that asked us to rate various values on a scale of 1 to 5: our desire to lead a team; the importance of work-life balance. I gave both things a 4 and was told I didn’t want it enough.
Clearly, the only acceptable answers to this question (if indeed one wants that team leader position) are the numbers 5 and 1.
And if you don't implicitly understand this, then this definitely isn't the right industry for you.
<Sarcasm>
StartUps were the boys' loophole for not having to learn to deal with their fathers. (/fathers' companies, structures, power games)
</Sarcasm>
At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1].
Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication.
1. http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF