EppsNet Archive: Silicon Valley

Drunk guy

I Used to Be Depressed, Broke and Anxious

by  on 
 

I used to be depressed, broke and anxious. Now I’m just depressed and anxious. 🙂 I appreciate this gentleman contributing free advice. It seems worthwhile. But something is off when the first thing a person tells you about themselves is how much money they make. I just read an article about a loneliness epidemic in Silicon Valley. People make a lot of money in Silicon Valley but apparently can’t figure out how to convert it into joy or connection. I’ve never seen any evidence that people with a lot of money are happier than anyone else. Quite the opposite, really. People think they’d be happy if they just had lots of money. Then they get lots of money and they’re no happier than they were before. Plus they’ve lost the fallback of thinking that the reason they’re not happy is that they don’t have a lot of money. There are… Read more →

Why is it Okay to Hate the Rich But Not the Poor?

by  on 
 

There is a feeling outside Silicon Valley that those inside the tech business are living in a tone-deaf bubble of arrogance. . . . Here is the evidence that Silicon Valley is living in a bubble of its own arrogance. Startup founders feel entitled to hate the poor. — Business Insider The author seems to be based in the UK, which is outside Silicon Valley, so he writes “There is a feeling outside Silicon Valley that . . .” and inserts his own opinion. It’s a “feeling,” you see, and it exists outside Silicon Valley. Very clever. If it’s okay to hate the rich (which it seems to be), why is it not okay to hate the poor? If it’s okay to hate people without knowing anything about them other than their economic standing, why is it okay to hate the rich, but not okay to hate the poor? Why… Read more →

Occam Has Mislaid His Razor

by  on 
 

Silicon Valley Discriminates Against Women, Even If They’re Better — PBS NewsHour An academic says that Silicon Valley is “not a meritocracy.” He doesn’t offer any evidence to support that. He just looked around and noticed more men than women in the high-tech workforce. The fact that there are more members of Group A doing X than there are members of Group B doing X is not evidence that members of Group B are being discriminated against in their efforts to do X. In particular, he says that only 3 percent of tech firms in the Valley were founded by women, as though founding a tech firm is a fun thing that everyone should want to do. Founding a startup is an ultra-high-risk activity that requires insane amounts of time and sacrifice. Do you want to have friends? A social life? Do you have a family? Do you want to… Read more →

Goin’ to Bangalore

by  on 
 

I’m spending a couple of weeks in Bangalore at the end of the month. Travel is the most depressing thing in the world, beating out listening to other people talk about their travels. Bangalore has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia. It’s like the Silicon Valley here in California, but with monkeys and malaria. My boss has cautioned me to drink only the bottled water from the hotel, never the bottled water at the office. “They refill the bottles at the office with their own water,” he said. “The hotel will give you two bottles a day, but I tipped the staff a dollar a day and they left extra bottles in my room. That’s a lot of money over there.” I’m seriously thinking about tipping two dollars a day just to see what the heck happens . . . Read more →

Silicon Valley Jobless Quit Tech

by  on 
 

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Jobless workers in Silicon Valley are giving up on the region’s dominant technology industry and trying to switch to other fields, as the area’s unemployment rate spikes above the national and state average. Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate — which was below California’s average and largely tracked the national average last year — has soared, surpassing the state average in May. By June, the area’s unadjusted unemployment rate was 11.8%, worse than California’s 11.6% and the national rate of 9.7%, according to the latest figures from California’s Employment Development Department. Many of the jobless techies are targeting new gigs in the clean-energy or health-care industries . . . Some are shifting even further afield, looking for jobs in teaching or financial consulting. People are leaving tech as “more tech companies are offshoring and some are shrinking, plus people are burned out and tired from having been there and… Read more →

Leaving Silicon Valley

by  on 
 

Notes from the Rainbow Hotel Casino, Wendover, NV: Belongings in a U-Haul in the parking lot. I liked the Bay Area, but it was indifferent to me. I sold online ads for an Internet company. I wore shorts to work and still made a lot of money. Then in October, the executives called a meeting and told us the company was closing. We had an hour to leave the building. I was really sad. I got another job selling ads for LookSmart. But LookSmart wasn’t as smart as it looked. In January, they laid off 30 percent of the staff, including me. There was good news too. I could always find 12 friends to go bowling on a Friday afternoon because they didn’t have jobs either. Now I’m going B-to-C. Back to Cleveland. Read more →