Silicon Valley is so realistic that I stopped watching a few episodes into the first season. I was going through a rough and very stressful time at work, and the show was reminding me too much of that rather than being an escape (as I usually want TV to be).
Thankfully I'm in a better place professionally now, and I recently came back to the show. Now I enjoy it a lot, even though it can hit very close to home.
For some reason that is the main reason why I watch the show somewhat religiously (and I don't even live in the US).
When suffering through push-backs, broken software, and no's frequently, sharing the pain with the Pied Piper team is my quiet way of balancing my mind.
Same reaction, although I have kept up watching it. It's too damn real and too close to what I deal with haha. My partner will refuse to watch it after first seasonal, same reason. It's brutal when you have lived through that before haha.
I don't quite have that feeling watching this show (I can relate to it, but I'm not in the Valley; the show is hilarious), but shows like Catastrophe or movies like This is 40 hit _very_ close to home for the same reason. Funny, but in an almost painful way.
So I get how you might feel that way if you're in similar straits as the show.
“A friend of mine who works in tech called me and said, ‘Why aren’t there any women? That’s bullshit!’ I said to her, ‘It is bullshit! Unfortunately, we shot that audience footage at the actual TechCrunch Disrupt.’”
I don't know the show very well, but this is a much better article than I expected. The vignette about online forums is so perfect I can't resist quoting it in full.
“Silicon Valley,” a show about computer nerds, has a fan base that is particularly attuned to minutiae, and particularly apt to argue about them on the Internet. If a Post-it, URL, or line of code is legible on the show, it will be screengrabbed and scrutinized. Last year, a few hours after an episode aired, a Reddit user with the handle HeIsMyPossum started a thread called “Why did the writers just obliterate all the good karma they had built up with their core audience?” He made an impassioned argument that a plot point—the accidental deletion of data from Pied Piper’s servers—was implausible. “So the files were being converted live while coming through an FTP? And that affects disk deletion speed?… Come the fuck on guys.” Rob Fuller, a software engineer and a consultant on the show, logged on to Reddit to defend his work, mostly by displaying his own nerd plumage. “Stuff like this happens,” he wrote. “I think even Amazon had an outage because one of the admins fat fingered a DNS or ACL change at one point.” Another user responded to Fuller: “Thanks for engaging us here, we really appreciate it.” The thread amassed nearly three hundred comments. “Sorry for being a dick,” HeIsMyPossum wrote.
Edit: well, it's weirdly anticlimactic sitting here. But it was hilarious in the New Yorker.
I think the premise of their technology is humorously on target. I mean, there's no limit to how much you can compress things, right? :P
It's sort of a metaphysical overarching joke rolled into the show. Anything on the show talking about their compression technology becomes necessarily unbelievable as a result.
Causality caused the file to be deleted on both ends!
That's because the The New Yorker is rather dull. Anything interesting stands out -- assuming your eyes haven't already glazed over from wading through descriptions of people's clothes and suntans.
I completely agree. Silicon Valley talked about the reality.
I founded a startup and headed engineering for another. I have seen more than half the things there as follows:
Getting money in tranches.
Investors making you spend invested money for personal gain.
Having a business CEO who has no product insights.
Board control issues.
Employees trying to overthrow founders and getting fired because of that.
Being forced to hire friends and family of investors.
Lawyers represent the company and not you.
Founding company with someone whom you do not trust.
Investors getting involved in day to day running.
Luckily each of the startups had an happy ending. But it took a lot of hard work and a few miracles.
One more thing to add. Having a CEO who takes a salary of 180k/year after seed round (which was almost half of the seed round) and apart from this also charges part of his house rent to the company.
Those were fun times.
If you want proof that the SV producers go the extra mile, a couple episodes ago there was a split-second appearance of a GitHub repository belonging to one of the characters. Turns out it's completely real (https://github.com/Stitchpunk/atari-ai ) and the owner has accepted pull requests!
“Some Valley big shots have no idea how to react to the show,” Miller told me. “They can’t decide whether to be offended or flattered. And they’re mystified by the fact that actors have a kind of celebrity that they will never have—there’s no rhyme or reason to it, but that’s the way it is, and it kills them.” Miller met Musk at the after-party in Redwood City. “I think he was thrown by the fact that I wasn’t being sycophantic—which I couldn’t be, because I didn’t realize who he was at the time. He said, ‘I have some advice for your show,’ and I went, ‘No thanks, we don’t need any advice,’ which threw him even more. And then, while we’re talking, some woman comes up and says ‘Can I have a picture?’ and he starts to pose—it was kinda sad, honestly—and instead she hands the camera to him and starts to pose with me. It was, like, Sorry, dude, I know you’re a big deal—and, in his case, he actually is a big deal—but I’m the guy from ‘Yogi Bear 3-D,’ and apparently that’s who she wants a picture with.”
In last Sunday's show they were ramping up to launch a beta of their product and had a closed alpha session where the team could give out access codes to close friends. The three team members, all engineers, got universally positive feedback for how great their user interface was. Well except from Monica, who couldn't quite articulate why it was just off to the casual user [1].
Essentially everyone in the engineering team's social circle either were engineers themselves who wouldn't recognize good design if it hit them in the mouth, or intentionally did not give criticism of the product in order to suck up to the promising new startup.
Semi off-topic, but I think there was an Easter egg in that part of the episode. A few seasons ago Monica had to give some bad news to Richard, and she changed into white clothing before talking to him. I don't remember exactly how it came up, but she said she changed because studies had shown that bad news was less upsetting when the messenger was wearing white.
When Monica was in her office looking at the beta, she was wearing a regular suit. When she shows up at Erlich's house (presumably soon after the last scene), she's changed into a white/cream colored sweater. I thought that was a nice callback to the earlier season.
I must say that Pied Piper's interface is a dead-ringer for Handbrake[1] if you moved all controls from different tabs onto one. Maybe similarity is not to Handbrake only, but any 'expert' level video conversion tool is bound to be equally inscrutable.
For me the most realistic scene, one that only people in the field would understand, is when they made the "box". The lead up from hating the assignment to not being able to do shit work really hit home. I've probably had had a few projects that i hated but spent more time then needed. To either make it work faster or modulerized it even though it was probably never going to be updated, just to keep my interest or to learn something.
> In 2015, Weissman convened the Stanford Compression Forum, which resulted in a forty-page white paper outlining what middle-out compression might mean. One of his graduate students, Vinith Misra, worked out the math more explicitly in another paper.
The paper they link to from there (https://www.scribd.com/doc/228831637/Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Effi...) is actually "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency: a model for male audience stimulation". Not that I'm complaining, that is absolutely incredible, but does the compression paper actually exist?
I think it's good that people in the actual tech industry and startup eco system can laugh about themselves. It's healthy. The day they/we stop laughing is the day we have a problem.
There was an article a while back on The Verge noting the irony in the show being "comedy". It's supposed to be a caracature of startup culture, stories, and the insane numbers that are casually thrown around. But as most people on HN know, Pied Piper would have had a similar path if it was a startup in real life.
What I'm getting at is that even in it's attempt to be more insane than what startup life is like, it's strangely... more accurate.
And I can't really tell if that's a good or bad thing.
In a lot of ways, "epochs" of software development track to Mike Judge productions... a lot of things changed after Office Space lampooned the industry the first time... I wonder if Silicon Valley will have the same effect.
Well, if you replace "hardware" with "infrastructure", it starts making sense. Somewhat realistic scenario goes like this:
The CTO makes a decision to move to AWS. A couple of "server huggers" on the team start blaming AWS's "shitty infrastructure" for unexplainable latency spikes and increased downtime. The CTO responds blaming their "terrible code" for not being designed properly and points at Netflix.
From an outsider's perspective, bad collaboration between engineering and ops (or even among engineers, frontend v. backend) might sound like that. They're joking about the "looks good in staging" trope [1]
I have seen it, but in very traditional orgs, where system administrators and developers were in very different realms, and mostly communicate through a ticketing system. Similar things between DBAs and programmers in that environment. Why are the queries slow in production?
So it's not an uncommon problem to have wherever there's no clear line of responsibility, and no real shared ownership. It's only unrealistic in the sense that, if you have those kind of problems in a company as small as Pied Piper, I'd expect the product to not work at all.
I'm not sure I agree - I feel like Gilfoyle writes plenty of code and also builds hardware. They have a natural rivalry, but I haven't seen it break down exclusively at the hardware/software boundary.
In the bad old days before dev-ops systems admins and engineers often had some pretty good pissing contests around blame shifting and pitching shit over the wall. Though it has come down, in tone, this relationship does exist to some extent still. I think they have captured the dynamic but skipped the actual exchanges/interactions to spare a less technical audience.
Many moons ago, and it was mostly a developer telling a sysadmin "My code should be working a lot better than this!" and the admin saying something about "I told you, your shitty code isn't taking advantage of the awesomeness in this AMD chip!"
I think it was back in the day of the Pentium III vs some AMD Athlon. I don't remember the conversation verbatim, i was too busy petting my G4.
I found that the show was totally off on most of the issues involved in the process of coding and in working as a coder. I put that on Judge having worked in SV as an engineer rather than a programmer; I don't even think he codes at all.
The attention to detail on the show is amazing. For example, during their move to the new office I noticed that they had Corovan moving boxes. If you don't know Apple uses Corovan exclusively and if you've ever moved offices chances are high that they moved you. Not sure why but it was amazing to me that they bothered with a detail like that.
I stopped after the first episode. It match ZERO percent of any of my silicon valley experience. Have never seen a backyard party with famous band. Have never seen a famous band with "nerds" not watching. Have never been to an SV party where hot women stand around looking to pick up rich SV men.
Maybe it gets better but I didn't give it the chance.
One of my favorite parts of the show is the opening credits. Being an old Netscape employee, I still get a little sad when I see the Netscape logo fall off that building, only to be replaced by Chrome. tears
The Silicon Valley show makes me anxious. I laugh but I also feel the pain from experience. And I'm not sure if that's good. I want and need to catch up but I almost dread it. I wonder if it's the same for cop drama shows and cops who watch them.
>“It’s capitalism shrouded in the fake hippie rhetoric of ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ because it’s uncool to just say ‘Hey, we’re crushing it and making money.’”
the world does seems to be a better place when you're making a lot of money.
[+] [-] zippergz|9 years ago|reply
Thankfully I'm in a better place professionally now, and I recently came back to the show. Now I enjoy it a lot, even though it can hit very close to home.
[+] [-] jsemrau|9 years ago|reply
When suffering through push-backs, broken software, and no's frequently, sharing the pain with the Pied Piper team is my quiet way of balancing my mind.
[+] [-] curiousgal|9 years ago|reply
Buy a gold chain!
[+] [-] Cshelton|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ageektrapped|9 years ago|reply
So I get how you might feel that way if you're in similar straits as the show.
[+] [-] the_cat_kittles|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnahckire|9 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, unsurprising.
[+] [-] carryalls|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|9 years ago|reply
“Silicon Valley,” a show about computer nerds, has a fan base that is particularly attuned to minutiae, and particularly apt to argue about them on the Internet. If a Post-it, URL, or line of code is legible on the show, it will be screengrabbed and scrutinized. Last year, a few hours after an episode aired, a Reddit user with the handle HeIsMyPossum started a thread called “Why did the writers just obliterate all the good karma they had built up with their core audience?” He made an impassioned argument that a plot point—the accidental deletion of data from Pied Piper’s servers—was implausible. “So the files were being converted live while coming through an FTP? And that affects disk deletion speed?… Come the fuck on guys.” Rob Fuller, a software engineer and a consultant on the show, logged on to Reddit to defend his work, mostly by displaying his own nerd plumage. “Stuff like this happens,” he wrote. “I think even Amazon had an outage because one of the admins fat fingered a DNS or ACL change at one point.” Another user responded to Fuller: “Thanks for engaging us here, we really appreciate it.” The thread amassed nearly three hundred comments. “Sorry for being a dick,” HeIsMyPossum wrote.
Edit: well, it's weirdly anticlimactic sitting here. But it was hilarious in the New Yorker.
[+] [-] kordless|9 years ago|reply
It's sort of a metaphysical overarching joke rolled into the show. Anything on the show talking about their compression technology becomes necessarily unbelievable as a result.
Causality caused the file to be deleted on both ends!
[+] [-] adrianratnapala|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timewarrior|9 years ago|reply
I founded a startup and headed engineering for another. I have seen more than half the things there as follows: Getting money in tranches. Investors making you spend invested money for personal gain. Having a business CEO who has no product insights. Board control issues. Employees trying to overthrow founders and getting fired because of that. Being forced to hire friends and family of investors. Lawyers represent the company and not you. Founding company with someone whom you do not trust. Investors getting involved in day to day running.
Luckily each of the startups had an happy ending. But it took a lot of hard work and a few miracles.
[+] [-] timewarrior|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WWKong|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untilHellbanned|9 years ago|reply
“Some Valley big shots have no idea how to react to the show,” Miller told me. “They can’t decide whether to be offended or flattered. And they’re mystified by the fact that actors have a kind of celebrity that they will never have—there’s no rhyme or reason to it, but that’s the way it is, and it kills them.” Miller met Musk at the after-party in Redwood City. “I think he was thrown by the fact that I wasn’t being sycophantic—which I couldn’t be, because I didn’t realize who he was at the time. He said, ‘I have some advice for your show,’ and I went, ‘No thanks, we don’t need any advice,’ which threw him even more. And then, while we’re talking, some woman comes up and says ‘Can I have a picture?’ and he starts to pose—it was kinda sad, honestly—and instead she hands the camera to him and starts to pose with me. It was, like, Sorry, dude, I know you’re a big deal—and, in his case, he actually is a big deal—but I’m the guy from ‘Yogi Bear 3-D,’ and apparently that’s who she wants a picture with.”
[+] [-] ben_jones|9 years ago|reply
[1]:http://www.piedpiper.com/app/themes/pied-piper/dist/images/i...
Essentially everyone in the engineering team's social circle either were engineers themselves who wouldn't recognize good design if it hit them in the mouth, or intentionally did not give criticism of the product in order to suck up to the promising new startup.
[+] [-] actsasbuffoon|9 years ago|reply
When Monica was in her office looking at the beta, she was wearing a regular suit. When she shows up at Erlich's house (presumably soon after the last scene), she's changed into a white/cream colored sweater. I thought that was a nice callback to the earlier season.
[+] [-] sangnoir|9 years ago|reply
1. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kq_VI7SJLxo/UASmKSHJDcI/AAAAAAAAIp...
[+] [-] walrus01|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissman_score
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smilbandit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atom-morgan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qnk|9 years ago|reply
The article contains several spoilers. You may want to hold off if you follow the show.
[+] [-] gadtfly|9 years ago|reply
The paper they link to from there (https://www.scribd.com/doc/228831637/Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Effi...) is actually "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency: a model for male audience stimulation". Not that I'm complaining, that is absolutely incredible, but does the compression paper actually exist?
[+] [-] fataliss|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swampthinker|9 years ago|reply
What I'm getting at is that even in it's attempt to be more insane than what startup life is like, it's strangely... more accurate.
And I can't really tell if that's a good or bad thing.
[+] [-] dccoolgai|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ModernMech|9 years ago|reply
"My code can beat your terrible hardware!" "My hardware is terrible because of your terrible code!"
That just doesn't happen in my experience. Has anyone else seen this?
[+] [-] old-gregg|9 years ago|reply
The CTO makes a decision to move to AWS. A couple of "server huggers" on the team start blaming AWS's "shitty infrastructure" for unexplainable latency spikes and increased downtime. The CTO responds blaming their "terrible code" for not being designed properly and points at Netflix.
[+] [-] etjossem|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/22605665.jpg
[+] [-] hibikir|9 years ago|reply
So it's not an uncommon problem to have wherever there's no clear line of responsibility, and no real shared ownership. It's only unrealistic in the sense that, if you have those kind of problems in a company as small as Pied Piper, I'd expect the product to not work at all.
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
Passive-aggressive bromances are a hallmark of comedy nowadays.
[+] [-] etrautmann|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer00eyz|9 years ago|reply
In the bad old days before dev-ops systems admins and engineers often had some pretty good pissing contests around blame shifting and pitching shit over the wall. Though it has come down, in tone, this relationship does exist to some extent still. I think they have captured the dynamic but skipped the actual exchanges/interactions to spare a less technical audience.
[+] [-] cm3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrnichols|9 years ago|reply
I think it was back in the day of the Pentium III vs some AMD Athlon. I don't remember the conversation verbatim, i was too busy petting my G4.
[+] [-] pessimizer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RangerScience|9 years ago|reply
It's just rare that you have a company making new hardware AND new software at the same time.
[+] [-] mmmBacon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NEDM64|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josu|9 years ago|reply
On a related note, a few days ago [1] Marc Andreessen recommended another show based on startup culture: Halt and Catch Fire [2]
I haven't seen it, but I will probably give it a shot.
[1] http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/?ref_=wl_li_tt
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maknz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drumdance|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggman|9 years ago|reply
Maybe it gets better but I didn't give it the chance.
[+] [-] jrnichols|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rexreed|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|9 years ago|reply
the world does seems to be a better place when you're making a lot of money.