Gee, a company who's business is data is obsessed with engineering and data? Color me shocked.
Snark aside, technology is hard. If you've worked in consulting for any amount of time you've probably realized that outside of a few pockets (SF, NYC, Austin, etc) most of the world is really, really bad at technology. Many of the biggest, most important institutions in the world really have no idea what they're doing. The biggest problem in my mind is that technical know-how is not distributed evenly. I don't know why that is, but I don't think diversity has very much to do with it.
> If you've worked in consulting for any amount of time you've probably realized that outside of a few pockets (SF, NYC, Austin, etc) most of the world is really, really bad at technology.
You mean outside of Tokyo, Calgary, Tampere (points if you can locate it on a map without names), Geneva, the Ruhr area, Milan, Shenzen and a thousand other places?
The 'world' is a lot larger than the USA and there are many places where people are really good at technology.
They may not be able to address a large unified market and they may not have access to enormous amounts of dumb money to chase the latest social media fads but that doesn't mean you need to ignore their existence, unless it was your idea to underscore the point of the article.
I disagree heavily. Many people worldwide are incredibly good at working with the technology in their environments. In fact, I would say most Silicon Valley engineers do not actually understand the environments they develop products for.
Probably one of the best historical examples was when Facebook had to force employees to use low end Android phones so their developers could figure out how badly the experience sucked.
Silicon Valley tells us to connect everything to the cloud while 10 meg Internet and wireless devices that costs us far more to stream than to store locally are common.
Security is another good example: Silicon Valley engineers are often worried about side channel attacks, arcane sandbox escapes, discussion about how to jump an airgapped PC using a speaker or something. Meanwhile, it's 2018, and Google just realized Chrome extensions are full of malware and is finally taking baby steps towards fixing that. We've had an ironclad solution over here in Chicago for years: We disable all Chrome extensions.
The technologies developed and the solutions created in Silicon Valley are rarely good solutions for the rest of the world. Silicon Valley is very good at fixing very first world problems, like the constant attempts to make travel data easier to find in your email box or your assistant, while failing to recognize that most people can't afford to travel often enough for a feature like that to matter.
"“...If you have a hierarchy where engineers are at the very top and the people who are interfacing with the outside world are a couple rungs below that, you really miss something when those people don’t have an equal voice at the table.”"
Technology is hard. Customer support is hard. Making money without collecting a massive amount of data about everyone is apparently very hard. Many things are hard.
That has nothing to do with placement and everything to do with intent and motivation. A generation ago the landscape was technology lifers and scientists -- now it's everybody and their mother trying to make a buck. The bar for competence is too high for the majority of people entering the field these days.
Tech is hard, but also unwanted. I don't think what distinguishes people in tech is proficiency in certain tools. It is a drive to optimize their lives that people outside of tech do not have. I think most of them are happier. Not "ignorance is bliss," just contentment with the present.
Broadly, Ms. Powell suggests that many of Silicon Valley’s problems can be laid at the feet of an engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture that invites little input from people outside the bubble.
Zoning has a lot to do with this: https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh. Zoning lets cities dramatically restrict the supply of housing, thus favoring incumbent owners; by now, the only people who will move to SF / SV are those who want to start a startup (or "play the startup lottery" if you prefer a different set of emotional valences). The city almost can't help become a monoculture, because everyone else has been priced out.
Everyone's been priced WAY out of Manhattan too, but I don't know that I would call it a "monoculture". (Tribeca/Greenwich Village area is very different than the Upper East Side for instance. Very different cultures. But only 0.0001% of Americans could ever really afford to live in either place.)
That's why I'm not sure that the affordability of housing is what's causing the monoculture?
In fact, I'd wager that with greater affordability in SF, the only thing you would really buy yourself is MORE monoculture. I don't think there is a massive wave of NON-tech people waiting to move into SF.
I'd hardly call the Bay Area itself a monoculture. Palo Alto is very different than Oakland which is very different than San Francisco. Hell, even in San Francisco the Mission, North Beach, and the Outer Sunset are totally different worlds.
'In short, Silicon Valley’s problem is sameness, stupid — and in Ms. Powell’s telling, we are not going to get a better, more responsible tech industry until we get a more intellectually diverse one.'
Can't argue with that. Pretty concerned about the impact of the tsunami of Chinese venture money that is going to take this thinking globally, I suspect SV is still kinder and gentler than the rest despite shortcomings...
https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92...
SoftBank: inside the ‘Wild West’ $100bn fund shaking up the tech world
(The Vision Fund is changing the rules for investing but will its whirlwind decision-making lead to bad bets?)
From the outside (Portland, OR) looking in, it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue (which I DO believe can drive different thoughts, look at a map of where most black Americans live -- spoiler alert: it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south) but also a diversity of industry problem.
I grew up in New York, which has a pretty big tech sector, but also has fashion, finance, publishing as major industries as well. There are folks who work for the big tech companies in New York who have also worked on Wall Street and I think that helps to prevent monoculture from growing out of control.
"it seems like SV not only has a diversity of race issue"
Asian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic are races too y'know (well, technically Hispanic is a linguistic category). On that front SV is a lot more diverse than most American cities. Take a look at the San Jose race map and compare to Portland:
Totally agree on the lack of industry diversity, though. SV = tech the same way that Detroit = autos, and it will likely go the same way once the tech industry is in the same place as the auto industry.
You are correct. It is very hard to be different in the wrong ways in the Bay Area, and the social sanctions against being different affect all aspects of your life including loosing friends and jobs.
What is the wrong way of thinking is largely defined by people that seem to believe they know the truth and will do anything including lying about how you are different to further their agenda.
I’m visiting Manhattan and coming to realize that the global citizens here are disconnected from the rest of America to an extent that even people in the SF Bay Area aren’t.
> I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south
A reasonable number, actually. Hell, Apple is run by southerners (Tim Cook is from Alabama). I happen to work with a number of folks from North Carolina and Virginia.
> it's the south, I wonder how many folks in SV grew up in the south
If we look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African... and sort by population, many of the states with the largest number of black Americans aren't in the south anymore (though they are large states, so don't rank as much percentage wise).
But having lived in the midwest, south, and west, and living in places with many black Americans (Vicksburg, Toledo) at that, the south has a very poor handle on diversity in general. Self segregation is very common even when integration has been mandated.
Of all the things you can blame, diversity of race is not. SV is majority Indians and Asians in engineering roles. Of course it could do better to have more white, black and Hispanic engineers
Which is great for the market. Borrow all of the good ideas that SV has and bring them to markets that they are blind about. I see this as a huge opportunity.
The first time I visited Mountain View, I was absolutely blown away by the "sameness" of the people living there. Racially, it is much more diverse than my hometown of Austin, but I could never escape the feeling, after talking to random people, that I was stuck in a scene from "The Stepford Wives."
Silicon Valley culture could use a large dose of empathy. For such a customer-focused industry, folks' unwillingness to 'walk a mile in their shoes' is eye-opening
Everyone could use a large dose of empathy. Either you're a Nazi fascist or a spineless socialist. Everyone is so quick to dehumanize each other and have zero tolerance for thoughts outside their circle. This isn't unique to SV, but it's definitely more apparent there.
> If you have a hierarchy where engineers are at the very top and the people who are interfacing with the outside world are a couple rungs below that, you really miss something when those people don’t have an equal voice at the table.
As an engineer, I've always found that I'm quite far from the top rung, and that my voice is frequently not the loudest at the table.
What may give the illusion that my voice is strong is that I only support ideas that I know I can build or are practical.
I find that the people who make complaints like that are usually the people who don't realize that their voices are just as equal as mine at the table. They just need to work on their credibility in order to make their voice stronger.
Edit: Credibility often comes from knowing what ideas to support, and when to stop pushing an idea. The term "idea person" comes to mind here.
That was an especially grating accusation coming from the “director of public relations” who probably had a private office, an assistant, a parking spot, and meaningful equity. Unlike anybody who knows how computers actually work.
Ms. Powell smartly recognizes a truth that many in the industry elide: A lack of diversity is not just one of several issues for Silicon Valley to fix, but is instead the keystone problem — the source of much else that ails tech, from its recklessly expansionist zeal to the ways its brightest companies keep stepping in problems of their own making.
This article is working from a presumption that companies should be subject to a standard of political representation; and if they aren’t then they don’t — and can’t — function. Where did this idea come from, I wonder?
It seems at odds both with recent history (many non-representative companies have done a lot of good) and it seems to not admit of any distinction between business institutions and political ones. Even if Google had broader representation of identity-related protected classes, it would not be a representative sample of the US or the world when considering things like education or other life history factors.
What kind of diversity is the author talking about, and what relationship does it have to any legitimate standard of representativeness?
I suppose if they had titled it Google's Keystone problem it wouldn't have gotten as many clicks./cynicism
Lets take the article though for what it purports to be, a review of Medium's first online book, which happens to be a piece of fiction that pilloried Google's culture because the author felt unheard at a company driven by engineering.
It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are."
Does that point to any deep regional insights? No. Does it point out that people running companies are human and have blind spots? Well, yeah it does but that isn't exactly startling news.
My suggestion for folks reading the book and this comment are to take away one thing; "Learning how to communicate with the corporate hive mind is an excellent skill to cultivate." and the more practical corollary, "You can't tell someone anything they are unwilling to hear."
You just can't. Get over it. I have had the experience of telling the CEO of a startup that their blind spot was hiding a train coming at them, and that it would take down the company. They couldn't hear it, they rejected my analysis as fanciful and guesswork. And when the company was destroyed by that very train wreck? They were mad at me! Not the situation, not their inability to hear what they needed to hear. No the messenger was the problem, not the situation.
What I learned was that you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear, and if you force them to hear it and are correct, they can end up hating you for it. It is better to ask gently if they are open to alternate views and if they are not, just stop. Let them learn these lessons in their own way and be supportive of them once they fall down and are working their way back up.
There is a theme in "Bad Blood" where they start falsifying their test results because they believe that they are close to having things working and they just need a bit more time. I am sure more than one person said, "Wait, this isn't the right way to deal with this." But to hear that, you had to accept that maybe the whole test with only a drop of blood was not a practical idea. And to hear that, you had to consider the idea that the whole idea was not going to work. Net result, ignore the 'haters' and move on.
> It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are."
I'm always struck by how readily people equate "heard and understood" with "agreed with".
It's very possible that a person can be heard, listened to, understood, and then the actions they want not be taken. Just because a person is heard is not the same as that person being agreed with.
My advice for people is to take on board the difficult lesson that someone failing to do as you wish isn't the same as them refusing to listen to you. That your wishes or warnings are not acted upon is not the same as them falling on deaf ears.
This refers to an awful "novel" IMHO - I read a few chapters before I started to cut myself. I'm confident that if the author didn't have a magic Google resume entry, it wouldn't have been published, much less hyped in the NYT as a Great Statement.
Everyone loves to talk about the problems Silicon Valley has but I honestly want to know what harm is Silicon Valley causing to the world? It's not like it caused a global financial crisis like Wall Street. Yes, there are the whole privacy issues with companies who's main business is selling ads but that's the nature of their business. If Silicon Valley was more diverse or if those companies were located in a different city, would there be any difference?
It's less about what problems Silicon Valley is causing the world, and more, that problems that Silicon Valley cant solve because of its own ideological limitations.
Though I'd suggest that Social Media is causing some very real problems - but I don't see an easy answer that doesn't involve changing the fundamental constructs of social media.
I think you have to look at "Silicon Valley" as a kind-of short-hand for the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) companies, along with Microsoft and Intel. It's more of a "state-of-mind" than an actual state.
So the author's point is that the "monoculture of thought" that pervades The Valley (and elsewhere) is in fact a problem, and one that needs to be addressed.
There are different words for the monoculture. Here on HN you might see it referred to as "the hivemind" or "groupthink". Or HN itself might be called an "echo chamber".
I think this is a valid concern, expressed by a voice in the minority, and is worth the time to attend and reflect upon.
To answer your original question, I would say that the harm that Silicon Valley is causing the world is the creation of the hivemind itself. It's not overt; it's insidious.
Where to begin ... if you follow HN, you see harm caused by SV companies every day. Sometimes it's privacy infringements; sometimes it's companies and investors making huge piles of money to take over entire markets; and sometimes it's SaaS companies deliberately locking in users, the list goes on.
It's so funny/interesting only a decade ago no one would listen to the engineers and the business types would just screw up everything and do whatever they want. Now the engineers built billion/trillion dollar companies and those types are crying that they've lost the power. Sometimes trying to regain it through political games.
Oh, the irony. Silicon Valley is the way it is in large part because the media keeps a close eye on everything that it does. Naturally, groups of people are going to behave in whatever way allows them to best survive under prevailing conditions. If the media, including NYT, hadn't spend the last 10+ years both salivating over and strongly critiquing Silicon Valley, there wouldn't be so much of a need for conformity.
Just do a Google search and you'll find opinion pieces, as well as ones published by the New York Times, about how Silicon Valley is misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Why would it be any surprise that people in the industry are paranoid of not being perceived as ultra liberal and diverse? A strong monoculture is a survival mechanism from environmental pressure.
Tech needs to accept accountability and transparency, but these jealous attacks from old-media has-beens are no less tedious for being so unpredictable.
This kind of stuff annoys me to no end. I think everyone realizes that Silicon Valley and the overall tech world has a diversity problem. There are aspects of our society that systematically under-develop and discourage minorities and women from following the path to becoming an engineer. It's a problem and it's one that our entire society needs to address.
But do we have an "engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture" problem? Hell no! We've got a whiny, non-tech contingent that is frustrated that engineers aren't willing to be high-level abstractions on top of computers problem, which is only a problem for those people who are shut out of guiding the direction of the tech industry by their lack of ability to actually do the things the tech industry does. The notion that we'd magically arrive at better decisions if we allowed more non-tech people to make those decisions is ludicrous and insulting. There's no reason to think that without the benefit of hindsight, those people would have made better decisions than were actually made. It's the same specious thinking that leads non-tech "idea" people to approach tech people and generously offer 5% of their sure-to-succeed company in exchange for the mere trifle of actually building it.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Execution beats opinions every time. People who are actually capable of doing the work don't give seats at the table just because "diversity." There's no reason to allow a PR person, like the one discussed in this article, to have outsized influence at a tech company. Engineers seek out engineering-focused cultures because they want a greater degree of autonomy in their work and they want to have a larger influence on the success of their company. Changing that would just mean that the best engineers would choose to work elsewhere, even starting their own companies if need be. That's why we have engineering-focused cultures...because these companies need people that can actually do the work. They've proven that it's not hard to find the non-technical talent, so there's no need to put as much emphasis on that when it comes to the culture and leadership of the company.
The one exception to that that proves the point is the current demand for enterprise tech salespeople. We're reaching a point where that talent is in just as high a demand as technical people. And to the companies that need enterprise tech sales, the cultures are adapting to value those employees alongside engineers. But when I read articles like this one from the NYT, it just feels naive and entitled. If you want to be involved in determining the direction of the tech industry, provide a reason and a value proposition based in reality or your going to be ignored.
It is orthogonal to the Times article, but George Gilder's recent book "Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy" [1] offers a valuable perspective. His recent interview at the Stanford Hoover Institute [2] is compelling.
[+] [-] ng12|7 years ago|reply
Gee, a company who's business is data is obsessed with engineering and data? Color me shocked.
Snark aside, technology is hard. If you've worked in consulting for any amount of time you've probably realized that outside of a few pockets (SF, NYC, Austin, etc) most of the world is really, really bad at technology. Many of the biggest, most important institutions in the world really have no idea what they're doing. The biggest problem in my mind is that technical know-how is not distributed evenly. I don't know why that is, but I don't think diversity has very much to do with it.
[+] [-] jacquesm|7 years ago|reply
You mean outside of Tokyo, Calgary, Tampere (points if you can locate it on a map without names), Geneva, the Ruhr area, Milan, Shenzen and a thousand other places?
The 'world' is a lot larger than the USA and there are many places where people are really good at technology.
They may not be able to address a large unified market and they may not have access to enormous amounts of dumb money to chase the latest social media fads but that doesn't mean you need to ignore their existence, unless it was your idea to underscore the point of the article.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|7 years ago|reply
Probably one of the best historical examples was when Facebook had to force employees to use low end Android phones so their developers could figure out how badly the experience sucked.
Silicon Valley tells us to connect everything to the cloud while 10 meg Internet and wireless devices that costs us far more to stream than to store locally are common.
Security is another good example: Silicon Valley engineers are often worried about side channel attacks, arcane sandbox escapes, discussion about how to jump an airgapped PC using a speaker or something. Meanwhile, it's 2018, and Google just realized Chrome extensions are full of malware and is finally taking baby steps towards fixing that. We've had an ironclad solution over here in Chicago for years: We disable all Chrome extensions.
The technologies developed and the solutions created in Silicon Valley are rarely good solutions for the rest of the world. Silicon Valley is very good at fixing very first world problems, like the constant attempts to make travel data easier to find in your email box or your assistant, while failing to recognize that most people can't afford to travel often enough for a feature like that to matter.
[+] [-] commandlinefan|7 years ago|reply
And moreover: it's _deceptively_ hard - it looks easier than it actually is. Every time, every case.
[+] [-] mcguire|7 years ago|reply
Technology is hard. Customer support is hard. Making money without collecting a massive amount of data about everyone is apparently very hard. Many things are hard.
[+] [-] tomc1985|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starpilot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|7 years ago|reply
Zoning has a lot to do with this: https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh. Zoning lets cities dramatically restrict the supply of housing, thus favoring incumbent owners; by now, the only people who will move to SF / SV are those who want to start a startup (or "play the startup lottery" if you prefer a different set of emotional valences). The city almost can't help become a monoculture, because everyone else has been priced out.
Unfortunately, Farhad Manjoo, the author, does not seem good at attending to alternate hypotheses: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust....
[+] [-] bilbo0s|7 years ago|reply
Everyone's been priced WAY out of Manhattan too, but I don't know that I would call it a "monoculture". (Tribeca/Greenwich Village area is very different than the Upper East Side for instance. Very different cultures. But only 0.0001% of Americans could ever really afford to live in either place.)
That's why I'm not sure that the affordability of housing is what's causing the monoculture?
In fact, I'd wager that with greater affordability in SF, the only thing you would really buy yourself is MORE monoculture. I don't think there is a massive wave of NON-tech people waiting to move into SF.
[+] [-] electricslpnsld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olivermarks|7 years ago|reply
Can't argue with that. Pretty concerned about the impact of the tsunami of Chinese venture money that is going to take this thinking globally, I suspect SV is still kinder and gentler than the rest despite shortcomings... https://www.ft.com/content/71ad7cda-6ef4-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92... SoftBank: inside the ‘Wild West’ $100bn fund shaking up the tech world (The Vision Fund is changing the rules for investing but will its whirlwind decision-making lead to bad bets?)
[+] [-] skrebbel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
I grew up in New York, which has a pretty big tech sector, but also has fashion, finance, publishing as major industries as well. There are folks who work for the big tech companies in New York who have also worked on Wall Street and I think that helps to prevent monoculture from growing out of control.
[+] [-] mr_tristan|7 years ago|reply
The bay area actually is one of the _most_ diverse in the country, which does include San Jose: https://www.kqed.org/news/10435390/bay-area-cities-among-mos...
The issue isn't racial _diversity_, it's racial _inequality_: the economic gains made in the Bay Area aren't including everyone across the racial spectrum. (https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-urgency-to-achieve-an...)
(I do agree about the commercial diversity argument though, but that's mostly my own anecdotal experience.)
[+] [-] nostrademons|7 years ago|reply
Asian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic are races too y'know (well, technically Hispanic is a linguistic category). On that front SV is a lot more diverse than most American cities. Take a look at the San Jose race map and compare to Portland:
https://goo.gl/images/gQsj9j
https://goo.gl/images/HYkX13
Totally agree on the lack of industry diversity, though. SV = tech the same way that Detroit = autos, and it will likely go the same way once the tech industry is in the same place as the auto industry.
[+] [-] asabjorn|7 years ago|reply
What is the wrong way of thinking is largely defined by people that seem to believe they know the truth and will do anything including lying about how you are different to further their agenda.
[+] [-] ummonk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electricslpnsld|7 years ago|reply
A reasonable number, actually. Hell, Apple is run by southerners (Tim Cook is from Alabama). I happen to work with a number of folks from North Carolina and Virginia.
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|7 years ago|reply
If we look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African... and sort by population, many of the states with the largest number of black Americans aren't in the south anymore (though they are large states, so don't rank as much percentage wise).
But having lived in the midwest, south, and west, and living in places with many black Americans (Vicksburg, Toledo) at that, the south has a very poor handle on diversity in general. Self segregation is very common even when integration has been mandated.
[+] [-] dmode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|7 years ago|reply
Which is great for the market. Borrow all of the good ideas that SV has and bring them to markets that they are blind about. I see this as a huge opportunity.
[+] [-] gaahrdner|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomc1985|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whamlastxmas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 years ago|reply
As an engineer, I've always found that I'm quite far from the top rung, and that my voice is frequently not the loudest at the table.
What may give the illusion that my voice is strong is that I only support ideas that I know I can build or are practical.
I find that the people who make complaints like that are usually the people who don't realize that their voices are just as equal as mine at the table. They just need to work on their credibility in order to make their voice stronger.
Edit: Credibility often comes from knowing what ideas to support, and when to stop pushing an idea. The term "idea person" comes to mind here.
[+] [-] commandlinefan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solidsnack9000|7 years ago|reply
This article is working from a presumption that companies should be subject to a standard of political representation; and if they aren’t then they don’t — and can’t — function. Where did this idea come from, I wonder?
It seems at odds both with recent history (many non-representative companies have done a lot of good) and it seems to not admit of any distinction between business institutions and political ones. Even if Google had broader representation of identity-related protected classes, it would not be a representative sample of the US or the world when considering things like education or other life history factors.
What kind of diversity is the author talking about, and what relationship does it have to any legitimate standard of representativeness?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
I suppose if they had titled it Google's Keystone problem it wouldn't have gotten as many clicks./cynicism
Lets take the article though for what it purports to be, a review of Medium's first online book, which happens to be a piece of fiction that pilloried Google's culture because the author felt unheard at a company driven by engineering.
It isn't a surprise that voices go unheard in companies (large and small). If I had to guess, I would say the most common refrain I have heard from any employee who quit their job, it was "I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong but nobody would listen, now look at where they are."
Does that point to any deep regional insights? No. Does it point out that people running companies are human and have blind spots? Well, yeah it does but that isn't exactly startling news.
My suggestion for folks reading the book and this comment are to take away one thing; "Learning how to communicate with the corporate hive mind is an excellent skill to cultivate." and the more practical corollary, "You can't tell someone anything they are unwilling to hear."
You just can't. Get over it. I have had the experience of telling the CEO of a startup that their blind spot was hiding a train coming at them, and that it would take down the company. They couldn't hear it, they rejected my analysis as fanciful and guesswork. And when the company was destroyed by that very train wreck? They were mad at me! Not the situation, not their inability to hear what they needed to hear. No the messenger was the problem, not the situation.
What I learned was that you can't tell someone something they don't want to hear, and if you force them to hear it and are correct, they can end up hating you for it. It is better to ask gently if they are open to alternate views and if they are not, just stop. Let them learn these lessons in their own way and be supportive of them once they fall down and are working their way back up.
There is a theme in "Bad Blood" where they start falsifying their test results because they believe that they are close to having things working and they just need a bit more time. I am sure more than one person said, "Wait, this isn't the right way to deal with this." But to hear that, you had to accept that maybe the whole test with only a drop of blood was not a practical idea. And to hear that, you had to consider the idea that the whole idea was not going to work. Net result, ignore the 'haters' and move on.
[+] [-] Kalium|7 years ago|reply
I'm always struck by how readily people equate "heard and understood" with "agreed with".
It's very possible that a person can be heard, listened to, understood, and then the actions they want not be taken. Just because a person is heard is not the same as that person being agreed with.
My advice for people is to take on board the difficult lesson that someone failing to do as you wish isn't the same as them refusing to listen to you. That your wishes or warnings are not acted upon is not the same as them falling on deaf ears.
[+] [-] pinewurst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] httpz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloha|7 years ago|reply
Though I'd suggest that Social Media is causing some very real problems - but I don't see an easy answer that doesn't involve changing the fundamental constructs of social media.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ebcode|7 years ago|reply
So the author's point is that the "monoculture of thought" that pervades The Valley (and elsewhere) is in fact a problem, and one that needs to be addressed.
There are different words for the monoculture. Here on HN you might see it referred to as "the hivemind" or "groupthink". Or HN itself might be called an "echo chamber".
I think this is a valid concern, expressed by a voice in the minority, and is worth the time to attend and reflect upon.
To answer your original question, I would say that the harm that Silicon Valley is causing the world is the creation of the hivemind itself. It's not overt; it's insidious.
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] platz|7 years ago|reply
hack the planet
[+] [-] mesozoic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|7 years ago|reply
Just do a Google search and you'll find opinion pieces, as well as ones published by the New York Times, about how Silicon Valley is misogynist, racist, and homophobic. Why would it be any surprise that people in the industry are paranoid of not being perceived as ultra liberal and diverse? A strong monoculture is a survival mechanism from environmental pressure.
[+] [-] 0xdeadbeefbabe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fmajid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curun1r|7 years ago|reply
But do we have an "engineering-and-data-obsessed monoculture" problem? Hell no! We've got a whiny, non-tech contingent that is frustrated that engineers aren't willing to be high-level abstractions on top of computers problem, which is only a problem for those people who are shut out of guiding the direction of the tech industry by their lack of ability to actually do the things the tech industry does. The notion that we'd magically arrive at better decisions if we allowed more non-tech people to make those decisions is ludicrous and insulting. There's no reason to think that without the benefit of hindsight, those people would have made better decisions than were actually made. It's the same specious thinking that leads non-tech "idea" people to approach tech people and generously offer 5% of their sure-to-succeed company in exchange for the mere trifle of actually building it.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Execution beats opinions every time. People who are actually capable of doing the work don't give seats at the table just because "diversity." There's no reason to allow a PR person, like the one discussed in this article, to have outsized influence at a tech company. Engineers seek out engineering-focused cultures because they want a greater degree of autonomy in their work and they want to have a larger influence on the success of their company. Changing that would just mean that the best engineers would choose to work elsewhere, even starting their own companies if need be. That's why we have engineering-focused cultures...because these companies need people that can actually do the work. They've proven that it's not hard to find the non-technical talent, so there's no need to put as much emphasis on that when it comes to the culture and leadership of the company.
The one exception to that that proves the point is the current demand for enterprise tech salespeople. We're reaching a point where that talent is in just as high a demand as technical people. And to the companies that need enterprise tech sales, the cultures are adapting to value those employees alongside engineers. But when I read articles like this one from the NYT, it just feels naive and entitled. If you want to be involved in determining the direction of the tech industry, provide a reason and a value proposition based in reality or your going to be ignored.
[+] [-] badcede|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conceptpad|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NYKG2G/ [2] https://www.hoover.org/research/george-gilder-forget-cloud-c...
[+] [-] ucaetano|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SansoyeA|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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