Silicon Valley's Loony Cheerleading Culture Is Out of Control 175
Nerval's Lobster writes "Kernel editor-in-chief and noted firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos swings away at Silicon Valley's current startup culture, noting that it's resulted in herds of wannabe founders and startup groupies who don't exactly have a track record of starting successful companies or even producing solid code. 'Though they produce little of value, they are the naive soft power behind aggressive capitalist machines in Silicon Valley: the trend-setting vanguard of the global Web and mobile industries,' he writes. 'We should be very wary indeed of these vacuous cheerleaders whose vague waffle about the transformational potential of photo-sharing apps is more sinister and Orwellian than anything dreamt up by a dictator.' How long can such a culture continue before it dries up, and the whole tech-investment cycle begins anew?"
someone's gotta start the show (Score:5, Insightful)
While the content being generated by these startups may be vacuous, there is at least the spark of new ideas (in some cases) or tangental thought that leads to other ideas. Someone else does the real legwork if it's a good spark, if these small startups can only talk the talk. Contrast the want-to-do's with the Microsoft archtype of staying safe and not innovating or thinking fresh.
There is some value to the cheerleading, even if it's just to provide grain for others to mill.
Answer to your question (Score:5, Insightful)
How long can such a culture continue before it dries up, and the whole tech-investment cycle begins anew?
As long as people with money keep getting sucked in by it
Is this really any different... (Score:5, Insightful)
No different than any other "business" culture. (Score:2, Insightful)
What we're seeing here is that Silicon Valley has become no different than any other business/industry group. Flash, buzzwords, bullshit, business lunches, golf - People that are good at appearances rule in the business community, mostly to the harm of everyone else.
reads like (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Dictator (Score:5, Insightful)
"the transformational potential of photo-sharing apps is more sinister and Orwellian than anything dreamt up by a dictator."
Flickr is worse than Hitler? What?
No, Milo's prose is worse than a triple shot cappuccino addled New York Times intern.
Sounds like somebody got a hold of something too strong at Burning Man. Slow down guy, it's not worth getting that worked up about stuff like this.
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:5, Insightful)
MS innovates, just slowly. I wish more of these [microsoft.com] guys ideas got turned into products each year, if they did MS probably wouldn't have the reputation they do of a stoggy business only company.
Re:Dictator (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a 30+year observer/survivor of Silicon Valley (and having gone through 3 start-ups) I have to ask - how is this any worse than now that it was during the Dot Com silliness?
For every roughly 10 companies started in the valley - 9 fail. Nothing new about that! It was that way before I got here!
New ideas are vital to the success of the place. Often they are bone-headed ideas? (How do you make money by giving things away for free - the common denominator in the Dot-Com era - as an example!) Others are obvious business models - Gee I think I'll build an on-line auction site (Ebay!) All have been tried - some failed and some soared.
Point is - this is just the normal rough-and-tumbel of Silicon Valley. The author needs to get over himself!
Re:Is this really any different... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dictator (Score:1, Insightful)
Even though I agree in spirit with some of the sentiments, I found it very hard to comment on the article, because it was so full hyperbole. There was almost nothing to respond to. The writer was firing shotgun shells at his own windmills. It's a shame that so much passion was not ironed or focused into a more substantial communication.
Re:Dictator (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree Milo is laying it on waaaaay too heavy here....but, honestly, have you met the people he's describing? "Evangelists", "Community Developers", "Mentors", "Facilitators" and their ilk? They have no technical skills to value.
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:2, Insightful)
First, let me just say... when I saw "cheerleading" in the title, like most people, I just clicked the link to see pictures of nerdy girls with pom poms.... and let me say, it was a grave disappointment. Instead we get some hyperbole about a guy who equates failed business-types trying to hawk their latest get rich scheme as equal to that of mass murderers and warlords, and some half-assed rant about the power of picture sharing.
I applaud your efforts to turn what is effectively a king sized bitch fest by a reporter who feels that these guys' failures are still better than his greatest successes, and wonders why people with real talent can't get ahead... and turned it into something that was actually marginally interesting to read. Bravo!
Now... to hell with "soft power" and whinging about people wasting money... get me some nerdy cheerleaders Slashdot!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a 30+year observer/survivor of Silicon Valley (and having gone through 3 start-ups) I have to ask - how is this any worse than now that it was during the Dot Com silliness?
For every roughly 10 companies started in the valley - 9 fail. Nothing new about that!
Of small business entrepreneurial ventures, 9 out of 10 will fail, so that's not a revelation or admission of any sort. I think the real crux here is that the rate in the valley is more like 99 out of 100 will fail, and even though that sounds bad it's still not the actual problem; the problem is that the 1 that "makes it" is a bullshit platform like Instagram and the 99 that fail include actual valuable technologies like medical industry interop tools and the like.
Was this article drafted (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone found a thesaurus!
"The artifice of start-up culture is a portent of what is to come."
"At once the zenith of the cult of excessively educated bourgeois bohemians and nadir of a glossy new venture-capital-funded geek culture..."
This reads as a writers masturbatory exercise.
Just be careful (Score:2, Insightful)
I can absolutely validate some of the comments on this thread as I've seen them myself, but what I really want to emphasize here, is that start-up "CEOs" will lie, and will promise you infinite wealth with no backing whatsoever. It not only about the products, which many times sound good (even if they are just smoke and mirrors), but it's also about their business practices. Many of these companies don't yet have a culture other than "survive and grow", so ethics and even business appropriate behavior is not there. Many times their HR is just an external service and there is no recourse if you have an issue.
I ended up leaving my position, joining the start-up and working my ass off for almost half a year when I realized this was really going nowhere. One day, out of the blue, the CEO called me to his office and said "we need you too leave" just like that. No explanation other than "there is no fit". Later on I realized he was right, I was no fit for their "culture", and I ended up coming back to my former employer, this time in a better role with 20-25% more pay than I had before. But I know I was also lucky. It could have been way worst.
So here are my lessons learned in hopes that this will be useful to anyone out there:
- Do your homework. Research the leadership team, their track record of success or failure as well as each one of their investors.
- Don't trust in anything verbal. Every promise must be clearly in writing
- Negotiate your contract. Never take their "stock contract" that only protects them. Invest in a legal service ahead of time and have your own template.
- Make sure you negotiate your exit as part of the contract. It's like a pre-nuptial agreement. You can't imagine it's going to be useful some day. - When you are evaluating a company, leave your passion, your beliefs and your ideals at the door. It's business. Look at them as a business that will be the source of your livelihood. How viable are they really?
If any of the points above don't click, then leave. Don't take it. There are another hundred of them out there. Most will die but a few will make it. Do everything in your power to choose wisely.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:2, Insightful)
You said you made sure it had windows 7 drivers, why didn't you just install windows 7 and have a good laptop in about an hour instead of spending "a night of hacking the registry"?
Re:someone's gotta start the show (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were the type to write software, I would take the lesson here as: Make a bunch of shitty stupid apps that perform trivial functions that witless people would find entertaining. If my odds are 1 in 100 and it's all phoned in crap anyway, how long would it take me to hit on one that's a success? 1 year? Less if I churn them out 1 a day? Plus, you can use the obnoxious amount of money you made to invest in developing something actually useful. The end result is that you gave up your pride in only making Stuff That Matters to empower your ability to produce something that makes the world a better place. Or, you know... you can judge people on slashdot. It's your call.