The funny thing is - this wasn't the case even 20 years ago. Silicon Valley was still a place you went primarily to work on cool stuff, secondarily to hopefully get lucky and build a company worth a shitload of money. You went there to change the world and work with the best, money was a decent side benefit but not required. Most took a pay cut (after cola) to move there and work on these awesome computer things everyone was talking about.

Now it's 100% about the money - just look at what is being funded. Almost no real "tech" companies - just a bunch of folks writing slightly different variations on how to sell ads. I have to try to keep a straight face when I have some obviously-way-more-talented-than-me engineer telling me about some silly worthless app they are working on. It obviously does not move humanity forward or progress the art of their profession in any way - it's just a lottery ticket people have deluded themselves into thinking they are "making the world a better place".

The change in tech startups has been extremely sad for me to watch. What used to be inspiring is essentially now one step removed from fraudulent.

This take is not completely fair - there are a lot of startups also doing interesting things - but it's closer to reality than not - and nothing like what you envisioned as a "startup" even just before the dot com era.

Renting a room in a shared apartment in a sketchy neighborhood (Mission/SOMA), depending on the company cafeteria for most meals, and riding the bus to work, i.e. the standard startup employee lifestyle, is a marginally lower standard of living than that of a typical grad student. Maybe the Macbook Pro you carry will be kept slightly more up to date.

University campuses typically have everywhere you'll need to go within a compact walkable envelope, and you can generally live within a short walk of one of the edges. The grad students are coming out ahead, in my view, since they don't have to contend with flaky and crowded transit.

If startup employees are being greedy, they're doing an exceptionally poor job of it. They would enjoy much cushier lives as, say, mechanical engineers and accountants in the Midwest.

It's not a valid explanation when you see the usual equities and salaries people get at startup nowadays.