Re:Silicon Valley's Keystone Problem: A Monoculture of Thought
by sudosteph on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @01:48PM
(#18123958)
You're right. The rest of the world has plenty of smart people, including developers and engineers. SV and some other metros have advantages in funding sources that let them brain-drain other areas through better salaries and stock, but it's not that people in other place just don't what they're doing.
RHEL does just fine with talent operating out of Chicago and Raleigh NC. If companies are willing to pay solid salaries, and give growth opportunities to people outside of SV (this was actually the biggest downside I noticed while working at a very large sattelite office of a SV-based tech company in NC), then they will find sufficient talent in most any large enough / educated enough US metro.
Re:Silicon Valley's Keystone Problem: A Monoculture of Thought
by nervousvarun on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @02:43PM
(#18124452)
If you pay them, they will come.
Re:Silicon Valley's Keystone Problem: A Monoculture of Thought
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @01:25PM
(#18123727)
I'd have to agree. From what I've seen, the SV reality distortion bubble makes it difficult for its occupants to understand the practical reality of people outside of it. There's that old expression, that when all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail? SV seems to be almost entirely populated by hammers.
Re:Silicon Valley's Keystone Problem: A Monoculture of Thought
by ferdberfel on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @03:43PM
(#18125028)
"In fact, I would say most Silicon Valley engineers do not actually understand the environments they develop products for."
Isn't that the point of her book ?
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.