However, I'll say this: for a theory to be useful it has to be internally logically consistent, but internal consistency is insufficient. The theory is usually applied to a mix of tautologies (independent of experience /perception) and observations (dependent on experience/perception)
In Michael's case his theory is logically consistent within itself, but 1) his axioms (about what ones' goals should be, what to seek in life, what constitutes fulfillment in work, etc...) seem wildly different from mine 2) what he has experience seems to trend towards the negative side and while not unheard of is, is definitely atypical in terms of the chain of events (hence our gut response which is to say "is he really talking about the same Bay Area/same Google/same software industry?") 3) even so, his perceptions of events seem to be very different from how I might perceive the same events.
I think that's why many people see Michael as while hyper-graphic (a common trend amongst many other Internet posters), clearly intelligent, insightful on technical topics (I'm a bit biased in this case, being a caml fan as well), but find his conclusions in discussions of the industry, management, and of entrepreneurship to be a bit bizarre.
(Donning a flame retardant suit, I am a bit reminded of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science -- or other theories of a "computational universe": it is interesting and there are no internal contradictions, but I'm at at loss at how it could be broadly applicable or how it supersedes existing scientific and mathematical theories).
This all is the (natural) consequence of the successes of SV. These days, enough kids aspire to be the next Zuckerberg, rather than the next great sports player. These kids will move to SV and consume existing technologies, in the sense that they will follow a couple of a rails tutorials and build the "next great webservice" by combining a couple of the patterns they've learned and create a twitter-bootstrap website that goes along with it. They may create some trivial extensions and post it to Github, but that's about as far as their direct contribution to technology goes.
This isn't necessarily bad, some of the world's problems will be solved by this new generation of entrepreneurs. The presence of more high level developers may also make SV even more attractive to the developers that can actually create cutting edge technologies, which would make SV an even 'richer' place in the sense of talent. However, the number of times I hear people say "I've wasted 4 years at university, and wish I dropped out after the first month" makes me think that they have not understood what university is all about, and makes me wonder if they will be among the ones pushing forward the frontier of technology.
The other group of people complaining about university, to whom I sometimes belong, is grumpy due to how easy it is to be self taught, even if you might miss some of the more theoretical stuff that you won't use unless you work on a harder problem than most software in the world. Sometimes it's not even about education as much as it is about finances - I quite often found myself looking at job ads and thinking "I could do the job right now if I dropped uni, and I would have no more problems with money".
Let me show you how it looks from the other side. I got two technical degrees (one of which is CS). I learned how to learn, how to understand the ideas of others, how to model complex problems via abstractions, and how to apply logic and mathematics to those abstractions to solve the underlying problems. I have very few concrete facts memorized because I know where/how to find them. However, the liberal arts students just sit around and have pseudo-intellectual conversations about art/music/whatever, but never gain the discipline required to discover an 'actually correct' solution to a complex problem. This is why they can't get jobs.
Energy tech and communications tech try to solve these, respectively; most funding, research and commercialization appears to happen here (although most deployment happens globally).
I've been studying where things are happening from my admittedly skewed vantage point for quite a long time. It does still seem that the vast majority (>60%) of activity is happening in the bay area.
I don't think SV is at the forefront of energy tech, don't have any figures to hand, but I would put Germany way ahead of SV.
Communications tech, yeah maybe, but it is very well dispersed now. Social change created by this? Less so, the US is trying to reinforce the existing consumer society through better advertising. Much of the rest of the world is experimenting with using new technology to help change society, from the Arab Spring to M5S and the Pirate Party and so on.
Edit: That is to say wind and solar can both be cheaper than coal right now depending on location and how you calculate the cost of money etc. Which means we are over the tipping point and it's just a question of how much and how quickly to invest not the need for some great breakthrough.
I don't know where you got your data or how you're doing your analysis, but you're incorrect on this one.
That said, scaling things up quickly is a hard problem but slow things down and many problems go away. Realistically, rather than transporting electricity to industry a lot of industry is going to move to where there is cheap power. Also, transportation is a separate issue boats and airplanes are not going to be 'green' any time soon.
You're cherry picking some of the outermost outliers of both of their ranges, ignoring the cost of storage and transmission and distribution infrastructure, and ignoring the fact that the price of fossil fuel could just decline to the cost of extraction processing and transport as we produce replacements. The cost of coal + extraction nears 2 cents per kwh.
First off transportation and processing are huge factors in the price of fossil fuels, finding and pumping oil are a small slice of the price of gas. At it's simplest cost of fossil fuels = (natural resource value) + (cost to locate) + (cost to extract) + (cost to refine) + (cost to transport) + (environmental cost). [even this ignores subsides etc]
What's important to consider is a proven reserve may or may not be worth extracting based on the market value when your done due to extraction, transportation, and refining costs. Many coal mines in west Virginia have been closed and reopened based on such factors. Now where do renewable energy come in? Shutting down existing coal power plants is a question of maintenance and fuel costs, but new power plants need to consider construction as well. Add to that all existing power plants have a finite lifetime so long term it's only the replacement costs you need to consider. So while building solar in new England is not worth it now, there are plenty of places where it is worth it and that's not going to change.
We have crossed the Rubicon to the point where economics are pushing adoption. Which means there is going to be a lot of grid connected wind and solar power in the future in places like Arizona which means grid operators have no choice but to adapt. The grid can and will slow adoption, but again existing infrastructure has a lifetime and the replacement is going to be designed around matching production with utilization.
The future of the energy market is a huge multidimensional optimization problem. But, investments follow expected profits and there are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of profitable alternative energy investments to be made over the next 30 years. Governments may help or hinder the process but unlike 10 years ago they don't actually need to be involved and it's still going to happen.
Having said that, the world is changing. And we will see other inovation hotspots emerge, but I truly believe without diversity in people, it is harder to have diversity in thought , which can inspire innovation.
But you can see far more greatness, goodness, and humanity if you so choose. Which shall it be?
Societies and cultures are complex systems. There are a lot of historical biases (e.g. castes even in the states) that are fairly easy to identify if you are looking. But for most people, I think, it is not worth stressing over aspects of the world that they have little ability to change. Why be unhappy?
> But you can see far more greatness, goodness, and humanity if you so choose. Which shall it be?
Unhappy critical people like some of us will see more because it is there to see. Many choose not to see it, because that is how cognitive dissonance makes people happier. Whatever world view works for you is the best one to have, I guess.
Michael is speaking from a broad base of experience, one that is not just a hero's epic of one success after another with a token failure before the ultimate victory. From the heroic perspective (PG, Zuck, Gates, etc.), every setback is but a small dip before eventual triumph. These people sincerely believe that anyone can do what they have, and as a result their worldviews are extremely limited and naive. In a way, they cannot know the other side of the story, because they have never experienced any other outcome.
The cold truth is that the situation Michael describes is reality for the vast majority of the working world. The darling VC-fund kids are a tiny minority, selling hopes and dreams to the masses in exchange for their servitude as employees who will never join their ranks.
It is very hard to see the system as a whole when one is so deeply immersed in one side of it. VC startups will not save the common man. If anything, they will put him out of work and ask him to "retrain", putting him in massive debt for an entry level position making far less than his previous job.
All this being said, I am extremely optimistic for the future, but I understand that the US requires significant structural reform if everyone is to benefit from technology. Not everyone can be a successful startup founder or programmer, and as soon as we accept that, we can move onto an earnest conversation about what needs to be done to make a better future for all, elite and commoner alike.
The dream we sell to our employees is one version of an idyllic California life. Awesome weather, awesome people, awesome food, and the best work that they've ever done. That what we strive towards. We don't say whether they'll join our ranks; it is simply not an issue. Nobody asks. And if they do have an interest in founding their own thing, we'll help them. They are usually capable.
Again, I just do not see the reality that you're talking about.
Whatever you say, Marie Antoinette. You're the exception to the rule and can perhaps create a new kind of corporate culture (though I sincerely doubt it.. if you do, you'll owe it to society to write a management textbook. Or - you will act like most people do - and hoard the information for personal benefit, until one of your underlings reverse engineers it and publicizes because you're just not paying her what she's worth. Case in point: Michael O Church). Most great work is stymied by politics, because the great creative thinkers and engineers haven't been groomed and trained in politics/management. So due to their social flaws, their projects fail, and they're stymied.
Michael O Church is crowdsourcing political support, and he believes the crowd will throw out the hegemony. Well, Michael O Church just might be on to something.
I will say two constructive things, and leave it as that:
- Startups cannot possibly afford to pay people what they are worth in cash salaries, because the value that they create is realized in the future. In order for startups to be fair, employees actually have to recognize some of the potential value of stock.
If employees were in a position to realize it, they could earn far more in equity. But people reasonably need some cash to live, so that is the tradeoff.
- The best experiences are worth more than equity or money combined. This is, to my mind, not sophistry. It's the only way to live. Money ultimately just gives more options for experience. You have to actually live life, and enjoy it.
Of course, that is true and so I agree with what you're saying. The problem with startup equity/options is that it's often so pathetic. 0.03% of a 50-person company for Engineer #20? That's ridiculous, especially when useless nontechnical VPs are still getting 1%.
Software engineers, in most companies, get next to nothing in equity. What they get is a token, a lottery ticket. Only founders and those horrible executive implants pushed by investors get a real slice.
Here's a fairer way of doing that (profit sharing): http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais-macle...
The best experiences are worth more than equity or money combined. This is, to my mind, not sophistry. It's the only way to live.
Few people have the luxury of not paying attention to compensation. There are STEM PhDs out there who end up working retail because they have no safety net and when they fall into the working class, they can't get back out (often, they can't even afford interview expenses to get out of whereever they are).
Michael is speaking from a broad base of experience, one that is not just a hero's epic of one success after another with a token failure before the ultimate victory. From the heroic perspective (PG, Zuck, Gates, etc.), every setback is but a small dip before eventual triumph. These people sincerely believe that anyone can do what they have, and as a result their worldviews are extremely limited and naive. In a way, they cannot know the other side of the story, because they have never experienced any other outcome.
My story's not over yet. I plan on being successful. I'm too old (30 this month) to be a VC darling, but I know I'll do something cool, and probably in the next 10 years. But the world needs to see that the misery is real and that, no, not everyone gets out of it. Most people don't start talking about their lives until the bad stuff is all years ago and they end up putting forth an "all's well that ends well" rosy view. I want the whole story to get out. If I have a break-out success in five years, then after 5 more on that, I will already have lost some touch with how the world really is.
VC startups will not save the common man. If anything, they will put him out of work and ask him to "retrain", putting him in massive debt for an entry level position making far less than his previous job.
Right. I don't think that's the intention. I think many VCs are good people trying to help the world. However, most of the established players in Corporate America would rather cut costs than improve yield. The first increases centralization of power (fear) while the second is destabilizing to those in power, even if economically beneficial to all (including them).
VC-funded startups can't change the world because they are an even more short-sighted (by necessity) strain of the Corporate America they're theoretically supposed to be attacking.
All this being said, I am extremely optimistic for the future, but I understand that the US requires significant structural reform if everyone is to benefit from technology.
Very well said.
Not only is Michael O Church clearly smart and well spoken, but it is simply statistically unlikely to be so often anti-affirmative by accident; not merely disagreeing, but holding a position that is the opposite of (what I believe to be) correct.
I came to the conclusion that I probably am seeing a very very different Bay Area than Michael O Church, and filtering the part that I see in a very very different way.
I think the reality is that perhaps mass culture is negative in the direction, but not magnitude, described here.
But what I see here, in the bay area, is a small tribe, embedded in city of San Francisco, energetically, beneficently, earnestly, relentlessly working and helping each other out, putting their considerable time, capital, and intellect towards building the future and solving our biggest problems. Nowhere else in the world are people really trying to solve these problems. And maybe it's not nearly enough of the bay area, but damn it, people really are trying. Not everyone believes and lives what they say.
But I think that, just enough of them, do. Enough to change the world for the better. And it feels, genuinely, like it is happening here, more than elsewhere. It would be a shame if that signal is lost to the noise.