Silicon Valley’s demise is much-heralded, in venues such as Business Week.
I don’t believe it.
This Spring, I helped organize two well-attended events focusing on startups and technology applications:
- Weekend Apps Open Social: Sponsored by Google and others, about 200 people descended on Google campus to learn more about Google’s new technology, meet new people, and write new software. Some of us slept over at Google, camping out in a conference room.
- Startup Weekend San Francisco: Sponsored by Microsoft and others, yet another 200+ people land in downtown San Francisco to spend all weekend writing brand new applications. Several venture capital firms sent representatives. Several groups earned seed funding. At least a couple of these applications may appear in your world next year. The ideas are sound, benefits to users very clear.
Despite an economy that’s rapidly disintegrating, highly motivated, highly educated and highly experienced people are creating the future of information technology… on their own terms.
Silicon Valley is not the Rust Belt
I attended 3 semesters of high school in the Rust Belt of northern Indiana at the initial waning of Detroit’s influence on the US auto market. Jobs were scarce, very scarce. People without jobs didn’t work. People with jobs put in their 40 hours then punched out.
Contrast that with the several hundred people I’ve met over the last 6 weeks. People ranging from software developers, to graphics artists, to business development and marketing professionals. Ranging in age from 17 to late-50s. Probably half of them are “unemployed” or under-employed. The other half are employed, and trying to fit in entrepreneurial ventures interstitially with their day jobs. And…
all of them are busy as hell!
Nobody has any free time. Everyone is busy creating products and starting companies.
Silicon Valley is dead. Long live Silicon Valley
Maybe there isn’t much “free” money floating around, but there is a vast, truly staggering amount of technology waiting to be employed. A stupendous number of problems to solve. And not nearly enough time.
Silicon Valley culture puts a premium on independent thinking, with a “show me” mentality. VCs are uninamous: a rough working demo beats any Powerpoint presentation, hands down. And that’s what people are doing: showing.
People move from all over the world to participate in the culture of Silicon Valley. Opportunity abounds. If you care about:
- Creating great technology,
- solving real problems, or
- simply paying the rent and grocery bill,
the cost of living in the Bay Area is plenty low enough to provide nearly unlimited opportunity.
A world of difference
The difference I see between Silicon Valley and the Rust Belt is the culture. I’ve in the Bay Area for 12 years, and I’ve lived in the Rust Belt for about 6.
Imagine an automotive or manufacturing industry where all your line workers couldn’t wait to get off work… so that they could head over to their local “Widget Making Machine User Group” to learn new ways to use Widget Making Machines. Voluntarily. Maybe they even pay dues (voluntarily) to their Widget Making Machine Club. Perhaps someone schedules the speaker for the monthly meeting to demonstrate Frobnosticators, which look much better (cheaper, easier, more useful) than Widgets. Everyone at the meeting, of course, will get the jump on Frobnostication. Someone of them will go home and whip up some “home-brew” frobnosticators, say, to customize the drink holders in DWs/DHs Hyundai. Or whatever.
In the Rust Belt, I never saw this. I won’t speculate why or why not, just that it’s something I never saw. Other’s can argue about rhyme or reason.
So… to anyone saying “Silicon Valley is dying,” that’s not what I’m seeing. People here regard “work/life balance” as the optimal ratio between writing software for someone else, versus… writing software for fun.
Now, I’ve got code to write.
