Pictures
Every summer when I was growing up, Joey Ford came out to my neighborhood to visit his grandparents from Milpitas, California, located in the heart of blossoming Silicon Valley. He told me unbelievable things like his elementary school locker was outside of all places, and he only wore a light sweater or a windbreaker in December. When his mom came out to visit I asked her if it was true, she assured me that he was telling the truth. She worked for a new software company. I’m sure she’s quite wealthy now. If I had kept in touch with Joey, I would have tried to look him up…
I’ve spent the past week in Silicon Valley. It’s been a bit of a pilgrimage for me. I’ve heard so many things… both good and bad… I wanted to see for myself. The following things are true:
- My house would cost about $500k in the bay area.
- Technology is everywhere… especially Sun (the “dot” in dot-com).
- Startups are everywhere… so are a lot of unemployed entrepreneurs 😉
- Apple headquarters is as cool as everyone says.
- Living expenses are really THAT high.
The following things are false:
- Everyone in Silicon Valley is/looks cool.
- Everyone earns six figures a year.
- Everyone is happy.
- It never rains.
I learned a lot while I was out there (more than just the user data that we were collecting). There is a great need to fill positions in the bay area, but there’s nowhere to live within an hour’s drive… at least not at what those positions will pay. I’m sure there are more six figure salaries out there than here, but that money won’t stay in the bank for very long. Rent, food, gas, and entertainment costs are through the roof.
A few nights the weather was great… mid-fifties with clear skies. However that doesn’t justify the inflated cost. The views are nice… if you can deal with the traffic to get to them. The culture is unique… if you can deal with the eccentricities of it. The cars don’t rust and stay clean longer, but there’s nowhere to drive in the city.
I hate to say it, but Silicon Valley isn’t what I expected. It was dirty more often than hip. It’s more expensive than Southern California and not as nice. There’s a huge cluster of hi-tech opportunities but there’s a plethora of low-tech complications and problems. Maybe I’m used to the mid-west. Maybe I’m just a boring Michigander (gawd, I hate that word… it sounds like we should all be laying eggs), but this state isn’t that bad.
For now I guess my future will be here… unless prices on the coast plummet or I win the lottery.
- Duane
The first of these was my Pet Rock theory. (Stay with me for a bit on this one…) In 1975 Gary Dahl thought to himself, “Pet… rock… Pet Rock!” He then proceeded to place a rock into a box with “air holes” and sell it. Instead of being put into an asylum, this guy became rich selling chunks of petrified dirt in a nice box to the general public.
Why did people buy these things?! Was there some kind of special prize in the boxes or maybe a contest to win some cash? Nope. They just bought them because everyone else had one. Something deep inside the human mind tells us that if somebody buys something (or more accurately, if many people buy something) that we don’t have there must be a good reason to buy it. We then happily dig into our hard earned monetary reserves and fork over the cabbage for the new product X.
This theory can be applied to many of the most popular consumer products on the market today. For illustrative purchases we will consider the following two cultural icons: Microsoft ®™ Windows ®™ and the omnipresent urban assault vehicle, better known as the Sport Utility Vehicle (aka Sport Ute, SUV).
Neither of these products popularity is based on their features nor their value. It simply comes down to an “I’ll use it because the Joneses use it!” Well, here’s a news flash:
The Joneses use it because the Smiths use it. The Smiths use it because the Johnsons use it. So on and so forth.
Brilliant, eh? Yup, we’re a bunch of upright-standing, bipedal lemmings lining up to run off the consumer marketplace cliff.
There are plenty of better alternatives. SUVs get horrible gas mileage, handle poorly under the most modest of driving conditions, takes up unnecessary space, and are a safety threat to those that wish to be remotely sensible. Windows is bloated, performs poorly under many simple computing tasks, takes up unneccesary ram and is a security threat to every administrator using it! (Conclusion: Windows is the SUV of the software market.)
I guess in the end, it’s not what you’re selling but how you sell it. SUVs are backed by the best promotions, flashy auto show presentations, and powerful commercial imagery. The same goes for Windows.
Eventually, we as a race will come back down to earth and realize that individual thought is more powerful than mass media campaigns and majority rule. It may take five-dollar-per-gallon gas and the breakup of Microsoft to happen, but it will. Nothing can be supported forever by empty features and hype. Except for the next big fad.
