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Could Working Remotely Kill Silicon Valley's Culture? (medium.com) 67

Posted by EditorDavid from the staying-in-your-garage dept.
This week Medium's editor-at-large argued remote working could kill Silicon Valley in a new article on Medium's business site "Marker" — because working remotely could bring an end to those "serendipitous encounters" which lead to blockbuster products: Tech serendipity is the means to an end in Silicon Valley. "You bring together a density of entrepreneurs and capital with a belief in crazy ideas and a readiness to fund them, and you manufacture serendipity at higher rates than if it were evenly distributed," said Shaan Hathiramani, the CEO of Flockjay, a San Francisco education startup, who is among those wrestling with how to replicate the chance encounter. But in a future remote dispersion of workers that all but excludes the unexpected, face-to-face encounter, what will Silicon Valley lose...?

Dozens of startups and legacy companies are trying to solve the serendipity crisis. Among them are Gather, a Silicon Valley startup, and Hopin, a U.K. company, both of which see the answer in conference apps: You watch online talks, then — just as you would at a physical conference — you go onto a "coffee break," a virtual room where you can "bump into" just about anyone else at the event. You can also sign up to be paired with people with whom you might have similar interests. "It's like a coffee break at TED," said Paul Saffo, a futurist at Stanford. Last week, Microsoft released a new feature for its Teams conferencing app called "Together Mode," which uses A.I. to cut out the images of everyone in a call and assemble them in a virtual setting, such as a theater. The sensation is to remove some of the fake-togetherness of Zoom calls, which is a real advance for the typical work meeting...

If the past is instructive, the pandemic will pass and many daily routines will return. Hordes of people will return to the office, but large numbers won't. Some will pick up and move. At that point, today's effort to digitalize serendipity will pick up more urgency. Video conferencing and other software will get better, and some companies will claim their product fosters the unscripted moment in truly innovative ways, blind to demographics. The question is whether that solution will include a continued place for Silicon Valley.
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Could Working Remotely Kill Silicon Valley's Culture? More

Could Working Remotely Kill Silicon Valley's Culture?

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  • Let's hope (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The bubble these people live in needs popping.
  • So what’s the difference between employees working remotely and just simply going a half step further and outsourcing all of those jobs overseas? The only difference management is likely to see is the massive $aving$.
    • Some of us perform functions that can never be replicated overseas. For one thing, i watch the people overseas.

    • So whatâ(TM)s the difference between employees working remotely and just simply going a half step further and outsourcing all of those jobs overseas?

      That you ask that question shows that you've never been involved in the disaster that inevitably follows outsourcing technology jobs. It was hard for me to type that through all the tears of laughter that spewed out of my eyes after reading that question.

      If your company starts outsourcing jobs, it's because Management knows that the company is already tanking. At that point, nothing matters but starting the search for a new job while the company is still solvent enough to issue paychecks.

      • I don’t share your view that management is competent or values anything past the next two quarters.

    • Indians are not paid less because they are remote, but because they are less productive.

      Software productivity is nonlinear. If you need to dig a ditch, two slow workers are as good as one fast worker. But that is not true with software because of the complexity and coordination that scales quadratically. A small team of smart developers is going to outperform a bigger team of slower coders.

      • If you try to pay 10 cents on the dollar vs US workers you will have this experience. If you pay 75 cents on the dollar you will have an entirely different experience, and probably lots of h1b workers will go home to take it.
    • You can't enforce NDAs over there. That's the only real difference.

    • Currently we bring the best overseas workers over to work in an office in the US. We could in future hire those same workers in their home countries and it would be a lot cheaper.

  • the first two examples in the article are the founding of Facebook and PayPal, I wouldn't count them as net positives as far as advancement as society goes, especially the former, society would be demonstrably better if Facebook had never existed

    and easily you could argue that what Silicon Valley has done is concentrate money and power in one area of California and who knows how many other amazing concepts all around the world are getting ignored because if you're not in SV, you can't get noticed

    • Facebook isn't even a product of Silicon Valley.

      The culture of Silicon Valley has been in the dumps for a decade more or less. Everyone is depressed, even the perennially optimistic race of startup CEOs have had the spirit crushed out of them, and they are depressed. Ask them why they are excited to be at their company, and they will kind of glare at you. Oddly, this is true even for companies that are doing very well.

      Even after the .bomb it wasn't this bad.

    • This, Silicon Valley culture amounts to the shameless advancement of hipster colonialism, tarted-up versions of typical upper-middle-class politics that range from derpy to deplorable, and a wanton circle-jerk of opportunity hoarding. The fact that a bit of actual innovation still gets done there is just a side-effect of this destructive concentration of investment, income, and opportunity that could do far more good if it were spread out.

    • Re:LOL sorry but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday July 18, 2020 @03:06PM (#60304891)

      the first two examples in the article are the founding of Facebook and PayPal

      Facebook started at Harvard University, in Massachusetts.

      PayPal started in Silicon Valley, but many of the early people had met at UIUC. So the "serendipity" occurred elsewhere.

      I live and work in the valley. Each company seems to exist in a bubble and fairly difficult to meet random new people.

      • Each company seems to exist in a bubble and fairly difficult to meet random new people.

        Take Caltrain. Even if you don't want to start conversations, you can see a lot of company code.

  • cities suck (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
    Cities are not made to be good for people, they are made to force workers to compete for small plots of land as a showing that they are willing to sacrifice their living conditions to be a good corporate citizen that plays along. That culture should be killed with fire.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SteveSgt ( 3465 )

      One can identify a list of advantages to living in a densely populated area (which, sadly, are less available during a pandemic), as well as distinct disadvantages. One can also identify a list of advantages to living in sparsely populated rural communities, as well as some clear disadvantages. Building those lists has been left as an exercise for the reader.

      But if everyone now living in the Earth's densely populated areas decided to move to a sparsely populated rural area... Well, there just wouldn't be a

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
        With all we know about how cities destroy human health and all that we see with COVID-19 in densely populated areas the jury is in and cities are bad for people. Maybe you ride your bike to a concert but really a person's health is more important. What you say about 'everyone spreading out' is probably true for America but there is plenty of room globally once the world is blanketed with internet by SpaceX and/or Amazon.
        • Jury has been "in" for millenia, yet cities still are developed. They aren't going away anytime soon. Economics and basic physical reality dictate cities will exist. There's only so many good ways to move stuff and people around, and time is valuable, I'm not going to live someplace where the nearest ANYTHING is an hour a way, unless I got 2 hours to burn every time I need ANYTHING.
          • Nonsense. There are many rural areas not more than 10-15 minutes away from a Costco or a Walmart. I'm not saying you have to live in the middle of nowhere. Now if you want to say in the US you may have a problem.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by XXongo ( 3986865 )
            Three slashdot posters stating that cities are bad for you, but nobody quoting data.

            "metropolitan areas had a life expectancy of 79.1 years, compared with 76.7 years in rural areas."
            https://www.ajpmonline.org/art... [ajpmonline.org]

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Xarius ( 691264 )

          With all we know about how cities destroy human health and all that we see with COVID-19 in densely populated areas the jury is in and cities are bad for people.

          European and Asian cities much more densely populated, and centuries older (i.e. unplanned urban development), than the ones in USA managed the COVID outbreak so much better. The USA is leading the world in infections and deaths, and it has nothing to do with cities and everything to do with incompetence.

          • Asians have been wearing masks for years. It is an already accepted part of their culture. I'd like to see some stats on voluntary adoption of masks in European countries because though they were not enforced they were worn anyway. I know most people wore them here in Canada and there was no law mandating them but for a few stores.

      • But if everyone now living in the Earth's densely populated areas decided to move to a sparsely populated rural area... Well, there just wouldn't be anywhere all that sparsely populated any more.

        You underestimate how truly gigantic Earth's surface is. Even ignoring the possibility of living under the ocean or inside of mountains, there's an enormous amount of completely empty space, on every continent. Nearly all of it is empty for one reason: lack of potable water. The rest is empty for one other reason: too much snow and ice. Both such problems can be solved by modern humans, but the energy requirements to do so are fairly dramatic.

        But even discounting the locations that are very high energy

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SteveSgt ( 3465 )

          You underestimate how truly gigantic Earth's surface is. Even ignoring the possibility of living under the ocean or inside of mountains, there's an enormous amount of completely empty space, on every continent.

          It's "empty" for another reason: All of the other species living on the planet, who we depend on for ecosystem health in ways we're far from understanding well, need space to live. Humans are the minority of Earthlings, yet happen to have an out-sized impact on the rest. If we really wanted to protect those ecosystem services, we would set-aside 50% of the Earth's land, un-touched by any development, for the other life on the planet. Here is one take on that idea [ https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com] ]. The f

          • It's "empty" for another reason: All of the other species living on the planet, who we depend on for ecosystem health in ways we're far from understanding well, need space to live.

            The propaganda you were exposed to as a child worked really hard to imply that we depend on wild species "for ecosystem health" and maybe even explicitly stated it. The implication and the statement are a bald faced lie. Outside of a statistically insignificant handful (who are quite literally dying out as their children opt out), humans do not use any part of the wild food web. For all intents and purposes, humans as a species are wholly independent of wild ecosystems. More, human agriculture goes out

  • I suspect not, but it doesn't matter since I also don't expect any real change as a result of more people working remotely.

    *shrug*

  • Culture? We got culture? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday July 18, 2020 @02:15PM (#60304777)

    I work in Silicon Valley and I am remote working for a company that I can drive to the HQ in about 10 minutes in good traffic. I am near the Tesla factory and the office is near Levi's stadium.

    Like many who started tele-working I found it quite a shift, particularly when you are starting at a new company. It turns out that a big part of your neural net's learning process uses associations of "location" with other memory-derivative concepts such as "experience" and "function." Normally you start a new job you know where your workplace is, where the break-room is, where the boss is, where the helpful person in accounting is and where the obnoxious person in sales is.

    When you are immobilized at your home office you lose all that. You have to learn to make associations a different way. Speaking for myself I found relating that to e-mail names or zoom handles is really not the same as physically moving from spot to spot in an office.

    Another important change is the sense of boundary. At the office you are at work. At home you are not at work. At your home office you are endlessly hassled with the needs of one pulling you from the other. And everyone at home will assume you are available for whatever.

    However we are versatile creatures and with a little effort you can learn how to adapt to and manage all that. And once that becomes the new normal I don't see people going back to the way it was. There are activities where it is necessary to get everyone together but the list of such activities suddenly got a lot smaller than it used to be.

    So yeah, the "silicon valley" culture has changed and will stay changed. And it will continue to do so. That's normal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ediron2 ( 246908 )

      Yes, things will be changing. But the rest?!... you keep talking your experience as universal, and it's not. Some of the stuff you describe fits my experience, but I am (A) comfortable with nicknames instead of location associations for colleagues (B) am familiar with numerous levels of separating work and personal for telelwork (c) am familiar with numerous compensatory mechanisms, etc.

      Sample variations I've noticed: Our sudden shift to telework led to our sales and leads needing minutes in Zoom calls t

  • with me face-to-face can meet me in my VR coffee haus. Be ready to play a board game and bring a good playlist.

  • People are used to talking with each other more and more... I think serendipity can happen even over existing means of communication.

    One thing I did recently was watch a virtual conference, with an accompanying Slack. We would have "live" viewings of different presentations where people were all watching roughly the same time, so could comment as the talk progressed. In a way it was almost better than a live conference.

    I've also been to a number of virtual online meets which manage this pretty well, where

  • ...as shared values. Someone who commits themselves to living in Silicon Valley & all that entails is displaying a set of values shared by everyone else who has done the same. It's expensive & inconvenient & very few people are willing & able to do it. It costs literally nothing to conference call in, attend remote webinars, participate in group chats & forums, commit code to a repo, etc.. Physically being in Silicon Valley is a badge that ambitious, hungry, do-whatever-it-takes coders

  • I suspect the inspiration behind many of the big silicon valley companies is individual, when someone has a great idea, it's not likely because of a chance encounter... BUT, the funding, execution, and atmosphere of growth in which that idea is born is a key to whether it will succeed or not. That atmosphere is highly encouraged in Silicon Valley, but it's spreading everywhere, the question is, can we leave the toxic aspects behind?

  • we could just let it die. Silicon Valley has brought us marvels and lifesavers, but it's also become kind of an echo chamber. Folks pat themselves and each other on the back and smugly survey their domains as they cook up new technologies which, to a large extent, are either mere fashion, or outright dangerous to society, or a combination of the two.

    We need to reconsider the proposition that limitless growth and innovation are an unquestionable, fundamental good, and that they are somehow sacrosanct. Humani

  • The heading is worded in a way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Saturday July 18, 2020 @05:29PM (#60305199)

    that suggests "work" is like poison to Silicon Valley's work culture.

  • It's fun to dance with bro-tech guys. It's fun to do everything online. It's fun to talk about being woke when you're 25. It's progressive to be proud of a company that has no one older than 31! It's fun to be around people that have never experience real life. It's super fun to judge people by these things! Its superb to feel that we are driving the economy.

    --
    “Go make love to a tube sock.” - Nenia Campbell

  • When I was alone in the office, as others were working from home during c19, people answer emails once a day and spend about half the time working. I don't think 90% of home workers can be profitable.

    • When I was alone in the office, as others were working from home during c19, people answer emails once a day and spend about half the time working.

      Did you think they were working more than half the time when they were in the office?

      Sucker....

  • Half of Silicon Valley's ideas are to take a normal thing and either make it a subscription or to pay a low wage worker to do it for you. There was the time they reinvented the vending machine, or that time they accidentally reinvented taxes, or when Uber tried to make public transit again.

    The people that came up with great ideas donâ(TM)t need to be in the Valley to come up with them. Half the time, they actually weren't. So who cares?

  • Throughout history, cities have been the core of commerce, and of new ideas. Thinking people, wherever they are born, are attracted to other thinking people. They move to where the action is. Cities.

    Certain cities, in particular, have been instrumental in changing the economy, the culture and the history of civilization. At various times Alexandria, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, London, NYC, Hong Cong and San Francisco. Often these are cities where trade is open and not heavily taxed. Often these are cities with

  • Iâ(TM)m in law school (I know, please donâ(TM)t kill me). One of the important things I miss with remote classes is the chance encounters on campus

    Itâ(TM)s networking, people. Itâ(TM)s important too.

  • I've only been in silicon valley a bit over 20 years, and I think I arrived on the downslope, I should have come 5 years earlier. The last few years of the 90's and first few years of the 00's were amazing in the kinds of spontaneous and relevant random encounters you'd have, like just at lunch or whatever, but these days there's too much focus on monetizing spontaneity itself. We're down to people pitching "uber for weed" or whatever trivial dumbass idea they have, when uber itself has almost become a pa

    • I've only been in silicon valley a bit over 20 years, and I think I arrived on the downslope

      Yes; I arrived in 1993, and Silicon Valley was something to behold. Here are some excerpts from a rant I've been working on about the change:

      Part of the cause may be the change of dominant business model, from "Make something enough better than the competition that people will pay for it" to "give things away and sell your customers to advertisers." But the problem is older than clickbait; a prominent open-source maintainer with a day job once told me that customers will not pay for quality.

      Once users lik

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shess ( 31691 )

        Part of the cause may be the change of dominant business model, from "Make something enough better than the competition that people will pay for it" to "give things away and sell your customers to advertisers." But the problem is older than clickbait; a prominent open-source maintainer with a day job once told me that customers will not pay for quality.

        Maybe? I once sold niche shareware on a niche platform, and a lot of people would approach me and ask why they were failing at doing the same. I'd talk to them a bit, and it would turn out that they had put like 60 hours into something and thought that everyone should be showering them with checks. I was putting in like 60 hours a month while going to school, and my hourly rate was very low - but plenty of people were willing to pay for it. Not as many as I'd have liked, and plenty were willing to just

        • Yes, I ended up viewing my shareware as resumeware. I had friends who made a living as independent developers (including one whom I told it was impossible), but they spent a lot more time on support and marketing than I was willing to.

  • Most startups are just recycling old technology with new marketing buzzwords...

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