<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html?_r=0”>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html?_r=0</a></p>
<p>This seemed like a fascinating article to me, on many different levels. I had hoped someone else would post it.</p>
<p>I hadn’t gotten that far in the magazine! The comment about Nvidia and other companies that make the less sexy stuff was interesting. My son interned there one summer and said a lot of their software was pretty klugey. It would have been easier to start over instead of trying to put bandaids on it, which is what he felt like a lot of the work was. But yes, wouldn’t it have been nice if they’d gotten good programmers to do the healthcare website…</p>
<p>^Why didn’t they? Certainly not for lack of talent or resources.</p>
<p>If they were anything like my son, the dominant reason was the almighty dollar, and he headed from Silicon Valley to Manhattan.</p>
<p>They had all the government resources, but the talent level might not exactly be what you need.</p>
<p>I’m not a fan of the ACA-HAHA (my term) but I did hear one observer point out that the idea that you can design an overriding system that will properly allocate costs and resources for 300+ million people is silly.</p>
<p>The article is pretty interesting. The comments about the job interviews/tests were revealing. </p>
<p>There is a gap and it is kind of understandable. The whole killer app thing was much like the internet was back in the 90’s, it was the place to be seen. The net has revolutionized things, and mobile is doing the same thing, but one of the problems is that a lot of the things that need to be done aren’t sexy, they are infrastructure, unglorified, but they need to be done. One of the problems with this is focusing on the ‘sexiness’ of something without thinking of what it is going to do. The mobile app that has killer graphics and a sleek UI is all great and good, but if it is a mobile app designed to allow traders to trade or monitor their portfolios on the fly, if it takes 6 clicks to see an order and it isn’t obvious what their position is right there, it isn’t going to go over well. The other problem is that often the attitude in my experience is that the people drawn to the latest and greatest get bored, then flit on to ‘the next great thing’, which is great, but it also ends up wasting a lot of time and talent.</p>
<p>The other problem is that like the .com’s of the 90’s, where the big thing was the IPO, today the big thing with many of these app mavens is to make something slick that they can sell to someone else, twitter is a rarity in that it went IPO, most of these app vendors want to be bought out by a facebook or whatever. There is nothing wrong with that, I have worked for startups that got bought out, but the problem is in some ways it isn’t about building something great, it is about building something great, enough to get someone to buy it, then on to the next thing, and often it turns out the app never goes anywhere. It is a kind of gold rush mentality, and in some ways it isn’t healthy. Back in the 90’s, it could be hard getting good people because so many were into the .com ‘silicon alley’ lifestyle…and many of them when reality hit, tried to get jobs with ‘real’ kinds of brick and mortar businesses that operated on revenue and profits and actually building something, and had an attitude that totally made them hard to employ.</p>
<p>If I had an ideal person, it would be someone who has the enthusiasm of the new, while maintaining some sense of feet on your ground kind of thinking. I kind of think that mobile is going to find its own stablity, the way the net did, and eventually it will go from being a gold rush to being mature businesses, vying for real revenue and customers. </p>
<p>This young man impressed me with his writing and thinking.</p>
<p>One thing I wonder about is whether some young scientists may be ending up in Silicon Valley because of the huge cuts in funding in academic labs. From my very limited perspective, it seems post docs positions are drying up, grants are disappearing and some labs are just shutting down – ever since 2007 and 2008. At some point does curing cancer start to not even be an option to consider when these young people plan their futures?</p>
<p>Agree that the article was insightful and well written. I believe she is a woman though, based on this:
<a href=“Behind the Cover Story: Yiren Lu on the Angst, Perks and Failures of the Tech Industry - The New York Times”>Behind the Cover Story: Yiren Lu on the Angst, Perks and Failures of the Tech Industry - The New York Times;
<p>I am secretly wishing that my son pursue Silicon Valley over the competitive world of academia. He is not likely to be convinced, but I could see where many young people would be intrigued by the tech world.</p>
<p>bog, give your son time. Mine watched postdocs struggle for another postdoc or find jobs in remote places. With age and maturity, your son may end up with a compromise solution, e.g. doing research in a tech company, vs. moving around every few years, sweating while waiting for that one offer to arrive.</p>
<p>Thanks for the important correction, bogibogi.</p>
<p>A friend sent me that article the other day. Well written. I’ve got one s who is drinking the silicon valley koolaid and loving it. The other is turning down a potentially very sweet opportunity there…</p>