When I was working on Ludicrous in 2016, a source told me "Elon Musk isn't a Silicon Valley guy. We like flat, collaborative organizations. He's a South African, he wants his companies run like slave plantations." People forget the Valley wasn't always like this. Tech doesn't have to be like this. - ThreadSky

niedermeyer.online • 46 days ago

When I was working on Ludicrous in 2016, a source told me "Elon Musk isn't a Silicon Valley guy. We like flat, collaborative organizations. He's a South African, he wants his companies run like slave plantations."

People forget the Valley wasn't always like this. Tech doesn't have to be like this.

Reposted from tweety fish

@himself.bsky.social does a nice job here (amidst other good points) in characterizing the older version of the tech world that I was drawn to, like, and consider myself a part of, that is being drowned out or drowned or destroyed by the crass neofeudalist money dipshits

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chaoscate.bsky.social•46 days ago

Did you see this one? It tracks... 👇🏻

https://youtu.be/9cJ1IZsp750?feature=shared

grant.monster•46 days ago

Interesting piece. The VC era of 10x returns definitely poisoned the well, but I think some people look back too nostalgically sometimes.

Malcolm Harris' "Palo Alto" is *superb* and shows the continuity of Silicon Valley's anti-labor, heavily subsidized, exploitative approach.

webrant.bsky.social•46 days ago

From worker's POV, Bay Area tech was always about open source, fair access, and equitable problem solving.

To the owners and investors it was about emulating Larry Ellison for their own control.

https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.online/post/3liz5r3qvhk2j

canarydied.bsky.social•46 days ago

The thing the author hints at, of these latest titans of tech reading certain works but completely misunderstanding, rings very true to me. I think all of us of a certain generation were influenced by cyberpunk, but apparently these people didn't understand it as a dystopian warning.

turtlebee.bsky.social•45 days ago

Even just a decade ago all the companies would talk about how their competitive advantage was their employees. They had a huge force the brightest and most talented and that was why they were great. Now it's all slash and burn, forced layoffs, and replace them with cogs and ai.

turtlebee.bsky.social•45 days ago

and you know what, it's possible that some of them grew too much, diluted their secret weapons. but the way to deal with that is carefully and slowly going through and seeing where the mistakes were made and correcting, not going through it all with a chainsaw and ignoring collateral damage.

chinajoeflynn.bsky.social•46 days ago

LOL even tech bros secretly hate the Boers

blueskywins.bsky.social•46 days ago

all his projects seem to be scams, I'm very curious about Starlink and SpaceX, what do you think about those?

niedermeyer.online•46 days ago

this is the short version:

https://youtu.be/L-Imw_s1aaI?si=AmgfMLtgbxuwAmnq&t=469

blueskywins.bsky.social•46 days ago

Thanks, love you. So in short the value is built on Elon hype and no real data on profit, also hard to get to profitability coz you need to many customers.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

My take: it's harder to culturally influence a base of workers that are very unique and specialized because you lack the flexibility to discipline people for ideological reasons.

sejwords.bsky.social•45 days ago

I think the valley did a far better job of hiding (to the public) that it is mainly a casino for big investors where the house always wins (the VC’s). They sold the illusion the place was all little Steve Jobs motivated by making really great stuff for the people.

walkerwest.bsky.social•46 days ago

Thank you! I’ve been working in Silicon Valley since well before Musk got here (illegally), and it’s sad to see the “The Valley” has become synonymous with greedy libertarian brats, vs. the “make the world a better place with freewheeling innovation” that I’ve known it as.

sfomel.bsky.social•45 days ago

SV founder William Shockley was a top-down guy, complete with eugenic racism. But the true SV started with the "Traitorous Eight," who split from him. "Noyce realized how much he detested the Eastern corporate system of class and status ... He rejected the idea of a social hierarchy at Fairchild."

thexenowitch.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah, the whole culture has been getting gradually destroyed. And the ambition to actually make the world a better place.

If one joins these companies, at first, this might not be apparent, as they still spew "world-saving" ambitions, but at the end of the day, it's all bad.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

I have pretty strong opinions on flat orgs. I think they work well during your startup runway. I think when you get to the point of operating a profitable going concern the flatness does more harm than good.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

A lot of these silicon valley mfs need to read Jo Freeman
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

niedermeyer.online•46 days ago

I think a lot of the root problem with Silicon Valley culture today is that worship of the startup has prevented it from developing an aspirational model of maturity. It's just "get big enough to buy other startups." That's not actual maturity.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

Absolutely. I'm a serial startup worker and I frame this as the "operationalization hump". Basically, startups are nimble precisely because they lack the burden of scale and can respond tactically to most problems. But tactical solutions don't scale to profitability.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

Similarly the established orgs they're outcompeting are being outcompeted because it's hard to evolve established operations over time, which is why ad-hoc tactical responses can often produce better outcomes.

justostrich.com•46 days ago

But without operational scaling, a startup has no long term value. So it's sort of a tradeoff, you choose to operationalize in an environment and you're essentially making a bet that this environment is the new normal, which makes you vulnerable to disruption.

bchanson.bsky.social•46 days ago

Ruthlessness wins.

kaseysmith.net•46 days ago

A Dantean torture for Musk would be tying him to a pole and forcing him to watch the open source community take over his companies.

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