<p>Please read the book. I do not agree with epiphany’s opinion. Yes there is a lot of technology in SV. So? </p>
<p>To add, they want employees who can do the job. Blossom described it well. The brain power in some of these places, regardless of their college degree, is apparently palpable. Sounds like some posters just want to join the groups throwing stuff at the Google busses. </p>
<p>I took epiphany’s post differently. I saw it as saying that just as the bastions of east coast elitism are convinced that everyone wants to be Just Like Them and bows down as they walk by, that that same arrogance is now present in Silicon Valley, and that both groups of people need to get over themselves. </p>
<p>I don’t have enough experience with Silicon Valley to have an opinion on that culture one way or the other.</p>
<p>But I do suspect that people in every industry always think people covet / aspire to be Just Like Them and Do The Cool Things They’re Doing when in point of fact, few people outside that industry care. </p>
<p>As an example, I have 2 media clients in NYC. One is a radio behemoth and the other is a cutting-edge cable channel, both names you’d all know. Very smart people. They are absolutely convinced everyone wants their jobs and that they are doing the coolest thing on the planet. They would laugh at the idea that the “best job” in the world is with McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, OR Google, or that those jobs hold “prestige” - how could doing telling a pet food manufacturer how to increase market share, or participate on the fringes of some deal, or sitting and code all day <em>possibly</em> compare to their jobs, where they get to party with Justin Timberlake! They are as self-referential as every other industry. Point being - CC often falls victim to the belief that there is one hierarchy of “prestigious / cool” jobs, and that all other jobs fall in line below. Prestige and / or fun are in the eyes of the beholder. They no more want to go work for Goldman Sachs or Google, than the people at GS or Google want to work at a media company. </p>
<p>"I took epiphany’s post differently. I saw it as saying that just as the bastions of east coast elitism are convinced that everyone wants to be Just Like Them and bows down as they walk by, that that same arrogance is now present in Silicon Valley, and that both groups of people need to get over themselves.</p>
<p>Correct, Pizzagirl.</p>
<p>“But I do suspect that people in every industry always think people covet / aspire to be Just Like Them and Do The Cool Things They’re Doing when in point of fact, few people outside that industry care.”</p>
<p>Only a refinement of that, ^. SV pities and finds irrelevant anyone who doesn’t “realize” that worshipping in the Temple of Technology IS the Coolest Thing on the Planet. If those outside that industry “don’t care,” those people are irrelevant to the (real) world and are to be pitied. </p>
<p>Charming.</p>
<p>Boorish attitudes have no geographical reference points. </p>
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<p>Ummmm, no. It looks like high school seniors, often in other parts of the country, are the ones who think that CS (≠ IT) jobs are all at a small number of well known companies (usually Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and/or Microsoft).</p>
<p>I think it’s great that a HS kid in Omaha thinks that CS equals Google, Apple, Facebook etc. If he or she is talented and interested in CS, that’s much better than thinking that CS means working at the local hospital troubleshooting when the billing system goes down, or getting a job at a big call center installing CRM systems. I find the latter attitude much more prevalent- CS equals anything having to do with computers, and explaining to HS kids that no- this is a huge and creative area which might have NOTHING to do with what the MIS folks do. We even see it on CC- there’s a prolific poster who keeps insisting that you don’t need math to be a CS major, and that it doesn’t matter where you go to college in order to get a good job in Tech. (only one of those statements is true, and then only partially true).</p>
<p>The only problem is in NOT realizing that innovation isn’t limited to Palo Alto.</p>
<p>“Ummmm, no. It looks like high school seniors, often in other parts of the country, are the ones who think that CS (≠ IT) jobs are all at a small number of well known companies (usually Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and/or Microsoft).”</p>
<p>Umm no, yourself. Not a high school senior. (Apparently you are also history-challenged, at least regarding CC.) The few companies named were a form of synecdoche. (Look it up.) And the fewness of them is representative of the attitudes in SV. </p>
<p>Have a nice day.</p>
<p>Epiphany’s post to me makes a sweeping overgeneralization about the residents of SV. Sure, some may be arrogant jerks, but my small sampling has found few that fit that stereotype.</p>
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<p>Never claimed you were. Just saying that the incorrect impression that “CS jobs” = GAFAM is most commonly held by high school seniors.</p>
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<p>Incorrect. GAF and Yahoo are hardly the only companies that people in Silicon Valley aspire to work at. Indeed, the “aspirational” jobs seem to be more like “working on some cool new idea in a small startup” rather than working in some big established company.</p>
<p>Clarifying my position on this issue, and reminding posters at the same time that CC’ers are not required to list their geographical locations, regardless of who demands that and why they feel entitled to such private information.</p>
<p>I mean no disrespect to those who might work in the tech industry in SV or who have relatives who do. Pizzagirl, as almost always, read me correctly. This is about comparisons. In my 10 years on CC I’ve heard the same old whiny song about how insufferably elitist East Coasters are, not to mention Ivy grads, students, and applicants. I’ve got news for you all: If you think that the East Coast epitomizes elitism, then you simply don’t get out enough. Period.</p>
<p>I’m sure we have all encountered East Coast elitism in some form, either virtually here, or actually there. However, I have also encountered, as I’m sure some of you have, the opposite, here and there: I’ve met modest Harvard students and professors, modest Yale grads and their spouses, modest Princeton enrolled students and alum, and I currently know rather well three enrolled Columbia undergrads who are modest, normal, and real human beings with beating hearts. They don’t think that there’s no life beyond the Ivy League; they have balanced self-perceptions; and they’re “well-rounded” in the best sense of the word, grounded, human, and not jerks. And they are in stark contrast to SOME of the self-absorbed, self-congratulatory operatives in the SV. Naturally that cannot be said of the whole population. However, it is a salient feature of the region to some degree, and it’s as nauseating as anyone who privately or not-so-privately believes that those outside of the East Coast elite establishment are possibly sub-human and may even be carrying Ebola.</p>
<p>Hope that clarifies.</p>
<p>“SV pities and finds irrelevant anyone who doesn’t “realize” that worshipping in the Temple of Technology IS the Coolest Thing on the Planet. If those outside that industry “don’t care,” those people are irrelevant to the (real) world and are to be pitied.”</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know enough about SV to know if that’s true, but if that attitude is indeed true, the people they are pitying don’t particularly care that they are being pitied. </p>
<p>The fine folks at Goldman Sachs or Google don’t particularly care that the media folks in NYC “pity” them and think their jobs are the very definition of uncool; so why should the people at Goldman Sachs or media companies worry that the SV folks “pity” them, if indeed they do? People do what they want to do, or they change jobs and move on if they don’t. People just generally don’t care about the opinions of people in industries they themselves are not interested in.</p>
<p>Not quite, PG. (About the “not caring.”) Recall years ago a certain CC Dad who posted extensively about his D not getting into H but succeeding phenomenally at U of Chicago. The biggest complaint from the family was the culture of intolerance <em>in the region</em> (there) about Ivies and just who (according to regional assumptions) had any worth whatsoever. Regional assumptions do matter. They are as important as industry assumptions, perhaps more so. I can’t begin to recount for you how many of my students feel pressured in their particular environments to do X, Y, or Z, (and I mean this beyond just family, national or ethnic culture), and how difficult that is to resist, rebut, etc.</p>
<p>Also, I’d like to differentiate among those with Attitude in the SV and those without. It seems to be a particular disease among those NOT working in the “betterment of mankind” sector – i.e., not biomaterials, bioengineering, medical breakthroughs, etc., but in tech related to recreation, convenience (for the affluent), and social media. Big whoop. Yeah, you’re really important. ^:)^ </p>
<p>If you work in the Public Defender’s office in Boston you are going to consider the lawyers at Ropes and Gray sell-outs- especially if they were law school classmates of yours. If you work in infectious diseases for Doctors Without Borders you’re going to consider the Beverly Hills dermatologist a sell out.</p>
<p>This is life- you can’t honestly be suggesting that grown ups should care about what other people think of their choices (assuming nobody is pushing drugs or engaging in illegal or immoral activity.)</p>
<p>Right. And feeling “pity” for perfectly well employed happy adults who don’t do the Cool Things You Do is like the proverbial tree-in-the-forest; if you don’t hear it, it might as well not be there.</p>
<p>Epiphany - re the thread you’re referring to (“oh noes! A bunch of Newton High School students look down on a perfectly bright young woman heading off to U Chicago instead of Harvard - she should feel awful!”) - my position was, and is, when people say stupid things, you don’t have to take their opinions seriously. I would note that if those people moved to the middle of Kansas where the prevailing culture is KU or bust, they’d somehow be able to resist the pressure from the culture around them, but in their hometowns they turn into weak-minded people who have to bend to the opinions of others around them. </p>
<p>depends on where your hometown is, PG. I don’t buy that STUDENTS can easily resist incorporating into their self-concepts the dominating opinions of those around them.</p>
<p>@Canuckguy: Rivera has been shown to not know what she is talking about when it comes to management consulting (and I would say the trading floor as well). Lawyers and true Investment Bankers (the salespeople who kill themselves with busy work) may be more snobby, however. It’s ironic that the more economically unjustifiable a profession is, the more they concern themselves with prestige.</p>
<p>Regarding post 292, I don’t know how things got so off-topic. The thread topic is why Google is supposedly underwhelmed by “big name” U’s, such as East Coast variety. Someone brought up, based on that article in the OP, how SV might be perceiving themselves as opposing “the ruling class,” when my entire point is that most of the SV seriously believes they are the ruling class, even though they might acknowledge that the rest of the world, or at least the East Coast, might not buy that yet. (actually, “know” that yet, according to them). They ignore the rest of the world, for the most part, because they’re quite content to make the SV their reference point for most everything. For the younger ones it becomes quite a weakness for college admissions purposes – this living in such a bubble, so that you are willfully unaware of anywhere East, South, North of you, never mind across the Atlantic. You OWN the world because you are supposedly the kings. The twentieth century almost doesn’t exist for them, which I find kind of scary and certainly not a recommendation for Elite colleges. Why be so proud of your ignorance and narrowness? There’s a lot of good happening in the world of ee and CS, much to benefit mankind, but --newsflash-- there are a number of fine minds out there who don’t happen to be residing in the SV. And just LIVING in the SV is not a special anointment from on high. (That’s the SAME kind of comment CC’ers have made about Ivy grads in the past – this Privilege of Place. Same POV.)</p>
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<p>“Most” of Silicon Valley is not Google (nor even in the computer industry). Even within the computer industry, most do not think of themselves as especially elite or “ruling class”.</p>
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<p>The computer industry in Silicon Valley is full of people who grew up in various parts of the US and the world, so awareness that places east, south, north (you forgot west), and across the Atlantic (you forgot Pacific) exist is certainly there.</p>
<p>I’m not a Silicon Valley person although we have clients there. But, a friend who is an IP/copyright lawyer told me about a very difficult negotiation with Google. The lawyer said that, consistent with @epiphany’s description, the Google folks more or less stated that nothing that happened pre-Google was relevant and that they had essentially changed the world by existing. As such, they more or less expected other companies to see the light and the world the way Google wanted them to. The lawyer reported an extremely high level of arrogance when Google’s business model was arguably built around violating other parties’ IP.</p>
<p>Shawbridge- ok, and this teaches us what exactly? People from Goldman Sachs are reputed to be arrogant. Google is arrogant. The oncologists and cardiologists at Mass General Hospital are arrogant. Pablo Picasso was arrogant. Margaret Thatcher was arrogant.</p>
<p>I’m not getting why any of this is so surprising to you guys. And frankly- not sure why any of it is relevant or germane.</p>
<p>What am I missing? Newsflash- Steve Jobs was arrogant. Do you all believe that someone can be at the top of a competitive and often brutal winnowing process and NOT be arrogant?</p>
<p>And this tells us what exactly? </p>