Place: Silicon Valley

A Historical and Social Analysis of the Bay Area’s Tech Scene

We’ve all heard of Silicon Valley.

Most know it as the epicenter of the booming tech scene: the land of the Apple, Google, and Tesla. Some know it for the startup culture: they hear legends of startups that raise billions of dollars — some which drive straight into the ground, and others that reward investors hundreds of times over. Finally, some see it as pinnacle of broken capitalism: a place with stark income inequality, rampant gentrification, and brutal sexual and racial discrimination.

In this article, we’ll be unpacking some of the most prevalent social issues in Silicon Valley, based on reports and first-person findings from online sources. By doing this, we can establish an understanding of some of the most pressing challenges in Silicon Valley, and come to understand how these issues might affect future growth of Silicon Valley. With our inclusion of first-person perspectives, we can also draw a more holistic view of the Valley from multiple viewpoints.

However, to understand present-day social issues, we must first develop an understanding of the Valley’s rich history.

Understanding the Past of Silicon Valley

From personal experience, I’ve seen many individuals consider the “rise” of Silicon Valley to have occurred between 1980’s and 1990’s. After, all, this era marked a transformative time in computing, including the shift to silicon transistors (hence the name “Silicon Valley”), as well as the inception of the internet².

However, the Bay Area’s shift to becoming a tech center can be dated as early as the early 1900’s, as San Francisco was becoming one the country’s most popular radio and telecommunication hubs. In 1939, NASA would establish AMES Research Center, which would become a major focus of attention during the Space Race in the 50’s and 60’s. The excitement of space travel and new inventions spurring from Cold War research attracted national attention, and Stanford University would become a primary education institution for technology research¹.

NASA AMES 1940 vs. present day. Source: NASA Archives

The rapid influx of talent and money to the Bay Area would plant the seeds of private capital and entrepreneurship in the coming decades. By 1970, Apple, Atari, Oracle, and Intel had become dominant companies in the tech scene. In just the next 10 years, the speed of technological advancement would prompt dozens of technology companies would join, eventually forming what we now call Silicon Valley². By the 90’s and early 2000’s, the invention of the PC and internet would launch the next wave of tech growth.

From this perspective, Silicon Valley’s growth has progressed in waves: each wave brought tremendous change, and would set the stage for the next one to grow even larger. It has seen the radio and telecommunications wave in the 20’s, the transistor and computing wave of the 40’s, the space race wave in the 50’s and 60’s, the private capital and corporate wave of the 70’s and 80’s, the internet and personal computing age of the 90’s and 00’s, and the digital entrepreneurship wave since. Silicon Valley stands as a land of opportunity; a place where ambition is contagious, excellence thrives, and entrepreneurship flourishes¹. These are the driving economic forces that brought Silicon Valley into the spotlight.

Issues of Valley, Reported First-Hand

It’s simple enough to perform a web search for the some of the issues present in the valley: namely discrimination, large wage gap, and homelessness, but this piece presents an analysis of first-hand experiences and reports from individuals within the Silicon Valley Bubble. By delving into multiple first-hand perspectives, we can paint a more holistic view of Silicon Valley issues and offer first-person perspectives.

To analyze the issues perceived to be present in the Valley, content analysis of a 10 first-hand reports of issues in Silicon Valley were compiled from blog posts. Through careful analysis of each source, I isolated five issues that were most mentioned, and included an analysis of each.

Discrimination

For this study, discrimination can take the form of racial, sexual, or religious discrimination. 20% (2) articles explicitly referenced discrimination, which is quite a significant amount for this study. Both referenced both gender and racial discrimination within the SV tech industry.

The narratives discuss how Silicon Valley has become a bubble, with very little representation within the bubble. Most companies are full of white or asian men. One narrative from Naomi Day describes cited how the only employees at Google that looked like her were either cleaning or cooking. She says:

“I walked 10 minutes through a winding green campus, seeing mostly white and Asian men, to get to my desk in a building where I was the only Black employee who wasn’t cleaning something.”

Naomi goes on to reflect how after her experience at Google, she is unlikely to return to the Valley. Specifically, she cites how it’s difficult to be a part of the Silicon Valley Bubble when she doesn’t see people like her reflected in the bubble.

Echo Chamber

A large issue that I, myself, have found in Silicon Valley is the inescapable echo chamber (and one of the reasons I attend Purdue University in Indiana!). This issue was brought up in 60% of the primary sources, which marks at as the most referenced issue in this report.

In SV tech, many individuals share the same opinions and value systems. This includes opinions on politics, wealth, and status³. This mentality has led to rise of popular satire, such as the show Silicon Valley from HBO that is notoriously similar to actual life in the Valley (in fact, many of the writers are actual venture capitalists or CEO’s).

All of the articles cited Silicon Valley’s echo chamber effects in some form, noting how there is often one “perspective” that is shared by all individuals in the Valley. This perspective typically includes the “hustler” mentality where individuals must be working 24/7; the idea that life is a race with winners and losers and it’s important to be the former; and that one’s status or value is tied to which startup you’re working for, or what level you’re in at a particular company.

This idea was best highlighted in Gloria Liou’s piece This is Silicon Valley, where she writes how:

Even social conversations revolve around tech — whether it’s spilling the hottest gossip on the new VP, plotting how to get “double promoted” from a Level 3 to a Level 5 product manager in exactly 22 months, or debriefing where the top angel investors get drinks on Thursday nights.

Work-Life Balance

There’s an unspoken expectation in the Valley that one’s passion must be the same as their day job. This is something I’ve seen as well in the software world, and rampant on most software engineering Reddit threads: it’s an expectation that software developers are spending their free time learning new technologies and working on meaningful side projects.

Outside of just software, terrible work-life balance is rampant in the Valley. Around 30% (3 sources) cited work-life balance as an issue. An anonymous author from San Francisco Confesses writes about her experience receiving odd messages at every hour of the day and being expected to respond to them immediately. She writes:

I received the Slack message at 10 p.m., right before jumping into bed to watch an episode, or three, of The Office. I know I should snooze my notifications, but I never do — the anxiety that comes with a later barrage of messages at once is too much.

Many other Bay Area tech employees also report low work-life balance. YouTube star TechLead (Patrick Zhong), who introduces himself as an “ex-Facebook, ex-Google tech lead & Millionaire” discusses how senior software roles often completely detract from family life, as they require attention both in and out of the office. TechLead has made numerous videos outlining how working as a senior engineer at Google mandated his full schedule, including weekends, and ultimately led to his wife and son leaving him and moving back to Japan. He tells his viewers that this can be common in Silicon Valley, and to be wary of the costs associated with lofty engineering salaries.

Toxic Culture and Jealousy

Four (40%) of the articles referenced Silicon Valley’s toxic culture and jealousy. Growing up as a student in the Bay Area, I noticed that starting in middle school, there was a noticeable competitive environment. Students were secretive about how they were studying, and moving into high school, there was almost no culture of helping other students succeed. As I came into college, I found this was a serious issue across Bay Area high schools. Gloria Liou, who went to a high school very close to mine, writes:

When I was in eighth grade, over a six-month period four students at a nearby school committed suicide by jumping in front of the Caltrain. During my sophomore year of high school, a schoolmate I used to walk with to the library took her own life. In my senior year, every single one of my peers had a college counselor. Some paid up to $400 an hour for counselors to edit their essays, and I witnessed other students paying to have their essays literally written for them.

This issue continues into the workforce as well. As discussed in the previous sections, there’s almost no difference between careers and personal lives, as one’s value in the Valley seems to be tied with job titles and career paths. As Sunil Rajaraman writes in his satire piece This is Your Life in Silicon Valley, there is always competition and jealousy when others are more successful than you. He says:

It’s time for some afternoon Facebook browsing. Your friends are all doing SO well. You are secretly jealous of your friend who just bought a house in Noe Valley. You speculate as to how rich they must be after their exit from LinkedIn. Even though they were only employee #500, they must have done well. You briefly try to do the math in your head. Maybe that can be you at your current start-up. It’s only a matter of time.

Homelessness

One of the most visible issues in the Bay Area is gentrification (the process where wealthy individuals join a neighborhood and housing prices increase) and homelessness. While only one source mentioned this as an issue, homelessness and displacement has taken a huge toll on families in the Bay Area³. Specifically in San Francisco, single bedroom apartments in non-prime locations of the city are average $1000-$2000 in rent according to Zillow (December 2020). Minimum wage in San Francisco is currently under $16, meaning rent can often be over ⅔ of an individual’s paycheck, assuming they are employed.

Part of the homelessness crisis can be attributed to San Francisco’s incredibly large pay gap: those working in tech are often making upwards of $100k (Glassdoor), and that money primarily goes to paying rent. There’s a quote I’ve heard over the years which says that all venture capital investments and software salaries ultimately end up in the pocket of SF landlords — many of whom do not even live in the Bay Area.

In addition, it seems the common response to homelessness and gentrification in the Valley is to agree it is bad, but provide little to no assistance to remedy the issue. While describing her experience in San Francisco, Naomi Day writes:

My experience of the crisis was watching tech workers waiting for their company-branded buses every morning while ignoring the homeless folks who wandered by, trying to keep warm. It was seeing tech employees walk the city streets at lunchtime, leftovers in one hand and expensive computers in the other, passing inches from the feet of homeless individuals sitting on sidewalks, asking for food or money or even just a smile.

The homelessness issue is not just restricted to San Francisco: Gloria Liou writes how skyrocketing housing prices affect students as well. Specifically, she says:

It’s not just in the city, and it’s not just “uneducated people.” In December 2018, 4,300 students at San Jose State University — over 13 percent of the student body — reported experiencing homelessness over the past year. Income inequality levels, in both San Francisco and San Jose, rank among the 10 worst cities in the nation and the gap between the poor and the rich continues to increase.

Moving Forward

Silicon Valley is a magical place. It continues to be the crowned capital of entrepreneurship and software growth⁵, despite the negative externalities it has imposed on the Bay Area. It’s no secret that the Valley has blatant issues, and is not a utopia by any means.

Silicon Valley has been seeing plateaued growth for a while now, as many individuals have grown weary of the Valley, and its magic slowly fades⁴. The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly sped up this decline, as work moves remote and workers are leaving the city due to high housing prices. This is leaving many people questioning whether Silicon Valley can keep its place as the dominant center of tech in the generations to come.

Interested in learning more? Check out part two of this article here.

Sources

1. Gershon, Livia. “The Origins of Silicon Valley.” JSTOR. 13 Sept. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2020.
2. Hardaway, Francine. “From the Field: A Short History of Silicon Valley.” Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 23 Aug. 2017. Web. 06 Oct. 2020.
3. “How Silicon Valley Made Work More Stressful.” Interview by Dan Lyons. Knowledge@Wharton. 13 Feb. 2019. Web. 5 Oct. 2020.
4. Lindzon, Jared. “Once We Can Work from Anywhere, Does the World Need Silicon Valley?” Fast Company. 08 June 2020. Web. 06 Oct. 2020.
5. McKendrick, Trevor. “Ode to Silicon Valley.” Blog post. Trevor McKendrick. 2019. Web. 05 Oct. 2020.