Welcome to Silicon Valley

How did I become part of this system



I'm lucky, I live in Silicon Valley. Here I was born, grew up and currently work as a product manager at Google. It has great weather, low crime, and good funding from schools. Adults have good dust-free work, and millions of opportunities are open to children. Here, people enjoy sushirrito for $ 15 and wash it down with 6-dollar third-wave coffee. The streets are filled with adzes and unmanned vehicles.



This is a place of opportunity. Many graduates, including me, immediately after college receive six-figure salaries, and I can also count on fair treatment, bonuses and benefits. At work I have free three meals a day, as well as an unlimited number of snacks throughout the day. Immediately I can get a haircut and go to the laundry. There is even a bowling alley and a climbing wall.

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Welcome to Silicon Valley. Would you like to live here?



When I was in the eighth grade, in one of the 6-month semesters, 4 students from a nearby school committed suicide by jumping under a train. In the second year of high school, my classmate, with whom I went to the library, committed suicide . In senior courses, each of my peers hired a college consultant. Some paid up to $ 400 per hour for editing an essay, others paid for the consultant to write it for them. My classmates cried because they received a grade of “A with a minus,” wept because their photos received less than 100 likes, wept that they did not go to Harvard. (I confess that I also cried because of this.) They had to stay awake several nights a week in order to survive seven extra classes and seven extracurricular activities. They were starving to meet “popular children,” stealing money from their parents for branded clothes, and still earned agonizing mental disorders that do not disappear even years after graduation.



Welcome to Silicon Valley



In my high school of 1300 children there were three black pupils and a dozen students of Latin origin. In my work, in a company that invests so much resources in diversity and integration , there are neither dark-skinned engineers, nor engineers of Latin origin. In 2017, Google out of all hiring specialists, 2% were black, 3% were of Latin origin, and 25% were women. Statistics on top management is even sadder, as it is throughout the valley as a whole.



The lack of diversity is evident not only at work - it permeates all aspects of life. All are worn by Patagonia and Northface, all have AirPods hanging from their ears, everyone travels to Lake Tahoe on weekends. And everyone is talking about the same thing: startups, blockchains, machine learning, and more about startups with the blockchain and machine learning.



Welcome to Silicon Valley



In my liberal arts college, in which I studied, we discussed everything with classmates: from British literature to public policy, from moral philosophy to socio-economic inequality. Compare this with the talk on the product management course, which is always full of newly graduated students. There, even everyday conversations revolve around technology - gossip about the new vice president of the company, plans on how to get a double boost in 22 months from level 3 to 5 for the product manager, discuss where investors drink on Thursdays. ( And yes, in Silicon Valley, there are also problems with alcohol and drugs ). Try to talk to these people about social problems, and you will very soon see the bored face of the interlocutor, hinting that it is time to change the subject. For example, together with my friend, we have repeatedly raised the issue of climate change, since we are very interested in this topic. We talked about the deterioration in air quality after a fire that devastated more than 60,000 hectares of Northern California , and recalled that Google still uses plastic water bottles and straws. We also called on to support environmental organizations during a charity week at Google. Every time in response, we heard silence.



You can earn money by changing the color of the button from green to blue.



In Silicon Valley, few people consider climate change to be an important issue to discuss, even fewer people think that something needs to be done on this matter. After all, it will not bring profit. With this you can not "shoot." And, of course, it is not related to IT. But you can earn if you change the color of the button from green to blue, if you launch another application for food delivery, if you manage to get even more clicks on advertising. This is how the Valley and the technology industry. As Jeffrey Hammerbacher, a former Facebook executive, said:

“The best minds of my generation think about how to make people click on ads”

Welcome to Silicon Valley



Homes are priced at up to $ 28,000 per square meter . The problems of homelessness and gentrification in the San Francisco Bay area became so acute that they got separate pages on Wikipedia. And this happens not only in the city, and this is not even the problem of "uneducated people." In December 2018, 4300 students from San Jose State University — more than 13% of the students — reported that they were homeless during that year. San Francisco and San Jose are among the 10 worst cities in the country in terms of income inequality. The gap between the poor and the rich continues to widen.

In 2018, San Francisco adopted Proposal C - a measure aimed at combating homelessness by raising taxes for large businesses. Salesforce and Cisco executives supported this idea , while Square, Stripe and Lyft were against this tax because of the way it was collected.



Would you like to live here?



Some may say that there are companies in Silicon Valley that care for the poor. Some organize annual advertising campaigns. At Google, employees are allocated $ 400 each, which can be sent to charitable organizations, for example, to food banks or a homeless shelter. And although Silicon Valley employees can help the needy, at the same time they complain that the tent cities "spoil the view" of the city, complain about those people whom they claim they care for. Over the past decade, more than 2,200 complaints of homeless people have been filed only on Hyde Street in San Francisco , and there is evidence of violence against homeless people in an attempt to drive them out of the streets.



Welcome to Silicon Valley



Here is everything that I have. My parents live here. This is the place where my high school friends returned and their college friends moved. Here I fell in love for the first time, and then for the first time I broke my heart.

Immediately classmates stole my homework and faked tests. Here parents threaten teachers if they put their children B +, here teachers also threaten tutors if they show copies of past exams. In this very place, my friends are drugged, cut and killed themselves. Here, my friends tried to ruin my relationship, my grades and my career.



Here, dating is everything. This is a place where everyone wants something from you. Here you never know when they will betray you in order to achieve a new goal.



That's all I have. But Silicon Valley is no longer my home.



Silicon Valley is no longer my home. I feel the influence of the technology bubble. I feel that my priorities are shifting towards money and career, that I begin to ignore those who need help around me, but this is what is encouraged and this is how I harmoniously fit into the surrounding reality. I feel that I am becoming a part of this system. Living here, I began to reflect on my school experience, full of suffering and aggression. Every year the mental health crisis of the high school students of Silicon Valley is growing . I wonder how much the social networks have influenced our psychological state with our friends during high school , and I understand how strange it turned out that the same friends now work on Facebook.



I was taught that in any bad situation there are three possible scenarios: you can ignore this situation, you can try to improve it, or you can escape.



Ignoring is, of course, an option, but it will not lead to any positive changes. Trying to improve the situation is a pretty good idea if you have hope that something can be changed. And you should leave when you are sure that nothing will change and you do not know what to do with it.



And I do not know what to do. When I returned here 4 years later, my depression also came back with me, as well as anxiety, growing frustration in humanity, together with the stream of fake and selfish "friends" fighting for the high status.

So, I'm leaving. But I hope to return.



I hope to return to another Silicon Valley. In a place where the mental health of students is taken care of. In a place where there will be diversity, not only among the people themselves, but also their lifestyle, conversations and interests. To a place where people will realize that their ideal life is expensive for others, and where they will strive to help those who are hurt.

And most importantly, I hope to return to Silicon Valley, where people will take care of each other and will be ready to work on what will improve our world, even if it does not help increase the number of clicks.



Note translator: Please do not associate my views and the views of the author of the article. Nevertheless, I thought that this could be an interesting insight into how life is organized there.