Every now and then, I encounter a blog post about “Leaving Tech”. Sometimes, it’s a whiny, self-indulgent rant by someone who didn’t expect startups to be so hard. Other times, the person has solid reasons for leaving the software industry. Now, I don’t begrudge people for making the decision to leave technology. A lot of great people are leaving this industry, especially when they get to my age (early 30s, which is middle-aged in Silicon Valley years). That’s a personal decision, and I understand why people make it, and I don’t fault them. This is an industry run by the wrong people and, consequently, it has a toxic, horrible culture full of junk that has nothing to do with computer science or programming. It’s ageist, sexist, racist, classist, and macho-subordinate. It allows horrible ideas like employee stack-ranking, micromanagement in the Orwellian name of “agility“, and open-plan offices designed to test people by seeing who gets the least sick. In software especially, we’ve allowed ourselves to be colonized by people who’ve failed out of the mainstream business culture. People leave this industry every day, often for good reasons, but I’m not going to do so. I’m going to stand my fucking ground.
It’s not really to my economic advantage to stay. People far dumber than I am make a lot more money in private equity, and people at or around my level of intelligence make seven figures, easily, after a decade in the hedge fund world. So why do I spend time and emotional energy on computer science and technology? This industry never loved me much– Google was pretty horrible to me, as is well-documented by this point– so why do I care about it?
I could get on a moral high horse about the importance of technology to economic growth, the noble cause of defending it, and all that, but the reason’s much simpler. I’m not leaving because, well, this is my fucking territory. End of story. No, it’s obviously not mine personally but it belongs to my tribe (Talent) and not the colonizing one. Technology happens to be one of society’s major profit centers, but even if it were irrelevant, I’d still be inclined to defend it. I’m fucking smart and I’ve worked fucking hard to understand this stuff, and this means that I belong here, and these colonizing fucksticks don’t. I’m a Talent Nationalist, and I would have no credibility as such if were to I give up so easily on the tribal birthrights of Talent, which include control of the technology industry. Sure, I could join the other side, tow their stupid line, become a smiling idiot just like them, and make a shit-ton more money, but there’s one problem with that… namely, the fact that would be disgusting.
As one result of technology’s colonized status, founder quality is at an all-time low. Every time I hear an investor say, “We don’t invest in ideas, we invest in people” I cringe, and here’s why. I’d respect those guys much more if they said, “We invest in ideas, and sometimes we fund a horrible founding team if we like the idea”, because that would be honest. Some of the ideas they fund are decent ones, like Uber. The people they fund, 95 percent of the time, are just atrocious. If their job is to invest in people, then I would be better at their jobs than they are by far, because unlike them, I wouldn’t fund so many people who are talentless and unethical.
I’m going to fight because, morally speaking, I have no other option, as a fervent Talent Nationalist. I doubt that I am Talent’s last line of defense, but I am certainly zealous in my defense of it and its rightful territory. If you come in to a scientific or technological company and impose employee stack-ranking, then you are invading my homeland with your shitty corporate culture, and I will defend my homeland past your demise and mine, because it’s my fucking job.
It may be fashionable for self-involved Silicon Valley hotshots to write blog posts about how they’re quitting tech because they’re tired of working hard. Fuck that. For me, it was never about that. The people I care about aren’t the ones writing “startups are hard” blog posts. I care about the highly competent men and women (and a disproportionate share are women) who are pushed out of this industry by its inept management, stupid practices, terrible companies and founders, and its exclusionary and macho-subordinate culture. We can’t have that. We can’t be driving out the true Talent while letting ourselves be overrun by bros and corporate yes-men. I may be a masochist, and I may be tied to an idea– that this industry can still be saved– that is absolutely insane. Even if it’s a losing war, I am going to stand my ground and fight. Someone must.
Really, what else can one expect me to do?
