Quantity is the problem. I'm sure there are some blindingly talented developers in New Hampshire but there's probably only a few of them and they're more than likely gainfully employed by a company that appreciates their value. Hiring an engineer for 60% of the price doesn't help when you can only fill a third of your headcount.
You're more likely than not going to get an equally untalented developer in Silicon Valley, for the same reason. The talented ones are likely already gainfully employed. I would go out on a limb and say that there are more smooth talkers with silver tongues in Silicon Valley, who will talk their way through an interview and only provide the perception of talent. Still think it's wise to start a company there?
It has nothing to do with the actual facts of the job market, and everything to do with the demands of the VC cartel.
I've actually had the opposite experience: I've found way more silver-tounged developers outside of the Bay. It's hard to bullshit in SV because most worthwhile companies have at least a few people who have been around the block a few times. The smaller the market the easier it is to hype yourself up. I've even noticed it in NYC -- a lot of developers who are able to talk a big game because many of the finance/ad-tech firms are relatively easy to fool.
The how did people like Robert Scoble thrive for so long in Silicon Valley?
I agree that New York in particular (and also London) is also full of silver tongued charlatans, and that has a lot to do with the culture and cocaine of finance/ad-tech firms.
> The smaller the market the easier it is to hype yourself up.
Okay, I can accept this. My hunch is that yes, it is easier to hype yourself up for a given company, but if there are fewer companies, you have fewer chances to do so, and therefore you're taking a bigger risk. Smaller cities can be big targets for con men because fewer con men are there and therefore one is less likely to know the given tactic that a con man will try.
This gets complicated into game theory and rationality and such. There's no way to know for sure, it's a good idea to be wise to these concepts regardless of location though. I still think that SV is incredibly overvalued, at this point in time, from both an employer and employee perspective.
You hit the nail on the head, but it's not limited to (but is concentrated in) Silicon Valley:
>I would go out on a limb and say that there are more smooth talkers with silver tongues in Silicon Valley, who will talk their way through an interview and only provide the perception of talent.
And smooth bloggers with silver cursors, who will type their way through a posting only to provide the perception of talent. People famous for being famous, cheerleaders who fancy themselves the authority on this or that because they have a lot of followers, but have no technical skills whatsoever, and have never done any of the difficult tedious shit work and midnight oil combustion required to ship a real product, like Scoble and his emulators.
I think a big wave of incompetent developers started with the "Ruby on Rails in 10 minutes" screencast that anyone could watch and easily duplicate the exact same CRUD web site with lots of pretty frosting and absolutely no cake. So many "dot com" startup web sites since then have the same level of out-of-the-box polish and spray-on tan, yet absolutely nothing tangible behind them, in terms of skilled thorough execution or original tractable ideas.
The shoddy buggy thrown-together quality, carelessly flagrant and criminal privacy violations in the naked pursuit of virality, and total lack of maintenance and customer support of sites like AngelList.com, where the lights are on but nobody's home, exemplify what I mean. It's got about as much depth and execution as "Hot or Not", and explicitly caters and appeals to the Silicon Valley charlatan crowd.
diskcat: "This is damage control. You clearly want to make people update their profiles or whatever by pretending to be somebody else they know.
You went with an immoral strategy to grow your business and that now it has finally hit you in the face on a very visible website you are here to be all apologetics. It's the "easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission" strategy and it is deliberate thus I must conclude that your apology is insincere and is only an attempt at limiting the backlash against you."
exogeny: "Why are we applauding Ryan again?
This is a saving face bailout from one of their own investors and a particularly embarrassing one at that given his statements of "I wouldn't consider anything under $100mm" and the pedigree of his investors.
They raised a shit ton of money and built nothing. No real technology, no significant additions to their platform, no development of community. And now the result is an all-stock acquihire from AL, which will amount of a purchase of their users and a one year rental of the same engineers and team that failed to build anything worthwhile.
Raising money at a $22m val from A16Z and selling for less than that - all stock no less - is a failure, and we need to stop lauding it as if it's somehow notable or impressive to take money and waste it."
There are plenty in Boston, and apparently our salaries remain a fair bit lower than those in the Bay Area. Come on over and bid our incomes up! Please!
