Thoughts on how High Density Housing is Destroying Silicon Valley

If you're on the road these days, you can't help but notice one inescapable fact -- traffic in the Bay Area just keeps getting worse and worse. Increasingly, we're seeing gridlock on our roads. During rush hour, there are times and places where you have to wait through a green light because you can't make it through the intersection -- there isn't any room for your vehicle on the other side. All of these vehicles and increased traffic density means longer drive times, lost productivity, and increased stresses from time pressures, bad drivers, and road rage.

Commuting home the other day, I took a route that was similar to my commute a couple of years ago and I was shocked by where I experienced traffic back-ups, and by how much traffic there was. My rough estimate, based on where I was seeing the back-ups, is that we may have double the number of cars on the road compared to just two or three years ago.

But where did all of these cars come from? Why are there more cars here?

I have one simple answer -- high-density housing. Over the past five years or so, there has been a trend to transform areas of land that once held one and two-story buildings into high-density residential and multi-use/residential structures. In the photo above (that I happened to take about three years ago), what was once a Santa Clara technology campus with about three 2-story buildings was being transformed into a multi-story, high-density multi-use housing facility. The same transformation is also taking place in a couple of blocks in every direction from here.

The big joke with these places is that they make the claim that these high-density residences won't significantly increase traffic because they're close to the train station and public transit. The reality is that, with most of these places, you need to estimate an additional 1.5 cars on the road.

It's surprising to me that so many of these developments have been approved (and continue to be approved) by local city councils. While there are always calls for more affordable housing (and claims that a lack of housing is the problem), these developments are simply eroding any semblance of quality of life in the area. Here's my latest analogy for the problem:

Imagine the Bay Area like an awesome Internet Cafe, good food, nice environment, good Internet connectivity. Then, people start having meetings there and more people keep coming in. Soon, there is no space to sit, all of the tables are occupied and all of the chairs are full. 

Troubled by this, the patrons call for more chairs, more places to sit. Comfy chairs are changed to benches and counters are added to walls, so more people can fit in, but soon there is no place for coffee cups and few places for computers. 

But the worst is that, while the number of patrons has grown significantly, the cafe's Internet connection is still running on the same DSL line that provided reasonable broadband 15 years ago. The Internet Cafe has no Internet.

The Bay Area is collapsing under the weight of too many users while the roads, our broadband connectivity.

It would be one thing if we had the infrastructure to support the human density that they are building for, but we don't. We have no subways, no metro train system. And if you look at San Francisco as an example, we're going on 10 years and they still haven't completed the Muni line from Union Square to the Caltrain station.

And just when you thought they couldn't pack any more in, there's more high-density housing on the way...

Facebook Partners With Companies to Violate Employment Law

I came across this article from the New York Times on Twitter. Since it's from the New York Times, it may be behind a paywall and you may have trouble getting to the actual article (here's another link to the article on ProPublica). However, if you can get to it, it's totally worth a read. As well, I've tried to craft a click-worthy title because I think that this story is really a must see.

The gist of the story is simple. Companies have been running job ads on Facebook that are targeted -- and thus, were only visible -- to a specific age demographic. In other words, if you're not 26-35 years of age, you don't see the ads because the company isn't interested in hiring you.

Facebook defends these ads. They want to make the case that the companies doing this type of advertising also run other programs on other platforms that target the people who aren't 25-36 years old. They think that it's great that companies recruit this way because of... well, whatever they say, it's really about ad revenue for them.

Knowing Silicon Valley, you might expect that we're talking about start-ups here, but not so. These ads are also coming from companies like Verizon, Amazon, and Target. Theoretically, these companies know that they can't put an "only under 50 need apply" in employment ad, so why would they use the age demographic targeting for an employment ad?

• It's easy. They simply need to tick a checkbox and they've focused their employment search on the candidates that they really want.
• It's very difficult for people to complain about something that they never see. Since the ads are only visible to the target demographic, it's unlikely that anyone outside of that demographic would know to complain. 

What I find most telling in this whole story is the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn when it comes to their reaction to ProPublica challenging them on the age-based ad targeting.

Other tech companies also offer employers opportunities to discriminate by age. ProPublica bought job ads on Google and LinkedIn that excluded audiences older than 40 — and the ads were instantly approved. Google said it does not prevent advertisers from displaying ads based on the user’s age. After being contacted by ProPublica, LinkedIn changed its system to prevent such targeting in employment ads.

Contrast that with Facebook's defense of the practice.

Facebook has argued in court filings that the law, the Communications Decency Act, makes it immune from liability for discriminatory ads.

Facebook also claims that since advertisers have to click a checkbox, the ads must be legal.

Facebook helps educate advertisers about the legal requirements they face so that they understand their responsibilities. We've also begun requiring businesses that show employment ads on Facebook to certify that they comply with the law before we show their ads.

While it's hard to say how the courts will ultimately rule on things, it strikes me that the spirit of the protections provided by the Communications Decency Act is about not being held responsible if someone posts something illegal on your platform. It's not designed to protect you from building a platform that sells them access to something that is inherently illegal.

Like the Russian political ads that helped shape the election, Facebook's advertising business seems to lack a moral/legal/ethical compass -- if not to avoid these kinds of issues entirely, at least enough of a sense of direction to get them out of it cleanly (see LinkedIn). It's like the ad revenue end of the business is fully-on Wall-Street-Bro-Culture-dollars-before-all-else, the kind of story you'd expect to hear coming out of Uber.

I actually am more sympathetic to Facebook's enabling of the Russian political ads using fake accounts than I am about this age-based targeting of employment ads story. In the Russian political advertising story, Facebook can fall back on the excuse that their systems were abused and that they were duped. With this, they set the system up to do this.

Of course, once this all plays out, when Facebook issues it's mea culpa and is forced to change it's practices, we all know that nothing will really change with hiring. After all, while Facebook built an advertising platform that enabled these businesses to selectively reach a specific age range, it was the prospective employers that implemented programs (that unexpectedly became public) that exposed decision criteria that have been operating in the background long before Facebook ever ran an employment ad.

This quote in the article from HubSpot spokeswoman, Ellie Botelho, made me laugh.

The use of the targeted age-range selection on the Facebook ad was frankly a mistake on our part given our lack of experience using that platform for job postings and not a feature we will use again.

While I haven't set up a Facebook employment ad, having configured numerous other online ad programs, I can say with some authority -- selectively narrowing the scope of an advertising program down to a specific granular segment isn't something you just accidentally click on. An accident could explain why their ad was also viewed in Europe or by people under the age of 18. An accident would have cost them more money. Selectively targeting an ad so that they only need spend on their actual, intended candidate criteria -- that takes extra effort.

Frankly, I hope that it costs the companies that have participated in this significantly. Perhaps if they'd had somebody from an older age demographic in their employ, that person would have had enough experience to keep them from going down such a stupid path.

LB Steak: Clever Marketing, Puffery or Misdirection?

So I had dinner last night at LB Steak in Santana Row. It was part of a group/work dinner. Like most typical group dinners, my expectations for the food wasn't particularly high -- work dinners aren't something you go to expecting to enjoy the food. What's more, having been to LB Steak for some truly mediocre brunch in the past (nice outdoor seating in Santana Row), I already had some sense of what to expect. I feel like I had a reasonably low bar going in.

Still, I was thoroughly surprised by the restaurant's marketing of their food and their dining room -- and not surprised in a good way.

Prior to grinding my way through rush-hour traffic to get there for dinner, one of my colleagues had told me that we'd be seated at the "Chef's Table". Now, being someone who enjoys my share of food and restaurant experiences, I must say that the idea of being at the Chef's Table had me hopefully optimistic. Perhaps this would be one of those enjoyably unique experiences that would walk back my previous brunch experiences. Imagine my surprise to see some of my colleagues sitting at a large table by the front window of the restaurant as I walked up.

I wasn't the only one. A couple of others asked the waiter about the "Chef's Table" and he said, "oh, that's just what we call this."

As I posted on Twitter last night, I suspected that they had switched tables on us for some reason (perhaps group size), but when I spoke with my wife about it, she said that she knew about LB Steak's "Chef's Table". So I looked it up this morning. Here's the link to LB Steak's private dining page. Further, on the PDF of their private dining menu (page 3), you'll find a description and picture of their "Chef's Table".

Of course, as I mentioned on Twitter last night, I don't think that the common perception of "Chef's Table" is "Big Table in the dining room by the front window and door". So I went looking for a definition of "Chef's Table". Here's what's on the Wikipedia page for restaurant:

A chef's table is a table located in the kitchen of a restaurant, reserved for VIPs and special guests. Patrons may be served a themed tasting menu prepared and served by the head chef. Restaurants can require a minimum party and charge a higher flat fee. Because of the demand on the kitchen's facilities, chef's tables are generally only available during off-peak times.

 Note: the emphasis added is mine. 

Clearly, LB Steak intends to set an expectation with the "Chef's Table" designation. It's an obvious attempt at priming (psychology) the customer's perception with a perception of exclusivity. For me, that core misrepresentation ate at me more throughout the evening than I ate at the food.

Being Sold on the Prime Rib Eye
In another round of adventures in labels versus products, the waiter sold a significant portion of the table on the 12oz Prime Rib Eye. He made some explanation about it, but mostly emphasized about how tender it was. Perhaps you are wondering what a Prime Rib Eye is?

• Expectation-wise, you might think it was Prime Rib...
• Or maybe you might expect that it's a big thick Rib Eye steak. 

As it turns out, it's a steak that's about the typical thickness of a slice of prime rib (about 3/4"), grilled like a rib eye. It's hard to represent the difference between the plates of steak that were presented to the table and what you probably were expecting if your mind was aligned with either of those bullets I've listed above. Visually, the product looked like something an inexpensive market steak you'd expect to get your average local grocery store. Or perhaps something you might get at one of those low-end chain steak restaurants.

The LB Steak menu lists this "35 Day Dry Aged Prime 12 oz Boneless Ribeye" at $52. I suspect that if I went to Costco right now, I could get a three-pack of prime Ribeye steaks for about the same price, any one of which would have delivered a product closer to what I would expect a business that features "steak" in it's name to be able to produce.

Puffery
So the question that you might ask is, are these misrepresentations by the business puffery? Merriam Webster has the definition of puffery as, "exaggerated commendation especially for promotional purposes : hype". Wikipedia goes further.

In everyday language, puffery refers to exaggerated or false praise. In law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally. Puffery serves to "puff up" an exaggerated image of what is being described and is especially featured in testimonials.

There's also this great link from the puffery page to restaurant menu writing style. In short, it's not unusual to attempt to inflate the description of dishes or make them sound more exotic. In one sense, you could say that that is what LB Steak is doing.

At the same time, while a "tenderloin of pork avec compôte de Pommes" may be "a pork chop with a dollop of applesauce," most people would probably be unhappy to be served some thin slices of lunch-meat-cut ham with some applesauce under the guise of a "tenderloin of pork".

This is the problem with their "Chef's Table" nomenclature. They could name it anything -- the Silicon Valley table, the Grand Table, anything -- without creating the false expectation of a "Chef's Table". Rather than elevating the dining experience, I think it undercuts the restaurant's credibility with the customer. I think that this is a clear-cut case of marketing quackery.

iPhone 6s Reservations: Better than Silicon Valley Traffic

It's hard to get out on the road in Silicon Valley these days without getting a bit road ragey. First there's the traffic. Add to that the frustration multipliers when you have people pull unbelievably dangerous traffic moves. Some classics are the "I'm in the far right lane on the right and my GPS (Waze seems to like doing this) says I need to turn left here, so I'm going to just make my way across four lanes to get into the turn lane" move. These people move as though there is nobody else in their world. Anyway, as I rant, I can feel the blood pressure rise. The joys of Silicon Valley.

But before you get out in traffic, what you really need is something to kick the blood pressure up, get you amped before you have to sit in your car and celebrate the traffic stress. My new favorite game is trying to reserve an iPhone at the Apple Store. It's become like a frustrating boss sequence, but with no resolution, no victory over the boss. Instead, I get nothing... except for my traffic frustration warm-up.

And as I click through the process, the million stupid clicks to try and reserve a model of the iPhone that I already know Apple won't have, I'm reminded of what a stupid process it is. Click. Click. Click. Through the entire sequence. Oops, you tried to click through to quickly and it defaulted to "see if your eligible for an upgrade from AT&T and what your payment terms may be". Back. Back. Now, you finally reach the store game -- the real boss fight.

You select your first store and you already know that they won't have inventory. It's one of those wasted attacks, something just to engage the boss. Then you start going through all of the stores in your area. The click. Location. Model. Carrier. Poop. Again. Then, just for fun, you start looking around the state, clicking on stores that you know you'd never drive to. Bakersfield. Carlsbad. Hey, they have a rose gold 16GB model Carlsbad.

Now you're ready for traffic.

The Nightmare Before Dreamforce 2016

And it begins. Today is the first day of badge pickup at Dreamforce, and the best day to pick up the conference bag and miscellaneous crap that they want to send you home with. It's probably a good day if you're staying in a hotel. Checking in, getting settled. Maybe have some dinner before a few parties. It's the warm up before the chaos.

But it's a different world if you don't have a hotel or if your accommodations aren't close. If that's your story, you face a different fate. First, there's the trip into the city. Mine was punctuated by the impact of Monday Night Football with the 49ers at Levi Stadium. An Event at Levi Stadium means that parking is restricted in downtown Mountain View, and I needed to drive around for 30 minutes to find someplace that I could park. I took the train from Mountain View because I thought that would be my best chance to avoid the traffic around Levi Stadium -- I got caught in that after work once before and it was a nightmare.

Next, there's the badge pick-up. Dreamforce does pretty well with this, sending out an email this morning with your QR code. I always hate trying to find some email that I got months ago with my conference reg info. But after they identify you, then they want to ask about what hotel you're staying at. My only option was "local/don't need a hotel". Which isn't true, but the woman assisting with registration and handing out badges doesn't want to hear any of that. Regardless of what you might want to do for hotel, there's no room at the inn. Sure it's semantics and it's not worth arguing over. And yet, as I mentioned in previous posts about Dreamforce, when you over-subscribe the event, you transform the experience into one where tensions run high. It's like the way that more traffic increases stress on the road, increases road rage, and correspondingly increases stupid driving.

Asking whether I have a hotel when I don't have one is meaningless if you aren't going to do anything to change the availability of housing. You have my demographic information from registration. If I'm outside of a select area, you've got to expect that I don't want to commute.

Walking to pick up my badge today, this thought occurred to me, so I've already sent it out on Twitter. What's the difference between Dreamforce and Apple's World Wide Developer Conference? Apples WWDC sells out in a period of hours. Sells out. They don't take any more more attendees. There is only so much infrastructure, so much capacity. In contrast, they keep selling seats to Dreamforce. They keep giving away free keynote and party passes. Come one come all, if we can squeeze another buck out of this thing, it's all good. More people equals bigger than Oracle -- take that Larry! Dreamforce is oversubscribed. Salesforce approaches capacity like it's a cloud service -- more is good, we can always expand capacity. But San Francisco is oversold, overcrowded and taxed beyond it's capacity to handle this event. If this was a restaurant, you'd have to say -- I love having all of you, but I can't serve all of you.

And this is why I hate Dreamforce. And why I hate Salesforce for even charging me for this experience and taking my conference money. And for making me commute.

Caltrans Offers $25K to Solve California's Transportation Problems

The other day I learned about Caltrans innovation contest, "$25K to find a new way". As it happens, it came up in a discussion about how the size of the price seemed unmatched to the scope of the problem -- sort of like sitting in New Orleans with 60 MPH hurricane winds swirling around, and offering $25K for innovative ideas on hurricane preparedness infrastructure. You know it's going to get worse, but it also seems a bit late to make a real impact.

Here in the Bay Area we're being inundated with more and more people, more and more cars, more and more traffic. Population growth and the corresponding increased load (i.e. traffic) is drowning our ecosystem. For every one story office building or business that is torn down to build three-story high-density town-home condos, you need to multiply each residence by 1.5 cars and probably about one child or so. And yet, there are no new schools being built, and the best answer for traffic seems to be adding the occasional lane here or there.

Finding Solutions
With the influx of so many new people into the Bay Area, the Republican solution would probably be to classify this as an immigration issue. Too many people coming here, destroying the existing way of life. And so, taking everything they learned from Sid Meier's Civilization 2, they would probably demand to "build city walls". Sadly, building a wall is an all-to-common solution presented, not only in modern American politics, but in the various dystopian, post apocalyptic stories -- walls and the ugly evil that lies outside the walls.

Forget the physical wall. Imagine a legal wall, something like California citizenship or a California preferred status -- something along the lines of status on an airline. First, imagine how it might work: I've been a California resident for over 20 years, this entitles me to use the "CA Preferred" lane in traffic, to park in the "CA Preferred" spaces. Maybe it even gives employers incentives to hire "CA Preferred". But if you think for one minute that something like a "CA Preferred" status might incentivize a company like Google to hire a local resident, I think you're crazy. Walls will not solve that which ails us.

Another grand solution is High Speed Rail. Oh, hey, we're working on that. But for those of you high-speed rail fans, here's an interesting story from the Atlantic about, "how come our trains can't run like the trains in Germany". While I found it kind of funny that the folks on the east coast look to Europe as the benchmark for train service (I think Japan makes a better benchmark), it still provides some very interesting assessments from the guys that run the train system in Germany.

Specifically, the report warns against putting stops in sparsely populated areas because that slows trains down. Put them only in the center of major cities, recommends report author Eric Eidlin, as Germany has done. The ICE train, for example, makes no stops during the two-hour journey between Berlin and Hamburg. France, on the other hand, has often dispersed train stations around the urban periphery and the result, Eidlin notes, has been not just slower trips but less-efficient connections to other modes of transport. “California should carefully consider the economic development and access challenges that French cities such as Aix-en-Provence and Avignon have experienced with exurban and peripheral stations,” Eidlin writes. “Thankfully, California has made the wise decision of siting most HSR stations in central cities. However, one notable exception to this is the proposed Kings/Tulare station east of Hanford, which would be located in an exurban location.” Also, the Milbrae and Burbank station locations will be in less accessible areas.

It's kind of funny that the consider Milbrae(sic) a less accessible station since that's your connection to SFO. Then again, there's a broader bit of humor in that, even the "convenient" Bart train between SFO and San Francisco takes nearly 40 minutes as the route takes you out to Daily City before bringing you into the city. The reality is that none of our transportation systems are built with any sort of hub and spoke approach nor any sense of express.

Perhaps the funniest "serious" solution that I heard was a recent KQED broadcast talking about the ferries on the bay. There's talk of dredging and adding ferry service into Alviso. Tired of the Google bus? You may be able to take a boat ride to the South Bay.

Root Cause
Part of the reason we're all suffering from these transportation problems is that the Bay Area operates as a bunch of independent cities that just happen to be near one another. There is no grand plan nor is there the ability to come together and deliver a strategic regional solution. Independent cities means that, if Mountain View decides to let Google or Linked In expand their campus and add 10,000 new workers -- and if that, in turn, creates monster traffic on 85 and 101 -- Mountain View can sit back and say, "bummer for you surrounding communities, we're getting our tax revenue. Highway capacity is the state's problem." (Levi Stadium vs Mt. View parking is an example of this.) And because there is only a small part of it that seems like a city problem, each city feels a limited concern about zoning and the impact of replacing old one-story buildings and lots with 3-story high density homes. They are just a few more buckets of people -- they aren't the flood that's drowning the area.

Meanwhile, transportation infrastructure like an efficient rail, light rail, subway and bus infrastructure -- it might be nice, but not in our backyard.

My Solution
The ideal world would see us with a train system like Tokyo. Train stations would be like mini-malls, centers of commerce. There would be a mix of express routes and slower lines with more frequent stops. An ideal would be rail lines that ran down the middle of every freeway and express way across the bay area, visible from the freeway so that those stuck in traffic can see how much faster the train gets there. If every major road in the Bay Area had rail / subway interconnections, I think we'd be in much better shape to handle the relentless influx of people.

Unfortunately, this probably doesn't fit within the scope of Caltran's contest. So here's another thought. Legislate that all CA businesses over a certain size must offer "work from Anywhere" ala Automatic (Wordpress). If nobody has to go to an office, you've got to figure a certain percentage reduction in traffic.

The Problem with Google's Campus Development Proposal

So the news of the week is that Google has proposed a significant overhaul of its business campus over in the Shoreline area of Mountain View. From Mountain View's The Voice,

Google gave the Voice a look at the plans Friday morning for a 3.4 million-square-foot campus to hold 10,000 new employees, the first buildings Google will have designed and built in Mountain View, despite the city being home to its headquarters since its inception. 

Of course, Google isn't the only one proposing new development, Google, LinkedIn and five real estate developers have submitted plans to build millions of square feet of new offices. Along with Google's proposal, there are a host of other civic improvements that they've bundled in too. The crazy thing about all of this is not the unique architecture, it's really more about trying to imagine another 10,000 people going in and out of that area each day. As anyone who has tried to navigate the intersection between 101 and 85 during rush hour knows, even with Google buses hauling thousands of Google employees in and out, the area is still a congested mess. Even if you consider their current numbers where about 1/3 of Google employees arrive by Google bus, that's still another 5000 or so cars trying to squeeze their way into the area.

The reports on the radio were all making a big deal about housing -- where are all of these new Googlers going to live? The reality is that that's really a minor part of the story. Unless the downtown Mountain View train station is redeveloped to look more like Tokyo station, with multiple train lines running through in multiple directions, the Magic Eightball prediction for traffic in the area is FUBAR.

The other funny thing about this is the "this will bring 10,000 new jobs into the area" message, the great canard of the "tech boom". The real truth underlying this "boom" is that this "10,000 jobs" number is not "people that need a job here in the area" -- this is not a new factory hiring local workers to come in and operate the machinery -- it's more likely 10,000 prestigious college graduates and international Visa holders brought in from everywhere else. I know that sounds like a joke, but having lived in Mountain View for fifteen years, I've had many Google neighbors but none of them lived here before they were hired by Google. In short, for most of the "new generation" of tech companies, there is a simple rule -- if you already live here, you're probably too old (unless you're a student at Stanford or Berkeley).

Don't get me wrong -- I think that the new architecture is interesting and would be a welcome addition to the office park. But beyond those buildings, those open spaces and those bike paths, there needs to be a lot more investment in how people get around. Money being what it is, I expect that it is unlikely to expect "the character" of Mountain View to remain the same as it was even 10 years ago, but what it's destined to become is a mess unless the infrastructure to support all of this is developed.

The Problem of Money

Earlier this week, there is news about another reporter quitting eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar's start-up media organization, First Look Media. Pando covers this with more detail, as the larger story has been something that Paul Carr has been following for a while.

For me, there is another thematic thread here. If you think back to when they were building this organization -- the promises and the prospects -- it was kind of like the story of building a modern dream team of media players. Rock star investigative journalists all pooled together in one old-media crushing modern empire that would rewrite the laws of news and journalism. And the first thing would be to sign these all-star players to big fat new contracts.

As is often the case, fat money is a harbinger of doom. Whether you want to look at sports and the performance of athletes in a contract year versus the year after they sign their fat new contracts or those newly signed top draft picks that never actually turn out to be the next Michael Jordan.

But what's driving the mega-contract opening bid? After all, anyone who's ever bid on eBay knows that you don't open big; instead, you swoop in near the end in an effort to win by inches.

But there's a second part to this equation; what's going on inside of the head of someone that signs one of these huge contracts. On the one hand, as employees negotiating salary, it's often essential to try and get the most money that we can on the way in the door. If it's a long term hire, this number works as a base that will, most likely, be followed with a very low percentage incremental increase year after year. And if the opportunity has a short life span, it's well worth getting what you can from it while you can. That being said, the kind of hire we're talking about here is different.

Like many other Silicon Valley opportunities, when these media people are moving into this new venture, they are going start-up. They stand at the beginning of the road to building something. In the start-up world, this often translates into equity versus salary. Equity versus salary isn't just about money, it's about gambling whether money today is worth more that potential returns down the road. And that, fundamentally, is about belief in the idea, belief in the potential. To buy into return, you must see a future. This isn't like investing money. You have only one of you, one unit of your time and effort that you can commit at a time. Equity is a win or lose investment.

To that end, when you're in for equity, salary matters less because you've already bought in. You've drank the Kool-aid. Which brings us to the second question in this "all-star" relationship -- if you believe in the idea, why would you want or need fat money to make the move? And, more to the point, what does that huge offer say to you?

From the guy with the money to the guys signing on, I don't think that there was ever a shared Kool-aid experience. This has been about guns for hire and the offer you can't refuse. And when you find that kind of offer on the table in front of you, you probably don't want to refuse. Unlike a select few, most of us need an income. But when the fat money comes, remember, you're probably in for a short ride -- don't expect an in-flight meal and no need to bother with the Kool-aid.

Whole Foods and the Myth of the Workplace Team

Here's an interesting post that I came across from a guy that worked at Whole Foods in San Francisco. My Whole Foods nightmare: How a full-time job there left me in poverty by Nick Rahaim details some of his experiences working at Whole Foods. It's an interesting read. I think that there are a couple of interesting take-aways from the piece.

From his description, it sounds like a strong bond developed between co-workers. The irony is that, while many businesses try to build this kind of connection, in Whole Food's case, it appears that the unifying factor is salary and union concerns. Imagine if that weren't the case and, instead, that team approach was directed entirely toward the customer experience.

In the piece he references a store meeting where they are are given a "vote" on which benefits to cut because of "Obamacare." In the article, he points to Whole Food's stock price, but possibly a better indicator would be profitability. Essentially, shareholders reap increased profits on the backs of the underpayed "team" members. Its surprising that they don't fold more of that profit back into the engine of the business. And yet, this is the problem with the alignment between the performance of a stock and the "success" of the business.

There is another irony in that, Whole Foods tends to cater to an upscale customer, and that most are probably shopping there because they feel a sort of "harmonizing with all of society, hippy coop" sort of vibe. And Whole Foods exploits this image, through in-store experiences and interactions with the staff in the store. It's also part of the reason why people are willing to pay higher prices and Whole Foods is able to command higher margins than many of their competitors. What do you think the impact would be on the Whole Foods customer base if Whole Foods employees -- the friendly staff that the store's customers interact with -- were broadly thought to be treated in the same way as employees of Walmart? It seems like a rather precarious business strategy.

Rush Hour: Silicon Valley vs Tokyo

I'm back from a week in Tokyo. It's often strange to visit there, being so wired and so off-the-grid at the same time. With internet access and mobile phones, it's easy to remain connected and yet, with the timezone differences and the language disconnect from the TV and news media, "current events" in the US seem like trivial pursuit facts. Life is those moments that you are immersed in.

For me though, the great inescapable reality driven home by time in Japan is how much our transportation system sucks. Imagine trying to explain our lack of trains to someone from Japan whose never been here. We have one that goes up and down the Peninsula, we have BART that connects points in the east bay to San Francisco, and we have a light rail connecting a few points in San Jose, Muni connecting a few areas in San Francisco... oh, and Amtrak running a line in from the central valley. And that's it. Else bus. Or car.

Millions of people live and work in the Tokyo area. Rush hour in Tokyo is this crazy sea of people moving through trains and their metro subway system. Train cars get so crowded that people literally squeeze into them. Lines and lines of people flow through stations, up and down escalators, flood over stairs. Wide hallways and tunnels that are virtually empty during off-hours flow packed with people during rush hour. Millions of people go from their residence to their place of work and back each day.

Contrast that with our rush hour. Thousands and thousands of cars crawling through stop and go traffic, sometimes three or four lanes wide. Mistakes -- trying to shift direction too quickly or move a little faster than a less rushed portion of the crowd -- result in crumpled steel and plastic, thousands of dollars in damage. It's not like bumping into a human in a crowd.

Pedestrian crowds do a much better job of coordinated navigation that car crowds. Even as they study pedestrian crowd dynamics, they could probably benefit from the amazing dance that is the crowd flow in rush hour Tokyo. There are no horns, no yelling. It's a mostly quiet shuffle, complemented by the background noise of various train announcements. While most might find rush hour Tokyo very stressful, for me it was a relaxing break from what rush hour has become here in the bay area. It was also a strong reminder of how totally screwed up our transportation infrastructure is here.

An Innocent Question
When you're abroad, it's not unusual for you to find yourself answering questions about home. One night during dinner, we were asked a question that was so simple on the surface -- and yet, provided a telling story of the underlying mess. The question was simply, "does the magnet strip on your train ticket work on all of the trains in California?"

For most of us here in the bay area, this question doesn't touch on our commute. For many, we may not even have the experience to provide an accurate answer. But the question and the underlying assumption is actually a more interesting story than an accurate answer. Put simply, if you live in a world filled with trains, can you imagine a virtually trainless world like the San Francisco Bay Area?

Before we could answer the train ticket interoperability question, we really needed to frame the world that we live in, a world with one train running up the Peninsula, one up and down the East Bay, and a couple of rounds of municipal light right connecting a few parts of San Francisco or San Jose. Oh, and the ACE train. That's it. You can't imitate the week I spent in Tokyo, traversing the city from one side to the other, on a combinations of municipal trains and metro subways. 

In the bay area, any attempt to go anywhere other than one end or the other on a line will probably leave you waiting at a station for a long time, riding for a while, then walking, taking a bus, or just not going anywhere further than a few blocks from the station. Our trains are not interwoven into our transportation fabric. Instead, we now suffer under the traffic of a transportation infrastructure crafted by the same geniuses that brought you LA traffic. You know what we need? More houses, more people, and more freeway lanes. Bah.

If nothing else, experiencing Tokyo rush hour that we really need to transform our transportation infrastructure, and that's not exactly a high-speed train line to LA. Most of us might be satisfied if we could get on VTA light rail and make it from one side of San Jose to the other in less than two hours. Or if Baby Bullet trains ran up and down the peninsula line all day long, supplemented by local routes that could pick up stops along the overall route. Express lines running parallel to local lines. Imagine trains running along Lawrence, Page Mill, Sand Hill, and everywhere.

Of course, even as I write this, I know it's a crazy pipe dream. All you have to do is look back to the BART extension into SFO and the great BART versus Caltrain battle over which could best service the airport. After years and years of construction, they managed to build a train that charges a surcharge, delivers poor service (who wants to go to Daily City in order to go to downtown San Francisco -- it's nearly an hour on BART), and makes it nearly impossible to connect with Caltrain. Why couldn't we have both connections? Or a master plan that made it easier to bridge the two?

No, instead of the infrastructure we need, we must live in the ad hoc transportation network we've got -- the world's "most brilliant people", left to rot away in gridlocked automobiles, shaking their fists at one another and while trying to understand the lane change logic of the people in front of them. We're doomed.

Driving by GPS: Sometimes Data Isn't Enough

It seems like the kind of thing that you see around here a lot more these days. As you approach a light, there's a back-up. It turns out someone has realized that, although they were in the right lane, they needed to turn left at the light, so they are now slowly making their way across three lanes of traffic to get to the left turn lane. Everyone behind be damned -- they don't matter.

These accidents-waiting-to-happen don't just arise out of the blue, they happen because someone has just received new data, just processed their location, and realized that they were poorly positioned to respond to it. This is driving by GPS at it's worst.

The ability to anticipate what will happen, to expect the possible and position yourself accordingly, is something that sometimes seems lost in the Silicon Valley we live in. Predicting these moments is a combination of strategy, planning, and experience, any one of which will enable you to do better than an ugly last minute "oh shit".

But even in the face of those unexpected events, there's no reason that you can't make a graceful adaptation -- recalculate your route and adapt to your new course with a smoother transition. Remember HP's tablet effort? So your tablet sales sucked, does that mean that try to work your way across three lanes of traffic in order to reach your, "we're not going to do hardware anymore" left turn?

A Tale of Two Laptops

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
(and they say I write long sentences) Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

It was within the period of a little more than a month or more that two laptops were stolen. And while law and justice play a role in the unfolding of the events, sometimes the injustices that you find are bound to a different set of concerns.

Property crime is not new to Silicon Valley, or the rest of the world for that matter. For years San Jose promoted itself as one of the safest big cities, hiding under mantle of a low murder rate. But there was always property crime. Several years ago when we had an office in San Jose, somebody broke in one night and made a quick walk-through grabbing laptops off the desks where people had left them. At the time the thing that struck me was the irony of providing giving someone a laptop that never left their desk. In addition to the hardware, some data was lost as there was no structured practice for backup. In the months and years that followed, the official practice for laptop backup became being supplied an external drive -- maybe -- and a request/suggestion to back up to that drive.

Offices in the areas around what is now the Google campus used to get broken into a lot -- to the point that you would sometimes see more Mountain View cop cars in that neighborhood than your own. Friends that had an office in that area had several break-ins. Once, they not only stole computers, they also stole the software disks. It's probably better now with Google everywhere over there. Is it worth breaking into a building for a Chromebook?

Stealing laptops out of cars is so common, most local restaurants have signs warning you not to leave personal property in the car. Sometimes the signs even specifically mention laptops. Over the past couple of months, I've heard stories of several laptops being stolen from cars in parking lots. And one evening, when we were at happy hour and discussions about the cops in parking lot came up, it was noted that they were there because there had been repeated break-ins.

It was in this manner that Mr. Thinkpad was stolen. He was boosted from the passenger area of a car, window smashed, laptop grabbed, thief and laptop into the get-away car, and away. Mr. Thinkpad probably thought he was safe in the same way that novice campers may believe that bears or racoons won't take food of their tents or their cars. Unfortunately, glass provides little security and SUVs, wagons and hatchbacks live under greater threat as access to the cabin provides access to everything -- there is no real out-of-sight.

Most of what Mr. Thinkpad took with him was in the cloud, as many of our processes have moved that way. There were several active presentations underway that were lost, possibly more, but when it comes to work systems, Mr. Thinkpad was probably backed up more consistently than most. And the concern? Other than for the active presentation, perhaps the greatest concern raised was for the glass in the SUV as the vehicle was new.

In the days and the weeks that followed, a new system was spec'd, ordered, and arrived around the time when Mr. Air would disappear. In fact, Mr. Thinkpad's relative was sitting on a desk, still in the box, when Mr. Air vanished. Mr. Air was abducted, seized from the desk in a daring mid-day entry into our office around 1:00pm. The thief walked in through a normally locked door that was propped open slightly to facilitate international visitors going back and forth to the bathroom. This inside of a semi-secure building with cameras and a guard who often hangs out at the front desk in the lobby -- the illusion of security. The disappearance of Mr. Air was such a surprise that, people in the office thought that maybe somebody had played a joke, hiding him for amusement.

While Mr. Air was not a work system, work was sometimes done on him. It's one of those crazy things -- sometimes work doesn't invest in tools for the work environment and you find yourself working on a system that's five or six years old -- functional, but heavy, slow, and hitting the limits of it's capacity. When Mr. Air did do work, most of it was shared back and forth through the cloud, meaning that no work was lost. At the same time, what Mr. Air did carry from work was the password and keys to a host of systems that all needed to be reset.

But the greater loss with the disappearance of Mr. Air was the personal data. Not only did Mr. Air hold the passwords for work systems, he also carried passwords for all of the home projects. And then there's all of that other personal stuff, like taxes. Mr. Air was not backed up. Mr. Air's predecessor, Mr. MacBook Pro had been time-machined shortly before his surprising, untimely passing, but in a strange twist, the drive used to back up Mr. MacBook experienced disk problems in the weeks following Mr. MacBook's passing. So, also lost with Mr. Air was nearly a year's worth of activities.

In the hours and days following Mr. Air's disappearance, the main questions tended to surround aspects of Mr. Air: Wasn't he backed up? Didn't he use a password? Did he have "Find my Mac" enabled?

And, in the days following Mr. Air's disappearance, there were continued postmortem reports on the thief -- they got him on video, they could see the car on video -- as though this would provide comfort or a return of Mr. Air. Additionally, it was noted that, "it's too bad it wasn't a work system."

A cost-conscious business might question or nuance the liability, or hold no responsibility for events and property under their roof. But that same line of questioning might lead to larger questions like what is reasonable to expect from an employer or an office environment. And with the Internet, broadband and online collaboration tools, is it necessary to subject people to unpleasant aspects of a shared office environment. And while many businesses offer features like gourmet kitchens, free sodas, or Xbox gaming areas, is a base level of security a reasonable expectation?
----

The storyteller makes no choice 
Soon you will not here his voice
 - Terrapin Station

I don't have any good take-aways from all of this. Much has already been taken. I will say that, from a broader perspective, the entire experience has prompted me to reevaluate a number of my views on company culture. Here's hoping you find insights along a gentler path.

On The Wire: Melodrama and Expecting Better

I originally came across this link from the Los Angeles Review of Books through the MediaREDEF daily email newsletter. Since reading the review and the thematic ideas presented in On The Wire by Linda Williams, I've been consumed with thoughts about how this notion of melodrama fits with a broader view of things. Quoting from the review,

Melodrama, on the other hand, is, again, a liberal, democratic mode, in which suffering is presented as unnecessary if only the authorities, and indeed the viewers, would commit to change.

We started watching The Wire several weeks ago, not long after Amazon Prime began offering HBO series on their unlimited viewing options. As you're probably aware, it's one of those shows that critics always rave about. The critical reviews are so passionate, it sometimes leaves you feeling like you should probably avoid the show just on principle -- at least, that's sort of where we were with it. More like, not something we were going to seek out. But when it fell in our lap and we opened up to watching it, we've become absorbed.

But that original sense of skepticism runs deep, and it often leave me with a desire to avoid critics ranting about The Wire. So the link to this review wasn't one of the first things that I clicked from that email.

“melodrama always offers the contrast between how things are and how they could be, or should be.”
This isn't simply a theme in The Wire, it's a design theme, a Silicon Valley theme.

The Wire does not aristocratically call for an acceptance of the war on drugs or racism as inevitabilities to which its characters must resign themselves. Rather, it demands moral commitment and social transformation even as it demonstrates the power and intractability of institutional barriers to change.

This is the grand struggle, envisioning a better world, then striving to make that world a reality. This is also the dream of work life in Silicon Valley -- that we don't have to accept the status quo, that we don't have to absorbed by the machine and made a part of a mindless bureaucratic structure -- we expect better.

We expect better. We expect better from the people around us. We expect better from the people and the businesses that we work with. We expect better for the world. 

Time for a Rebrand - the Silicon Valley 49ers?

So I was reading through this new piece in Time talking about how cool and high tech the new Levi stadium is -- it's quite interesting. Here's one thing that struck me:

It’s in the center of the tech universe, of course, so it’s only natural that 49ers management decided to devote a significant sum of money to building high-tech infrastructure.

Since the 49ers play here and obviously technology is going to be a theme in promotional activities, isn't it time that we rebrand the team the Silicon Valley 49ers?

Consider, San Francisco often wants to claim a Silicon Valley connection when businesses promote their technology -- like the city is part of Silicon Valley. And while people throughout the world want to visit San Francisco as tourists, cities and regions everywhere want to scoop up Silicon to be part of their regional brand -- Silicon Gulch, Silicon Beach, Silicon Triangle.

And just think of the possibilities. Charlie Chip, the Fry's mascot can hang with Sourdough Sam. Nano-sized beers sold for premium prices. The possibilities are endless.

But we wouldn't have to lose the San Francisco connection entirely. Much like other parts of the workforce here, the team can say that they live in San Francisco, but they just take the Google Bus to work here in the Valley...

Unfortunately, for their first pre-season games, it looks like the team decided to adopt that other classic high-tech cornerstone -- telecommuting.

Wouldn't this whole rebranding thing be SO perfect?

Jeff Weiner and The Voice of a Public Company

So last night's Pando Monthly was another interesting experience, notable for both it's similarities and differences. Previously, I attended the Max Levchin event in part because I really wanted to see the guy I'd read about in Juice and Founders at Work and in part because I happened to be in the city that week for a conference. The audio that night made it a bit of a struggle to hear some of what was being said, but all in all, it was quite enjoyable.

The driver for last nights event was Linked In. Having burned through The Alliance book recently, I was curious whether Jeff Weiner would share any additional interesting insights on the culture at Linked In -- sort of a third party window into values and ideology.

The event was hosted at Rackspace in San Francisco. As with many of these events that take you into the offices of businesses in the city, it's always amusing to see the office itself. Near the bathrooms there was the bike rack room, filled with bikes hanging there. And in the hall on the way into the bike locker, they had a bike stand and a complete set of bike tools -- now this is an office I could work in.

The Pando Monthly experience is also a great chance to see the embodiment of the writers you often read. While you feel like you know Sarah and Paul from their published content, there's still sort of an eery celebrity vibe that it's hard to let go of when you're in this kind of event environment. And whenever I look at Sarah, I can't help wondering whether I might have seen her at the P&H -- or whether I was already here in the Bay Area while she was hanging there.

So Jeff Weiner made for an interesting Pando Monthly event. It's always a strange and amazing story, the path that brings us to where we are at this moment. And while Sarah is often able to bring the interview to unusual places with some unexpected topics and questions, it was also kind of funny watching as Jeff Weiner remained consistently professional. Even. The voice of a large public company. Everything he said, every response felt measured. Within the lines. On the record.

Not that that was a bad thing. It just makes for an interesting contrast to what we sometimes see in public figures -- or people from the start-up world aspiring to be big. Instead of inflammatory comments or some level of churned up drama, Jeff Weiner delivered in the thoughtful spokesperson role. He was personable enough that you felt like you were listening to him -- not a sanitized presenter version -- but still careful and precise. A benchmark representation of how to be the voice of a public company.

Off to Pando Monthly: Fireside Chat with Jeff Weiner

Not all of these seem worth braving an afternoon trip to the city, but this one looked good.

The Alliance: The Best Business Book I've Read in Several Years

On Tuesday, KQED's Forum program featured LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman talking about his new book, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age. After listening to part of the program -- I had to get into a meeting -- I found that I was interested enough to head straight to Amazon to find out more about the book. One Prime membership and two days later, the book arrived this morning. I finished it by lunchtime.

Without a doubt, this is one of the best business books that I've come across in a long time. I highly recommend it.

The basic premise of the book is a redefining of the employer-employee relationship, designed to address the modern business environment. Gone are the days of lifetime employment, but we still carry residual assumptions that corrupt aspects of the employer-employee relationship. The Alliance provides for a better social contract, defining a framework for dealing with employment periods as tours of duty with goals for advancing both the company and the employee's interests.

The Problem with Most Business Books
It's not unusual to come across a business book that catches my attention. An interesting idea or an insightful look into a technology or trend -- if it's wrapped in a good story -- can usually spark my thinking, sometimes enough to buy the book. At the same time, for as many books as I've bought in the past couple of years, I've actually finished few of them. Mostly, that's because, once you work your way through the core premise and you understand the framework, the other content is typically provided as supporting information and it's rather tedious to work through. Usually, after a couple of days of hacking through a few pages here and there, I find myself drawn into other projects, then I stop carrying the book, and soon it's collecting dust on the cabinet.

The Alliance was far more successful. It's well documented, with anecdotes and examples from a variety of businesses. The examples used are typically brief, not more than a page or two, sometimes as short as a casual reference. The flow is fast, the chapters are short and it moves with the pace of a tight presentation deck. But it gets better:

• More than just presenting a concept, the book provides a rough framework for implementing an approach. It's like reading a manual with exercises and example. There is some good take-away material here.
• While it maps out the framework, it doesn't get bogged down in process details. It's almost more of an executive overview of a policy handbook, rather than a tedious policy handbook.
• At the end of each chapter, the book provides links to a web site where you can get more content online. This is the way modern book publishing should be.
• Even the appendices include example documents that help provide inside into the process and the strategy. 

In the end, this is one you definitely should read. It even provides a great context for how the social network should fit into the culture of the business -- but you could probably see that coming from the Linked In folks.

Not that they're reading my blog, but a hat tip to Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh. This is an exceptional book you've put together here.

HBO's Silicon Valley: I expect better

Just so you know, I started this review of HBO's Silicon Valley after the pilot episode which, btw, I hated. Initially, I found that it was so disappointingly bad that it actually spurred me to write a review. But I keep wanting to give it a chance, to let it breath and open up -- this is, after all, a series from the same guy that did Office Space. Plus, there's something about watching movies or TV programs that are set in the place that you live, whether it's just watching for landmarks or looking for geographic continuity, it draws you in.

Silicon Valley delivered little over the course of it's seasonal run. Overall, there were maybe or four moments in the series that seemed amusing. And for those few moments which I would be hesitant to call gems, you had to endure the rest of it. Back at the first episode, here's what I started to write. I can't say that my opinion changed much.

So I worked my way through the first episode of HBO's Silicon Valley show yesterday. I say worked my way through because I've had root canals that were more pleasant -- at least I was medicated for the root canal.

More than amusing me or making me chuckle, Silicon Valley just made me angry. It was 50 minutes of time wasted not just because it wasn't good, but because it was a series of "funny" takes on "modern" Silicon Valley culture that have been done multiple times in other places. They trotted out the stylized tech company campus meant to be like Google or Facebook complete with the multi-person bike "used for meetings". Hollywood loves them some multi-person bike.

For me, there were so many tired Silicon Valley tropes that imagine a mythological world that we supposedly live in:

• The doctor pitching investment in the device he's developing; why, because I guess people in Silicon Valley people are supposed to be like people in Hollywood pitching their scripts.
• Technology people describing their product with a long string of meaningless techno-babble keywords and phrases.
• The universal 'demographic mix' of programmers
• The great core technology breakthrough that will revolutionize the world.

Admittedly, we live in an amazing place and it would seem like there is the framework for a great story here -- perhaps that's why it's so disappointing to deal with the same old tired cliches.

Compare Silicon Valley to Amazon's now cancelled Betas series. There were a lot of things that I didn't like about Betas, but there were aspects of it that were way more authentic. Instead of being so Hollywood-formulaic, Betas felt more start-up, exploring territory that conventional movies and television don't go. The thing that actually grabbed us into that first episode was the bit with the Asian female character and the texting prank, something that never would have made it on network TV. And that's sort of what makes Silicon Valley so maddening. This is HBO. They aren't bound by the lowest common denominator decency rules and limitations of network TV. But clearly, they are still bound by its conventions.

Fundamentally, I think that Silicon Valley falls down exactly because it tries to find the humorous aspects of Silicon Valley.

Over the course of it's season, Silicon Valley was ripe with cameos. This seemed like yet-another Hollywood device to make it feel authentic, "if we just use real personalities, it will be more real". In that way, it almost seemed like it was more interested in making it seem real than making interesting characters and an interesting story.

Another one that was surprising, one of the guys over on the Pando Daily staff really seemed to like Silicon Valley. He actually wrote several rather positive reviews. It's actually one of the reasons why I put my initial review on hold -- I looked at his review and thought, "am I missing something?" It's a good reminder that, like restaurant reviews and various other opinions, to each their own. 

The One Moment
Looking back over the course of it's season, there was just one moment for me, one brief gag that spoke to a deeper truth of Silicon Valley. It was in episode 8, the season finale. It was like an actual cameo of authenticity. No spoilers, but let me just say that it starts as little more than a dick joke, a predictable bit of humor that flows through the season. But, in this one moment, there is a difference. The joke twists and the "engineer" takes over. Suddenly, you have an entire room working analytically to solve a theoretical problem without regard to the plausibility of the initial premise. This really is Silicon Valley in it's essence, this free-form willingness to throw resources and processor cycles on what-ifs, to engineer a world on a foundation of imagination.

If the rest of the series had been like this, Silicon Valley might be content I would recommend. Instead, the sum of its parts is about eight hours of wasted time.

More on Ageism in Silicon Valley

I came across this post by Tim Worstall on Pando yesterday. At first it made me chuckle -- it reminded me of a topic that I wrote about recently -- clearly there is a bit of a content zeitgeist here.

While I'm not a big fan of the Pando post, it did link me to this piece by Noam Scheiber in the New Republic. The New Republic article reminds me of another one that I found in a search during some of the reseearch on my post. That article featured discussions about plastic surgery, people dying their hair, and how the clothing people wore during interviews changed improved some of their results.

Sometimes when you read these broad-brush thematic articles about how there are not enough women or minorities in tech, you can't help but feel the shadow of some academic or journalist looking for an angle to drive eyeballs. Meanwhile, a short trip through the bay area can be a vivid reminder of the reality of just how incredibly diverse the area is.

At the same time, Scheiber's piece works better as it spans hiring, culture, and even VC funding. The culture here is shifting, and not necessarily for the better.

Ageism, Statistical Discrimination and The Lost Civilization of Silicon Valley

With all of the back and forth about the cost of housing, Google buses, economic class warfare and other symptoms of something horribly wrong with things these days, I want to pull together something that is sort of a synthesis of several items to help fill in a few more dots on the changes in Silicon Valley. You might call this Part 2 of my endless rant on Silicon Valley Lost.

As I spent time reflecting on why the culture has changes so much, I was reminded of how much aspects of age have changed around here. When I first began working in tech back in the 1990s, I was one of the younger members of the staff. Demographically speaking, the workplace was reasonably well distributed in terms of age; young workers just out of college, middle aged workers that had been in the workplace for ten years or more, and older workers that had been around for a long time.

These days, much of that has shifted. Consider this data from research by Payscale:

• While the overall median age of American Workers is 42.5, the oldest median age in the Payscale survey of technology workers was at Hewlett-Packard at 41 years.
• The other five companies with older workers, in descending order of median age, were I.B.M. Global Services (38 years old), Oracle (38), Nokia (36), Dell (37) and Sony (36). Note that from this list Oracle is the only business that's primarily here in Silicon Valley.
• The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook (28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30).
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.

You can look at that data and the companies and draw a lot of conclusions, but one that's noteworthy factor is that most of the companies in the youngest end of the rank are Internet and post-dot.com companies. Some of that probably goes back to a shift in thinking that took place back in the days of the dot.com era when part of the world wanted to invest everything in Internet clicks, and the brick and mortar world kept asking where the money was going to come from. Sure, some companies found ways to make money, but the conventional wisdom take-away was that the old guys just don't get it.

Perhaps, like this story about the economist on the dating site, hiring youth is more statistical discrimination than it is anything else. When I heard Stanford Professor Paul Oyer on the radio promoting his book, he also described some of the significant similarities between the dating world and the job market. To paraphrase something that he said during his KQED appearance, "like dating, both the employer and the job candidate must like each other and be interested in the relationship."

Whatever the reasoning behind it, working from a general recognition that today's emerging companies are less likely to hire older workers, you can draw some other conclusions; specifically, if there is a surging economy in the world of tech start-ups and if you don't belong to a specific demographic, then, like a Google bus, you're probably not getting on in. It matters little whether you are a nice person with a great personality, whether your interests are aligned, or even if you've been waiting at that public bus stop for a long time, you're not going to get on that bus.

Want to see what the impact of this trend has been? Here are a couple of links:

• Check out this dynamic infographic showing the relationship between "private shuttles in San Francisco" and businesses in the those same areas in the city. The Pando post describing it in more detail is here.
• Then there's this link to a map of evictions in the city. Here's another Pando post on this one.

What you can see is that there isn't nearly the kind of growth out in the Avenues and the Sunset, the areas that tend to be older, quieter, more families. In that way, this is not a story of the awesomeness and desirability of the geography of San Francisco. Instead, it really highlights the demographics of this economic surge -- and the bystanders, or casualties, depending upon where you find yourself in relationship to that trend.

Today's Silicon Valley is trending Logan's Run. It's an Amazing place. There's just one catch. You are only allowed so many technology cycles before you're replaced by an H1B visa, an Ivy League intern or perhaps someone with not less than 4.6692 Likes on Facebook. Then, it's carrousel. Or you can run.