Programmer vs. Manager: Silicon Valley Season 1 Discussion

Theses:



the series begins with an exposition - with a start-up party, where the main geek characters discuss the hosts of the party - Gulebib, expressing that money and luxurious housing are undeserved.



There is a grain of truth in this, and life is unfair - someone really gets everything for free, while the other is humping in vain all his life.



But in the startup crowd, such reasoning is categorically discouraged, since it is believed that this is nothing more than stiffness, closeness to everything new, the so-called thinking of a loser, an envious person - which in the future will prevent investors from selling or pitching their own project.



And it doesn't matter if this or that startup is promising (or is a dummy and will not work).



The director, giving a rant about how he will make the world a better place, does not say a word about the essence of innovation, “integrated multi-platform technologies” do not mean anything, this is porridge from an ax, a game of bullshit bingo.



Looking ahead, this Indian director will eventually fly out of his own company.



The owner of the incubator house arranges for the main character - Richard. he is not able to correctly submit his project.



This is still an exposition, but the dialogue touches on the most important question, who is more important - Jobs or Wozniak, the answer to which society has long been given - preferring and worshiping the first - Jobs. However, if you dig into the biographies of both, you can find interesting things.



Jobs, perfidiously deceiving his friend Wozniak, reselling his video game work, and in fact initially entered the industry on his hump.



Yes, this is how life works, if Wozniak hadn't turned up to Jobs as a friend, he would have just been doing something else, maybe got a job as a traveling salesman and made the world a better place by selling Kirby vacuum cleaners - most likely he would have succeeded there, but still underestimate It's not worth it.



Throughout the first season, this thought - packaging is more important than the product - is heard louder and louder. This paradigm does not apply exclusively to the United States, among Moscow startups everything is just exactly the same, and I think it has been adopted in all corners of the globe.



Richard, in frustrated feelings, tries to find a place for himself, and finds nothing on his pocket. In this case, I do not think that the series demonstrates the truth that programmers who receive an average salary in the industry, and not just anywhere, but Google, cannot afford housing. Most likely, the problem is solved by moving to a more remote and disadvantaged area; in addition, it is quite clear that no matter what the real estate bubble in the valley is, low-paid personnel are still required - sellers, drivers, movers, etc., and since the market balances these moments, it is obvious that the programmer is does have an advantage. If you choose this profession, I do not think that you will be in poverty.



Further, the toxic atmosphere in the team is demonstrated, and Richard confesses that he has seen all this corporate nonsense in his grave, and that he has the option to quit “work for his uncle” and start his own business.



This is a typical illusion of young “advanced” people - that you can rise from rags to riches instantly, without having any assets, simply by creating a popular site, a la social network. At the same time, they lose sight of the fact that the main factor of success usually lies just outside of technology, and represents, for example, connections, access to investment - which is achieved, among other things, by long work for that very uncle. It is also important to study how everything works for this uncle, and when creating it, it is advisable to skillfully copy working techniques, and avoid non-working ones - which dramatically increases the chances of success.



But usually, they try to get over it all, limiting themselves to watching the movie The Social Network, where Zuckerberg drops out of college and immediately becomes a billionaire, because he is the most agile.



By some miracle, in the toxic atmosphere of the company, someone was honored to conduct a technical examination of Richard's brainchild. There are a couple of points - he stated that the site (and the player that had to be downloaded from it) is proprietary, that is, closed - and its parameters will have to be assessed by eye.



Saying that the site "searches by compressed files", the programmer smacks nonsense - since he sees only the front-end of the site, and possibly the backend API swagger, and which files are being searched for on the back, he cannot know (most likely, if speed is important search, they will be, firstly, not compressed, and secondly, they will also be indexed, that is, they will be provided with redundant information for quick search).



Here (oh, how successful) a manager runs, who, having heard this nonsense out of the corner of his ear, runs to the head of a multibillion-dollar company to report on the hellish efficiency of the algorithm in terms of the speed / quality ratio - which is all the more strange, because the quality of the music was determined by ear. Of course, no one will bother the bosses about such nonsense - you need to invent a cure for cancer or free energy.



Although the US has known problems with poor internet, and possibly compressing 4K video for real-time Wi-Fi streaming is like a cure for cancer for them.



Since this is required for the scenario, two billionaires receive technical estimates for a startup almost simultaneously (and both are made on their knees), and vying with each other shove Richard millions and tens of millions of dollars. This can be forgiven for the show just because it’s a plot, but we understand that this is simply impossible.



As they show later, both Gavin and Peter, of course, are directors, but they manage most of other people's money and report to shareholders. Giving away big money in haste and uncertainty is hardly encouraged. A technical assessment is a very complicated procedure, primarily because you cannot reveal all the know-how before the sale - otherwise they will simply be copied and nothing will be paid (as the turncoat manager Jared / Donald Dunn later admits).



Peter Gregory wins in the end by pushing the ego of Richard, who wants to be in charge, to own the company. Such uncompromising character is characteristic of young animals. Answering this question about how much money and on what conditions to take at 20, 30 and 40 years old, I think one and the same person can give completely different answers. By the way, it's a great move to send a cute young lady-assistant to Richard - that's why they recruit HRs from them, the recruited person will get an impression of the company from them, and impressionable IT people can fall in love (without realizing that they may see this girl for the first and last time ).



In high spirits, Richard tries to come up with a powerful protest slogan to counterbalance Let's make the world a better place, but suddenly it turns out that the protest has long been privatized by corporations, and decent slogans have been snapped up - it's just as good to make peace, to the evil Hooley.



Well, this is where episode 1 ends (at the moment, episodes for season 1 have been filmed).



We welcome your opinion on the interesting and witty moments of the series.