Hasnain says:

Lots to ponder from this one. I think I’ll come back to this a few times to internalize it. I have various somewhat conflicting thoughts:

* that was a simpler time. tech was a little less evil and more altruistic back then
* I really really resonate with the point back then about fewer people being in tech just for the money
* giving back seemed to be a very common theme, contrasting with the FIRE movement right now
* the avenues one can go into after a successful tech career are pretty much everywhere
* I would love to see a follow up that 1) profiles these same people and 2) profiles folks from the latest set of IPOs
* I wonder how perceptions of the tech people both themselves and in the communities around them have changed
* even without having struck gold things have changed so much with layoffs (and just general poverty)

“Seattle isn’t the only center of newly minted wealth out West. Silicon Valley, the software lodestone 30 miles south of San Francisco, has also produced its share of cash-outs—men and women, most of them still in their 30s and 40s, who made a ton of money off Internet start-ups early in the game and headed (often literally) for the hills, climbing Mount Rainier, trekking in Nepal, watching the sunset from their redwood decks high up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Because of who they are and where they come from and the way in which they became rich, they’ve spawned a social revolution of such magnitude that it is transforming entire sectors of the West. Unlike people in the ­financial-­services industry, who end up as bond traders or bankers because they want to make a lot of money, “Microsofties” made their wealth serendipitously; for the most part, they tended to be from academic backgrounds—geeky, creative, interested less in striking it rich (until recently, when the Internet got to be like the Gold Rush) than in devising innovative software programs.”

Posted on 2025-02-11T02:13:29+0000