Secret History of Silicon Valley

I have a minor in History of Technology so I really enjoy learning about the history of products, industries, and economic sectors. While I have read many histories of Cold War shaping of airplanes, the nuclear power industry, and so on, I had never stopped to think about the possible role of defense funding in the creation of Silicon Valley economic culture and infrastructure.

From: startuplessonslearned,
2 weeks ago

Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley" talk at Computer History Museum 11-20-08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: startup tech)

"Hidden in Plain Sight:
The Secret History of Silicon Valley"

SlideShare Link

a new education plan

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. A new president-elect, the economy continuing to tank. I have a new plan to take my previous bookkeeping experience and financials obsession back to school for CPA exam prep. I'm a bit nervous about the CPA pass rate of 30% although I used to be excellent at cramming, memorizing, and standardized tests. I plan to continue to let start-up ideas percolate up through my brain as I study depreciation and what have you. As my husband and I have been evaluating ideas, he immediately begins to think through the technical requirements while I grab a pen and start making profitability estimates. I think any additional education in financial management will help us eventually.

Obama's Campaign Machine

Eric Ries campaigned for Obama in Colorado and posted a description of his experience on his blog, Lessons Learned. Ries suggests that many companies can learn from Obama's quick learning cycle and empowerment of volunteers:

Now, I had never volunteered in a campaign before. In fact, my political philosophy is considered pretty conservative by many of my friends, and I'd never engaged with the Democratic Party in any way before. So I was pretty nervous about how I'd be treated, and pretty skeptical of the words written in that briefing packet. My experience totally blew me away. Every worker - volunteer and paid staffer alike - that I interacted with from the campaign lived these values [Respect. Empower. Include] every day. Everyone understood the campaign's values, as well as its high-level strategy. And I was always given the opportunity to do meaningful work for the campaign, as long as I was willing to be held accountable for accomplishing its goals.

I think modern companies have a lot they can learn from that experience. In today's world, knowledge workers (and especially those who thrive in startups!) are basically volunteers. They don't have to work for you - they can always get another job. They aren't primarily motivated by money, anyway. Instead, they seek meaningful work where their abilities can make a difference. If you give them that opportunity, and hold them accountable for the results of their efforts, they will move mountains for you. But if you make the mistake of telling them what to do, you'll probably be disappointed.

Obama Victory

I know that not everyone is celebrating an individual candidate's victory today, but we can all celebrate a victory over racism. I have that calm feeling I get when I think that the world works right, the feeling that I get when I live on the coasts, when I see people of color as bankers, and teachers, and business owners, when I feel like it is just as likely that a non-white person will decide my fate as it is that a fellow white one will. The feeling that our society works at least a little the way we say it does -- that a good idea, intelligence, hard work, luck can pay off for anyone.

Living in the Midwest was difficult. African Americans in Wisconsin have some of the highest rates of poverty in the country. In Madison's sea of white people, there were a few black professors and more black poor. Blacks were practically absent in the middle class. This can seem to leave one with the intellectual options of blaming "the system" in some way or blaming African Americans themselves, leaving individual European American attitudes off the hook. While I believe that the sources of African American poverty are complicated and can't be entirely explained by individual choices and bias, I like the blog Stuff White People Like as a way to see the white culture I'm swimming in.

I'm glad so many of us voted for hope, hoping we can heal some wounds, hoping we can move forward together.

Twitter I eat my hat

Seems I was wrong about Twitter. HubSpot has several great articles on how Twitter can be used to build engagement with customers/clients.

discoveries

My son woke us up in the middle of the night last night to tell us he was worried about ghosts. We all got back to sleep after a bit of reassurance. Turns out he was actually scared for a reason. He told me this morning that he saw some lights under his blanket last night. He had never noticed static electricity sparks before.


I love Handipoints -- my son loves to play computer games, I like giving him rewards for good behavior. My grading of his off-line behavior gives him points toward fun things inside the game. Today I watched him play Handipoints. (I don't often watch him; I trust their kid safety controls.) I saw him start a conversation with another kid via their avatars and invite her to his room to play. The first thing he did when they got there was to excuse himself to the decorating section to fix up his room. Great impulse, but while he was busy with that his friend wandered away. He didn't take it hard; at four, friendships are easily fluid.

twitter

I don't get twitter, at least not professionally. I prefer to use it as a mind meld, geotracking device with people who care that I just caught a cold, or took my kids to the park, or have had the same song running through my head all day.

I deeply understand that the personal is political, but is the personal professional? Up to a point, and that point stops at twitter for me. Character is important but not where someone is having dinner. What do you think? Would you and how do you use twitter professionally?

Gen-X employee retention

The vanishing corporate necessity: 7 strategies to retain Gen-X women so your company thrives
By Deanne DeMarco

There are a couple of typos in this article, but its overall analysis of Gen-X's attitudes toward work is right on. While so far missing the worst of sexual harassment, I share my generation's frustrations over unmet expectations for pay equality, exciting work, and the desire to have a family as well as a work life.

It's especially frustrating that many of the Gen-X friendly workplace policies suggested by DeMarco have only been partially realized in the past couple decades. Advocates for women's employment have been calling for "[f]amily leave polices, job sharing, telecommuting, on-site child care, mentoring and flexible work schedules" since at least the 1990's. For larger companies, family leave is now federally mandated. But the other policies vary widely by company.

Due to the lack of part-time opportunities for women with my education level and skill-set, I am considering full-time employment. Telecommuting and flexible work schedules are assumed to be possibilities here in Silicon Valley, but often aren't advertised in advance for full-time positions. If I am lucky enough to land a full-time job, my young children would have to spend 11 hours a day in childcare.

In job ads I have yet to run across language that would suggest that an employer would consider reorganizing a full-time job into two part-time jobs for the right candidates. Restructuring a position as part-time could save an employer money by eliminating benefits and would guarantee that all my hours at work are productive. But having been out of the labor market for four years and with the economy on a downturn, I don't feel like I am in a position of strength to ask for a job to be reorganized for me.

web 2.0 is played out

Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen

Posted using ShareThis

It appears every possible social network idea has been or is being developed. What's going to be the next big thing?

better be careful what I wish for

My husband gave me a book about Python yesterday.

amusements

My son describes a goal in which the ball passes between the opponent's legs as a Wikipedia Goal. (Yes, I am that bad at soccer; it's happened multiple times.)

His babysitter constructed a blow gun for him. He spends his days now shooting Risk soldiers out of a paper hanger tube.

I think I want to code

Well, baby code -- html. Designing front-end user interface seems like so much more fun than merely mocking up pages in Photoshop. Making the buttons functional seems like it would be so satisfying.

This is coming from someone who has been adamant about not coding. "I'm not a programmer. I don't want to code," I regularly protest. I just want to focus on whether or not a page "pops" or what the flow is like. But I can't resist the noobie thrill of "ooo, the button works!"

operation bootstrap

Fear is the Mind Killer of the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur (we must be Muad'Dib, not Clark Kent)

I am currently a big fan of Dave McClure. His recent post is about the courage it takes to be an entrepreneur. If you do not think that you'll be able to fire someone, ruin his/her [insert holiday here] then don't plan for a business that requires employees. Can you look Geordi in the eye, umm, visor, and tell him to repair the reactor, to sacrifice himself for the rest of the crew?

While the Sequoia VC rant is perhaps too doom and gloom, I agree with their basic message: get real or go home. Make some money; don't wait for a handout. Don't give your employees "retreats" at Tahoe or Vegas until you're profitable.

My husband has a little bit of the old mindset -- thinking about at which stages of a project we could approach VCs for money, when we could try to sell. I want to grow it all ourselves with enough money saved from a first stage to finance a second, etc. Operation Bootstrap.

P.S. McClure's post struck a chord with me also because I've been grokking a lot on Dune lately. My motto has been "keep your hand in the box." Pain does not always mean destruction and death. Pain means pay attention, either endure the pain until it passes and/or do something different so that the pain goes away. Painful learning, painful birthing can bring forth great things.

economic binge and purge

I should be more worried about the economy. But I am old enough to have seen a couple market downturns now, so I'm not very phased. Plus, I grew up poor. What I'm concerned about is that even I recently found myself lured into the unsustainable "we can have it all" American attitude.

For purposes of my job hunt I bought a suit from the Mall, full price. I also got highlights in my hair to cover some untimely gray. Lately, I haven't thought much before eating out. I buy moderately expensive groceries, including convenience foods. I bought new furniture. I stopped shopping at the thrift store. I contemplated sending my children to private school.

All things that my husband and I can afford right now, thank goodness. But we're not rich, so keeping the complete "poverty may strike at any moment" mindset intact may be a better strategy for us long term.

Since we got married we have stuck to a cash only economy. We purposely (and luckily) carry no debt. Even liberal me is starting to get angry about bailing out other people's extravagance and bad decisions. American seems to have a problem, and the bailout seems like an act of enabling rather than the intervention or hitting rock bottom that it needs. We go from spending spree to tightening our belts without the foresight or discipline to create and stick to a sustainable budget. We buy things without saving for them first. Delayed gratification -- I'll try to remember that the next time I reach for my wallet.

Social Platform Wars

I can't resist a good Venn diagram -- especially about the current participants in the social networking market.

From: dmc500hats, 10 months ago

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

SlideShare Link

Sequoia Capital’s 56 Slide Presentation Of Doom

Why my husband isn't quitting his day job and I'm looking for one . . .

Sequoia Venture Capital Warning to CEOs

I am not a fembot

Or a spambot. I think I triggered blogger's automatic spam filter a couple days ago by copying one of my LifeJournal posts over here.

In other news, my son is able to sort numbers from small to large and to round numbers to tens. My daughter is becoming quite accomplished with playdough.

wage stagnation

My husband just told me that when he started as a programmer about seven years ago he was making what I made, ahem, a long time ago, just out of college. That sure puts my recent job hunting in perspective.

flexible work

In addition to planning a business, I am also looking for a part-time job, preferably telecommute. We don't need the money yet, thank goodness, but I would like to be a back-up for my husband. I am worried that the longer I am unemployed the less employable I become.

I found a local job placement firm which specializes in flexible work arrangements but they are looking for people with a bachelors degree and 10 years of experience. So doing the math, they want women who have waited into their thirties to have children.

One potential positive outcome of the larger economic woes would be increased flexible work options. I think it would be a great deal for an employer to pay me to work part-time, get my most productive hours, and save money by not paying me benefits. I'm sure someone will fall for this eventually . . .

breastfeeding and work

First wave feminism was supported by paid domestic help. Second wave feminism was fueled by baby formula. I believe that we are the first generation of women to combine breastfeeding and industrial/post-industrial work outside of the home.

While breastfeeding is good for our babies, it is a drag on our careers. Breastfed babies need more night feedings than formula fed babies. Pumping eats up lunch breaks and watercooler time. I also believe nursing is a physical energy drain similar to pregnancy. Many previously productive women are surprised to find that they are unable to combine nursing with their jobs. Career gaps to stay at home with children, while supposedly increasingly common, typically decrease earning potentials.

How have you seen this issue addressed by employers other than by offering designated pumping rooms?

my husband's persuasive arguments

My husband has just about persuaded me to give up looking for a job outside the home. He wants our family to retain all of the value I create, not just get some of it in salary while the rest goes as profit to shareholders.

We have two small children so not losing most of my would-be salary to child care expenses is a powerful argument.

Also, no one else is going to let me run their company unless I go to business school.

I'll be blogging here in Mompreneur 2.0 about my attempts to multitask building an online business while raising two bright children.

kids say the darnest things

Yesterday E. insisted that taking him from the play room at the gym was "child abuse." And A. was in a storm of "No's" when I asked her, "Do you want to say no?" She paused, looked at me, and said calmly, "I already said no." The girl knows a logical conundrum when she sees one.