News & blog

Paul Suni — June 3, 2012 @ 5:43 am

Nice post. I agree that sharing is part of Silicon Valley cultural DNA. No doubt, this is a special place. Much misunderstood. One economistic explanation that has been offered in the past concerning the culture of sharing is that people change jobs comparatively frequently here, and consequently you never know who you will be working for in the future. I imagine that such theories did not originate here. I surmise that I have not met one person in my 30 years here who would think like that. First and foremost, as a culture, we don’t tend to get bogged down with deprivation thinking. We don’t compete for opportunities as a culture so much as we tend to generate opportunities. This is what is possibly most unique about Silicon Valley. In the creative, Silicon Valley mindset in which deprivation is not an issue and abundance is not seen as utopian nonsense, a kind of artistic colony has arisen. Seriously. The root of the word technology is the Greek word tekhne which means art.

The sharing that occurs here is distinctly similar to the kind of sharing that one finds among artists (performing musicians especially) and their relations with the public. There is a tacit understanding that what is central to our culture is a matter of heart – passion. We talk tech but under the hood is a lot of heart. People work for money up to a point only. Beyond that, inspiration and excitement at work count for a lot more than a few more stock options and a bit more money.

Another important cultural aspect concerns the nature of creativity itself. It is possibilistic rather than probabilistic. In the probabilistic midset in which deprivation thinking lives, everything always has to add up to one. In possibilistic thinking, everything always adds up to greater than one – ten, one hundred or a thousand depending how inspired and confident we get. So, we have a sense that there is a lot to go around and it is this sense of abundance that supports the kind of emotional risk taking that is necessary in art and creativity – including technology entrepreneurship.

I would not make a sweeping generalization that competition is a mere game here but it may be more so than is often thought. Some seventy-five percent of Silicon Valley CEO’s are engineers and scientists whose primary motivator is absolutely not money but self-expression, in my experience – doing cool new things – jamming with other geeks, techies and entrepreneurs. The Silicon Valley relationship to competition and the rat race is slightly different compared to Wall Street where self-expression is mostly about winning and being admired, the measure of which is mostly money and conspicuous consumption. Having said that, who would want to eliminate the game aspect of competition? Is it not as essential as cooperation? Concerning fierceness, I think that a good competition is fierce whereas a bad competition is half-hearted.