Frankie Cordeira Jr.

Description: Silicon Valley Living in 'Sadomasochistic Bubble'... It has been said that Silicon Valley or the 50 or so square-mile area extending from San Francisco to the base of the peninsula has overseen the creation of more wealth than any place in the history of mankind. Its made people richer than the oil industry; it has created more money than the Gold Rush. Silicon chips lines of code and rectangular screens have even minted more wealth than religious wars. Wealthy societies indeed have their own complicated incentive structures and mores. But they do often tend as any technological entrepreneur will be quick to remind you to distribute value across numerous income levels in a scaled capacity. The Ford line for instance may have eventually minted some serious millionaires in Detroit but it also made transportation cheaper helped drive down prices on countless consumer goods and facilitated new trade routes and commercial opportunities. Smartphones or any number of inventive modern apps or other software products are no different. Sure they throw off a lot of money to the geniuses who came up with them and the people who got in at the ground floor. But they also make possible innumerable other opportunities financial and otherwise for their millions of consumers. Silicon Valley is in its own right a dynasty. Instead of warriors or military heroes it has nerds and people in half-zip sweaters. But it is becoming increasingly likely that the Valley might go down in history not only for its wealth but also for creating more tone deaf people than any other ecosystem in the history of the world. In just the past month the Valley has seemed like its happily living in some sort of sadomasochistic bubble worthy of a bad Hollywood satire. Uber has endured a slate of scandals that would have seriously wounded a less culturally popular company (or a public one for that matter). There was one former employees allegation of sexual harassment (which the company reportedly investigated); a report of driver manipulation; an unpleasant video depicting C.E.O. Travis Kalanick [furiously berating] an Uber driver; a story about secret software that could subvert regulators; a report of cocaine use and groping at holiday parties (an offending manager was fired within hours of the scandal); a lawsuit for potentially buying stolen software from a competitor; more groping; a slew of corporate exits; and a driverless car crash. (The shit will really hit the fan if it turns out that Uber's self-driving technology was misappropriated from Alphabet's Waymo; Uber has called the lawsuit baseless.) Then there was Facebook which held its developer conference while the Facebook Killer was on the loose. As Mat Honan of BuzzFeed put it so eloquently: People used to talk about Steve Jobs and Apples reality distortion field. But Facebook it sometimes feels exists in a reality hole. The company doesnt distort realitybut it often seems to lack the ability to recognize it. And we ended the week with the ultimate tone-deaf statement from the C.E.O. of Juicero the maker of a $700 dollar-soon-reduced-to-$400 dollar juicer that has $120 million in venture backing. After Bloomberg News discovered that you didnt even need the $700 $400 juicer to make juice (there are apparently these things called hands) the companys chief executive Jeff Dunn offered a response on Medium insinuating that he gets up every day to make the world a better place. Of course not everyone who makes the pilgrimage out West is or becomes a jerk. Some people arrive in the Valley with a philosophy of how to act as an adult. But heres the problem with that group: most of them dont vociferously articulate how unsettled they are by the bad actors. Even when journalists manage to cover these atrocious activities the powers of Silicon Valley try to ridicule them often in public. Take for example the 2015 TechCrunch Disrupt conference when a reporter asked billionaire investor Vinod Kholsawho evidently believes that public beaches should belong to rich peopleabout some of the ethical controversy surrounding the mayonnaise-disruption startup Hampton Creek (I cant believe I just wrote the words mayonnaise-disruption). Khosla responded with a trite and rude retort that the company was fine. When the reporter pressed Khosla he shut him down by saying I know a lot more about how they're doing excuse me than you do. A year later and the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into whether the company defrauded investors when employees secretly purchased the company's own mayonnaise from grocery stores. (The Justice Department has since dropped its investigation.) When you zoom out of that 50-square-mile area of Silicon Valley it becomes obvious that big businesses can get shamed into doing the right thing. When it was discovered that Volkswagen lied about emissions outputs the companys C.E.O. was forced to resign. The same was true for the chief of Wells Fargo who was embroiled in a financial scandal. In the wake of it's recent public scandal United recently knocked its C.E.O. down a peg. Even Fox News one of the most bizarrely unrepentant media outlet in America pushed out two of the most important people at the network over allegations of sexual harassment. (Bill O'Reilly has said that claims against him are unfounded; Roger Ailes has vociferously denied allegations of sexual harassment.) Even Wall Street can (sometimes) be forced to be more ethical. Yet Elizabeth Holmes is still C.E.O. of Theranos. Travis Kalanick is still going to make billions of dollars as the chief of Uber when the company eventually goes public. The list goes on and on. In many respects this is simply the D.N.A. of Silicon Valley. The tech bubble of the mid-90s was inflated by lies that sent the NASDAQ on a vertiginous downward spike that eviscerated the life savings of thousands of retirees and Americans who believed in the hype. This time around it seems that some of these business may be real but the people running them are still as tone deaf regarding how their actions affect other people. Silicon Valley has indeed created some amazing things. One can only hope these people don't erase it with their hubris. Full ScreenPhotos:Silicon Valleys 14 Most Spectacular Failures Andrew Mason Groupon Scorned as the worst C.E.O. of 2012 by CNBCs Herb Greenberg Andrew Mason was at the helm of Groupon when the company went public an I.P.O. Greenberg wrote off as the most over-hyped . . . of recent years. Years after going public Groupon still has trouble turning a profit . Photo: Photo-Illustration by Ben Park; From Bloomberg (Mason) Robert Kirk/Photodisc (Ticket) both from Getty Images. Elizabeth Holmes Theranos Elizabeth Holmes became emblematic of Silicon Valley excess when her $9 billion blood-testing start-up Theranos became the subject of a series of Wall Street Journal investigations that reported that the companys technology didnt actually work. Theranos is currently under federal criminal investigation. Photo: Photo-Illustration by Ben Park; By Adrianna Williams/The Image Bank (Needle) Andrew Burton (Holmes) both from Getty Images. Parker Conrad Zenefits Zenefits C.E.O. and co-founder Parker Conrad resigned in 2016 amid concerns over questions about his $4.5 billion start-ups regulatory compliance. Further reports insinuated Zenefits company culture under Conrad was more frat house than hackathon complete with allegations of sex in the stairwells and plenty of drinking. Photo: Photo-Illustration by Ben Park; By Steve Jennings (Conrad) Jack Andersen/DigitalVision (Beer) both from Getty Images. Marissa Mayer Yahoo Hailed as the turnaround boss Yahoo so desperately needed when she was hired for the job in 2012 Marissa Mayer has come under fire as investors have lost their patience waiting for a miracle that never came. (The millions she reportedly spent on lavish parties and perks while the ailing Internet giant circled the drain didnt help.) Yahoo is now up for sale. Photo: Photo-Illustration by Ben Park; By Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images (Mayer). Carly Fiorina H.P. When Carly Fiorina was let go from her six-year tenure as C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard the companys stock jumped 10 percent upon the news of her firing. While she was C.E.O. Fiorina didnt increase the companys profits and she actually decreased H.P.s shareholders wealth by 52 percent. A disastrous merger with Compaq which led her to fire some 30000 employees haunted Fiorina throughout her failed senate and presidential campaigns too. Photo: Digital Colorization by Ben Park; By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. (Fiorina). Jason Goldberg Fab E-commerce start-up Fab was once valued at $900 million a near unicorn in Silicon Valley terms. But after allegedly burning through $200 million of its $336 million in venture capital C.E.O. Jason Goldberg was forced to shutter its European arm and lay off two-thirds of its staff. Photo: Photo-Illustration by Ben Park; By Anthony Harvey (Goldberg) Oli Scarff (Frame) both from Getty Images. Gurbaksh Chahal RadiumOne and Gravity4 Fired in 2014 from his ad-tech firm RadiumOne following a domestic-violence conviction Gurbaksh Chahal founded a new company to compete with the one he was kicked out of. But Gravity4 his new firm was sued for gender discrimination in 2015 though that case is still pending and former employees have contemplated legal action against him. Photo: Photo-Illustration By Ben Park; By Charley Gallay/Getty Images (Chahal). PreviousNext
By Frankie Cordeira Jr.
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