The New York Times is Jealous of San Francisco

Articles in the New York Times have been laughably bad when looking a San Francisco; a city and a scene they don't understand.

heads up: this is a pretty old post, it may be outdated.

The New York Times has developed a pattern of jealously examining the tech scene in San Francisco. I find it silly and frustrating to read in the paper of record.

These articles follow a similar pattern. They pick an issue to illustrate why SF is better or worse than NYC. Interviews and anecdotal evidence ensue. Inevitably, the NYT author comes to a judgment that either SF is too weird or that NYC's approach is superior.

These NYT authors all seem to miss the larger meme. Despite their collective insistence that NYC is just as capable as SF of hosting the tech capital of the world, it doesn't, and maybe can't. Put aside the high rents, crazy fashion, offbeat culture, and stream of bad ideas, SF is the 16th century Venice of today.

Some examples of this in action: (I'll add more as I read them and laugh)

  • Above, executives from Beats Electronics and Apple, after Apple bought Beats this year in a $3 billion deal conducted without Wall Street’s help.

    DealBook

    In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test

    David Gelles •

    Major companies are doing business without the advice of NYC bankers. No ill effects observed.. 'Look at those crazies in California! They'll learn their lesson when it all blows up in their face and NYC becomes the center of the world again'.

  • Mark Donaldson and Dawn Judd’s daughters, Esmé and Clara, in the loft living room.

    The New York Times

    The San Francisco Envy Chain (Published 2014)

    Elizabeth Weil •

    Real estate has gone berserk by the Bay, and tech billionaires are building pleasure palaces. But the homes to covet are the ones reminiscent of the city’s more soulful past.

    'Look how weird San Francisco houses are!'

  • Noirish scenes from today’s San Francisco.

    The New York Times

    San Francisco Noir (Published 2014)

    Dan Saltzstein •

    A search for a bygone genre, with Dashiell Hammett as guide, yields its own set of mysteries.

    'Let's setup a straw man argument: San Francisco has no "noir". How unhistorical!'

  • Uber has renounced the thuggish campaign of targeting critics that its senior vice president for business, Emil Michael, described in a dinner party.

    The New York Times

    Uber Scandal Highlights Silicon Valley’s Grown-Up Problem (Published 2014)

    Neil Irwin •

    The core values of start-up culture can conflict with the responsibilities that come with being an economically important company.

    "Adults" are needed to run serious companies, like JP Morgan NYT writer takes the bad behavior of one Uber executive and wishes tech companies were better at customer respect and privacy. Contrasting to JP Morgan is both New York centric, and laughable given JP Morgan's record.

  • Google offers great employee perks, and often ranks among the best companies to work for.

    DealBook

    Why the ‘Best Places to Work’ Often Aren’t

    Tony Schwartz •

    Tech employees are dumb, and they should feel dumb This is somewhere between: "tech company doesn't know what it's doing" to "those tech company employees think they have it good, but they really don't". I love the complete oversight that NYC favorite banks don't ever get mentioned.

  • Stewart Ugelow

    Medium

    What Happened When The New York Times Tried To Profile Marissa Mayer

    Stewart Ugelow •

    Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has a long profile of Marissa Mayer’s turnaround efforts at Yahoo called “What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs.” Sadly, you won’t read about it…

    #longreads meets the worst parts of tech journalism, sponsored by The Times "this is tech journalism at its sexist worst."

  • Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of Slack, in the company's office in San Francisco.

    Bits Blog

    Is Slack Really Worth $2.8 Billion? A Conversation With Stewart Butterfield

    Farhad Manjoo •

    The CEO of Slack politely educates a reporter on how VC funding works This reads more like a Hacker News post than an interview with a CEO one of the fastest growing companies in the history of the world.

  • Aaron Levie, co-founder of Box, which provides tools for storing and sharing data to businesses.

    The New York Times

    Box, Provider of Cloud-Computing Services, Faces Make-or-Break Moment (Published 2015)

    Quentin Hardy •

    Box is nearing a point other young companies are also likely to face: Find a way to cut losses and stay ahead of deep-pocketed competition or disappear.

    "His youthful manner, which practically screams 'Silicon Valley,' was a selling point." Nothing shows respect for a public company CEO who's launching a new product like making the lede about the fact he dropped out of college.

  • The venture capital firm led by Marc Andreessen has a pro-talent stance that attracts tech founders but can make returns relatively modest.

    The New York Times

    Andreessen Horowitz, Deal Maker to the Stars of Silicon Valley (Published 2015)

    Noam Scheiber •

    The venture capital firm operates much like a Hollywood talent agency, and in the process it has the potential to inflate a technology bubble.

    Silicon Valley is so caught up in it's own fame, it fails at business This post singles out Marc Andreessen as representative of a trend of VCs focusing more on Hollywood star power than on business. The subtext is that real investors don't get distracted by fame which is, naturally, untrue. The whole thing in anecdotal and seems oblivious of the increased risk that venture capital entails.

  • David Byttow, left, and Chrys Bader founded Secret.

    The New York Times

    A Founder of Secret, the Anonymous Social App, Is Shutting It Down (Published 2015)

    Mike Isaac •

    Secret’s rapid rise and fall illustrates the flash-in-the-pan nature of Silicon Valley’s current technology boom.

    This one app failed, so all apps are a fad "Secret’s trajectory illustrates the flash-in-the-pan nature of Silicon Valley’s current technology boom. Even as a handful of start-ups rise to stratospheric valuations and take in billions of dollars in financing, other privately held companies cannot sustain their following."

  • Today, people see shades of 2000 in the eye-popping valuations of companies like Slack, whose offices are seen at top; Uber; and Airbnb, at bottom.

    The New York Times

    Overvalued in Silicon Valley, but Don’t Say ‘Tech Bubble’ (Published 2015)

    Conor Dougherty •

    The tech industry’s venture capitalists admit to a certain amount of “frothiness” in start-up investments, but they studiously avoid another word. Bubble.

    Besides negatively invoking the Gold Rush, let's exaggerate the craziness of those Californians. "It is a wild time in Silicon Valley. Two-year-old companies are valued in the billions, ramshackle homes are worth millions and hubris has reached the point where otherwise sane businesspeople muse about seceding from the United States."

  • BuzzMachine

    BuzzMachine

    How (not) to interview

    Jeff Jarvis •

    Using interviews to support a biased, fear-mongering, opinion. This article will be declared unbiased because it contains interviews from both sides of the "debate".

  • It took a day longer than I thought for The Times to turn Reddit/Gawker into a trend story.

    —Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) July 22, 2015

  • https://www.flickr.com/photos/pokerbrit/14846494975

    BuzzMachine

    Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

    Jeff Jarvis •

    Let's take the word of a few disgruntled employees and condemn a company that confounds Wall Street

  • The New York Times

    Is Silicon Valley Similar to Detroit? (Published 2005)

    Steve Lohr •

    Some industry observers believe United Sates technology industry will see its competitive stature erode, as new global rivals undercut American companies on price and increasingly wrest lead from US in innovation; optimists disagree, holding computing's almost infinite malleablity means it will not age like traditional industries; ways in which computing is moving ahead include increase focus on uses of technology in specific fields; drawing (M)

    Remember how cars were a fad? So is Tech.

  • A billboard in Times Square displays the Snapchat logo.

    The New York Times

    Dizzying Ride May Be Ending for Tech Start-Ups (Published 2015)

    Michael J. de la Merced and Katie Benner •

    The latest sign of growing unease over the valuations of some richly priced companies has emerged with Snapchat being discounted 25 percent by Fidelity, the mutual fund giant.

    A few startups aren't doing as well as they were, therefore the whole tech industry is doomed! Also, let's compare VC to mutual funds, because the risks are similar right?

  • The New York Times

    When a Unicorn Start-Up Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt (Published 2015)

    Katie Benner •

    Employees at Good Technology, once valued at $1.1 billion, found their shares made practically worthless by a sale to BlackBerry for $425 million.

    News: A startup has a bad exit! Startups are risky! … oh wait. This happens all the time.

  • The New York Times

    Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future (Published 2016)

    Farhad Manjoo •

    By just about every metric, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are getting larger, more entrenched in their own sectors, more powerful in new sectors and better protected from competition.

    The "Frightful 5" tech companies form an oligarchy the controls… something Nevermind that corporate oligarchies are rife in large US industries and blatant falsehoods like Cisco not continuing to dominate it's space.

  • The New York Times

    Expect Some Unicorns to Lose Their Horns, and It Won’t Be Pretty (Published 2016)

    Steven Davidoff Solomon •

    The market downturn will force highly valued start-ups to regroup and seek money at lower valuations, pitting employees, founders and investors against each other.

    Fearmongering unicorn and strawman bubbles

  • The New York Times

    Twitter, to Save Itself, Must Scale Back World-Swallowing Ambitions (Published 2016)

    Farhad Manjoo •

    A more prosperous and promising future for Twitter may be as a private company or as a smaller division of a tech or media giant.

    Dancing on the newly proclaimed grave of Twitter Nearly gleeful that Twitter is struggling, there's no hesitation in reminding us readers that Twitter was never a real business to start with.

  • Joshua Reeves, a founder of the payroll management start-up Gusto. “Even in downturns, some businesses succeed,” he said of the shifting economic environment.

    The New York Times

    Caution Rebuffed, Unicorns and Other Start-Ups Fixate on Rainbows (Published 2016)

    Katie Benner •

    As stocks gyrate and venture capital pulls back, many Silicon Valley start-ups of every size remain upbeat, at least about their own prospects.

    If the "unicorns" go, the whole thing goes! Just because we saw high valuations in a few dozen companies, it doesn't mean that the whole industry is overvalued.

  • A building across from Duboce Park in San Francisco. Some residents say soaring real estate prices have made evictions a big problem.

    The New York Times

    In San Francisco and Rooting for a Tech Comeuppance (Published 2016)

    David Streitfeld •

    The city is bulging, the rents soaring, and residents are growing more vocal about wishing Silicon Valley would cool off, or at least pay up.

    Even those crazies in California want the tech economy to collapse The NYT makes the claim, after talking to some activists, that everyone in SF wants the tech economy to bust.

  • The New York Times

    Opinion | Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired (Published 2016)

    Dan Lyons •

    Life in the new tech workplace is suspiciously like life in the old sweatshop.

    A former Newsweek writer to complain about young managers firing people for being older. This should have been a piece on Theory Y vs X management. But it became a vaguely veiled anecdote on the discrimination in Tech.

  • Broken glass from a car window. About half the property crimes in San Francisco are thefts from cars.

    The New York Times

    San Francisco Torn as Some See ‘Street Behavior’ Worsen (Published 2016)

    Thomas Fuller •

    As property crimes rise and homelessness persists, the city is divided over whether to respond more aggressively to problems on its streets.

    In which the NYT conflates homelessness and crime Not only is per capita a bad measure of crime because some many people commute into San Francisco, but homelessness doesn't lead to crime.

  • The New York Times

    Opinion | Do You Love Music? Silicon Valley Doesn’t (Published 2016)

    Jonathan Taplin •

    Years after Napster, musicians are still victims of digital piracy, but now it is companies like Google and SiriusXM that make the theft possible.

    Do you love music? Silicon Valley doesn't The title arrogantly stereotypes a whole geography with a platitude. This is just another example of how the NYT, based in old-media centric New York, prefers to defend the established businesses focused on intellectual property over supporting innovation.

  • http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/28/business/ap-us-alphabet-moonshots.html Google does great, but we can't believe they're throwing away good money instead of maximizing the bottom line! Innovation costs too much.

  • The New York Times

    The End of Reflection (Published 2016)

    Teddy Wayne •

    In a world in which a phone or computer is rarely more than arm’s length away, are we eliminating introspection?

    As more science shows technology is good for us, we'll try to defend the smaller and smaller corner we're painting ourselves into.

  • A cellphone user in Shenzhen, China. China’s tech industry has popularized some technologies that are just getting started in the United States.

    The New York Times

    China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech (Published 2016)

    Paul Mozur •

    American tech companies study Chinese users and apps as a smartphone revolution changes how people interact, buy products and manage their money.

    Silicon Valley isn't cool. You know what's cool? China. Mostly because they have QR codes.

  • Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos

    The New York Times

    Opinion | Don’t Blame Silicon Valley for Theranos (Published 2016)

    Randall Stross •

    The troubled testing company dazzled the media, but Palo Alto investors were the first to see the potential flaws.

    This one time, it wasn't Silicon Valley's fault. But, just remember that most of the time it is: 90% of venture capital investments fail.

  • Karlyn Goetz, a Redfin agent in Seattle, who earns a salary. “I never feel like I have to make a sale,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about where the food on my plate is going to come from.”

    The New York Times

    Redfin Shies Away From the Typical Start-Up’s Gig Economy (Published 2016)

    Nick Wingfield •

    Redfin, a Seattle company that considers itself a real estate and tech company, has challenged the conventions of both by hiring full-time agents.

    Let's pick a controversial news topic and interview one person about how their company doesn't apply!

  • The New York Times

    The Uber Model, It Turns Out, Doesn’t Translate (Published 2016)

    Farhad Manjoo •

    The ride-hailing service is a giant, but companies that aim to get stuff done on demand for customers, like food delivery, grocery shopping and parking, are faltering.

    Writer has a bad experience when prices go up; insists that the whole product sector is defunct.. Economics of course have nothing to do with it.

  • The New York Times

    In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build (Published 2016)

    Conor Dougherty •

    An activist who calls her group BARF is pushing for more housing, pitting cranky homeowners and the political establishment against newcomers who want the region to make room for them, too.

    Let's interview a crazy SF anarchist (hey, she's "self-described"' don't blame us if she's crazy, we all know anarchists aren't real political thinkers) about her 500 person email list and her homeless candidate for a minor municipal regulatory committee.

  • The New York Times

    Palantir Buyback Plan Shows Need for New Silicon Valley Pay System (Published 2016)

    Steven Davidoff Solomon •

    The offer comes as debate intensifies over compensation for employees, who face restrictions on the sale of shares that only their companies can lift.

    Let's take one unicorn and abstract it's problems to the idea that all equity is fundamentally flawed!

  • Employees at Mic, a five-year-old website in New York that is vying to become a leading news source created by and for millennials. Chris Altchek, in blue sweater, is its chief executive.

    The New York Times

    What Happens When Millennials Run the Workplace? (Published 2016)

    Ben Widdicombe •

    At Mic, a media site created by and for 20-somethings, oversharing, acting entitled and second-guessing the boss are the norm.

    Let's find a few examples of Silicon Valley people making stupid decisions and blame an entire generation for all that silly technology stuff they do.

  • Penny Kim wrote for the website Medium an article titled “I Got Scammed by a Silicon Valley Startup,” about her experience with Isaac Choi’s company WrkRiot.

    The New York Times

    A Silicon Valley Dream Collapses in Allegations of Fraud (Published 2016)

    Katie Benner •

    The disintegration of WrkRiot has gripped Silicon Valley, though it is a familiar tale to many who arrive with the dream of creating the next tech juggernaut.

    There are no fraudsters in banking or other real jobs, so let's throw stones in this glass house!

  • Golden Gate Avenue, in San Francisco, Sept. 7, 2016.

    The New York Times

    Opinion | What San Francisco Says About America (Published 2016)

    Thomas Fuller •

    After 27 years reporting abroad, I rediscovered a land of sustainable pot, sleek Teslas and easy credit.

    The New York Times likes to use SF as the example of what's wrong with America. Never mind the problems with other cities, let alone … gasp … New York.

  • The New York Times

    MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up (Published 2016)

    Farhad Manjoo •

    No venture capital, no Bay Area presence, no crazy burn rate: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs and following their instincts.

    What can we say positive about Tech? I know! A puff piece on a successful company that isn't in Silicon Valley! To make sure we get the point across, let's spend the lede talking about those silly incubators those techies use.

  • Allison Arieff

    The New York Times

    Opinion | Solving All the Wrong Problems (Published 2016)

    Allison Arieff •

    Do we really need an app that lets us brew our coffee from anywhere?

    This is the epitome of all NYT posts. Silicon Valley does trivial things and the world has "real" problems. Oh, and we're basing this on only one named example and a blind eye toward any the contrary evidence.

  • President-elect Donald Trump hosted a meeting of tech industry leaders at Trump Tower in December.

    The New York Times

    Opinion | Silicon Valley Takes a Right Turn (Published 2017)

    Thomas B. Edsall •

    Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon used their PACs to support Republican Congressional candidates more than Democratic ones in 2016.

    The NYT is shocked—shocked—to find that large tech companies act like large companies everywhere. Painting the disparity between tech companies which support the GOP and Tech workers who do not. Which is just like nearly all companies everywhere. Also half of the companies in the lede are not based in Silicon Valley.

  • Slin Lee and Daisy Yeung in their apartment in San Francisco. “When we imagine having kids, we think of somewhere else,” Mr. Lee said.

    The New York Times

    San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone? (Published 2017)

    Thomas Fuller •

    San Francisco has the lowest share of children of the country’s largest cities, a longstanding trend reinforced by a tech industry that skews young and single.

    San Francisco is so bad, they don't have children anymore! We'll show you a bunch of stats and quotes to prove that. But we won't ask why or show you the trend line. That would be context or "journalism".

  • A tourist in front of a Facebook sign at the entrance to the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

    The New York Times

    Silicon Valley’s Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China (Published 2016)

    Paul Mozur •

    China’s internet filters block many of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies but have done little to stanch a Chinese obsession with its culture.

    Can you believe that other people actually like the Silicon Valley culture!? Oh wait, it's the Chinese. They're weird and scary. Never mind.

  • President Barack Obama participating in a Google Portal virtual event in June. Over the last eight years, Google was closely associated with the former president.

    The New York Times

    Google, in Post-Obama Era, Aggressively Woos Republicans (Published 2017)

    Cecilia Kang •

    The tech company had many close links to the Obama administration. Now it’s scrambling to forge ties with President Trump and a Republican-dominated Congress.

    What a shock, a country more valuable than most nations lobbies the president of the US.

  • The nearly vacant Vallco Shopping Mall in Cupertino, Calif.

    The New York Times

    ‘We Almost Have Riots’: Tensions Flare in Silicon Valley Over Growth (Published 2016)

    David Streitfeld •

    As the region has become more congested and expensive, there are growing demands to rein in the physical space that many technologists call home.

    Silicon Valley is a complete mess because… real estate.

  • The New York Times

    Opinion | Jerks and the Start-Ups They Ruin (Published 2017)

    Dan Lyons •

    Bro C.E.O.s like the head of Uber will keep destroying companies until people stop paying them.

    Guess what? There are jerks in tech too! (Oh, and they are just like our jerks in banking)

  • Rachel Renock, the chief executive of Wethos, center, with her business partners, Claire Humphreys, left, and Kristen Ablamsky. Ms. Renock said they received sexist comments while seeking financing.

    The New York Times

    Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment (Published 2017)

    Katie Benner •

    More than two dozen women in the tech start-up industry spoke to The New York Times about being sexually harassed by investors and mentors.

    NYT focuses on sexual harassment and VC. They could have done an article on bankers just by swapping words

  • Tech leaders and investors, some of whom have disagreed with President Trump, met at the White House on Monday about updating government technology.

    The New York Times

    Tech Titans Make Pilgrimage to White House to Discuss Government Systems (Published 2017)

    Cecilia Kang •

    Timothy Cook, Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt were among 18 tech executives at a forum held by an administration they have had conflicts with.

    Told in the grand context of the stock market, tech industry execs went to The Whitehouse to help the government buy newer tech. How dare they act as businesses! Also, why can't they keep their stock prices from fluctuating!?

  • The New York Times

    Opinion | In Silicon Valley, Working 9 to 5 Is for Losers (Published 2017)

    Dan Lyons •

    A century ago, factory workers went on strike to demand better conditions. Today, start-up “hustlers” celebrate their own exploitation.

    In which the fear-mongering click-bait headline doesn't match the content which goes on to disprove the headline.

  • Marta Ramos, left, is a janitor at Apple headquarters. That’s the same job Gail Evans, right, held at Kodak in the 1980s.

    The New York Times

    To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now (Published 2017)

    Neil Irwin •

    Focusing on core competence and outsourcing the rest has made U.S. companies lean, nimble and productive. It has also left lots of people worse off.

    Replace tech company with bank, or really just company. Economic inequality isn't an industry trend – it spans the economy. Oh, and they admit the entire article is BS

  • David Brooks

    The New York Times

    Opinion | How Evil Is Tech? (Published 2017)

    David Brooks •

    Our devices consume our time and dilute our social interactions.

    Tech is evil because it's different! Also, those techies want to make money. This is the new peak of the anti-tech backlash that wishes the engineers would just go back to silently making everyone's lives better and stop trying to run a business. The tech industry is the current world focus, as finance, and industrialization were before. As with all industries, there are bad actors, but that doesn't make the whole industry evil.

  • Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. “There needs to be more aggressive enforcement action on tech companies like Google,” says Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.

    The New York Times

    Internet Giants Face New Political Resistance in Washington (Published 2017)

    Cecilia Kang •

    Facebook, Google and Amazon are coming under increasing pressure by regulators concerned about their growing power.

    Technology companies are unregulated and coddled. It's either them or sex trafficking and never-mind that free-speech stuff.

  • Facebook, Google and others positioned themselves as bettering the world. But their systems and tools have also been used to undermine democracy.

    The New York Times

    Tech Giants, Once Seen as Saviors, Are Now Viewed as Threats (Published 2017)

    David Streitfeld •

    American tech companies positioned themselves as entities that brought positive change by connecting people and spreading information. Perceptions are shifting.

    Did you know Technology is a whole industry now!?

  • The new Salesforce Tower is visible from just about everywhere around San Francisco.

    The New York Times

    San Francisco’s Skyline, Now Inescapably Transformed by Tech (Published 2017)

    David Streitfeld •

    Salesforce Tower, which at 1,070 feet is the tallest office building west of the Mississippi, will be inhabited in January, signaling tech’s triumph in the city.

    How dare those techies build offices!

  • Dropbox, which made its initial public offering in March, and Spotify may be at the start of a wave of I.P.O.s for highly valued and recognizable start-ups.

    The New York Times

    Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave (Published 2018)

    Jack Nicas •

    With Dropbox and Spotify successfully going public, tech investors believe that a bonanza of initial public offerings is finally about to arrive.

    Now that tech companies are on the stock exchange, these VCs are geniuses! The companies are still shit, but look at all that money! Clearly the NYT is well-positioned to decree which VCs to pay attention to.

  • Representative Tim Ryan, back left in tie, organized a bus tour through the Midwest with about a dozen venture capitalists.

    The New York Times

    Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley (Published 2018)

    Kevin Roose •

    About a dozen venture capitalists recently took a bus tour through the Midwest, and a funny thing happened: They caught the heartland bug.

    Let's get a bunch of people who complain about Silicon Valley to complain about Silicon Valley.

  • The New York Times

    The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now. Enjoy It While You Can. (Published 2018)

    Kevin Roose •

    Inspired by Silicon Valley’s hyper-growth, companies elsewhere are burning cash in hopes of being the next big thing.

    All these companies are loosing money! Even some of the public ones! It's a bubble! Never mind making bets and loosing money is the business model of VCs. It's business via experimentation. The horror.

  • The New York Times

    A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley (Published 2018)

    Nellie Bowles •

    “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones.”

    Let’s pick a few extremists that happen to live in Silicon Valley to make a fear-mongering argument that the place is hypocritical and doing us all harm.

  • Kara Swisher

    The New York Times

    Opinion | Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? (Published 2018)

    Kara Swisher •

    Some think chief ethics officers could help technology companies navigate political and social questions.

    Sound tech companies hire ethics officers? Why don’t any other companies have them? Oh, because ethics should be engrained into company culture? It’s not a bolt-on responsibility? Why are tech companies special? What does it mean for Silicon Valley to "grow up"?

  • A partly eclipsed supermoon behind the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco in January 2018.

    The New York Times

    Happy New Year! May Your City Never Become San Francisco, New York or Seattle (Published 2018)

    Emily Badger •

    Or Portland, Denver, Boston, Dallas, Houston or Los Angeles.

    Despite acknowledging that NYC is the pinnacle of the squeezing out the middle class problem, somehow west coast cities, and San Francisco in particular, become the boogeymen.

  • The San Francisco skyline, obscured by smoke and haze on Wednesday.

    The New York Times

    Opinion | Facebook and the Fires (Published 2018)

    Kara Swisher •

    The toxic smoke is a bleak backdrop and an apt metaphor for where Silicon Valley finds itself.

    Nothing like perpetuating the idea of the coming tech backlash that the NYT has been the leading champion of.

  • Jake Orta searched through a trash bin outside Mark Zuckerberg’s home in San Francisco.

    The New York Times

    In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash (Published 2019)

    Thomas Fuller •

    In a city swollen by the wealth of the tech industry, the rich and poor live very separate lives. But sometimes they connect through the garbage.

    The NYT is weirdly obsessed enough with tech elite to cover the guy who picks through Zuck's trash. Of all the cities in the world where this happens, (including NYC) why pick this guy?

  • More near-term support for the “graying industry” view of technology came two weeks ago from Goldman Sachs. The economy may be doing nicely and corporate capital spending picking up, but it will not help the technology industry much, according to the investment bank’s survey of corporate spending plans. In 2005, corporate spending on information technology will rise less than 4 percent, the Goldman analysts predicted. “Technology looks to be firmly in the cyclical category for now,” the report stated.

    If anyone can be trusted to say the new information economy is a fad, and hasn't replaced the mass media economy. It's the largest New York Bank telling the New York Mass Media it's so.

  • Yet another, somewhat longer, view suggests that America’s technology industry will not inevitably decline. The more optimistic outlook rests not on the prospects for Wall Street investors, but on the nature of information technology.

    Oh, right. If we look past what short-term stock investment obsessed analysts say, it's pretty obvious that Silicon Valley represents a fundamental shift in how business is done.

  • Medsphere Systems is a start-up that hopes to bring the open-source software formula to hospitals.

    Let's take a left turn to look at anecdotal evidence from one company focused on one sector of the Technology industry.

  • Amazon employees on a lunch break. Many employees say they spend hours working at home most nights or on weekends.

    The New York Times

    Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (Published 2015)

    Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld •

    The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

    The NYT rallies against Amazon as a "bruising workplace", and then doubles down in an op-ed:

    Amazon — and, to be sure, any number of other companies as well — has taken this idea to its logical extreme: Bring people in, shape them in the Amazon style of confrontation and workaholism, and cast them aside when they have outlived their usefulness.

    —Joe Nocera

    But,

    The back and forth between Amazon and the Times and the conversation it has generated is a perfect meta-narrative for the tension between technology companies and media companies.

    —Emily Bell

  • The Mimo baby monitor, built into a onesie, knows that when a baby wakes up, the parents will, too -- so it turns on lights and music and even makes the coffee.

    The New York Times

    Opinion | The Internet of Way Too Many Things (Published 2015)

    Allison Arieff •

    You may be able to get your phone to project bright colors if your window sensor detects a burglar, but what is protecting you from your phone?

    A few crap products mean that a whole sector of technology, generally agreed on as inevitable, is useless

  • The New York Times

    Meet the People Who Train the Robots (to Do Their Own Jobs) (Published 2017)

    Daisuke Wakabayashi •

    Before the machines become smart enough to replace humans, as some people fear, they need to be taught.

    Robots are taking all the jobs! An excellent bit of fear-mongering motivated by an attempt to get more in touch with Trump's base.

  • Ben Silbermann, the chief executive of Pinterest, “measures twice, cuts once,” said one early investor in the company.

    The New York Times

    Pinterest Is a Unicorn. It Just Doesn’t Act Like One. (Published 2018)

    Erin Griffith •

    The company rejects Silicon Valley’s aggressive, hype-driven way of doing business. But its slow and steady approach has frustrated some investors and employees.

    A lot of words to state that Pinterest has been struggling to grow, but they "discovered” localized content and are now growing. Somehow, struggling to figure out growth is not the "Silicon Valley way"?

  • The New York Times

    Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed With the Virtue of Suffering? (Published 2019)

    Nellie Bowles •

    The Stoics and friends continue to be the dominant thought leaders from Google to Apple — and a new entrepreneur lobbying firm has even named itself Cicero.

    There’s nothing more callous than ancient Roman philosophy brought to modern times—especially when we can pain the whole of Silicon Valley as douchebags!

  • The New York Times

    When Uber and Airbnb Go Public, San Francisco Will Drown in Millionaires (Published 2019)

    Nellie Bowles •

    Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Pinterest plan to go public. California’s newly minted rich will be hungry for parties, houses, boats, bikes — and ice sculptures. Here comes the big one!

    OMG! Young people are gonna be rich!

The New York times is just collecting the confusion that New Yorkers feel when looking at San Francisco. It's a shame that the confusion exists, but … first they laugh at you…

Later…

Act 1 of This American Life's It's Not the Product, It's the Person is a great example of New York 'old media' just not understanding how Silicon Valley works.

Alex Bloomberg pitches his new podcast company, asking $1.5 million dollars in seed funding. He shows an ignorance for how venture capital works, amazement at how business-like getting funding is, and arrogance in carpetbagging.

I've loved Planet Money, and Mr. Bloomberg in it, but this was very frustrating to listen to.