| Google is Oak Ridge. When I was growing up in Silicon Valley traffic was light, places were far, and there was nothing in between. Silicon Valley was rarely the place you wanted to be, we all wanted out having been here our whole lives. We wanted New York, we wanted Los Angeles, we wanted anywhere but here. Over the years that has changed. You ask most people that work at Google the significance of the Googleplex and no one will ever tell you about the prominence, about how it used to the rolling valleys housed the SGI buildings. But day in, day out, the buses flow. The cars flow. Once you're on campus it's a different world. Everyone's busy, everyone has something important they're insisting on doing. The whole of Mountain View, and in turn the surrounding suburban sprawl has been turned into the tiny steams coursing into Oak Ridge. The highways are jammed. The roads are jammed. There are more lines. There are more people. All eager to do something important. Meals are provided, the buses are provided, the interns get their limos to go to the local hotels Slowly but surely, we got our wish. Los Angeles came to us. New York came to us. |
Los Angeles never struck me as a place to elevate, and I like the real New York better.
Silicon Valley was better when it was a place the MBA-culture carpetbaggers and thugs considered an outpost and avoided as much as they could. The weather and the scenery were just as good or better (due to less buildup) and people were able to focus on building things, not having to listen to endless conversations about Y Combinator and vesting schedules and Mark Pincus.