Day 11: A LinkedIn to the Past
Dah dah dah daaaaah! (Yes, that's Ocarina of Time, and I'm referencing a Link to the Past, but I still think it's funny. The best jokes are the ones you have to explain.) We visited LinkedIn and the Computer History Museum today!
Linking in
I spent the least money on food today that I have on this entire trip. It all started with breakfast at the hotel before we loaded into the van for some carpool karaoke on the way to LinkedIn. When I say carpool karaoke, I mean we were playing old tv themes and singing along, which was pretty darn funny.
We were greeted by Della McMillan ('91), a QA consultant at LinkedIn and her husband Greg, a senior technical writer. They acted as our hosts for the day, and escorted us to our meeting room. The conference rooms in the building we were in were all named after super heroes, which seemed pretty fun. Once we got there, we met up with Baron Roberts and Gary Lin, both engineers, and Henry Brown, a technical writer. Greg's opening advice for us was to love what you do, because if you're miserable, you work will reflect that.This seems like a pretty simple thing, obviously nobody wants to be miserable. But complacency can keep you in a miserable job because it's easier than seeking out something else. Just another push to get out of the comfort zone. When it came to the topic of startups, both Baron and Gary talked about the difficulties of working in one. It takes a tremendous amount of both ego and resilience to believe that your ideas are correct and to keep working despite the tremendous outside pressure. However, both agreed that the experience was worth it in the end. It reminds me of when Erik did his book report, and had us pick out the attributes of great entrepreneurs that spoke to us. One that I chose was determination. I'm not claiming I have what it takes to start a business, but I do think that anyone who works extensively with code has the "will-bang-head-into-wall-until-things-work-ness" that is necessitated by work in a startup. It comes with the territory. Gary also echoed Greg's point about loving what you do. He had hopped jobs about every two years or so until he eventually settled in a LinkedIn. Gary said it was his ability to branch out and LinkedIn and to keep working on different projects without stagnating that kept him there.
The mythical land of Silicon Valley
Baron had a question for us during our meeting: how does Silicon Valley match up to our expectations. To be perfectly honest, it seems about half and half. From everything you hear in the Midwest, Silicon Valley seems to be a place featuring only tech companies and only two levels of business: the startups barely getting by and the megacorporations that are full of fluff like coding beanbags and nap pods. Obviously there are more than tech companies, and some of them are even pretty major players in the valley (see: venture capital firms). There are also obviously companies in between megacorp and startup. It's hard to say how much it differs. I think the biggest difference is that it's an actual place. There's a strange mythos surrounding the Valley, that it starts to seem like a Mt. Olympus-type place. Sure, it's a real mountain, but you don't actually see the gods sitting on the top. I'm happy to report that Silicon Valley is a totally real place, and while there are no gods here, there are very real companies. My favourite description came from Kari, who used the term "loosely organised chaos" to describe her impressions before coming. Even being here, that feeling still rings true.
A very secure lunch
After our meeting we were treated to lunch at one of the LinkedIn cafes. I got to talk more with Baron during the lunch, especially about his earlier comments about security. During our meeting, he mentioned that LinkedIn is constantly under attack. Not from government-level hackers (hopefully), but just from scammers and spammers looking to use LinkedIn to find new victims. Cyber security is an area of interest for me, so I got to talk a little more about what that looks like for LinkedIn, as well as how best to get started in the field. It's always nice to get some advice from someone closer to the fields that I'm interested in. As for lunch, LinkedIn has a nice cafe with several options for lunch. I ended up getting lo mein noodles with sweet and sour chicken and a small piece of cake for dessert. Free lunch is really nice.
Back to the past
After our visit to LinkedIn, we stopped at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I don't think any of us quite knew what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by the exhibits. We only had two hours, and I could have walked around the museum for at least another hour. They had an IBM 1401 demo lab where you could make your own punch card, which was really cool for the novelty, but also put into perspective how intensive coding used to be.
I can't imagine how annoying it would be to have to debug punch cards. I'll keep my GUI and i7 processor, thanks. Other interesting exhibits included the evolution of software, featuring exhibits from gaming to digital music storage to Wikipedia.
The museums main exhibit is a collection of artefacts from computing history, from abacuses until the early internet. It would be infeasible to post all the pictures I took from there, but suffice it to say there were many, and if you ever find yourself with a free afternoon in Mountain View, California, the Computer History Museum is definitely something to check out.
Get lucky once, good on you. Get lucky twice, you might be an entrepreneur
After our visit to the museum, we came back to the hotel just in time for Kari to give a book talk. She presented on her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 by Sarah Lacy. The book is a history of the recreation of Silicon Valley after the dot-com crash. Kari brought up several interesting questions pertaining to entrepreneurship. One of which was if there are any innovations left or if everything is just an improvement now. There was some debate over what constituted a new idea and what constituted an improvement. In my opinion, there are plenty of new ideas out there. Both in and out of the tech world. They may be inspired by things that are around now, but there are still new ideas out there somewhere. Another interesting question was about the Zuckerberg Phenomenon, or the fact that the majority of major Silicon Valley success stories come from young 20-somthings. The question was how true is that idea? It comes down to several factors, but I think innovation and success can come from anyone, it's just that younger people don't have industry experience telling them that the way they're thinking is stupid. So they charge on ahead and end up creating something entirely new and successful.
Having a grape dinner
It's a double pun because grape replaces great, and we went as a group to Sultana for dinner, which is also the name for a variety of grape. The more you know. We met up with Craig Cornelius (our host at Google), and got to talk to him about some of the other companies we visited, as well as his experience riding in RAGBRAI (he encourages everyone to do it). I ended up having lamp cöp shish, which was seasoned lamb, bulgar, and roast vegetables. The entire tables split appetizers (babaganoush, hummus, and falafel) as well as baklava for dessert. It was a fun outing as a group, and a nice opportunity to try some new and different foods.
Up next tomorrow is Benetech, which should be very different from the past couple of days. I'm looking forward to a change of pace.
Linking in
Fun fact, I had to retake this twice due to wrong numbering. Apparently I can't count.
I was told to look inquisitive for this. Nobody else did.
The mythical land of Silicon Valley
Why are all social networks blue and white?
Baron had a question for us during our meeting: how does Silicon Valley match up to our expectations. To be perfectly honest, it seems about half and half. From everything you hear in the Midwest, Silicon Valley seems to be a place featuring only tech companies and only two levels of business: the startups barely getting by and the megacorporations that are full of fluff like coding beanbags and nap pods. Obviously there are more than tech companies, and some of them are even pretty major players in the valley (see: venture capital firms). There are also obviously companies in between megacorp and startup. It's hard to say how much it differs. I think the biggest difference is that it's an actual place. There's a strange mythos surrounding the Valley, that it starts to seem like a Mt. Olympus-type place. Sure, it's a real mountain, but you don't actually see the gods sitting on the top. I'm happy to report that Silicon Valley is a totally real place, and while there are no gods here, there are very real companies. My favourite description came from Kari, who used the term "loosely organised chaos" to describe her impressions before coming. Even being here, that feeling still rings true.
A very secure lunch
Henry Brown (left), Baron Roberts (third from left), and Greg McMillan (right)
After our meeting we were treated to lunch at one of the LinkedIn cafes. I got to talk more with Baron during the lunch, especially about his earlier comments about security. During our meeting, he mentioned that LinkedIn is constantly under attack. Not from government-level hackers (hopefully), but just from scammers and spammers looking to use LinkedIn to find new victims. Cyber security is an area of interest for me, so I got to talk a little more about what that looks like for LinkedIn, as well as how best to get started in the field. It's always nice to get some advice from someone closer to the fields that I'm interested in. As for lunch, LinkedIn has a nice cafe with several options for lunch. I ended up getting lo mein noodles with sweet and sour chicken and a small piece of cake for dessert. Free lunch is really nice.
Back to the past
Computers have come a long, long way
It says "devin hanggi hello world"
Tyler tries his hand at punch card coding
Music storage has become much more elegant. Now it's mostly in the cloud.
After our visit to the museum, we came back to the hotel just in time for Kari to give a book talk. She presented on her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 by Sarah Lacy. The book is a history of the recreation of Silicon Valley after the dot-com crash. Kari brought up several interesting questions pertaining to entrepreneurship. One of which was if there are any innovations left or if everything is just an improvement now. There was some debate over what constituted a new idea and what constituted an improvement. In my opinion, there are plenty of new ideas out there. Both in and out of the tech world. They may be inspired by things that are around now, but there are still new ideas out there somewhere. Another interesting question was about the Zuckerberg Phenomenon, or the fact that the majority of major Silicon Valley success stories come from young 20-somthings. The question was how true is that idea? It comes down to several factors, but I think innovation and success can come from anyone, it's just that younger people don't have industry experience telling them that the way they're thinking is stupid. So they charge on ahead and end up creating something entirely new and successful.
Having a grape dinner
It's a double pun because grape replaces great, and we went as a group to Sultana for dinner, which is also the name for a variety of grape. The more you know. We met up with Craig Cornelius (our host at Google), and got to talk to him about some of the other companies we visited, as well as his experience riding in RAGBRAI (he encourages everyone to do it). I ended up having lamp cöp shish, which was seasoned lamb, bulgar, and roast vegetables. The entire tables split appetizers (babaganoush, hummus, and falafel) as well as baklava for dessert. It was a fun outing as a group, and a nice opportunity to try some new and different foods.
Up next tomorrow is Benetech, which should be very different from the past couple of days. I'm looking forward to a change of pace.
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