The truth about leaving Silicon Valley

Subject: The truth about leaving Silicon Valley
From: Chris Despopoulos <cud -at- ARRAKIS -dot- ES>
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 10:10:07 +0200

I can't help chiming in... Maybe this can even pass for
on-topic, if I'm a skilled enough writer.

I pretty much agree with Sarah Stegall in that the Valley is
like a boom town... Sure there's lots of gold, but there's
accompanying inflation as well. Housing is indeed
rediculous - the last I checked, vacancy rates were hovering
around 2%. And I was one of those people commuting 1.5
hours each way. Not only is it horrible to spend so much
time commuting, but it is also horribly inefficient to
consume so much energy just to move your body into somebody
else's realestate (office building/cubicle/parking spot) so
you can move atoms around (the truth of what we do for a
living... yet another subject). This wastes the 4
commodities most important in California; time, real estate,
gasoline, and the resale value of your car.

In the words of one of California's own (Nancy Reagan), just
say "NO!"

Here comes the marginally on-topic part.

Telecommute. In the words of an obscure Arkansan, we are on
the bridge to the 21st Century, and the technology is pretty
much there to let us all work from almost wherever in the
world we please. What's lacking is the social structure for
it. See the example at the end of this message.

When a social structure that could improve working
conditions is lacking, it falls on the proletariat to create
it. I can't blame anybody for moving to the valley. But
you don't necessarily have to. Contact agencies in the
valley and tell them you want to telecommute. If there are
so many jobs (there are), and it's so hard to live there (it
is), you will not be alone (you're not). Nonetheless, you
will encounter resistance. BUT... If enough people keep
bringing up the idea, it will blossom and grow, just like
the idea that McDonalds is a hap-hap-happy place, or smoking
is glamorous, or an investment in tulips can't possibly
fail. If these ideas had their day, why not telecommuting?

And there are benefits all around:

* It saves the employer money; he doesn't pay for your
equipment, chair, web time, or coffee.
* It creates a new management class; one that connects
physically disparate team members.
* It encourages technological innovation.
* It keeps you closer to hearth and home.
* It encourages the (espoused) American principals of
freedom and family.
* It brings the worker into the globalized market. (This
last point might be a source of mean resistance from
senior mgmt, but I don't want to project a political
view on them right now. Let me just say that the
advantages an investor finds in the globalized market
is diminished by globalizing the society of labor. It
follows that globalizing your position should give you
an advantage.)

Clrearly, not everybody can telecommute, but if writers
can't, who can? I'm trying to live by these words,
telecommuting from Spain. So far it seems to work. I'm
still here and I have two jobs at the moment. In fact, I
should be working on my deadline right now. But this rant
is not without its self-serving purpose.

This is an appeal to anybody with the nerve to give it a
try. The more people stand up and try it, the easier it
will be for everybody... A typical boot-strap problem. So
not only do I want you to enhance my credibility, I want you
to get out of your cars, get out of urban sprawl, and help
the world take meaningful advantage of this technological
spawn of Silicon Valley. Whether or not it's on topic, I
think it's certainly feasable for technical writers to be at
the vanguard, and to raise the issue whenever possible.
Even the engineers will thank you.

EXAMPLE of LACKING SOCIAL STRUCTURE:
A large corporation employing thousands of people expressed
concern about the commute problem. This was in no small
part because San Jose requires companies to pay some type of
tax if they cannot get a certain percentage of their
employees to abandon their cars. This is measured by
counting parking spaces. So this company put on a fair to
enourage alternatives to the one-person-per-car commute (a
California staple). Telecommuting was not represented.
When I asked about that, the answer was that the senior mgmt
didn't want to encourage telecommuting. This, in spite of
the fact that they had a telecomm policy in place, and many
of the elite (developers and sales/mktg types) took
advantage of it regularly.

It seems the problem was not technological, since some of
the most highly compensated (and hence most valuable) work
was getting done remotely. I submit the problem was that
upper-middle management was flummoxed by the prospect of
tracking people thay couldn't physicall watch. I ultimately
did telecommute two or three days a week, and nobody died or
even lost any blood. And, in the course of two years or so,
the number of people who telecommuted at least one day a
week jumped significantly. Or so my anecdotal sense of the
situation inclines me to report.

Sorry for getting carried away... cud


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