In many traditional industries, you will find executives who really wish their companies were Silicon Valley companies. Why is this?
Notes:
- For several years, I worked with a talented CEO from France.
- On a regular basis, I heard him refer to "Valley guys" and "doing it Valley style". He had a real fascination with Silicon Valley.
- As a European, there can be a strange inferiority complex when working in tech: Silicon Valley is seen as the center for tech innovation, while Europe is seen as the laggard.
- Increasingly our politicians in Europe, most of which are very Left-wing, are moving again tech companies via aggressive regulation and fines.
- Recently we have even seen the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, being arrested in France.
- If that trend continues, us European tech leaders will no longer feel inferior, but embarrassed.
- My French CEO decided he wanted to open a small office in the Valley. He hired two marketing folks, and asked me to hire our first engineer in the region.
- I interviewed a few engineering candidates, and when my boss found out that they wanted 3-4x the salaries of an equivalent engineer in France, he decided he did not want to run a Silicon Valley company after all, it was just too expensive!
- Now I work for a much larger firm with tens of thousands of employees, which is a traditional American company.
- Again, those leaders get bright eyes when they speak about us "becoming a Silicon Valley" company, in spite of our primary business not being tech.
- For us, tech is a business enabler, not our core business.
- In spite of this, I once again find myself hiring engineers in the Bay area that are WAY more expensive than East Coast or European equivalents.
- I am not blaming those engineers for asking for high salaries, as the reality is it is very expensive to live in the Bay Area so their living costs are high.
- What I don't understand are the executives suffering from this Silicon Valley envy: do they feel they are not a proper tech company unless they have an office and staff there?
- I have been blessed to work with brilliant engineers from all over the World, from Dublin to Chicago, or Bangalore to Tokyo. Location is important for practical reasons, but attitude and talent are way more important.
- No one location in the World has the monopoly on those, in spite of the mystique.
- In my opinion, what makes Silicon Valley special is not the tech talent, but the venture capital scene there.
- As anyone who studied economics knows, capital is a key factor of production.
- If Europe wants to replicate the success of Silicon Valley, it needs to fix its venture capital scene first.
- What I am working on this week:
- Media I am enjoying this week:
- Maelstrom by Peter Watts, which is part 2 of his Rifter series.
- Back playing Escape from Tarkov with the release of patch 0.15.
Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/657-Silicon-Valley-envy-amongst-executives-(TLP-2024w34)
