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> You wanna join the evil 1% in the valley? That's relatively easy. Learn how to code and ship working systems, especially big data and machine learning systems. That ability alone is worth high six-figures income to Google and Facebook (cue people insisting that's not the case because they don't make that kind of money).

Lol what the fuck are you smoking? Making 7 figures is de facto NOT relatively easy and NOT standard for any engineer (in the Valley or otherwise; even with RSUs). I mean, even the article says it's very rare.

> Even then, I consider the election of Donald Trump and the existence of his base a far greater threat to freedom than the worst of Google, Amazon, and Facebook combined.

Donald Trump is gone in four years, GOOG, AMZN, FB will be around for a very (very) long time. The comparison is lacking at best.

you don't need 7 figures to join the 1%. last i heard it was around $450k/year; there are a lot of people at Apple/FB/Google/etc that make that much or more, but still far less than $1M

He said 1% in the Valley, not in the US. Also, I think it's better to compare total wealth rather than income (which can easily drop dramatically).

The thing is, there's a lot of us who don't want to join the 1% in the valley. We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest.

So for a lot of us, just work hard and join the crowd isn't really a solution. Not to mention, if you find Trump a true threat, please realize he is a threat made possible through the echo chambers of SV tech, which is either so incompetent as to not anticipate it or too greedy to stop it.

So GTFO of Silicon Valley then? The place is feeding on itself at this point IMO and I'm just about ready to leave myself because happiness > $$$$$$$ past a point. See also my libertarian friends who live in SF, constantly kvetching about the politics, but who all refuse to live somewhere else.

Meanwhile, Austin's nice and it's still affordable on a moderate six-figure income. Not to mention the relatively undiscovered gem of Portland and its fantastic food truck culture. Then there's the option of going abroad. It's a big world out there. Don't limit your options.

Overall point: don't fight the herd, you will lose, go start your own instead.

Finally, I don't blame Facebook or Google for Trump in any way whatsoever. I blame the overarching intellectual incuriosity of most of the American people for that one, independent of party affiliation.

Biased evidence: I grew up denied access to advanced math and science courses because I was pegged as someone with ADHD and potentially mildly retarded by the same sort of idiots who elected Emperor Orange. This was because I displayed near OCD w/r to writing code from the age of 6 and little interest in anything not relevant to that task.

That inclination was discouraged by my school system all the way to college whereupon it suddenly became useful and the rest is profitable history.

Good words.

Side note based on your personal experience; I was taking to my friend last night. He's got serious ADHD and only recently has realized that and been treating it at 35. He barely graduated high school and while not especially educated is very intelligent, especially socially. He's finally experiencing what it's like to unlock his potential.

It's a bit of a tragedy that it took 20+ years for him to get diagnosed and receive proper treatment, and it makes you wonder how many millions of people are in a similar boat.

Nice going, man! I'm also a bit in the same boat that all I'd like to do is program, but the current education system doesn't allow one to get what they want unless they jump through hurdles.

It's nice to see someone who made it.

"We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest."

When has it not been a greedfest? People have been trying to clone big, successful companies forever. Google was hardly the first, and won't be the last. This has been going on for many decades. Welcome to capitalism.

Something that is new, though, and much more troubling is their massive spying on their users. That could have a very significant negative effect on society in the long run, and is one of the main reasons that I personally would never want to work for these companies either.

> look no further than NVIDIA's 100% ownership of the DL/ML processor space.

[Disclaimer: I work for Google, opinions are my own]

Google has their TPU that they are letting others use via Cloud services[0]. It may not be the same as buying hardware, but they are giving Nvidia a run for their money.

https://cloud.google.com/tpu/

I would love it if you licensed this technology to the other cloud providers. IMO it would be an awesome embrace and extend play both in terms of HW and in making TensorFlow faster than its competing frameworks.

Otherwise, you guys seem locked in an expensive Red Queen's Race with NVIDIA's 1000+ engineer HW team.