It's an outsiders' take on what seems to have grown into a disconnected, insular culture. While under most circumstances one could dismiss such commentary as "he doesn't understand us and made little effort to get to know us," when that culture exists primarily to make stuff (products, software) for the masses it would do well to pay heed to its criticism, don't you think?
I don't think it's harsh. If anything it's falling for the author's narrative.
The author was clearly there solely to write a hatchet job on the SV startup culture. The stuff about getting rich is just there to make him sound a bit less parasitical.
I'm sure some of what he says is valid but the dystopia is just as fake as the idea that SV is paved with gold.
I'd go further and, given these kinds of articles usually follow a template, it's quite interesting what he didn't say. Usually the author will find people who are disillusioned/downtrodden to interview i.e. show the rotten underbelly.
It's noticeable that the only negative commentary came from a barman and a musician, and they were of the basic change is bad variety. As a consequence, he's stuck with painting everyone as a witless man-child.
So either he's an incompetent journalist or he didn't find a rotten underbelly. As I've never been to SV, I can't comment on which it is but I can be pretty confident that this article won't help me find out.
Bay area housing is atrocious, SF has a homeless problem, and the tech industry has been hopelessly corrupted by money. (Not that there weren't con men before.)
Hopefully that's not news to anybody here.
Tech, like any other profession, has its own sociolect or variation from daily conversational English. Not everybody can appreciate that, especially those that grew up monolingual.
Short of giving unsolicited advice to the writer about leaving the confines of whatever monocultural bubble they grew up in, I'm not sure what there is of us to heed in that part of the critique. Shall we all stop using words they know in ways they don't like?
Realistically, the author's target market is not HN, and we're just experiencing marketing for their book. Judging by the article, it's a story book for adults that want to feel secure that they made the right choice by not moving to experience California (both its positives and negatives), even for few months. If the author would like to question all of the lingo; the "metrics", our "spaces", this is not that book. (I would be interested in reading that book!) If they want to take their shot at taking down the sharing economy, this is not that book.
You're right, we should heed criticism, but the article is light on that and instead pushes a familiar offensive narrative.
Why do think so many of these outside stories seem the same? The short answer is tropes. These don't only concern the forms any story can take, but also actually shape how one conceives of things.
Besides, the Bay Area employs more than 1M people just in sw/hw connected roles (engineers, product managers, project managers, operations, and testing). The outsiders look at a subgroup that represents less than 5% and equate that the tech industry out here.
At least The Circle didn't pretend not to be fiction, this seems like it wants to be journalism. And that's, frankly, a problem.