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How accurately does Blind reveal the id of Silicon Valley?

1 points by asdfman123 ↗ HN
I wanted to name it "what's the deal with Blind" but thought it would be flagged.

Is it mostly trolls, or are they for real?

I'm not in SV but accepting a FAANG offer shortly. SV is supposedly filled with geniuses, but 1) lots of the people there are deeply clueless about relationships, they're 2) very greedy, and 3) completely ignorant about everything outside of "TC" and office politics.

I'm not trying to criticize Silicon Valley or anything like that, so try not to get defensive. I'm just wondering... are most of those "smart" people only technically smart? Is that how people really are when they're not putting up a front?

Or are they a bunch of bored engineers cosplaying as horrible people?

5 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 24.4 ms ] thread
schoen
> try not to get defensive

> horrible people

I don't know what Blind is and have no ability to answer your question, but I think your reference to "horrible people" is at cross purposes with your aspiration of not making people defensive!

asdfman123
I guess so. The whole site though... man.
throw_me_away1
SV is not filled with geniuses. It isn't even filled with genius coders. It is filled with good-enough coders that happen to work at companies that capitalize on their work very well. Sometimes, this goes to people's heads. "I make 400k, therefore I must be smart." They are wrong.

Despite having lived in SV for a long time, I was never on Blind. Friends tell me about it. Blind really only is where people go to talk about TC and how much they hate their jobs, from what I hear - so don't be surprised that that's all you read about on there.

Are tons of nerds bad at relationships? No doubt. Are very many people very greedy? No doubt. Especially those that sign up for an up that's focused on talking about TC in SV.

I wouldn't put too much into it, except to calibrate what salaries are possible.

ironmagma
It’s either false or people are really, really good at hiding it. I worked at a huge company that exists on that platform, and while people there were not that happy or that nice, they weren’t generally the totally antisocial pricks you read on there. I always wondered who of the people I interacted with IRL were actually on Blind posting things, it didn’t seem possible it could be any of them.