People seem fine so long as they don’t commit too deeply to a single people maze, and retain a deep streak of non-alignment. But the moment they get owned by a particular people maze, it’s the beginning of the end.
Conversation
If you’re new on the scene, take your time to figure out the people mazes for yourself. Not just idea mazes. Don’t just sign up to be in the tribe of the first group to notice or court you. Like Harry Potter said to Draco, “I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.”
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You know that line about network effects in interest graphs (Chris Dixon I think): come for the tools, stay for the community. All of Silicon Valley and Tech more broadly is an example of that, in both the best and worst senses of the idea.
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It’s wonderfully open as a place, trivially easy for even the most socially inept, or awkward, or misfit types to find a welcoming crowd to hang out with. So long as you like some ideas and can add to the pot in even a modest way, you’ll make friends easily. That’s the danger.
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The shift from being primarily interested in ideas (almost always a good thing) to being primarily interested in other people (almost never better than a mixed blessing at best) is really tempting and easy. About 80% turn into pure people-scenesters at the first opportunity.
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You’d be surprised how hard it is to actually talk technology in Silicon Valley. It’s FAR easier to gossip endlessly about intricacies of raising money, what various VCs and star entrepreneurs are up to, and most easily — what various people mazes are talking about.
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You’ll learn people mazes about 10x faster than idea mazes. More people know the map of who’s who in say AI or crypto than what’s what.
And if you have even minor success on any front, it is 100x, because the people mazes will come to you, and try to network you in.
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I try to stay pretty strongly on the idea maze side (though the specifically technology side of my work is mostly not public) and resist the pull of the half-dozen or so people mazes I’m nominally part of. Including my own.
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It worries me that newbies are so stoked on the community side. Apparently unaware of its dark side. They gush constantly about the wonderful, brilliant, awesome people they’re meeting and getting to know. The ideas are just currency to them.
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For many it feels like coming “home” after years or decades feeling out of place wherever in the world they came from. With nobody to talk yo in person. It’s a beast feeling of spiritual self-discovery for a lot of people. Every few years there’s a fresh batch.
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I’d even say the primary economy of the tech scene is not tech at all. It’s the economy of cults, subcultures, loose guanxi nets, dealflow intel webs, etc. I call it people mazes because there is a lot of topological variety. What’s common to all the people mazes is the openness.
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All the atomized misfits from the entire world seem to land here and immediately dive into an orgy of self-organized connecting, trying to cram a decade or more of social starvation within months.
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If you actually want to just do interesting technical work outside of very narrow areas, you’re probably better off elsewhere. Come to Tech when you’re done with the actual tech part.
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