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1) There are more salary positions at BOA than hourly. You seem to think the only jobs at banks are tellers, which is completely false.
2) Gyms, Healthcare, Dentists, Meals, Bikes, Shuttles, Stock Options etc are all PERKS! It is one of the ways they attract talent. My friend at Google says he would never work for Apple because they don't have the same perks he gets working at Google. Businesses are all about competition, not just for customers, but employees too. There are people who say, I won't work at Facebook unless they provide transportation because I only want to live in San Francisco. The great thing about tech companies is that many believe "happy" employees are more productive, which is true. If your company takes good care of you, you will be much more loyal to them. It's simple business 101... even a freshman business student with no experience in the business world can understand why companies offer perks.
Actually you are the one who claimed bofa employees get 30 minute breaks. The only bank employees I know that get 30 minutes are in the retail side. Maybe you should go back and reread your post. You implied a singular work schedule to all bofa employees.
I am glad you think those "perks" are employee benefits. In reality, the employer benefits quite a bit with these "perks." Pretending each tech worker is worth $50 an hour, and with the free lunch, gym, and commuter bus the employer get and extra 90-120 extra minutes of productivity from each employee, I'd say the real winners are the investors and employers. They just increased productivity by 20-25% with minimal cost and reduced turnover.
Actually you are the one who claimed bofa employees get 30 minute breaks. The only bank employees I know that get 30 minutes are in the retail side. Maybe you should go back and reread your post. You implied a singular work schedule to all bofa employees.
I am glad you think those "perks" are employee benefits. In reality, the employer benefits quite a bit with these "perks." Pretending each tech worker is worth $50 an hour, and with the free lunch, gym, and commuter bus the employer get and extra 90-120 extra minutes of productivity from each employee, I'd say the real winners are the investors and employers. They just increased productivity by 20-25% with minimal cost and reduced turnover.
I guess 99% of companies are just clueless, lol. I wish more industries followed tech. It's wonderful to see a company offer so many great things, plus a nice salary with benefits. These poor employees having the option for free dental, pools, restaurants, gyms, transporation! I pray for them every night. On a serious note, you do realize companies lose money from those amenities. The main purpose is to attract and retain top talent. My friend at Google is a prime example! I do agree though that it increases productivity and you know why? Because happy employees are more productive!
You are 100% mistaken. Skills are hardly part of the picture. Especially if you are looking for funding to be an entrepreneur. It takes connections plain and simple. Or pattern matching.
Ask all the female engineers not getting funding (cough cough read Women 2.0's blog for a few minutes). Or the ones like my friend who were getting the same amount of $ as new grads after 10+ years as a developer. Or the black ones and latino ones who are busy starting networking groups to start closing the gap.
This is more of a Bay Area issue, than a VC funding issue. I'm black and work in technology myself. I also want to start a business. However I would never do business in San Francisco or the Bay Area. The first reason is mainly because it's just too expensive to do business here. And the Bay Area outside of VC funding is just way too anti-business. Didn't San Francisco move to get rid of Lyft because Taxi companies went and lobbied City Hall? I can't really hang with a government who can't stay out of the market place, and listen to complainers because they're forced to compete.
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Let's talk about reality for a minute. Blacks and latinos use smartphones at much higher rates than everyone else. Why aren't more people developing apps for these audiences? (I am not making any assumptions on what those apps might be). Why aren't more developers from these groups? Why aren't more products being marketed directly to these groups. Let's ask a more basic question, why aren't companies taking input from these groups as they make up the biggest audience for their products?
If all it took was "skill" we'd have way more Asian CEOs of tech companies (to stereotype). Last time I checked they were 97% white and male. And the same with the boards of those successful companies. Why don't you come back to me when the demographics of the senior leadership match the demographics of the rest of the employees.
So what? I love flaming hot cheetos and grandma cookies. Does this mean that the people who make those products owe me a job? I don't understand this logic, it has never made sense to me. The real question is how many black and latinos have the engineering ability to work with smart phones. How many have the expertise to design enterprise systems? How many can scale out a system like that?
There unfortunately aren't that many. And there is a reason for that. They aren't going to school for these things. They aren't really running neck and neck with white and asian engineers. The main reason is culturally black and latinos love that "right now" money. They'll get into business as long as it offers a fast buck. Neither have shown that they can do what it takes to fine tune business and expand business.
I am definitely painting it with a broad brush though, and generalizing. I'm a black male myself. I don't put myself above other black people. I've known other black professionals. But the thing is, I've met so few black people who have the same drive for technology and engineering as the average white or asian. Many blacks and latinos simply just will persue engineering because they think it's the path to more money. And they drop out when things get hard. Many blacks when they get in corporate America just try not to get fired, so the kiss ass, and go with stupid ideas that their superiors impose on them. Whites and to a lesser degree asians are far less subservient. You're a manager with a dumb idea, most white employees will speak up.
The real issue is with assertiveness. I'm a VERY assertive person. That is how I got into the field of technology. So I take that on the job with me, and I don't have my head up someone's ass all of the time because I'm happy to be the only black guy employed somewhere. I know I'm very solid technically, and I'm a strong engineer. My ability will always speak for itself. And as a result, people I've worked with no matter what race have respected me. They quickly forget my skin color when I start talking technology with them, because they know I have passion for it.
The real thing, is that it wasn't a fast process. What I know about technology is a culmination of over 20 years of self study. It all started with a dusty BASIC book that I got from my uncle when I was 14 years old. My first computer was 80286, that my mother brought home from her job, because it was about to get thrown out. I took all of that, and reading out of date books because we weren't rich to develop my tech skills. So it's cop out for a black guy like me to walk into any tech company, and just kick ass, or sell myself short because I'm black. I'm an engineer first, and a black man second.
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** FYI: I work in tech marketing and have most of my career.
My own company is fairly diverse (ethnically) for a tech company, and the dev team is full of people who are friends and have been working together for several years across several companies. There is only one person who is an "outsider" in the dev team. He came from a competitor.
The Silicon Valley meritocracy is a myth. And I won't even call you out on your blanket stereotyping of Oakland residents.
Actually many technology companies are very diverse. I had 5 meetings in the last 2 weeks. Not one white person was in one of them. The asian, Indian, Latinos in my office greatly outnumber the whites. And news flash, there aren't even that many white people IN Silicon Valley. I can walk around all parts of SV and not see a white face for awhile. And the "white" people I do see are very suspect. They probably aren't really white.
I guess 99% of companies are just clueless, lol. I wish more industries followed tech. It's wonderful to see a company offer so many great things, plus a nice salary with benefits. These poor employees having the option for free dental, pools, restaurants, gyms, transporation! I pray for them every night. On a serious note, you do realize companies lose money from those amenities. The main purpose is to attract and retain top talent. My friend at Google is a prime example! I do agree though that it increases productivity and you know why? Because happy employees are more productive!
Don't be fooled. Not every tech company offers this. People at Google are WAY too busy working to enjoy half of these things. That's really all hype. Tech workers are some of the most overworked people in any industry. They put in long and hard hours. And they're up all hours of the night working. They stay in the office late, and somtimes have to do a little work before they go to bed. Working in tech is a very thankless job. Trust me, I know. Where I work now isn't quite as bad. But where I was before, 70 hour weeks wasn't uncommon. So in tech, you have to REALLY love your job. And I mean really love technology.
Right now where I work, I'm dealing with an interesting mixture of business people and marketing people. I told one guy I work with about the possibility of having an on-call schedule. He thought it sucked, and talk about how he has stuff to do on weekends and he would never want to deal with on-call. For me, it doesn't even bother me, because I've been on-call for so many years. But that's the tech culture for you. The systems you work on are 24/7, so you have to also be as 24/7 as possible.
To be honest, I am sick of this false notion that tech is a meritocracy, and anyone who works hard will be able to get ahead. After volunteering with a nonprofit working on setting up hackathons (for recruiting interns) at historically black college campuses, when potential employers said they didn't want to go because:
1. they weren't sure about the "quality" of the students
2. all of their best developers come from their alma mater
3. they haven't ever met anyone from any school outside of the typical top 10/20 CS programs.
Where the "best idea wins," as long as you happen to be friends with or socially connected to VCs or other influencers. It is pretty cliquey. And if you don't happen to have the right people in your network, it isn't very easy to break in. Even if you work hard.
This is the media. Technology has NEVER been about the "best idea wins". It's always been about who can refine an existing idea the best.
There is nothing innovative about Facebook. You had things like Tagged, AirG, and Myspace long before it. But what Facebook did have was a more clean look, so people flocked to it.
Microsoft and Apple are hardly innovators. The first smartphone came from IBM way back in 1992. It was also touch screen at that time. But Apple made a cleaner look, so it popularized smartphones. I had been a devout Windows CE smartphone user at least for 4 years before the Iphone dropped. Windows wasn't a new idea either. Xerox created the first GUI OS, and Apple stole the idea, and subsequently Microsoft stole from them.
I could go on. Google wasn't the first search engine. But it was the first to use it's search algorithm. However algorithms like that had been around for decades. Every other search engine experience was clumsy.
Virtualization which became popular in enterprises in the late 2000s had been done on Mainframes since the mid 90s. Logical Partitioning is nothing but LPARS that mainframes had been doing for decades.
There aren't any new ideas. There just new ideas with different targets. Xerox Palo Alto OS was only marketed towards big computers. It was Apple and Microsoft who targeted it for regular users. Myspace was just a place for artist, but Facebook made it's target scalable for the common user.
It's all about marketing. And you, who is in marketing tech should know that. Even before the big tech boom, we had the console wars in Microprocessor wars in the 60s and 70s, and after that we had the console wars in the early 80s. Now it's just the internet thing. Eventually it'll be something else. I'm putting my wager in for robotics and automation. But who knows really.
It's never been about "the best idea". It's always been "bringing old ideas to new people"
You're nuts if you think Google's success had little to do with the fact that both its founding members went to Stanford. Do you REALLY believe that people are either incredibly lucky or possess some superhuman work ethic and that's how wealth is created and distributed in this country? That education and prior social connections don't matter and that everyone has an equal chance to make it? Can I please get whatever it is that you are smoking, because I want to see/experience whatever it is that you're seeing.
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The real issue is with assertiveness. I'm a VERY assertive person. That is how I got into the field of technology. So I take that on the job with me, and I don't have my head up someone's ass all of the time because I'm happy to be the only black guy employed somewhere. I know I'm very solid technically, and I'm a strong engineer. My ability will always speak for itself. And as a result, people I've worked with no matter what race have respected me. They quickly forget my skin color when I start talking technology with them, because they know I have passion for it.]
Btw, where did you develop this assertive attitude. Was it something you were lucky to be born with, or perhaps did your parents, teachers, relatives, classmates, etc all help you foster this personal attribute? Did you grow up in absolute poverty and despair, or did you have access to opportunities others might not have had? Just curious.
You're nuts if you think Google's success had little to do with the fact that both its founding members went to Stanford. Do you REALLY believe that people are either incredibly lucky or possess some superhuman work ethic and that's how wealth is created and distributed in this country? That education and prior social connections don't matter and that everyone has an equal chance to make it? Can I please get whatever it is that you are smoking, because I want to see/experience whatever it is that you're seeing.
Sure the success of Google has a lot to do with the founders going to Standford. Not to say that it doesn't. But there is no law that says only Stanford graduates can be successful in the world of technology. There are a great many tech companies, and companies that make great use to technology built by people who aren't Standford graduates. Hell, believe it or not, some of these people have never even stepped foot in the State of California. Crazy I know!
But let's not discount that the owners of startups have an insane work ethic. And I can tell you there are definitely challenges of building a startup. You can have a great idea and a lot of money, and your company can still flop. For every Facebook there are a lot of failures that never got off the ground. Pretty sure some of these places had people who were well degreed.
people hate to hear it, but in the world of tech, things are weird. You can't control innovation, nor can you can control who innovates. It's the closest thing we have in this world to a true meritocracy.
But everyone does have an equal chance to make it. Now I'm hardly some top guy who runs a company like Google. But I'm far more successful than a liberal like you feel I should be. I was born in the projects of Kansas City, Missouri to a mother who had a piece of a job making no more than $6 an hour, and a father who smoked crack and humped women.
The only reason I'm in California, working a job in technology is because technology doesn't discriminate. Now was my path to success as straight forward as some affluent kid who went to Stanford? No. But I love engineering, and I spent a lot of time studying. So sure, I had disadvantages, but I worked through them. I've read books on discrete mathematics, abstract mathematics, calculus, logic the field that spawned computer science. I read my ass off. I applied the things I learned. And with that I was actually able to get somewhere.
So who really cares where the founders of Google graduated from. You can still be successful as well. You just may need to work a little harder, but there is no harm in that. Technology is a beast. It doesn't discriminate. Anyone who understand technology, but also can control it is holding a very powerful weapon.
We should celebrate technology and not condemn it. There is nothing that the founders of Google don't know that you can't know or figure out.
Sure the success of Google has a lot to do with the founders going to Standford. Not to say that it doesn't. But there is no law that says only Stanford graduates can be successful in the world of technology. There are a great many tech companies, and companies that make great use to technology built by people who aren't Standford graduates.
So who really cares where the founders of Google graduated from. You can still be successful as well. You just may need to work a little harder, but there is no harm in that. Technology is a beast. It doesn't discriminate. Anyone who understand technology, but also can control it is holding a very powerful weapon.
We should celebrate technology and not condemn it. There is nothing that the founders of Google don't know that you can't know or figure out.
If you truly believe that if Sergey Brin and Larry Page were Cal State East Bay grads or only attended community college that they'd be in the same exact position they are in today, I guess I don't have much to say to you, since you'll believe whatever fantasy land ideas you want; like tech being the ultimate meritocracy.
It's great that you've found the success you have, but your story is definitely the exception, not the rule.
I guess 99% of companies are just clueless, lol. I wish more industries followed tech. It's wonderful to see a company offer so many great things, plus a nice salary with benefits. These poor employees having the option for free dental, pools, restaurants, gyms, transporation! I pray for them every night. On a serious note, you do realize companies lose money from those amenities. The main purpose is to attract and retain top talent. My friend at Google is a prime example! I do agree though that it increases productivity and you know why? Because happy employees are more productive!
If it didn't help the bottom line and profits (or stock prices) they would stop offering these amenities in a heart beat. They are making up for these costs elsewhere ...
This "nice salary comes at a cost of longer working weeks. Which you may enjoy, but as Zuckerberg says, he doesn't hire people over 30 because they have families and stuff and don't want 70 hour work weeks in exchange for free lunch and onsite laundry.
I've met a lot of hard working black tech entrepreneurs and very few of them are finding easy access to capital and angel funding to get their ideas off the ground compared to their peers with the "right pattern."
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