鈥淵OU CAN SENSE IT in some of the companies, that people are almost
giddy with excitement about what they鈥檙e participating in,鈥� says Chuck Darrah.
鈥淚t鈥檚 like: Boy! I just wish I wasn鈥檛 working so much. I know it鈥檚 not fair to
my wife, my kids, my husband, my whatever. But God! It鈥檚 so heady.鈥�
An infectious enthusiasm pervades Silicon Valley鈥攖he sense that this is
the place where the future is being invented. For some people, says Darrah, this
is a high-tech Mecca; the only place where they can find out what they鈥檙e truly
capable of. Others just come to make money. 鈥淏ut most people,鈥� he says, 鈥渁re in
this incredibly happy `best of all worlds鈥� where they can make good money while
pursuing these wonderful engineering challenges.鈥�
As chairman of the anthropology department at San Jos茅 State
University, Darrah is in a good position to judge. With colleagues Jan
English-Lueck and James Freeman, and a host of students, Darrah has spent eight
years recording the habits and views of thousands of people who live in the
valley. Why? Well, one thing guaranteed to excite anthropologists is news of a
tribe that has never been seen by Western eyes. And that鈥檚 what has happened
here: Silicon Valley has developed a unique culture. So like Margaret Mead
crossing the Pacific to study the Samoans, Darrah and his team have stepped
boldly across their thresholds to observe their neighbours.
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They have focused not on the 27-year-old billionaires who spring up from the
valley every few years, but on the 鈥渓ittle people鈥� who toil behind the modern,
glass fronts of companies such as Adobe, Apple, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard.
鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at a culture,鈥� says English-Lueck. 鈥淭hat means the daily lives of
people, how people create meaning, how people live in groups and the rules by
which they live in the groups.鈥�
On the surface, Silicon Valley culture wouldn鈥檛 look out of place in Chicago
or St Louis. But dig deeper and certain characteristics of valley life appear
grossly exaggerated. The team has found that two things in particular dominate
the lives of ordinary people: work and the specific nature of that
work鈥攕cience and technology.
There is a strong tendency for valley dwellers to see life through an
engineer鈥檚 eyes, as a series of 鈥減roblems鈥� to be solved, says Darrah. And they
turn to technology to solve those problems. People worried about their
children鈥檚 whereabouts, for example, buy them pagers. 鈥淧aging your children to
let them know you are concerned that they arrived home safely from school
demonstrates parental responsibility,鈥� says English-Lueck.
Reflex action
Another common reflex for solving problems is to set up a database. Take the
software engineer who left work to have a baby. 鈥淭he way she approached this was
to think of child-rearing as another technical problem to be solved,鈥� says
English-Lueck. 鈥淪he mastered the literature the way she mastered the literature
on a particular computer language.鈥� The woman created a database of articles on
parenting which became a resource for other mothers, who would call or e-mail
her for advice.
The trend for approaching everything as a technical problem extends even to
the way people view their own lives. 鈥淥ne person told me how his therapist is
encouraging him to write a mission statement for his life,鈥� English-Lueck says.
Personal mission statements are becoming de rigueur and can lead to a
lengthy management process. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 just say what鈥檚 the goal, but what are
the goals to implement the goal, how do you monitor your own life and make sure
that you鈥檙e implementing the goal appropriately,鈥� she adds.
The intrusion of work and working methods into daily life is nowhere more
obvious than in the way people handle relationships. In other places, people
make a distinction between work and social relationships but in the valley, the
two are completely intertwined. All relationships are assessed for the value
they can add to your working life.
Darrah tells of an interviewee who went to hear his two-year-old sing at
nursery school and overheard one father ask another where he鈥檇 got his child鈥檚
Tamagotchi. The answer was a conference and the men then struck up a
conversation: 鈥淪o what conference? What kind of engineering are you in? Who do
you work for?鈥� Now, said Darrah鈥檚 interviewee, picture the scene: 鈥淭here鈥檚 12 of
us parents in a circle, there鈥檚 two-year-old kids, we鈥檙e singing Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star, and these two are going at it, exchanging business
cards and e-mail addresses.鈥�
This behaviour, says Darrah, would be considered grossly inappropriate
anywhere else, even in the US. 鈥淏ut not here,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檝e both speared crab
puffs off the same hors d鈥檕euvres plate and that makes us bonded in a way that
makes it completely fair game to talk business. That鈥檚 the ritual.鈥�
The notion that everything must add value to your work operates not only on a
personal level, but also at community level. In Silicon Valley, community is
something that improves your lot鈥攖he gardens kept up by the parks
department or courses run by the local community college. 鈥淭he idea of community
as just being people who live around you, and whose lives your life is
intertwined with is strikingly missing,鈥� says Darrah.
Temple of tomorrow
Companies also see community as something that can add value. During the
recession of the early 1990s, when the Silicon Valley phenomenon looked as if it
might sink without trace, an organisation made up of major corporations called
The Joint Venture held public forums to promote the idea of laying fibre optics
throughout the valley to improve communications. With the wiring in place, the
companies would then market the idea overseas: 鈥淭his is the way they do it in
the cutting edge temple of tomorrow.鈥� It was quite overt, Darrah says, that 鈥渢he
community was something that you experimented on and used as part of your
尘补谤办别迟颈苍驳鈥�.
With people using their friends and companies using everyone for their own
ends, it would be easy to become cynical about Silicon Valley. But this misses
the point that most people know what鈥檚 going on and are happy to play along. 鈥淎
lot of the people that we interview are quite conscious that they are
extraordinarily lucky and privileged to be working on engineering problems that
other people back in their home country or city can only dream about,鈥� says
Darrah. 鈥淢any people really believe that what they鈥檙e doing, in all sincerity,
is going to change the world and change it for the better.鈥�
