1) A not so groundbreaking view of Silicon Valley: I came here 15 years ago, because after returning to the US it seemed that everything in southern California was FIRE sector: finance, insurance, real estate. This included fraudulent companies that would implode within 2 years.

2) Silicon Valley companies seemed to be _actually making new products people wanted_, instead of offering subprime mortgages and inflating a housing bubble.

3) I had been doing some "software plumbing" contracting between trips overseas: release engineering, maintaining IBM's suite of config management projects -- themselves soon to be obsoleted by git and other products.

4) I drove up to San José for a job interview at Cisco which I had arranged from the LA area. The interview went awful, as it was a contract position with most of the team in Florida and the rest not able to ask questions.

5) I had another interview within two days, and another contract offer which started within a couple of weeks with IBM's castle-on-a-hill research division in Almaden.

6) The researchers there were delivering software almost via mainframe and I suggested abandoning the entire effort to move them to the Rational product suite and quit the contract, an hour before the lead developers suggested the same.

7) I spent part of the summer waiting for Google's hiring process to complete, and then started a dream job as an L4 release engineer at the G.

8) During my first stint at Google I did a lot of scut work on large-scale production projects.

9) After running what amounted to air-traffic control on a lot of early projects -- this was during the move of systems to borg, before most of the modern distributed build system or the introduction of Go -- I was lucky enough to work up to the GWS release rotation.

10) So far, so good. Mostly tried to figure out things while working with smart and experienced people and getting a glimpse of what was possible.

11) Because of a lot of personal stuff, I took time off from things and spent time traveling, meeting friends, and working on side projects at the TechShop in Menlo Park.

12) And, in 2010, joined a former coworker as a release engineer at Facebook.

FB needed air traffic controller-style release engineers then, who would keep up with the aggressive release schedule for what was at that point a very manual, twitchy PHP monolith.

13) So for 15 months I worked 60+ hours a week chasing releases in what was colloquially known as "clowntown." Red noses and all, until HR complaints mounted.

14) This was an incredible opportunity that was also incredibly stressful. I wish I had made more of it -- but it was also physically and mentally draining and traded on a sense of vigilance which I developed elsewhere.

15) Lesson learned: I try not to build systems or processes that trade on these methods any more. They don't depend on engineering -- they depend on the exhaustion of one set of personnel to insulate others. It's the opposite of DevOps.

16) I'd figure that FB has gone through major changes in release culture and technology in the last decade, and the business reasons for these methods (pre-IPO) do not exist today.

17) How do I know this? Because of the number of former Facebook employees who have started (and sometimes, sold) companies based on technologies and methods which started there ... ODS, SCUBA, Phabricator etc.

18) Anyway ... these ideas get passed around and refined throughout Silicon Valley. One person didn't discover continuous delivery any more than one person is responsible for Facebook News Feed or Google Search.

19) I mean, unless someone is selling something or asking for a promotion.

At least get your name on things, like PageRank.

I think ClownTown is already taken by a retail chain and several horror movies.

20) It would have been impossible for me to learn everything I needed to know at a single place, and get the progressive experience required to develop my career at one place, even at dream jobs in Silicon Valley.

21) I say this as someone who has never received a promotion within a company in the last 15 years.

22) The only way I've advanced has been through changing jobs.

23) If you're wondering why the average tenure is so low in Silicon Valley, it's because the technical system is geared toward sharing knowledge between practitioners, not because everyone sucks and they all get fired in 6 months.

24) Pre-pandemic, companies could find people who had a lot of experience and get them in to interviews, where even sourcing in other locations would have taken 6+ months

25) Now, of course, companies can interview people remotely, all across the world, for jobs which are also distributed / remote.

26) This works until you have an enforceable noncompete clause in some jurisdiction.

27) If any of my employers had an option to keep me from working in ... what?

Computers? Internet? Release Engineering? SRE? Cloud?

My tech career would have ended in 2009.

28) A two-year freeze on knowledge transfer between similar industries would have stopped the Valley dead as well.

The adages are "it's a small Valley," and "it's really all one company."

We didn't just invent remote work. Distributed teams have been working fine for years.

29) The hesitancy, before 2020, was because it's hard to interview people and a rapidly growing industry has a lot of inexperienced managers. It's easier for a team to come to alignment -- on hiring, on motivation, on strategic effort -- face to face.

30) Silicon Valley often coats what is economically necessary with the veneer of vision.

Commercial real estate prices rising? Let me tell you how amazing this unadorned, concrete box, open office is!

Prices for skilled labor rising? We pick our geniuses straight from the tree!

31) Employees with market power legitimately think they're going to be sick, hospitalized, or die if they go to an office? And it's worse if they're older or sedentary?

Well, let me tell you about the incredible future of working from home! No commute! Such productive!

32) Geez, I wonder what the future holds for socially distant, 50% max occupancy buildings (mandated by county health departments) over the next 18 months?

Amazing "focus pods" and "collaboration zones," known as offices and cubicles.

33) Who wants that tech cafeteria experience or ball pit now?

34) I could continue this part of the rant, but that's enough. Greetings to my two readers and a dozen bots.

Stay healthy, and best wishes for a better 2021.