Comment by onetimeusename
1 month ago
I don't think it's wrong to go back that far. I think SV is it what it is because of those companies but also the schools, some local charm and quirks, etc. and the same reasoning applies there. The tech companies begot more tech companies basically. Before Meta and Alphabet it was Microsoft and Yahoo and before MS it was Sun and Netscape and before that Oracle maybe and the list keeps going back and add in hacker culture in the Bay Area I guess which existed for a long time. It's a fair thing to point out.
Immigration to SV is probably a result of SV success not the other way around. Likewise, why would immigrants even come here if there was nothing for them before they arrived? I think the adulation of immigration is historical revisionism. Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.
> Sure, immigrants now contribute but they did not build SV.
"If you bulid it, they will come".
In the power curve growth of SV fortunes "home grown" second, third, fourth generation, and longer immigrants certainly built the groundwork, drawing upon education from schools founded upon Oxbridge and other offshore inspirations, absolutely as you say, all the same more recent first generation immigrants played a big part in inflating it sky high.
With no additional immigrants drawn to SV it's not hard to imagine SV stalling out at 1980s Microsoft levels, impressive but far short of where it is today.
>I don't think it's wrong to go back that far.
I think in a discussion about the effect of immigration on the current state of an area, in this case Silicon Valley, you can totally reference its history if you are making a claim about a chain of events. If instead, you skip over 50 years of history which includes multiple generations of how the industry worked and multiple generations of immigration policy, to start talking about
> The highly selective immigration policy that prevailed from 1924-1965 is likely a key reason why so many Silicon Valley companies were founded by immigrants
then you are making a narrative that has nothing to do with the point, and I am unwilling to accept your framing.