Having lived here for more than 10 years I have several friends from big tech like Meta and Google. I didnāt pay much heed to this earlier but quite a bit of my circle is really obsessed with where they work and always associating their identity and self worth with it. I donāt use social media, even though I work at one and mEtAmAtEs around me just canāt get around this. They often make fun of me being on a high horse and ask me to use IG and FB, but I just donāt like those platforms. I donāt even use Snapchat outside of work from Monday - Friday. But theyāre just so obsessed with the products that the company where they work at owns, so many even shill about Threads, which no one even outside of Meta recalls anymore. Then there are others - a big overlap with the previous group where they overreact to every stock move. Meta has been on a tear in the last few months, a 10% drop last week and our WhatsApp group has been blowing as if Meta has fallen back to $80 and these guys would need to line up for the food bank queue. Totally ignoring the fact that most of them have bought multi-million $ homes and are still looking to buy more stuff, all while vacationing in Europe and buying expensive shit. I just find this behavior ridiculous and call for attention. Making a mountain out of a molehill. Iām genuinely curious, do people like to live like this? In worry all their life? Is this normal and Iām the abnormal one here? TC: $560k
It seems the problem here is meta mates- I did not see a mention of googlers in your rant or even Apple &netflix. It could be the culture of meta which forces them to be that way.
I didnāt want to say this explicitly - but yes, your observation is right. I often see them claiming victories about product launches on our WhatsApp group. Itās so weird, no one else does that. And it all makes sense - they often tell me how they have to post stuff on their internal workplace and claim how they made āimpaccā, but when it trickles like this into their personal life I just find it really weird. Itās like they just want to claim everything as their own doing.
You are unfortunately right- especially about posting things on internal workplace. I think itās the only place I have heard people blowing their own horn like that- that said, itās no excuse for them to bring that shit to the rest of us. There is more to life than work At @op how about maybe you move to a city - San Francisco maybe - Iāve found itās easier to meet other professionals as opposed to if you live in say Sunnyvale
The Bayās is a sad, dystopian monoculture, where everyone fixates on the same small set of things. Itās the inevitable result of an economy where everyone has the same skillset and works in the same industry. Seattleās not far behind.
Yes whenever I visit Seattle I get the same feeling. Just worse weather.
tbh there's a lot of people like this even in nyc - they are maybe slighlty less superficial but talk to tech people at squareu/cash and it always comes bcak to these topics - stocks, rsu stock price, meta. its a tech people thing, a lot of us are really really into money
The Bay Area is a very boring place. What else is there to really talk about?
Get out of the circle of boring people. Make friends with people that have more going on in their life than work and can take pride in their own accomplishments rather than having to ride on their employersā coattails.
Sounds like an Indian friend group. You need new friends. They always care about the material things and prestige
Yes, Indian. And itās been really ridiculous since the time they started earning multi-million TCs for literally no doing of theirs. Been pretty funny on our WA group in the last few days. They are calling me ābig guyā now just because SNAP went up 30% while totally ignoring the fact that weāre down more than 80% and my TC is up just because of some additional equity grants which run out later this year. And they act as if theyāre now making $100k after making $1.5-2M+ TC
Yea Iām Indian American and Iāve noticed this among my first generation Indian friends. I will say Bay Area is becoming more and more of a monoculture as housing costs have exploded. Op if you want to avoid this, make friends with interests outside of tech. Find people who want to go hiking, or see a concert, rather than people who want to talk about mortgages or RSUs
When your biggest achievement in life, something that sets you apart, something that makes you apparently better than others - is getting into FAANG and collecting RSU refreshers - this becomes their life. It is no different from NYC finance bros comparing bonuses or simping over Goldman CDO fund with 1.5% expense ratio that will let them have a carry for 5 years.
Lol Iām glad I donāt meet my NY friends that often, they also show those traits at times but much much better than Bay Area.
The ones that react to every stock move annoy tf out of me. Seen them outside the bay area too.
Nearly everyone at G is pretty autistic. Woo hoo, DEI at work!
If you just look at blind, it is a miserable place. No hobby, no passion, just TC and prestige. These are the empty things after you make good enough money.
TC or GTFO!
Move to LA. No one cares about tech down here and most people you meet are in other industries. Also better weather and way hotter chicks.
The problem with that is there are few tech options down there- were you to lose your job, you will have to come back to the bay
Yeah. Snap is my last job ever, but a concern.