It is best to be the CEO; it is satisfactory to be an early employee, maybe the fifth or sixth or perhaps the tenth. Alternately, one may become an engineer devising precious algorithms in the cloisters of Google and its like. Otherwise, one becomes a mere employee. A coder of websites at Facebook is no one in particular. A manager at Microsoft is no one. A person (think woman) working in customer relations is a particular type of no one, banished to the bottom, as always, for having spoken directly to a non-technical human being. All these and others are ways for strivers to fall by the wayside — as the startup culture sees it — while their betters race ahead of them. Those left behind may see themselves as ordinary, even failures.

~ Ellen Ullman

Ellen Ullman Silicon Valley Software Development Startups Strivers Technology Venture Capital

In November 2011, San Francisco magazine ran a story on female entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and illustrated it by superimposing the featured women's heads onto male bodies. The only body type they could imagine for successful entrepreneurship was wearing a tie or a hoodie. Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby.

~ Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg Empowerment Silicon Valley Women

He was certifiably insane, an Ayn Rander who fancied himself an Übermensch and “the Singularity’s chosen avatar

~ Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen Internet John Mcafee Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist