Lady in Silicon Valley
Blog: A Lady in London - 7 November 2009
I grew up in Silicon Valley. Intel, Cisco, and Oracle were household names in my town not just because everyone used their products, but because everyone's parents were employed by them. As a kid I didn't realize how unique my home was; I thought everyone's parents—except for mine, of course—became paper millionaires overnight and every household had at least three computers by 1986. And while I was stuck driving a 1992 Dodge Caravan to school every morning, most of my classmates were embarrassed that their BMWs were only 3 series. It was, as we came to call it, a bubble.
In 2000, the bubble burst not only for most of those paper millionaires, but also for my somewhat skewed sense of reality. Going to college in a rundown industrial city struggling to reinvent itself in a post-industrial world, my time in Providence opened my eyes to the fact that there were other sectors besides tech, other employers besides dot coms, and other ways to make a living besides selling a product that didn't exist yet (and probably never would).
Not caving to my mother's intense pressure to become an engineer—she all but offered to pay for four more years of school in return for a BS in CS when she came for Parents' Weekend my junior year—I escaped Silicon Valley's techy siren calls for the more traditional world of finance. But three years of Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund later, I found myself in London looking for a job at a tech startup.
Something about the work-hard play-hard culture of the tech world, the excitement of innovation, and the strong entrepreneurial drive of the industry brought me back to the fold. Not long later, I landed a job in London with a company that is headquartered three blocks from my high school in Silicon Valley. Now that's dot com luck for you.
Something about the work-hard play-hard culture of the tech world, the excitement of innovation, and the strong entrepreneurial drive of the industry brought me back to the fold. Not long later, I landed a job in London with a company that is headquartered three blocks from my high school in Silicon Valley. Now that's dot com luck for you.
This past week I was out in Silicon Valley catching up with my coworkers at headquarters and getting trained on some new products that I'm going to start selling in France, Spain, and Italy. In true Silicon Valley fashion, my days were filled with back-to-back meetings, power lunches (Mexican, please!), and power coffees (at one point I was averaging three a day, which is a lot for someone that hardly knows a latte from an espresso).
Of course there was also the occasional day when our Customer Service department cooked us all pancakes and eggs in the office. There was also an office happy hour in which I won a wine tasting contest and took home the prize of some fabulous Le Creuset dishes that will probably gather dust in my kitchen for the next ten years since my boyfriend and I never cook.
The days were hot hot hot, and I took advantage of the outdoor dining and coffee destinations as much as possible. One day the mercury reached 90 degrees F (that's 32 for all you C people), and I was torn between feeling too hot and being thankful for the rare bit of vitamin D my pasty expat skin will get this year.
The days were hot hot hot, and I took advantage of the outdoor dining and coffee destinations as much as possible. One day the mercury reached 90 degrees F (that's 32 for all you C people), and I was torn between feeling too hot and being thankful for the rare bit of vitamin D my pasty expat skin will get this year.
This of course was tempered by a rogue thunderstorm with fistfuls of lightning and no rain whatsoever. I have never seen anything like in in San Francisco, and wasn't surprised to hear everyone on the street saying that they thought it was an earthquake when it woke them up in the middle of the night.
Weather aside, in the evenings I either battled traffic to head up to my apartment in San Francisco or headed to my mother's house in rural Silicon Valley (yep, it's rural; we have deer and rabbits and mountain lions and everything). On my nights in San Francisco, I met up with friends and family for meals at Gitane, a new gypsy-themed restaurant on Claude Lane that could only do well in America (who would go to a gypsy-themed restaurant in Europe?); Luna Park, an old favorite in the Mission; and Zushi Puzzle, the best sushi restaurant this side of Tokyo.
On my nights in Silicon Valley, I laid low at my mom's house or went to dinner at local favorites. Because we never made it up to wine country, my mom was kind enough to break out a couple bottles from her last trip, my favorite of which was a big, bold Zin from Bella Vineyards in Sonoma County.
The fun startup culture, the warm California sun, the amazing food, the outstanding wine, and the good company were all tempting me to extend my stay in Silicon Valley. Returning to what I had heard was a rainy week in London wasn't the most appealing thought. Nor was the fact that my boyfriend was flying out to the Valley for work the day I was to return to London.
The fun startup culture, the warm California sun, the amazing food, the outstanding wine, and the good company were all tempting me to extend my stay in Silicon Valley. Returning to what I had heard was a rainy week in London wasn't the most appealing thought. Nor was the fact that my boyfriend was flying out to the Valley for work the day I was to return to London.
But.
Nothing gold can stay, and my golden California summer had to come to an end yesterday morning. As I left home for the airport, I realized that while the the Valley's dot com bubble may have burst long ago, there's a second bubble made of much stronger stuff that will be forever luring me back home.
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