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We're Not All Millionaires
The rest of the world has a distorted view of the Silicon Valley
By Brian D. Rossman
When did you realize that you were a millionaire? For me, this epiphany occurred on my last trip out of the Valley.
"Taxi," I yelled from the valet area of my Georgetown hotel in Washington, D.C., as I was trying to get to the airport. Several minutes later, my yellow coach arrived.
"Where would you like to go, sir?" my driver inquired in a thick Peruvian accent.
"The airport, please, my plane leaves in an hour and a half."
"OK," he replied.
A few minutes later, after he had extricated the vehicle from one of D.C.'s countless circles, he asked, "Where are you flying?"
"San Jose," I answered.
"You mean, Silicon Valley," he chimed excitedly, much of his accent falling away as he uttered the ubiquitous name.
"Yes," I said.
"I love the Internet," the cabby confided. "Whenever I am waiting for a fare, I surf the Net. In fact, I have my laptop here in the front seat."
I normally would have engaged him in some sort of related dialogue, but it was 5 a.m. EST and after two days of meetings I was beat. Apparently, he didn't notice, because he continued the conversation by himself.
"Do you work in Silicon Valley?" He turned and looked at me for confirmation, ignoring the red light he sped through.
"Yes," I said hurriedly, hoping my answer would return his eyes to the road.
"You must be rich, huh?" He eyed me like I was royalty.
"I beg your pardon?" I didn't understand the connection he was making at that moment, and I was too tired to ask for a detailed clarification.
Thinking I was a dimwit, my driver laid out his train of thought for me: "You work for a startup. You have lots of [stock] options. Your company goes public. You must be rich."
Even without my morning espresso, he'd made his vision of Silicon Valley crystal clear. He made our successes sound so self-evident, so matter-of-fact, so easy. Apparently, the Silicon Valley story that we export is much different than the version we experience every day.
Granted, we do have our option babies, those out-of-school peach-fuzz engineers who seem to be overnight millionaires. And the statistics do support the contention that the ranks of the very wealthy are growing.
According to a June 1998 Congressional report, the number of High-Income Earners (annual income greater than $100,000) in California has increased dramatically over the past five years.
With 2,158,051 people having reportedly earned more than $100,000 in 1996 (clearly the figures are much higher today), it does seem that there are a lot of potential millionaires in this state. With a 1996 California population total of 32,383,000, however, these high-rollers represent less than 7 percent of our state's total demographic.
Yet, as showcased by my taxi driver, the myth that everyone in our neck of the woods is a millionaire is quite a PR job by the media and our high-tech industry.
As the cab came to a stop at the departure section of Dulles, I said, honestly perplexed, "I don't know how to answer that." I fumbled with my luggage, still lost in an introspective haze. Why was I not a millionaire? Is there something wrong with me? Can't I measure up? This internal dialogue stayed with me during the flight home. Dozing off, I thought about my family, my friends, my life. I realized that not being a millionaire was not a bad label and not un-Silicon Valley.
I suddenly understood what had been bothering me. My driver had only a superficial picture of our region. In his view, it stood for greed. To me, Silicon Valley is synonymous with passion, hard work, innovation and autonomy.
Are we doing anyone a favor when we advertise our many successes without highlighting the efforts underlying those feats? Do we minimize our achievements by not trumpeting the energy and will that gave birth to them? As a colleague of mine was fond of saying to those who marveled at the results--but not the means--of his lifelong accomplishments, "It took me 20 years to become an overnight success."
As we approach the millennium, it is sometimes helpful to look beyond our own myopic vision and see ourselves through other people's eyes. Of course, when those eyes are wearing rose-colored lenses, the view can be quite distorted.
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Campbell, California
