Google Ventures General Partner: "Increasingly, it feels like people in our industry, the tech industry, are losing touch with reality."

From M.G.  Siegler at 500ish Words*:

Arrogance Peaks in Silicon Valley
As we slip out of touch with reality…

There’s something that has been in the back of my mind for some time now. And while it pre-dates the Facebook fiasco, that situation certainly brings it to the forefront. Increasingly, it feels like people in our industry, the tech industry, are losing touch with reality.

You can see it in the tweets. You can hear it at tech conferences. Hell, you can hear it at most cafes in San Francisco on any given day. People — really smart people — saying some of the most vacuous things. Words that if they were able to take a step outside of their own heads and hear, they’d be embarrassed by.

Or, at least, these are stances, thoughts, and ideas that these people should be embarrassed by. But they’re clearly not because they keep saying them.

This isn’t only about Facebook — far from it. That’s just the most high profile and timely example of a company suffering from some of this. And in that case, it’s really more in their responses to the Cambridge Analytica situation, rather than the situation itself (which is another matter, though undoubtedly related). They don’t know the right things to say because they don’t know what to say, period. Because they’ve slipped out of touch....MORE

*M.G. Siegler General Partner @ GV (née Google Ventures). In past lives I wrote at TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and ParisLemon. A man of few words. Except when writing

Note from the editor

As someone who used to write for a living, I believe most things that I read on the internet these days are far too verbose. With that in mind, I try to keep everything here around 500 words. Sometimes it will be a bit less. Often a bit more. Sometimes quite a bit more. But I try. Thanks for reading.