It was always like that; just plenty of people naive enough not to realize that.

It kinda was though. It was Stanford grads living inexpensively due to cheap agriculture land and creating lots of interesting things in a chill mediterranean climate. A way different place with way different motivations and very low stress due to cheap cost of living.

"Office Space" was a 1999 movie based on Mike Judge's Silicon Valley experience from the 80's. "Silicon Valley" was his updated take on it I suppose.

It was always about money, and it always will be about money.

"Don't be evil" was a silly cultural builder mantra and marketing tool.

> It was always about money, and it always will be about money.

There were people like that in the old days (TJ Rogers, Larry Ellison) but also a lot of hippie-influenced folks with an idealistic world view. People literally talked about making the world a better place without irony.

But when the .com boom appeared people flooded here for the money and, since it appeared "make the world better" was one of the things people said, it was cargo-culted widely ("we're making the world a better place by allowing advertisers to reach audiences they were previously excluded from").

Fortunately the density of idealists is higher in SV and density of narcissists higher in SF. But yes, the quality has gone down.

I'm sure those people existed, but money and power is money and power and influences everything as it always does.

I'd say the valley is still mostly free from the idea bros. Many of them got caught up in crypto which was largely an East Coast phenomenon.

> Silicon Valley was once the domain of nerds and introverts trying to build a better future.

Silicon Valley used to be "Defense Valley" because it built weapons systems for the DOD long before the web came around. It was never the domain of nerds and introverts trying to build a better future, it has always been evil and done evil for the sake of capitalism.