Rapid-fire change, especially in personnel, sends up warning flags. Those values fade, however, in a commercial world where getting a product to market first matters more than meeting government specifications. Silicon Valley is intimately acquainted with the roller coaster ride of start-ups. Since David Packard and Bill Hewlett started their company in a Palo Alto garage in 1939, the Valley has been a crowded hothouse of new ventures. People start companies just a few blocks from the place they once worked.
New ventures fill up office spaces vacated by their faltering, older brethren.
Sun Microsystems Corp. That physical proximity means that people can switch employers without disrupting the rest of their lives. Some people say they wake up thinking they work for Silicon Valley. Their loyalty is more to advancing technology or to the region than it is to any individual firm. Atri Chatterjee agrees. In the old days, if you worked for IBM, you could move from one division to another.