Will our tech industry in Silicon Valley remain awesome, however? I've been working in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, and it seems to me that power in our industry within the past decade has consolidated to a small handful of companies. I'm hearing less these days about startups disrupting incumbents, and I'm hearing more about incumbents entrenching their gains. Even when it comes to career choices, it seems these days that more young people are opting for the Leetcode grind in hopes to join a FAANG or another high-paying Silicon Valley firm instead of starting a company. After all, it's hard to start a company in a garage when renting a home with a garage is prohibitively expensive for many people.

My concern is that Silicon Valley could end up becoming a place where it's all about entrenched incumbents, where it would be too difficult for startups and small businesses to compete, and where those who'd otherwise be willing and ready to compete against the incumbents are stymied by extremely high housing prices that discourage risk-taking, not to mention regulatory capture from the incumbents. Silicon Valley could morph into a place that stifles innovation instead of encourages it.

While I'm on this topic, it also seems to me that Silicon Valley collectively is losing the social goodwill it once had. I remember a decade ago people outside of the tech industry being very excited when they heard of one of their friends getting a job at a company like Google or Facebook. Google was still seen as one of the "good guys," and Facebook was still seen as a tool people loved that allowed them to connect with their friends and family. Yes, there was discontent in some parts of the Bay Area about gentrification fueled by an influx of tech residents combined with long-standing restrictions on housing development, but the broader society still thought highly of the tech industry and Silicon Valley in particular. Today that goodwill has been eroded. There are many people who don't think highly of the current generation of tech leaders; Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman seem to bring out different emotions than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did during their heydays (and I know Jobs and Gates had their detractors).

The difference, though, between Silicon Valley today and Silicon Valley in the past, however, is that Silicon Valley is a deeper part of our everyday lives today than it was in the past. The tech industry is bigger than personal computers and e-commerce; the tech industry today plays a major part of our lives. Tech has become vital infrastructure, much like how energy and telecommunication companies are. Maybe in the early days of electrification and telecommunications companies like PG&E and AT&T were better regarded, but eventually as these companies played an increasingly integral part of peoples' lives, these companies exploited this fact, and thus they lost their social goodwill. I can also think about how cars in American society undergone a transformation from being seen as a liberating force to being seen by some as an oppressive force (e.g., facilitating urban sprawl, car-dependent commuting, soul-crushing traffic congestion, etc.). Perhaps the tech industry has entered this life cycle, but I could definitely be wrong.