# "Silicon Valley Guy" stereotype? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 13, 2017, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189 "2017-07-13T18:50:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/21 "2017-07-16T17:29:33Z")
In 1952 I drove a delivery route from Oakland down through San Jose and back up the Peninsula to San Francisco. It was called the Blossom Valley. San Jose was just a small farm town. Once stopped for mass at a small church and the service was in Portuguese. In 1959 I bought a house near Leigh and Blossom Hill road. The drive to the IBM labs was through farm land. At one spot the road went between a pair of ancient pepper trees. When they dropped their pods the whole area was pink. Years later they were cut down to make room for a parking lot. Now it’s called Pepper Tree Plaza. I left the Valley in 1996. It was still hardware engineering with manual checking of mask layers. Sometime after 2000 silicon compilers and Taiwan foundries took over. Fairchild and National Semiconductor are long gone. Crane ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/22 "2017-07-16T17:52:13Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > There is still a lot of wafer fab capacity in the US. What really went offshore was almost all assembly and a lot of test. Typical for me was to have wafers gabbed in the US, shipped to Malaysia for assembly, shipped back to the US for test, then shipped to OEM assembly (usually back overseas). Assembly and test were the first to go because of high labor content. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/23 "2017-07-16T19:04:57Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > Nah. Software engineers could be hardware engineers but they have really short attention spans. I wish! Something resembling this conversation happens way more often than I’d like: S) Hey, I’ve got this bug X on generation 5 of our hardware… H) That was like 6 years ago. We’ve made 3 new architectures since then and are working on the fourth. I don’t remember. S) We’re still shipping gen 5! Fine. Ok, I guess this is a long shot, but what about bug Y on gen 5? H) Oh, that one’s easy, since the unit hasn’t changed in years. S) Why not? It’s not like it isn’t riddled with bugs. H) Yes, but the guy that originally made it retired. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/24 "2017-07-16T19:12:01Z")
“Read the current data sheet. Both ‘bugs’ are now features” Crane ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/25 "2017-07-16T20:05:38Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > And a bit further south, orchards–lots and lots of orchards. Up until the mid-sixties it was [The Valley of Heart’s Delight](http://inthevalleyofheartsdelightcom.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/9/2/10924499/1332288651.jpg). Del Monte and Libby’s had major canning facilities here. We moved to San Jose in the late 60s when my dad got a job at IBM. Our subdivision was surrounded by orchards back then. Not many of those fruit trees left. ☹ Yup. I moved to Sunnyvale in 1978 and the orchards were pretty well gone by then. Near my apartment, where two roads diverged there was a triangular bit of land with about twenty trees on it and that was it. There were two types of cannery, fruit and tomato. A lot of the fruit cocktail in this country was canned there because, except for the pineapple, everything grew in the county, and the pineapple was easily shipped in because there was a saltwater connection. Those closed up when the fruit was gone. The tomato canneries kept going for a while with [tub flatbeds](https://localwiki.org/davis/Tomato_Trucks) of toms being trucked in from San Joaquin Valley but about 1985 those closed, too. I’d read about it in January but forgotten when tomato season started. All early summer I had the impression something was missing but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I was driving south on I-5 and a tomato truck went barrelling by the other direction. “That’s it!” ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/26 "2017-07-16T20:44:34Z")
In 78 there was still a remnant of a plum orchard on Matisse, behind the Sunnyvale community center. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2017, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/27 "2017-07-16T20:51:52Z")
Just looked it up on Google Earth - the orchard is still there. It’s called Heritage Park. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189/28 "2017-07-17T16:16:16Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > I left the Valley in 1996. It was still hardware engineering with manual checking of mask layers. Sometime after 2000 silicon compilers and Taiwan foundries took over. Fairchild and National Semiconductor are long gone. Your timeline is about 10 years off. The last design I did where I manually checked mask layers was in 1987 (that was for connectivity; automated checking for design rules pre-dates my work experience). Logic synthesis started taking off in the early 90s (as an analog/mixed-signal designer I was only peripherally affected), and TSMC/UMC were also getting well established at that time - that was the “fabless revolution” that I mentioned in an earlier post. I know I did my first TSMC design in 1994, and a co-worker had been designing in that process for a year or two. National Semiconductor existed independently until six years ago when it was acquired by TI. Fairchild was acquired last year by ON Semiconductor. AFAIK the majority of the Silicon Valley operations of those two companies are still in operation, just with different signs on the buildings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/silicon-valley-guy-stereotype/791189.md?page=1)