思考与写作paulgraham.com
城市与雄心（2008）
Cities and Ambition (2008)
2008 — 2018，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Paul Graham 2008 年的经典随笔《城市与雄心》：每个雄心勃勃的城市都会向居民传递一种隐含的信息——纽约说“你应该更有钱”，剑桥说“你应该更聪明”，硅谷说“你应该更有影响力”。文章探讨这些信息如何塑造人的抱负，以及选择居住地就是选择被什么样的信息浸染。
为什么经久不衰：它把“住在哪座城市”这个现实选择提炼成“你在听哪种信息”的思考框架，十几年后对远程办公时代考虑去留的人依然切中要害。
HN 评论精选
以亲身经历反驳 PG 对湾区的浪漫化描述：湾区充满阶层壁垒和单向竞争，文化比纽约更怪。
我在湾区住了几年，感受却不太一样——也许是我的问题。我最大的印象是：湾区极度渴望富有，却又对此隐隐不安。它与纽约和南加州存在一种基本是单向的竞争关系。尤其在半岛地区，阶层结构明显得奇怪：斯坦福周边的创业圈非常诡异，我认识的那些年轻人从“宽裕的中产上层”到“极其富有”不等，而我的同龄人大多是他们的员工，不在创始人社交圈内。那个圈子即使没有产品也能轻松融到“亲友轮”的钱（最近一例是从一位叔叔在中国的公司融了75万美元做手游）。生源结构失衡到斯坦福干脆给家庭年收入低于10万美元的录取者自动发全额奖学金——反正没几个符合条件。总的来说我并不怀念那里，虽然挺喜欢那些无处不在的豪华派对上的风投美食和美酒。但就其所推崇的东西而言，那里的文化可能比纽约还要怪。
_delirium查看英文原文
Living for a few years in the Bay Area, I didn't really end up with the same impression, though that could be my fault. My biggest impression was that the Bay Area wants to be extremely wealthy, but feels slightly inadequate about it. There was a constant palpable rivalry with both NYC and Southern California, a rivalry that was mostly one-directional. And on the Peninsula, in particular, there was a strangely obvious class structure. In particular the startup scene around Stanford was super-weird. I didn't know the Googlers (wrong years), but the kids I knew ranged from "comfortably upper-middle-class" to "extremely wealthy". Mostly my peers were their employees, not in the founder social group; the founder social group had a remarkable ability to raise "friends & family" money despite having no product (the most recent raised $750,000 from a company in China owned by an uncle, to develop mobile games). The demographics are so unbalanced that Stanford actually will give an automatic full-ride scholarship to any accepted student whose family makes under $100,000/yr, since not many admitted students qualify for it anyway. Overall I don't really miss it, though I did like eating VC food and drinking VC beer at the ubiquitous lavish parties. But the culture might be even weirder than NYC, in terms of what it promotes.
批评 PG 无视阶层现实：他接触不到中产上层以下的人群，阶层其实比以往更重要。
我得指出 PG 那句“社会阶层正在从重要事项清单上消失”的说法。阶层的含义变了一点，但我觉得它比以往任何时候都更重要。问题在于，像 PG 这样的人从来不会接触中产上层以下的人，那些“不兼容”的阶层对我们是隐形的。这个国家有一整个世界的人是他根本无法对话的。各州有 59% 到 80% 的人能高中毕业——那 20-40% 的辍学者可不是因为去创业了。有一类人把广告当信息来源照单全收，有一类人不重视教育……有数百万人和中产阶级的目标、人生价值观完全不同。PG 你在文中多次使用“二等公民”这个陈词滥调，却没想过它到底意味着什么！
awakeasleep查看英文原文
I have to call out Paul Graham's idea that social class is dropping of the list of important things. What it means changed a little, and I think it's now more important than ever. The thing is, someone like PG never sees or interacts with anyone lower than upper middle class. Other 'incompatible' classes are invisible to us. There is a whole world of people in this country that he wouldn't even be able to talk to. Depending on your state, between 59 and 80% of people graduate high school. That 20-40% isn't dropping out because they're running a startup. There is a class of people that takes advertisements at face value, as sources of information. There is a class of people that doesn't value education... There are millions of people that don't even have the same goals or life values as a middle class people do. PG you used the cliche "second class citizen" a bunch of times in this article without thinking about what it actually means!
湾区被金钱逻辑主导、日益封闭；搬到纽约做真正的产品反而更健康。
“纽约对十亿美元印象深刻，哪怕你只是继承来的。而在硅谷，除了几个房产中介没人会在意。”——湾区所有风投机构唯一的共同点就是钱。很多钱确实来自科技业，但让他们拥有权力的是钱本身。另外说点个人见闻：我在旧金山住了两年，那种无休止的科技圈喧嚣（尤其是大数据+机器学习+网络技术这种奇怪组合）让这里变得难以忍受的封闭。刚搬来时，那些自以为年轻有观点就了不起的二十几岁年轻人还挺可爱，现在只让人无法忍受。做公司不该只为了被收购、被人才收购，或者做只有你那被 iPhone 绑架的科技小圈子才用的产品。我觉得搬出湾区去做真正的产品是有价值的。我最近搬到了纽约，这里的科技圈小得令人耳目一新，有种黑马气质，让我想起奥斯汀。这里的科技人大多温和，还有不少聪明、谦逊、善于交际的前金融人士。这里的一切也不都围着“发布你的烂产品然后发推”转，而是专注于做不以被收购或风投驱动为目标的东西。
eshvk查看英文原文
> New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate agents. The only defining common factor of all the VC shops in the bay area is money. Sure a lot of them made that money in tech but it is money that lets them have power. Also some anecdotal impressions: I lived in SF for two years. I think the constant humdrum of tech (specifically a strange breed of big data + machine learning + web tech) is making the place intolerably insular. When I first moved there, I thought the opinionated twenty something year olds who think that their youth and opinions mean that they matter were cute. Now, it is just fucking insufferable. Building a company shouldn't be purely about getting sold, acqui-hired or building products that no one outside your iphone addled tech circle will use. I think there is utility in moving out of the bay area to build real products. I recently moved to NYC. The tech scene feels refreshingly small, surprisingly under-dog like, I am reminded of Austin. Most tech folks I meet here are mellow, there is also a large overlap with incredibly smart ex-finance people who are humble and sociable. Everything also doesn't seem to be focused on shipping your shitty product and tweeting about it, there is focus on building something that is not primarily focused on acqui-hired or VC-driven. Also, more importantly, NYC is superior to San Francisco as a place for your social life. The men:women ratio is way more balanced, you are constantly reminded that your "coding skills" are not all that define you. When I first came to interview here, I had serious misgivings about the place (the climate is miserable), yet I think the thing that made me decide to move here was a conversation I over-heard in a coffee shop between two girls. It was about Python. The snake, not the language.
反驳 PG 对剑桥的推崇：波士顿被老钱和大公司文化主导，空谈多行动少，不适合创业。
PG 没提的是，剑桥（以及正在兴起的更便宜更潮的替代品萨默维尔）就像清教徒城市中央的一座孤岛。波士顿整体传递的信息是“老钱说了算”：你出生在哪、你的避暑别墅在哪（玛莎葡萄园、科德角还是缅因？）似乎是最重要的事。大公司主导一切，你必须按他们的规则玩：成为他们中的一员，进入那个男孩俱乐部，有点灰白头发，高尔夫打得像样（或假装喜欢），才会被认为擅长做生意。如果你在学术界或做研究，波士顿/剑桥很棒；但要做点实际的事或创业，这里不是地方。有雄心的年轻人搬去了别处，剩下的人困在学术界或朝九晚五的公司生活里，也许能往上爬几级（或陷入老鼠赛跑）。补充一句：我在剑桥确实遇到过非常聪明的人，但 talk is cheap，那里空谈太多了。人人对一切都有观点，可一到行动，就没多少了。
ardit33查看英文原文
PG fails to mention that Cambridge (and Sommerville, the emerging hipster/cheaper alternative) is like an island in the middle of a puritan city. Boston, in large, give the message of "old money rules". Where you were born, where is your summer house (Martha Vineyard, Cape Cod, or Maine?), seems to the most important thing. And coorporates rule, so you have to play by their game: meaning you have to be one of them, in the boys club, have some gray hair, be decent at golf (or pretend to like it), in order to be considered good at busniness. Boston/Cambridge is great if you are in academia, or doing research, but doing anything practical, or startup it is not that place to be. Young ambitious people move somewhere else, the rest is stuck in academia, or living the 9-5 life clinging to the coorporate life, maybe they will manage up in the ladder (or rat race). Adding, I also have met very smart people in Cambridge, but talk is cheap, and there is a lot of it in there. Everybody has an opinion about everything, but when it comes to action, there isn't much.
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