Affluent Silicon Valley engineers give back to community
Updated 12:00 PM ET March 9, 2001
By Vic Reklaitis
The Stanford Daily
Stanford U.
(U-WIRE) STANFORD, Calif. -- If your Internet startup idea didn't make it past the first round of the BASES E-Challenge, or if you won the contest and got funding but were left holding your hat in the recent tech stock crash, you are probably feeling disillusioned with Silicon Valley.
If you attended the Students for Environmental Action at Stanford panel discussion on Feb. 26, that feeling probably deepened.
"Economic Boom For Whom?" was the title of the talk, and disillusionment and disenfranchisement were the themes. The panel discussed housing and labor issues in Silicon Valley and included Rev. Scott Wagers, an advocate for the homeless who runs the First Christian Church shelter in San Jose.
Wagers explained how many full-time tech workers are "costed out" of housing, a problem he feels tech companies and the City of San Jose have little interest in solving.
"When corporations rule the world ... Silicon Valley can be looked upon as the personification of that," Wagers said. "People's voices are muted. We need to pursue solving homelessness with the same fervor that we pursue starting up companies."
How do Silicon Valley engineers feel about being socially conscious? Rather than causing rampant disillusionment, the tech slump might in fact be motivating some Valley workers to be more altruistic.
Bill Maguire works for Tech Corps, a non-profit organization that places tech-savvy volunteers in needy schools and communities. "My experience talking with people working in Silicon Valley is that there is this widespread idea that there must be something more that you can do," he said.
Thanks to Tech Corps, a teacher who dreams of an after-school program for future Web page developers can be connected with a programmer who wants to help. "I see that in the most noble of terms," Maguire said. "People are using their skills and reaching out."
In an area known for its greediness, there is a growing movement to do something more, and it's led by programmers like Nipun Mehta.
Mehta may well be the first Sun Microsystems employee to be compared to Gandhi. Although he has earned his share of Silicon Valley money as a young software engineer, Mehta drives the same Toyota he had in high school and lives in a room in his parents' house that contains only a sleeping bag and an alarm clock. With Mehta's mantra of "Let's get pumped up!" ringing in their ears, 250 volunteers have joined him at his startup, Charity Focus. Charity Focus volunteers build Web solutions for non-profit organizations.
Organizations like Tech Corps and Charity Focus show that, on some level, Silicon Valley is giving back.
Some Stanford students who go the startup route and work for for-profit businesses are also socially conscious. Senior Guru Sethupathy co-founded Woosh!, an e-commerce startup based in Sunnyvale, and worked there for 15 months before returning to campus to finish his computer science degree.
"You can get caught up in the everyday mundaneness of programming," Sethpathy said. "But all of us want to create something for the long run and want to make a difference. You have to do something good and productive and add value. You can't just for zero value get a million dollars. At the end of the day, Woosh! and I personally want to do something that is for the greater good."
Sethupathy pointed out that it can be difficult to fit altruism into a Silicon Valley schedule. "When I was there, we spent every waking hour trying to make the company run, and you can't really give back until you've grown up. Since I've left Woosh!, I understand that it (has started) outreaching to the community." Sethupathy said therefore that Woosh!'s outreach work shows that it has the right set of priorities: "It shows a good mindset."
As a junior last year, Paul A. Martin left Stanford to join PayPal, a startup that allows its users to send and receive money online. According to Martin, PayPal sees itself as working for the greater good in creating a new way for money to flow freely. "Basically, the vision that the founders have -- it's a very libertarian view -- is if there's a free movement of capital, tyranny cannot exist."
PayPal's stated goal is to allow anyone anywhere in the world to transfer and deposit funds securely. Martin said that many PayPal employees, including one PayPal engineer born in communist China, are very inspired by this vision.
From a business standpoint, neither Sethupathy nor Martin, having been in a position to "strike it rich," is disillusioned with his startup. At the same time, neither plans to work for another startup in the near future. Each is satisfied with having had the chance to be innovative, to be responsible for part of a creative venture and to learn about Silicon Valley.
There doesn't seem to be much disillusionment in the Valley. While they are not leaving their jobs in droves to build homeless shelters, tech workers are looking outside of the realm of their cubicles and trying to contribute in other valuable ways.
So cheer up -- maybe your startup idea has fizzled and you won't be a millionaire in the near future, but there's a new reason for hope in the Valley: the engineers are giving back.
(C) 2001 The Stanford Daily via U-WIRE
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