HBO's newest comedy "Silicon Valley" premiered this Sunday. It follows Richard Hendrix (and his buddies) as he finds himself going from mindless employee at the show's version of Google to owner of his own potentially umpteen million dollar company after creating a lossless compression algorithm.
Aside from the show's creator Mike Judge's history, the cast and a two-minute preview HBO released a few months ago, I didn't know much about the show. But I didn't want to like it. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley. My parents aren't software engineers, but I've always been around that world. I ended up going to college at UC Berkeley to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and I now work at a company just like the people in the show.
I guess I appreciate that this world is getting some shine through the comedic lens of a guy like Mike Judge. I wouldn't compare my office to the one in Office Space, but I definitely feel like the only sane person in a room full of ridiculousness when at work. It's just that the software industry has completely blown up. There's so much money in this world that it doesn't even make any sense, and the industry has become this caricature of itself during that process. But there's so much more to life in the Valley than this. So if an outsider's only entry point into this world was The Social Network and news reports about how awesome Google's offices are, I didn't want another (likely more accessible to the average viewer) viewpoint to come from that angle. There's also several stereotypes about software engineers that I've always resented, especially while in college, and I probably took it personally that a significant HBO show could potentially portray that as the norm.
What I didn't learn until today was that Mike Judge worked as a programmer. Granted it was 30 years ago, he has more insight into what it's like to work at one of these companies than I ever thought he did. It's kind of inspiring to know that I could possibly go from what I do now to what he does now.
The pilot was okay. It was hard to not groan at the Jobs/Wozniak joke. It's also weird to watch a storyline about a guy's side project becoming a million dollar company in literally hours when I know that not only does this never happen, but also that most engineers just kind of exist without really contributing anything all that significant in the grand scheme of things. But I get it, it's a fucking TV show. I do appreciate the sort of inside jokes thrown in – about no girls being around, the absurd IPO party kind of lifestyle, the insults the guys in the house throw at each other – that reveal a deeper level of these friends' personalities. Because, in the end, the fact that the show is based here isn't what makes it funny or interesting. It's simply what drives the plot forward.
I don't see Silicon Valley catching up to Veep, which I believe to be funniest show on TV, in terms of quality, but I'll obviously continue to watch. I was never worried so much that the show would "portray us incorrectly." It was more that, if they were going to do this show, it better be good because I've forced myself to be personally invested in its reception. I'll probably write about it more here in the coming weeks.
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