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In the warp speed time of less than two years the tangible sixty-million-dollar investment turned into congealed snow. As the film documents their business descent into oblivion, the two entrepreneurs are shown in psychologically naked disarray, in contrast to their euphoric beginning. When their start-up began, there is a scene in a cab where both of them look at each other in amazement, with supernal delight in their faces. They say to each other: "We're going to become billionaires!" That is the high point of their ideals. It is evident then that creating a company as a public service had been the farthest thing from their minds. The money and power it gives was their driving force. (The curtain of public benefit is dropped in another scene in the film where a board of directors member speaks on how valuable a service the company is giving, and then says at the end, "And of course, make a lot of money!")
Later [...] Tuzman puts his hands together in prayer, and it's evident that he is not praying for peace in the world but for the survival of his business income [...] (GovWorks had never made a profit; it only generated the illusion that it would eventually make a profit. This is typical of all the startups that self-destructed at the start of the new millennium.)
Their obsession to become billionaires had defined their identity as human beings. And when they saw that dream of who they were to become vanish, the fallout from their disillusionment began. It took the form of a bitter breakup between two young men who were practically blood brothers since their high school days. To preserve his CEO status, Tuzman fired Herman, and Herman left in bitter, stunned disbelief. Tuzman's girlfriend broke up with him, for he devoting all his time to business, and she felt irrelevant.
The end of this documentary film leaves the two entrepreneurs as shells of human beings. They had invested their entire sense of themselves as men who had the potential of being admired for their wealth and power, but all they were left with was congealed snow in their hands.
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this movie sounds amazing
[...] they were feeling depressed; while the stock market soared, their souls were plummeting. They were unhappy, but the media was telling them that the size of their bank accounts and the prestigious jobs they held qualified them to be exceptionally happy. They were feeling guilty because they "should" be happy by the standard our society dictates for happiness. And because they weren't, they felt guilty, since they played by society's rules and yet did not receive the emotional benefits they thought they were entitled to. They had conformed to society's criteria of happiness (that is, wealth and a good job as the tickets of entrance to an exciting life filled with love, emotional satisfaction, and a future of ever-expanding possibilities for triumphing over new challenges life would present in the subsequent years).
The men and women we saw who expressed to us their depressive feelings in the face of material success thought they were exceptions to the rule and felt something was wrong with them for feeling the way they did. [...]
They were looking for answers in all the wrong places. For they weren't abnormal people [...] unhappiness was - and is - a national problem, not a sign of individual failure. [...]
on the people who sought them out for counseling. damn
The companies they worked for created wombs in which all their creature-comfort needs could be satisfied. It seemed great at the time they started their employment, but three or four years later [...] began to understand that a career was just a career, and a company was only a company, not a lifetime culture. For it is the very nature of a company to be solely concerned about its own profits and stock-market price. A company's loyalty is to its own bottom line, not the welfare of its workers. If the welfare of its workforce enhances the bottom line, fine. If not, increased productivity demands and downsizing will substitute for workforce creature comforts. [...]
not the most elegant phrasing but an important thing to remember
The twenty-somethings, not having developed a long-term sense of self that enabled the older men and women to prevail over expected economic tribulations, were vulnerable to psychological onslaughts on their sense of self [...] They had graduated in complicated technological arenas and felt smug about that fact [...] they had a skillful relationship with things; they delighted in solving technical programs, repairing, building, and creating new tools [...] The challenges were endless, and the delight in overcoming those challenges was enormous. It could be the best drug in the world and more satisfying then eating a decent meal or sleeping as salve to the soul. A king-of-the-world feeling.
With few exceptions, these twenty-somethings had boxed their lives into a tiny corner of experience: they were only high-tech workers who thought that their title was the key to the universe. Most of them had chosen a high-tech career because they felt it was a safe place to exist. In school they had been called geeks and nerds by students in the social sciences and humanities, who were adept at connecting their lives with other human beings. But the "geeks or nerds," labeled as such by their fellow classmates, felt demeaned as outcasts. They were "weird," which was the operative word the more socially oriented students used to describe them. [...]
There were many reasons why this kind of self-isolation felt safe and comfortable in contrast to associating with the world where people connected with each other [...] Best to isolate oneself and get away from threatening interpersonal relationships. Machines were the solution: they didn't talk back, neglect you, abuse you, or demean you. Since you were in control of the machines instead of them controlling you, they were safe. Isolation was safe; nobody could harm you.
too real
All of these avenues of anguish were ways they were protecting their long-developed self-images that they were valuable human beings solely because they were high-tech careerists. For hadn't they had the last laugh on all of their former high-school and college classmates who thought they were weird? They had been making $75,000 a year, with options added, while their former classmates were lucky to make $30,000. They could flaunt their economic superiority as payback time for their being shunned in earlier years by their classmates.
But now their self-esteem was under attack. Many felt their stomachs turning into empty pits of fear. If they had no career identity, then they were nothing! That feeling is the equivalent of death. [...]
aaaaahh
I learned to survive in that hellhole of a family by becoming all things to all people. Life is a game to me. Always look pleasant, look interested, look compassionate, and act as if you always wanted to be helpful. In my business it's important to win people's trust. I always show I care about their problems. I'm in a highly competitive industry, so it's important to win the trust of my clients to get the big-time deals [...]
this is so sad
[...] Silicon Valley is more than just a geographical area in northern California. It is also a state of mind - a state of mind that lusts after the easy life, wealth without working for it, wealth that defines your important status in life. [...]
hm part of this conflicts with the whole work-as-identity strain of thought but noting anyway
[...] Youth was the gold mine CEOs could exploit, and the media hype of the 1990s kept proclaiming that not only was Silicon Valley a revolutionary new industry, it was an industry whose revolution was powered by young people. It was a time when everyone over thirty-five or forty was considered expendable. The corporations of Silicon Valley regarded workers in their late thirties and forties as "over the hill," expendable drains on profits. Loyalty and trust and the value of experience may have been appropriate for the old manufacturing way of life, but this new century was the Information Age century in which hiring and firing in obeisance to the bottom line took precedence over the other values in life.
As long as one was in one's twenties, this devaluation of becoming older was accepted as something to brag about and flaunt in the face of people in their thirties or forties who were doomed to live on a fraction of what the young men and women in the Valley were making. They had bought the belief that after thirty, creativity is lost. [...] They were entitled to their economic success because they were young [...]
Carol and Harry had bought this illusion that being young was the only value in life that mattered. But this illusion began to erode when they turned thirty. They made excuses for themselves on their thirtieth birthdays that they were not really deteriorating, going down hill in life after all. [...]
Having a child meant acknowledging you were growing older. But Harry wanted to be the only child in his marriage to Carol. For his behavior throughout the marriage was the behavior of a self-indulgent child, always wanting center stage, always wanting instant gratification. He considered his impulsive behavior a badge of honor, not something to be modified. These character traits, combined with his very competent adult business abilities, made him attractive to many people. He created an image of boyish charm combined with adult business success.
[...]
Harry remained Harry. He still lives in Silicon VAlley, still is successful in the job he still likes. He's known as a "player" and enjoys surreal short-term relationships. He continues to fight the battle of staying young forever and is now busy looking into new genetic and hormonal developments as possibilities for arresting the aging process. He has yet to realize that only the dead stay young forever.
just a great character study (somewhat inspo for neil even if the specifics are different)