To Silicon Valley and Back: Part 3

Time flies: two of three months are already over, and I can honestly say I have settled into everyday life. I have an orderly, structured daily routine, both at work and afterwards, with doing laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and exploring the area.
But everyday life is now also showing me what I value about home and, in fact, what I miss. I also feel that by now I understand much better (and experience it myself) how the work culture here in the Valley differs from the one in Germany/Switzerland. Finding out exactly that for myself was one of my big goals, after all.
But more on that in the third part about my stay here in Silicon Valley.

This time I have once again changed the format of the post a little. So there are more concrete tips this time than "just" stories. Feel free to tell me which you like better.

At the beginning of my trip, I came up with a few basic questions that I ask pretty much everyone I newly meet here at work:

1. What defines the work culture here in the Bay Area for you?
   If the person I am talking to has worked in Europe before (which most of them have), I also ask what differences they see.
2. What inspires you and where do you get new inspiration from?
3. What are the biggest challenges you are currently facing (at work)?

The answers to these questions are quite interesting, which is why I would like to share them with you at a high level.

What I notice is that people place a lot of value on shared activities beyond pure working hours. Even considerably more than I know from home – and I already thought that was pretty good. People here also try (considerably) harder to strengthen identification with the work and one's projects: that is why you can tell from the T-shirts employees wear which projects or teams they work on. It is not that this doesn't exist back home, but here it is simply more pronounced. It simply has to do with being proud of it and wanting to show that. It is little things like these that I notice more and more.
Where I was used to celebrating a kind of big summer party once a year, here I experience bigger social events like that every month.

If (voluntarily) getting together actively and having fun is such a firm part of the company DNA, I think you have achieved something great. It also clearly shows once again one thing that remote work will never be able to replace.

I also had the opportunity to talk to a few leaders here, both from my own company and from other companies. I am always interested in tips and advice on what they would pass on to me for my career, and the following points were key takeaways they gave me:

Work on your network
I work for a global corporation, but I would argue that this applies to companies of any size. Actively expanding your network all the time is simply extremely important these days. Foolish is the one who doesn't use their network. It takes some courage to send strangers invitations for a coffee or lunch, but it will help you later. The key is to expand your network beyond your own bubble. I was told that at some point the time will come when you need help from someone else, and that is when active networking pays off.

Focus on your strengths, not weaknesses
I am also used to performance reviews where you figure out together how you can get better at things you are not so good at. Here I was told the following: "Do amazing things by working on topics you are amazing at!" For everything else, build a team of people who are better where you are not. On closer inspection, there is so much more in that sentence: diversity, work culture, team building, all the way to leading and inspiring teams.

Speed is everything
Until now I was used to being very consensus-oriented (consent at most). Here it is more common to appoint a "decision" maker in the team so that you can decide and execute quickly. Someone with a big vision who sets the pace, and that person then has to be maximal. Of course I cannot generalize this, but it was also an insight I have taken away from conversations and personal experiences so far. I think finding a middle ground should be the goal, but with speed as the stronger criterion. How am I faster than everyone else? How do I get feedback faster? How can I improve faster than everyone else?

Asked about the differences between working here in Silicon Valley and in Germany, the insight is that here in the Valley people are faster at making decisions. Simply testing first, even if something is not 100% finished. Ideation and the innovation process are somewhat more decentralized. We Germans are said to be better at being efficient, because we put more emphasis on clear standard processes, but we tend to overengineer.

For me, a company visit, getting to know another team or a conversation is always particularly valuable when I feel inspired. Was there something new I could learn? Did I gain a new insight, or was I made aware of a new issue? I kept asking the people I talked to where they get new input from, and I am happy to pass the answers on to you:

• Ask the person you are talking to about someone in the company who inspires them, and then go for a coffee with that person
• Invite other people to lunch more often
• Deliberately ask about the most important people in the other person's network and get to know them – but share yours too
• Arrange visits to other companies, even if they are in a different field, and learn about their methods for building innovative teams and an inspiring company culture
• Subscribe to various newsletters and set up Google Alerts on topics that interest you
• Listen to podcasts and ask others for their recommendations
• Watch TED Talks
• Keep an eye out for exciting founder/entrepreneur stories on the well-known streaming platforms

Those were the most frequently mentioned points, and I hope some of them may inspire you as well.

Here the topic of workplace clearly has to be mentioned, because many people want to keep working from home. But it is obvious that you then don't come together as a team. That is currently really the biggest challenge for almost all companies. The reason is obvious: the distances here simply cannot be compared with ours in Germany and Europe. Everything is much farther apart, and the public transportation network cannot be compared with ours.
It is simply hard to get people from the many places farther away to their workplaces. Rents and purchase prices have risen so much that even high earners move farther away into rural areas. That is why you see more company buses than buses from the public transit operators. For that reason there are numerous ideas on how to make the sites even more attractive for employees (than they already are).

By now I have a pretty good routine, both at work and in my private life. One private highlight, besides my wife's visit, was above all the visit to Vandenberg Space Force Base. In the last post I had announced that something "with stars is coming", and my bucket list said I would love to watch a rocket launch. So I went on a little road trip and, 4.5 hours later, by a lucky coincidence, ended up at the private launch event of Firefly Aerospace – a young startup that wants to compete with SpaceX. After a speech by the CEO, we followed the launch preparations live until the countdown started. But when it reached "0", unfortunately nothing happened, because there were technical problems. After several new attempts that day, the launch was unfortunately postponed because of bad weather coming in. So, regrettably, I did not see the launch, but it was still great to experience the team and the preparations live. The tingle in the air as the countdown ticks down and everyone looks toward the rocket.

Then I played tech tourist and drove to the famous "founding garages" of HP, Google and Apple. I also walked into the Netflix and eBay headquarters and paid a nerdy visit to the Computer History Museum. I also looked into the history of Silicon Valley and why it is actually called that, but there will be a separate video on that too.
Speaking of video: there was a little scare here. I really wanted to buy a Bluetooth microphone for my Sony camera, because I was tired of the cable. In the store, the package was taken to the checkout for me, since I still wanted to look around the store a bit. After I had paid and left, I ended up at the Tesla factory. I wanted to film there and discovered that the package had been emptied and my mic taken out. Unluckily for me, I had not checked, but at some point someone must have stolen the mic. So I went back to the store and didn't really expect to get my 250 € back. But the amount was refunded without any discussion – apparently not the first time this had happened. Lucky in my misfortune.

Besides all the good things I experience here, I would also like to end by talking about a downside I notice: this region is home to some of the most valuable companies in the world. Money is no problem here, and the companies go to insane lengths and invest vast sums to always find the newest ideas and startups and invest in them. So why is public infrastructure outside the company grounds often so bad and run-down? The roads are mostly in pretty bad shape, I was strongly advised against taking the train, the buses are well past their best years, and there is trash along almost every road. It is really bad on the freeways. I have already had to dodge wooden planks, iron bars, ropes, tires and tarps – that has not happened to me in 15 years on German roads.
Why are there (according to residents, too) more and more homeless people? Why are so many cars broken into? Where do all the taxes collected here go? I really don't understand these stark differences and, to be honest, would simply have expected more.
When I brought this up, a colleague told me that politics here and across the whole country is shaped by lobbying. That is how laws are made not according to what is best for the people, but according to what is best for certain interest groups. That is terrible, but of course it cannot be generalized. But I also notice how "tired" many of the people I talk to are of the topic of politics. They are tired of the constant fighting between the two big parties, and basically many share the same values and have a similar understanding of what a healthy society and metropolitan region should look like.

So, this blog article has once again turned out longer than I thought, and I already made an effort to cut it down. But I hope I was able to give you a few more concrete tips this time. That was the second-to-last part of my blog series about my stay here in Silicon Valley. I have also started editing a few videos to make the whole thing even more interactive.

Enjoy, and see you next time.

• Go to Part 1 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”
• Go to Part 2 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”
• Go to Part 4 of “To Silicon Valley and Back”