In “Silicon Valley is Broken. Should We Even Bother to Fix It?” Erica Douglass relates her Silicon Valley experiences. It reminded me of my three months in Silicon Valley.

I originally flirted with moving out to the Bay Area in 1997, to work for Inktomi. I flew out for an interview and got an offer, but they wanted me to work for about twenty percent more than I was making here in the Philadelphia area. I owned a house and had an $800 a month mortgage. In the area where we wanted to live, $2,300 a month apartments were typical. So we stayed on the East Coast.

Ten years later, everything was different. I was a principal at a design firm. I moved out to the West Coast, the official story was, to be closer to our biggest client. I spent a lot of time on CalTrain and BART and in local coffee shops. I hated it.

In Philadelphia, we have several big industries—pharmaceuticals, banking, some ad agencies, Comcast—but nothing dominates. When I meet someone, it's as likely they're a painter as a programmer or lawyer or bike mechanic. In the Valley, it feels like all conversation is about Deals. Everyone's sitting around working on a slide deck. Or in Eclipse or TextMate.

You couldn't sit in a Starbucks and not hear someone give an elevator pitch or explain how, "Yes, money is important, but if the _concept_ isn't there, I don't think I can get really excited about a position." (I cannot describe how superficial and robotic and calculating the woman was who I watched deliver this little speech.)

The Valley is a solipsistic, autistic dystopia. And that would be fine if what we think of as a technology product hadn't changed since 1980, but it has, profoundly so. If you aspire to create something that real people use to solve real problems, there's no need to be there. In fact, being there distorts your sense of reality. It takes a genius to resist the prevailing mindset.

I came back to Philadelphia and while there's a lot to gripe about here—the people who talk big about doing start-ups but don't even know what a start-up is, the winters, the summers, the trash, oh I could go on—there's a diversity here that makes it easier to put technology (and life) in perspective. Even NYC is better than the Valley, because there's so much there that nothing dominates: the bigness does.

I recommend you go read Ms. Douglass's piece; it provides a dose of harsh reality to anyone who thinks that success awaits all those who choose to move to Silicon Valley.