Green with Envy
Wondering where we fit in...
BY MICHELLE QUINN
Mercury News Staff Writer
AT FIRST GLANCE, many people in Silicon Valley seem to have it all: SUVs, cell
phones, $3 lattes. Good jobs, with rising pay and bonuses, and great weather, too. But
listen to the chat over those lattes and it's quickly apparent people are anxious about
money. If these are the best of times, they ask, why am I not happier?
It's not just high costs and stretched budgets. It's that money and the drive
for it are suddenly changing this place from just another community to a new wonderland
where it's almost a cliche for 20-somethings to become wealthy. Here, money is everywhere,
seemingly in your face all the time: It's people glued to the stock ticker and the well-off
bulldozing respectable homes and replacing them with mansions. It's the cars people drive,
the gadgets they carry.
New wealth is rewriting relationships with friends, family and co-workers, and
heightening everyone's sensitivity about where they fit in. It's raised expectations and
fueled frustrations. No matter what their economic status, people are on edge.
Even the high priests of the money pursuit lament what they call the triumph of
greed over accomplishment.
"Technology is just a means to an end for some people these days,"
says Craig Johnson, chairman of Venture Law Group in Menlo Park. "The goal of the
game used to be building great companies, a process which usually took many years. Now for
many it's personal wealth creation, and the bigger and faster, the better. Young
entrepreneurs say, without a hint of irony, they want to get past 'the money thing' by the
age of 25."
Most people don't clear that hurdle, of course. The tens of thousands of workers
outside the technology industry know they won't hit pay dirt in the way tech workers
might. And many in technology also fret that they are missing out on Silicon Valley's
promise when they see others prospering more. Especially with money being made so swiftly,
it's hard not to feel envious, and even at times resentful -- not necessary of those in
the headlines but of those close by.
"Although you are doing better (than some), the person in the cubicle next
to you is doing twice as well," says Shawn Simon, 30, a high-tech marketing manager.
"There is always someone who has been in the valley longer and is doing significantly
better."
Simon recalls overhearing two cubicle mates talking about an upward surge in the
company's stock.
"Aren't you glad you didn't sell?" one asked. No, not really, replied
the other, who added, "I'm talking about my shares worth a couple of thousand dollars
and yours are worth more than $20,000."
To be sure, any angst over Silicon Valley's new affluence is far outweighed,
some believe, by its benefits. "The money is so huge," says Roger McNamee, a
general partner in Integral Capital Partners, a Menlo Park investment partnership.
"It must by definition do good."
Status game creates its own headaches
But there's nothing simple about money. Far more than a financial currency, it
can be a powerful measurement of self-worth, a way to keep score, the source of sometimes
inexplicable emotions. Most people don't want to talk about money directly but it's on
nearly everybody's mind.
"There's an awkwardness of all this wealth around you," says Kirk
Hanson, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
Not being able to do it all or have it all may seem like a particularly middle
class whine. But the status game has arrived in Silicon Valley, and though many find it
distasteful, they're drawn into the competition nonetheless.
Jeff Horwitz, 42, who sells cellular phones, tries not to worry about what
people think. But he can't help it.
Before he dipped into savings to buy a $28,000 1998 Buick LeSabre, Horwitz
parked his 1983 GMC Sierra pickup -- 400,000 miles on the odometer -- down the street so
that clients wouldn't see it. "If you have a terrible car, people automatically
distrust you," he says. "You see them thinking, 'What, you can't afford a good
car? And you're in Silicon Valley? What's wrong with you?' "
Economic disparity has always made socializing awkward. It's become increasingly
true here.
Consciously or not, many people try to avoid that discomfort by making friends
with those whose economic profile is similar to theirs. But Janine Tunay, a financial
analyst with the city of Sunnyvale, strives for the opposite.
Tunay has a wide social circle; she is a member of the Junior League of San Jose
Inc., a group of mostly well-off women devoted to volunteerism.
Yet Tunay and her husband rarely entertain friends because they feel their
apartment is too small. The two make ends meet -- and live rent free -- by managing a
28-unit apartment with no yard near Santa Clara University. At night, they turn their
television louder to drown out the neighboring sorority practicing its songs.
"I let people know that I'm a public servant and will never have a
4,000-square-foot home in Saratoga," she says, matter-of-factly.
There are moments when Tunay, 33, is reminded of her economic station, even
though she and her husband earn just shy of the county's $85,000 average household income.
When she was invited with the Junior League for a bus tour of San Francisco's diamond
district, she wondered to herself, "With what money?"
The couple say they made the right choices, such as professional downshifts both
made to spend more time with their 18-month-old and 4-year-old children. Still,
"there's pressure we put on ourselves that we're not living up to a standard of
living," says her husband, Greg Bartkowski, 36, who works in real estate.
That obsession with keeping up with the Joneses means "many people are in a
rat race here," says Jane Rothstein, who has a private therapy practice in Palo Alto.
Leisure time, once seen as the mark of success, has given way to "I don't have
time."
Money becomes a problem only when it turns "from motivator to the sole
motivation," Joe Costello wrote recently in a Mercury News opinion piece.
Then, "greed has got you," says Costello, chairman and CEO of the
Santa Clara software company think3. "Money becomes an addiction just like drugs or
alcohol. Like any other addiction, it can take hold of your life and end up running it and
then ruining it."
Class becoming more important, some say
One trademark that has helped Silicon Valley thrive is the opportunity for
almost anyone to succeed. If you work hard, few begrudge your wealth, says attorney
Johnson. Compared with old-money communities, "there is not as much class envy."
But is that changing? Many complain that the egalitarian atmosphere is slipping
away.
"Before, there was a community culture," says Tunay, who's lived here
a decade and is married to a Cupertino native. "Now there's a corporate
culture."
Now, class is becoming more apparent. Wealth may be hidden behind faded blue
jeans and T-shirts, but status -- and all its trappings -- is increasingly hard to
disguise.
The newly affluent sometimes worry their prosperity will make old friends
uncomfortable.
"The thing is there is more pressure to be ostentatious" nowadays,
says Michael Suever, 41. He and his wife drive well-worn cars. But after hitting the
jackpot on company stock options, the two recently traded up to a 3,500-square-foot house
in the Redwood City foothills. It's hard for acquaintances not to notice.
"You can't help but show how well you've done by the type of home that you
buy," Suever says. "It's difficult to hide."
Sometimes it's the subtleties that put you in your place.
Bill Devine, a Menlo Park attorney and author of "Women, Men &
Money," a self-help book about money, recalls a recent birthday party in Atherton for
his daughter's friend.
A wealthy woman he had known for years greeted him not with the "Hey Bill,
how are you?" as she normally did, but with a crisper, "How do you know people
here?"
He stumbled to explain.
The encounter left a bitter taste.
"It was stunning to me that she wanted to make the connection between how I
would know the others who own million-dollar homes," he says.
Perhaps it's unavoidable: Money plays a role on the dating scene, too.
Tom Nivison, 39, a distribution specialist at Hewlett-Packard Co., expects to be
asked how much he makes during the second or third date, and sometimes the first. He
thinks he has a good answer: a house, low debt, paid-off cars. He can tell immediately if
that's good enough. Often it isn't.
"Some women have said, `I don't think you make enough to make it
here,' " he says.
But Nivison doesn't feel sorry for himself. After all, he believes in the market
economy. "They are looking at me as a potential mate. That concerns them. I may not
live at their lifestyle."
Many people don't feel at all like they're falling short, of course. On the
contrary, they're immensely proud of their achievements. Counted among them are many
immigrants whose lot in life is far better than they might ever have dreamed.
"The first reason immigrants come here is not for wealth but for
security," says Fremont resident Madhukar Tallam, an engineer at Intel Corp. who
emigrated from India in 1981.
Their wealth is a welcome byproduct that "has opened up more doors,"
says Ben Menor, executive director of Northside Community Center in San Jose, which serves
mostly Filipinos and Indo-Americans. "Yes, there is a greater degree of stress but at
least I know my child is surrounded by opportunity."
Rather than feeling they haven't accumulated enough, some immigrants find
themselves wondering if they have too much, Menor says. There is a worry among newer
immigrants who landed in lucrative high-tech positions that their money has been made so
quickly that longtime residents might think "How dare you?"
"The sudden wealth is making resentments," Menor says.
For some, scaling back means getting ahead
Uncomfortable with money's higher profile here nowadays, some people consciously
dodge the Silicon Valley money mania.
They leave, looking for another region where they can escape from the daily
measurements of fortunes won and lost. Or, they lower their expectations and resolve not
to get caught up in the obsession.
Laila Adle, 33, who teaches visually impaired children, doesn't spend much time
thinking about how well she and her husband are doing compared to others.
But occasionally, it's hard not to. The social scene -- even picking a
restaurant to meet friends -- can be difficult to navigate because acquaintances may have
wildly different financial means.
"You have to be wary of who has money now," Adle says.
To spend more time with their toddler, Avery, Adle and her husband each works a
four-day week, earning a combined $70,000 a year ($15,000 less than the county average).
But they have benefited from the boom economy in the housing market: Their
two-bedroom Sunnyvale townhouse has increased in value, giving them $130,000 in equity.
Still, Adle says, others seem to have an ease of living she lacks. As she stops
her 1995 Saturn at a Sunnyvale Starbucks on her way to work, she feels a tad envious when
she spots the stay-at-home moms in tennis garb, with their sport-utility vehicles and cell
phones. When she goes to her Sunnyvale parenting class, she meets with other new moms,
some who have nannies and some who don't work -- or both -- ensuring they have quality
time for themselves and their families.
"You have this image of what you're supposed to do," she says, and the
other moms are doing it.
The new economy is delivering yet another nagging concern -- that the boom can't
last forever.
"There's a new sense of unease that people of the middle class never knew
before, that all this wealth is on paper," says Meir Statman, professor of finance at
the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. "Now the middle class has
both a sense of wealth and a sense of anxiety that this wealth may be fleeting."
Most people who are "successful in this valley also suffer from a terrible
sense of insecurity about keeping wealth," says Susan Rea, a Los Altos therapist.
"A high-tech executive said to me that every night he goes to sleep worried that
someone is making a product that will make his product obsolete."
When and if the boom market busts, it's the middle class, not the rich, who will
be especially vulnerable, as they were during the economic downturn in the early 1990s.
As he drives from San Jose's Willow Glen to Sunnyvale each day, Gary Reece, 44,
obsesses: "Where are property values going to go? How's the company I am so deeply
invested in going to do? What am I going to do to help level the playing ground for my
children?"
And then the applications manager ponders the ultimate question: "If the
bottom falls out, can you ever recover?" he asks himself. "You have to risk so
much more to play the game here."
When success isn't enough to satisfy
One common fantasy among the disheartened is cashing out and going someplace
where the living is easier and ambitions more modest. If there's a survival of the fittest
here, then even some of the winners say they aren't getting what they deserve.
"When we're the leaders, managers, directors at companies, why am I
spending weekends fishing for quarters in the couch to do the laundry at the
laundromat?" asks Shawn Simon, the marketing manager. "I'm starting to think,
`What's wrong with this picture?' It's deferred gratification at all levels."
And yet, Simon and his wife, Karen, say it's hard to argue they suffer. The
couple earn enough to put them in the top 10 percent of Santa Clara County income earners
and were paying $1,495 in monthly rent for a Los Gatos townhouse.
But they wanted to buy a house in Silicon Valley and felt they had earned a
better home than they could afford here.
So in February, they left, getting themselves transferred to comparable jobs in
Oregon.
There, away from the money madness of Silicon Valley, they bought a four-bedroom
Colonial-style home on a quarter acre -- for under $450,000 -- in the state's best school
district.
"We couldn't be happier," Karen Simon wrote in e-mail from up north.
Even before she left, she had this hunch about Silicon Valley: "It's a great place to
have been from."
