Silicon Valley Letter: Huddled masses 2.0: Skype dads and Instagram moms

Labour mobility is in your face in Silicon Valley. Skills are in short supply here and with the rest of the US economy flagging, moving vans are regular sights outside apartments and houses.

Designers, coders and the product types that bring technology ideas to life come here for their daily grind, albeit one where passion for tech shines. Even the start-up gurus creating fantastic companies to be bought out have dreams tempered by six-figure college debts for MBAs, and more. For all the glamour, excitement, fun and occasional madness of working in the Valley, we are here “to do stuff”. That’s tough at times, professionally and personally.

Most valley coders are not locals, and many are immigrants, brought to the US on H1-B visas that address the lack of native US tech skills.

The H1-B quota has long been socially and politically contentious. Tech firms lobby for additional visas (fiscal year 15’s allocation being filled within a week) and can be actively involved in immigration matters that some cynically suspect is more for pragmatic business reasons than altruism.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is the prime mover behind FWD.US, an organisation that has the backing of other Valley supremos and campaigns for immigration reform, sometimes not without controversy.

This labour mobility often means an atomisation among tech workers that isolates them from local communities and each other.

Scratch the surface of shapes thrown in the venture capital mecca of Sand Hill Road or by the college hoodied-up startupistas in the Mission in San Francisco and you'll find very few deep and meaningful bonds formed.

For some there’s a shallow need to be cool and to belong, one that sees herds of hip young things outside restaurants anxious for the dubious cachet of overpriced dining accompanied by a grainy Swedish black and white movie with subtitles beamed overhead.

Being on my second tour of duty in the Valley, I’ve given up listening to tip-hungry San Francisco “servers” (waiters) or with making trips to Roxie’s Market and Deli in the Sunset for comfort bags of Tayto. But for many tech workers here, choices are narrower, and it can be a lonely and socially dysfunctional place.

Individuals, as well as whole families, emigrate to the Bay Area, sometimes aided with attractive relocation packages to help them find their feet, get set up with accommodation, find schools or obtain cars at preferential rates, smoothing the path through the nightmare of having no previous US credit history. Other times not.

The gyms, cafes and corridors of tech offices are where Chinese, Hindi, Russian, or Hebrew is as likely to be heard as English. At times it's hard to find a native of San Francisco or the Valley. The newly transplanted can find some familiar cultural grounding: Indian Diwali celebrations, Chinese New Year festivities, Eid al-Fitr end of Ramadan feasts, even a killer fry-up at the United Irish Cultural Center in San Francisco.

Yet, segregation and fragmentation is obvious as individual tech workers donned national colours of World Cup teams to watch "soccer" games streamed live into offices during work hours and then departed alone.

On the face of it, immigration is a win. Shared learning, innovation, investment and experience are an upside. Being exposed to new or different ways of doing things broadens the mind, and challenges assumptions. Immigrants returning to the “old country” with “new” values, insights and experiences make it better for everyone.

But tech immigration has downsides too, often discounted by a glib media commentary unable to empathise with human realities.

Many do not, or cannot, move their families here. Contracts can be short. Hours can belong. Pay can be low. Notions of job satisfaction can border on the satirical, with programmers working on individual features rather than complete products, eating at their desks as they work in silence. Most are not here for the Teslas or the kudos, but to provide for their families abroad.

Being away from home, and separated from friends and family is emotionally demanding and ultimately impacts how you live and work.

There is something deeply sad about watching a group of male Indian tech nationals, all wearing identical pristine jeans and white trainers, pushing a single trolley through the aisles of Safeway supermarket in Foster City at 3am. Being a "Skype dad" or "Instagram mom" to children on the other side of the world just doesn't cut it as a parent.

That the sun shines nearly every day here means you can plan and do things that Irish weather would never allow. But, it also means fruit and vegetables need to be harvested and lawns mown by those immigrants whose language I cannot speak, who stand on street corners in the hope of a day’s casual work in the fields around Half Moon Bay or the gardens of expensive houses in Pacific Heights. I can only imagine the worries of unskilled illegal immigrants here. Start-up tech workers can joke about the relief felt when the pay cheque clears, but others are paid in cash for good reason.

All of our stories as immigrant workers in the Valley relate in a general way, although our paths in getting here and eventual destiny vary.

Valley immigration is rarely a water cooler conversation in tech circles or on social media. Noisy tech campaigns for direct flights from hometowns of choice into San Francisco airport are insulting first-world problems compared with real immigration and human hardships.

It’s good to be reminded that although opportunities come in many shapes and guises in the Valley, access to such life chances remains massively unequal and it is something worth fighting or coding for. Everywhere.

Ultan Ó Broin is director of Oracle Applications User Experience for Oracle. The opinions expressed here are personal