Seth has been talking about the series Silicon Valley for a while now.

He’s impressed, and he isn’t alone, because Bill Gates has taken a break from reinventing the toilet to sing the show’s praises on his blog, Gates Notes.

According to Gates, despite the massive impact that the actual Silicon Valley has had on our lives, pop culture rarely depicts it accurately.

Silicon Valley is an exception here, and the show to watch if you want to understand how Silicon Valley works today.

The show follows a small team of developers at an internet startup called Pied Piper. The characters struggle to strategise, build their product, raise startup money and battle massive tech giants to reach their goals.

Here’s Gates:

The show is a parody, so it exaggerates things, but like all great parodies it captures a lot of truths. Most of the different personality types you see in the show feel very familiar to me. The programmers are smart, super-competitive even with their friends, and a bit clueless when it comes to social cues. Personally, I identify most with Richard, the founder of Pied Piper, who is a great programmer but has to learn some hard lessons about managing people.

We’ll rewind the clock and start with season one’s trailer:

The characters are well-intentioned but prone, like many who delve into tech, to “over-the-top-vision statements”. As Gates puts it:

Even a huge believer in technology like me has to laugh when some character talks about how they’re going to change the world with an app that tells you whether what you’re eating is a hot dog or not.

Sounds about right. When you work in media, you get pitched a lot of weird app ideas, most of which would probably live a short and pointless life if they ever left the drawing board.

The level of accuracy in the show is high, and the writers often meet with experts, Gates included, to ensure that it is maintained.

He has watched every episode of seasons one to four, and half of season five, and he only has one complaint:

Silicon Valley gives you the impression that small companies like Pied Piper are mostly capable while big companies like Hooli are mostly inept. Although I’m obviously biased, my experience is that small companies can be just as inept, and the big ones have the resources to invest in deep research and take a long-term point of view that smaller ones can’t afford. But I also understand why the show focuses so much on Pied Piper and makes Hooli look so goofy. It’s more fun to root for the underdog.

I haven’t watched the show yet, but if Gates says it’s worth it, I see no reason not to.

The upside of coming to the party late is that I can binge watch the show without having to wait.

[source:gatesnotes]