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"For those in tech in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley doesn't just hit home \u2014 it is home. \nSeason one is set to wrap up on June 1, and the similarities between Mike Judge's version and the real thing are piling up. From the man behind satire like Idiocracy and Office Space, Silicon Valley follows a group of young entrepreneurs trying to build the next big tech startup with a ridiculous name: Pied Piper. And it's pretty spot on. Stanford grads galore, sky-high-paid Googlers (and Facebookers and Applers), and startups that come and go faster than your springtime allergies.\nSee also: 15 Celebrities Before They Were Famous\nWith one season (almost) in the books, and season two already on the docket, we took a look at the moments in Silicon Valley that we've actually experienced in Silicon Valley. They weren't too difficult to find. \n1. Robot boss\nIn a scene from episode five, Big Head, a former employees of Pied Piper, has an \"in-person\" meeting with Gavin Belson, the big-time tech executive at a fictitious Google lookalike, Hooli. Belson appears in hologram form in order to be \"present\" while talking to Big Head, and the technology used for the call is, of course, state of the art and cost \"20 million f*cking dollars.\"  \nIt also fails miserably. The connection is bad, no one can hear, and ultimately, the meeting continues via cell phone (where the call is ultimately dropped). A clear example of the limitations of telecommuting in the age of technical innovation. \nWe went through a phase at Mashable where the communication method of choice was video robot. It inspired the parody below, where our robot boss can be seen zooming around the office, inspiring resentment wherever he goes. \nBig Head: we know your pain. \n\n2. Actually explaining your startup to other people\nBy the time most startups get off the ground, they're prepared (at least somewhat) to explain to an outsider what their company actually does. This does not mean it was an easy question to prep for. Most of the time, that description involves a bigger, more established company as an anchor point. \"We're like Airbnb, but for parking spaces,\" \"We're Uber for dogs,\" or even, \"We're Yelp \u2014 for weed.\" \nStartups that are built around great technology don't always have it figured out right away. Others that do have it figured out may not have a CEO with the social skills to convey it. The fictional guys on the show seem to be suffering from a little bit of both. \nThere's also mention of a company \"pivot,\" a fancy way of saying they scrapped their initial business strategy to start over in another direction. Yeah, we've heard that one before. \n\n3. The parties are ... awkward\nIf most tech parties didn't have free booze and food, we're not sure anyone would attend. In the pilot, the guys from the show take advantage of both at a Kid Rock concert at a house party. Pretty wild, right?\n\nIn real life, people will line up for hours to see a bunch of tech veterans talk about the garage that birthed their startup, but a musical artist that sells out arenas goes unnoticed. \nAt the Crunchies in 2013, Gza from the Wu Tang Clan rapped while most of the audience checked their phones to find out who Gza actually was. At Facebook's F8 developer conference in April, I captured the crowd's befuddlement as rock music blared from the stage. (In the Valley's defense, the crowd got more excited for DJ Diplo's performance later that night, so perhaps the drumming was just too hardcore.)\n\n4. Leering at women? There's an app for that\nBefore joining the fictitious company Pied Piper, Big Head's claim to fame was an app that \"shows you the location of a woman with erect nipples.\" The sad part? It sounds a lot like something we've heard before. \nAt TechCrunch Disrupt in 2013, two guys presented an app called Titstare, \"an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits.\u201D This actually happened. At a tech conference. The duo later claimed it was a joke, but the fact that they were invited on stage at a major tech event before people realized it was offensive sheds some light on the generally dude-centric mindset that permeates the tech world. \nIn October, one tech community center hosted a Hackers and Hookers Halloween party. The assumption: men are the tech minds, women are the eye candy. As you can imagine, it wasn't well received. \n\nif you want a great example of how tech dollars have filled San Francisco with garbage people, here is a party: https://t.co/z2c62yKKYu\n\u2014 brandon sheffield (@necrosofty) October 23, 2013\n\n\nKinda weird analog flame war about sexism and tech happening on my co-working floor. pic.twitter.com/vHVmcEOiFh\n\u2014 Sam Laird (@samcmlaird) May 16, 2014\n\nHBO's Silicon Valley has few female cast members, and sadly, that's pretty accurate. Most startups are led by men, most VCs are men, and tech has been a pretty male-dominated world for some time. And the female characters in the show are threefold: assistant to a VC, stripper, and girlfriend who wanders, scantily clad, around one episode. Not the most layered of roles. \n5. Dropping out of college is acceptable, if not encouraged\nUnlike the rest of the nation, in Silicon Valley, if your startup doesn't have at least one college or grad school dropout on the team, you may want to reconsider your strategy. \nIn HBO's Silicon Valley, fictional venture capitalist Peter Gregory announces during a TED Talk that he'll to pay students to skip college, calling higher education \"snake oil.\" In real life, Founders Fund General Partner Peter Thiel is doing something similar. The annual Thiel Fellowship pays 20 students $100,000 each to forgo college for two years to work on their startup ideas. \nStudents around the country are swimming in debt trying to get a degree. In Silicon Valley, we pay students not to go to college. \nSilicon Valley is a unique place. It provides a lot of promise for a lot of people and it's the economic engine of our region. But it also has its wrinkles, some more deeply ingrained and prominent than others and, moral of the story, they're ripe for satire.\nSo, sorry, tech superstar Elon Musk. Mike Judge has got your our number. And it makes for some pretty entertaining TV.\nBONUS: 'Silicon Valley' Cast Reveals 10 Mistakes Your Startup Is Making\n\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/05/18/silicon-valley-show-comparison/>