The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

I was there near the end. First, as a summer intern in 1998, and then in 1999 as a full time engineer on what is now Google's Mountain View campus. SGI had always been a dream company for me. I'd first learned about them in high school; now, right out of college, I'd somehow managed to land a dream job.

SGI's hardware was cutting-edge and exotic. IRIX was killer (sorry Solaris). Cray was a subdivision. My coworkers used emacs, too. They put an O2 on my desk!

The dream didn't last long. Major layoffs hit just a few months after I started full time. I wrote about the experience here: https://davepeck.org/2009/02/11/the-luckiest-bad-luck/

I worked at Google from 2013 to 2020. There were definitely employees (maybe a majority) who assumed that Google would always be the dominant force in technology. Those of us who were a bit older always understood that everything changes in Silicon Valley.

Those buildings represented that change to me. I can remember coming to concerts at the Shoreline in the 90s and looking at those Silicon Graphics buildings: they looked so cool, and they represented the cutting edge of technology (at the time). And yet...it all disappeared.

Same goes for the Sun campus which is where Meta/Facebook is now. Famously, the Facebook entrance sign is literally the same old Sun sign, just turned around! [0]

So I always cautioned co-workers: this too, shall pass. Even Google.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back...

Meta still has the Silicon Graphics logos on a few glass conference room doors in building 16, I believe. At least they were there in 2012.

Great memento mori.