I bet you would have found Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak in a hacker hostel…
New hostels for techies are cropping up in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Crammed into odd spaces with futons, young programmers, designers, and scientist who have not yet achieved Facebook-level riches are finding inspiration in hacker hostels.
Mostly men in their 20’s and as many as 10 are crammed in a two-bedroom apartment. Potential candidates are highly pre-screened and for the right person, the environment is highly desireable. Justin Carden, a 29-year old software engineer is staying in a hostel in Menlo Park while working on a biotech startup talks about the place as if it were Stanford. “The intellectual stimulation you get from being here is unparalleled.”
Interesting Factoid: In the 60’s, researchers at the Stanford Artificial Laboratory slept in the attic while waiting for their turn on the shared mainframe computer.