Brad Feld wrote a quick post about a quote from one of his CEOs about Silicon Valley:
“I love coming out here. It’s like high school but with money instead of girls.”

Alas, the Valley is far too much like high school, especially with the line that it draws between “the cool kids” and everyone else.

More than half the motivation behind some of the cliqueish behavior I see is a desire, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the guys who didn’t get the girl in high school to be a cool big shot.

After all, no offense to Reid, who is a good guy, but I don’t think that the Reid Hoffmans of the world were chick magnets back in the day.

What I find sad is how those who were once abused and ostracized are so quick to turn the tables and become “Mean Girls” themselves when given the chance.

As I’m fond of saying, no one stays on top forever (even for icons like Scott McNealy), and people will remember how you treated them back when you were riding high.

Be the cool kid who treated everyone with respect, not the jerkwad who terrorized the freshmen.

(Originally posted as a comment on Feld Thoughts. If you want to follow all of my comments, subscribe to this del.icio.us feed: http://del.icio.us/chrisyeh/yehcomment)