From: Silicon Valley
Genre: Television
Who said it?: Jian Yang (but translating for another person)
The story behind the quote: This week’s quote comes from the HBO sitcom, Silicon Valley. The show focuses on a programmer who creates a new program that does file compression really well and manages to leverage that to create his own small startup called Pied Piper, which is the same name as the compression algorithm he created. Essentially a parody of the programming industry and how corporations can be rather cutthroat even when some people try to do good in the industry.
The quote is said in the Season 5 episode, Artificial Emotional Intelligence. In the episode, Jian Yang (played by Jimmy O. Yang) is trying to recreate the Pied Piper code in China. He’s approached by billionaire Gavin Benson (played by Matt Ross) to negotiate a price for the code. As Gavin keeps upping his purchasing price, one of Jian Yang’s programmers makes a comment in Chinese. Jian Yang then translates it for Gavin Belsom, telling him that he understands that the billionaire is intentionally lowballing him.
Geek wisdom: Powerful people will try to exploit others by various means. Whether it be with money, influence or power, they will try to deceive honest people by not telling them the full story. So, you have to be skeptical about offers that may seem too good to be true. That’s because it just might be true.
My Geek Wisdom 