“I think it’s so spot on,” said Serge Roux, a 37-year-old industrial designer at Cambridge Consultants in Kendall Square. “It’s magnified, obviously — a little over the top — but the personalities are right on: the complete introverts who have no idea how to act socially. I can name those people in our company.”

When workers in Boston’s technology community watch “Silicon Valley,” HBO’s new sitcom about life in an Internet startup, it all seems so familiar.

There’s the look-alike of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. And the dorks who can write computer code in their sleep but can’t talk to a girl without getting tongue-tied. And the millions of dollars seemingly in reach.


An antic takeoff about the pressures and promises of creating the Next Great Company, “Silicon Valley” centers on a crop of shaggy, slovenly, self-absorbed entrepreneurs living and working in a communal “incubator” space that resembles a frat house for nerds. It is the latest creation of Mike Judge, the sharp wit behind “Beavis and Butthead” and “Office Space,” a cult classic for its skewering of cubicle culture.

The show has become the closest thing to required viewing in Greater Boston’s large startup community — and not everyone is laughing. Indeed, the show is a mildly polarizing event: Fans such as Roux enjoy it for accurately portraying the deadpan moments in their work world; others are irked by what they consider an unrealistic depiction of their profession.

“My sister called me the other day and was like, ‘Hey, I’ve been watching that show — that’s what you do!’ ” said Daniel Adler-Golden, 28, who founded an online network called Grouptones that helps musicians find band mates. “It’s like, ‘No, that’s not at all what I do.’”

“It’s magnified, obviously — a little over the top — but the personalities are right on,” said Serge Roux, a 37-year-old industrial designer at Cambridge Consultants in Kendall Square. Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff

Adam Garfield and his colleagues at the Boston startup SpeedETab have turned the program into a weekly virtual gathering. With two workers based in Boston and two in Florida, the SpeedETab workers usually watch “Silicon Valley” on their own but trade wisecracks by text messages. While some moments strike them as far-fetched, much of what they see in the characters and events rings familiar.


“Behind every joke there’s some truth,” said Garfield, 26, whose company is developing a new mobile payment system for bars. “I don’t think you can be in the startup world and not laugh at satire like that.”

Workers at another local tech firm, LevelUp, have taken their fandom up a notch. After the startup featured in the show hired a graffiti artist to redesign its logo in a recent episode, LevelUp brought in graffiti artists to redecorate its new office on Arch Street in Boston and posted pictures of the new art on Twitter.

Whether Boston’s tech workers love or hate the satire depends on how they answer one key question: What is “Silicon Valley” really about?

The ones who see a show about the day-to-day existence of a startup team invariably find details that don’t match their own experiences. While the show’s protagonist, Richard Hendriks, begins fielding multimillion-dollar offers 15 minutes into the first episode, Adler-Golden has been toiling for two years and recently raised $15,000 on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo.

He can take a joke but hates the idea that viewers — such as his own sister — could believe the life of a tech entrepreneur is so glamorous.


“They’re definitely not going to show you the uninteresting parts, and that’s most of it,” he said.

Frank Pobutkiewicz also believes “Silicon Valley” distorts the reality of launching a company. The founder of College Apprentice, a company at the Cambridge Innovation Center that runs entrepreneurship programs and international academic trips for students, he just does not see the fun in a show that’s all about his industry.

“I am surrounded by it,” Pobutkiewicz said. “Why am I going to go home and watch it?”

For those in Greater Boston’s startup scene, part of the fun is the needling the show delivers to the real Silicon Valley, which in the tech world has long been the Big Apple, with Boston cast as the second city.

“I’m so glad “Silicon Valley” is getting so much press because now it’s also getting bad press — and we’re not!” said Carlos Martinez-Vela, executive director of the Venture Café Foundation at the Cambridge Innovation Center.

Coastal rivalries aside, some in Boston’s tech community find that “Silicon Valley” hilariously captures some of the zanier things that can happen in their field.

For example, when Richard, the show’s central character, is faced with a choice between a $10 million buyout offer and a smaller investment that would let him keep the company, he suffers a panic attack and flees to his doctor.

But instead of getting medical attention, Richard gets pitched — his doctor has this idea for a smartphone-enabled device that can distinguish between a panic attack and a heart attack.


If Richard chooses the $10 million offer, the doctor asks, would he consider investing in the medical device company?

“That was awesome and so true,” Timothy Grovenburg, a tech investor at Berwind Private Equity in Harvard, said of the scene. “Everybody and their brother has an idea.”

Ultimately, Richard decides to take the smaller seed money from the venture investor so that he can retain majority ownership of his company, cheekily named Pied Piper, and proceeds to build it with the help of several geeky friends.

“I love caricatures about this world because they’re around us — they’re real,” said Martinez-Vela. “I’m not offended because I’m very critical of this environment. I work in it, I love it, but I also sometimes can’t believe these characters actually exist.”

To some, it isn’t just the satire that rings true.

Subhash Roy, chief executive of Waltham-based Q Factor Communications, appreciates how realistic many of the key relationships in “Silicon Valley” come off. As at the fictional Pied Piper, Q Factor’s business involves technology for transmitting large files of information, such as videos and songs, without losing quality.

Roy singles out a scene involving one of Pied Piper’s business partners, Erlich Bachmann, who pulls off a stirring explanation of the firm to a key investor when Richard freezes.

“He totally nailed it, and we would have said almost exactly the same thing about us,” Roy said of Erlich’s performance.

“Silicon Valley” gets one more thing right, said Roux, the industrial designer. Though it makes fun of socially challenged tech workers almost relentlessly, the show also makes clear they are the industry’s backbone — even if that backbone is a bit hunched from too many hours curled over a keyboard.


By Andrew Ba Tran, Globe Staff, inspired by John Verostek “They change the world,” Roux said. “If we didn’t hire those guys, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”

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Callum Borchers can be reached at callum.borchers@globe.com.