
Valley Talent - luu
http://rkoutnik.com/articles/Valley-Talent.html
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greenleafjacob
Most software that has been or will be written is boring CRUD mixed with
specific use case business rules, but that doesn't mean that talent is
inapplicable to "technically simple" problems. Even the simplest application
can devolve into a mess of complexity. True talent is managing that
complexity. That skill has a place in any non-trivial enterprise that uses
software, not just those that solve NP-hard problems.

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minimaxir
The core problem is that there's little _incentive_ to build complicated,
high-effort startups and hire appropriately-skilled people for them because
venture capitalists are giving tens of millions of dollars to people who build
quick-and-dirty apps that follow trends which will die within a month.

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RKoutnik
On one hand, absolutely. The current wash of investment means that there's
plenty of CRUD startups that get funded that wouldn't otherwise. They'll get
acquihired at best and the cycle continues.

On the other hand I don't think that founders will say "Oh, I won't pursue
that technical passion project - I'll just build another Twitter!" The
incentives to plunge into hard technical problems are not (at their core)
based on money. That's just a plus. And lots of investor money means that
those with the skills are more likely to found a company instead of letting a
side project languish on a hard drive somewhere.

So those who can build amazing things will continue to do so. The current
funding environment isn't stopping them. Having more CRUD apps than you can
shake a RAM stick at is a small price to pay for enabling the next Stripe or
Heroku.

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mahyarm
The thing is, there is a lot of interesting things that you could reduce into
'crud' per say. Or crud with servers.

For example, would bitcoin be a 'crud app'? Is mint a 'crud app'? Is pinterest
a 'crud app'? Facebook or Instagram?

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RKoutnik
BTC: No, there's an astounding amount of cryptography there. You can build
CRUD stuff on top of it.

Mint: (assuming the financial tracker) No, ask anyone who's worked with bank
software before - it ain't pretty.

Pinterest/FB/Instagram: Possibly. At the start? Absolutely. What makes those
companies valuable is their network effect - everyone you know is already
there. Supporting users at that scale takes a lot more than just reading up on
the latest APIs. FB invented a (sorta) new language to tackle their scaling
problems.

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kevan
For more info there's the Bitcoin whitepaper:
[https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

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moeamaya
I've seen an alternate anecdote developing, one in which talent is growing
weary of delivery, social, and data startups. It appears to result from both a
financially stable base (engineers having made money from prev mentioned
startups) and a desire to have a larger impact.

Additionally, something I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, but the API
availability is unfathomably vast now. I was checking out Google's developer
console and there are over 100 incredibly robust APIs just a GET request away.
In the real world, you can order drone images, turn off your lights at home,
monitor your health levels all from url endpoints. These computational
implementations are encouraging talent to work on projects that are beyond the
scope of a laptop and a dorm room.

I for one am optimistic in Valley Talent, and can't wait for the next few
years.

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walshemj
When I have looked at Google API's they always seem to be half completed and
badly documented.

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softdev12
I now use a quick test whenever I hear about a new startup: I ask myself
what's the "trick" they are proposing. If the trick is sufficiently clever,
then I raise the odds of the startup getting initial traction.

Here are a few examples:

1) rent out cars that people leave at airport parking (i.e. flightcar, etc.)
2) group people together for a buying discount (i.e. groupon, etc.) 3) a
middleman service that uses middlemen (i.e. magic, etc.)

Most of the hot new startups aren't delivering on a basic need (like food or
shelter), but seem to be like one-off computer hacks. And that's not a bad
thing. These are smart people bringing out clever solutions that deserve
talented valley employees.

The returns that these startups will generate are much more attractive for
short-term investors and will have clear advantages over the long-term
mentality needed for building a hard new technology.

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joesmo
I think talent, at least in engineering, has very little to do with the
success of startups. The "Absolutely" and "Absolutely not" engineers are the
same. There are good ones and bad ones everywhere. It's hardly ever the fault
of engineers that the company they are working at doesn't make it. Likewise,
very few companies make it because of engineering talent.

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RKoutnik
Talent does not exclusively create success - there's still some elements of
luck and market in there. It's still a huge part of success. Look at the
absolutely insane amounts of effort companies are putting in to attract
talent.

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jordanb
The companies put a lot of effort into finding people who are 1) sufficiently
competent and 2) cheap. That's quite a bit different than trying to find the
best of the best although it can be plenty hard if you're not willing to pay
the market clearing rate.

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phamilton
I think this is in line with what someone once called "fetishizing
complexity".

If I work on a project that is complex, I am a good engineer because I solve
hard problems. If I work on a simple problem, I'm just another code monkey.

I think a good engineer can take a complex problem and frame it in a simple
light. I think a less great engineer can take the same complex problem and
come up with a complex solution. From many perspectives, the second engineer
is the one innovating.

Note: I'm talking about complexity in a business sense. There are many
problems that are mathematically difficult and don't fall under this umbrella.

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viscanti
As an industry, we do a poor job of distinguishing the good engineer coming up
with an elegant solution and the lesser engineer coming up with the complex
solution to the same problem.

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akbar501
There's a lot of everything in the valley.

For complex software, take a look at some of the database companies. For
flight hardware + software, AirWare is doing some cutting edge work.

Even the "simple" gets complex at scale (ex. Facebook).

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rguzman
Thinking that the 'talent' necessary to make a successful startup or product
is just 'coding talent' is as naive and ill-informed as thinking that the only
talent needed to play in the NBA is being tall. Coding is just one of the
important aspects of starting a company, there are many others.

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dasil003
Reads like someone who has immersed themselves in the SV bubble for a year or
two and now thinks they know it all. Hint: talent is orthogonal to whatever
trends are happening in SV (or elsewhere).

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markbnj
>> One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is
that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent'.

This is a common refrain? I'm an experienced engineer about as far outside
Silicon Valley as you can get in the U.S., and in more than twenty years I
have never heard this sentiment expressed. Perhaps the author needs to make
some new acquaintances.

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zatkin
I found this article to be contradicting itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
if you read code line-by-line, you're just obtaining more knowledge, not
talent. How does this suggestion lead to more talent?

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ajoy39
Knowledge nurses talent, but it is not in and of itself knowledge. The
knowledge of how to solve a problem that has been solved before is incredibly
useful, but the real talent in our industry is the talent to solve new
problems in new ways, and most people develop that talent but not just looking
at how a problem was solved but deconstructing the process of how the designer
of that solution came to the conclusion they did.

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pdq
Randall, I have a suggestion for your site: add the article title as the HTML
title, so the tab shows up as "Valley Talent" instead of "Randall Koutnik."

