
Glamorous tech startups can be brutal places for workers - Turukawa
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688390-glamorous-tech-startups-can-be-brutal-places-workers-other-side-paradise
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10912945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10912945)

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akjetma
> Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, mainly to hire its 13 employees.

I don't usually like to nitpick, but this just seems totally incorrect.

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terravion
Right there with you, given the network effect of the underlying business, it
seems crazy that this wouldn't be most or all of the value of the company.

Moreover, it is not a stunning realization that not everyone likes their job
...even in tech. Or that employers with a lot of technical drudgery would have
to offer higher wages, perks, and more job security to recruit.

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w1ntermute
The whole _reason_ why all the perks and high salaries have to be offered is
because there aren't that many people who want to do the work. Otherwise,
people would be willing to work for peanuts in order to get a foothold in the
industry, like in entertainment, journalism, or art.

~~~
tymotm
Not necessarily, that maybe part of the explanation.

The majority of the population is simply not capable of doing the work because
it requires a high IQ.

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w1ntermute
If that were the case, then theoretical physicists and mathematicians would be
getting paid high salaries to do what they love, rather than decamping to Wall
Street and wasting their lives performing financial gymnastics.

Both supply and demand matter, and the vast majority of coding is something
the average person could be trained to do, especially given how accessible the
resources required to learn are. The problem is that the majority of people
are not interested in spending their lives sitting in front of a computer for
8+ hours/day editing text files essentially reinventing the wheel.

~~~
tymotm
Physics and Math aren't in demand the same way high programming ability is.

"Both supply and demand matter, and the vast majority of coding is something
the average person could be trained to do, especially given how accessible the
resources required to learn are."

This is wrong. Passing an interview like Microsoft's or Google's requires a
very high IQ. They are designed that way for a reason.
[http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2007/02/its-all-about-
brainpower...](http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2007/02/its-all-about-
brainpower.html)

The average person isn't nearly as smart as you think, probably because you
mostly interact with people in a restricted range. For example, have you taken
the SAT and do you remember how easy it was? Training, on average, fails to
significantly improve SAT scores. [http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2012/02/test-
preparation-and-sat...](http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2012/02/test-preparation-
and-sat-scores.html)

If you think the average person can solve highly g-loaded algorithmic problems
by practicing you are delusional. Most people could practice 16 hours a day
for years on end and they would still do awful. Even for the more basic
programming stuff, the performance of a higher IQ person is usually far, far
better.

~~~
w1ntermute
I should've been more careful when I said that the "average person" would be
able to learn how to code. You're right that I wasn't even thinking of those
who had difficulty with the SAT, but rather those who went to good colleges
and then went into a variety of non-tech fields, such as finance, law,
medicine, or science.

I was formally trained as a scientist, and many of my friends who didn't go
into tech went into one of those 4 aforementioned fields. It's those groups of
people (which is quite large) that I was referring to when I said that coding
is something that can be self-taught with freely available online reference
materials - myself and a couple of my friends have successfully done exactly
that.

