

Alexis Ohanian on Solving America’s Innovation Crisis - _pius
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/alexis_ohanian_reddit_co_founder_on_solving_america_s_innovation_crisis.html

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tenpoundhammer
The 1st part was ridiculous, having bizarre work hours and overly ambitious
work loads that require constant over working doesn't distinguish those who go
the extra mile. It distinguishes those who have the extra time in their life.

A single twenty something is going to have far more flexible hours and than a
37 year old man with a wife and two kids one of which has a disability and
needs extra care. I would imagine the 37 year old does a lot more in a day
than the 20 something although not all of that is at work.

While he has less business value he still has a ton of value as a human being
and should be treated as such. If we expect our businesses to treat humans
just like machine or office appliance than I guess not making that distinction
is ok. But if we want to live in a society were we value people and make room
for everyone to be successful than this matters.

The second part of this is spot on. College doesn't give you everything you
need and code schools don't teach you everything you need either.

~~~
nostromo
I'm tired of the narrative about how everyone over 30 can't work overtime
because of their half-dozen special-needs children and their demanding spouse
and their massive underwater mortgage and whatever else.

I'm over 30. I have _more_ time to work because I'm not dating and partying
and backpacking.

While trying to elicit sympathy, this narrative actually does more harm than
good.

Besides, it's just not true, at least with me and my peers. We're more
financially stable, harder working, honed, and more focused than we were when
we were 20.

~~~
geogra4
>I'm tired of the narrative about how everyone over 30 can't work overtime
because of their half-dozen special-needs children and their demanding spouse
and their massive underwater mortgage and whatever else.

How about those with wives and children would rather spend time with them than
at work?

Is a work-life balance to be looked down upon?

Why should the endless march of capital win at all costs vs human labor?

~~~
nostromo
That's great! But it's not a function of age.

I had more work/life balance in my 20s than I do now. Some people are the
opposite.

But it's an individual's choice to make, not some sort of natural law as it's
often presented.

~~~
mahranch
I actually think it IS a function of age. For example, while you personally
have more time in your 30s, it's not true for the majority. An average person
in their 30s will have experienced more "life" than someone in their 20s, so
the chances are higher that they will have added obligations and
responsibilities.

Whether it's financial responsibilities or familial responsibilities, ignoring
how life usually works out for the average person because your situation is
different is a bit selfish. As much as kids in their 20s like to think they
have their life planned out step by step, life has a way of throwing a wrench
into those plans. I don't think its disingenuous at all to assume that people
have less responsibilities in their 20s than in their 30s. A personal anecdote
to the contrary doesn't really change that.

~~~
vnchr
Like material wealth, relationships and commitments generally increase over
time.

~~~
runamok
I find I had more social relationships in my early 20s before I had a long
term girlfriend and we moved to a new area. It's only through conscious effort
that we maintain friendships with a few other couples. It would be easy to be
lazy and just spend time with my partner.

As people have kids perhaps they create new relationships with other couples
with kids but they often grow apart from those that don't.

Work commitments have varied through the years depending more on the company
culture.

------
Futurebot
It's a bit confused, so let's unpack the issues. There are really two crises,
and they have some overlapping solutions, but are definitely not the same
thing.

First, there are innovation issues. As Tyler Cowen goes over in his books,
we've already picked much or all of the low-hanging innovation fruit, and will
have to work much harder (collectively and individually) to innovate.
Ohanian's statements and implications about education (which I would argue is
more about knowledge, practice, and spending time actually thinking about
problems and solutions, rather than formal credentials) are correct.
Autodidacts are likely to be at the forefront of innovation for the
foreseeable future. Those willing to focus on learning and building things for
themselves will reap the gains compared to those who want to just live their
lives (spend time with others for fun, party, have hobbies, and all those
other things people in earlier generations were promised once they "put in
their dues") will struggle. While this was probably always true, we're
entering a new era of hypercompetition where (in the US at least) it'll be
what divides those in poverty from those with plenty (see Autor's work for
more on this.) Which brings us to the second crisis:

Jobs. In the coming decades, as we continue to automate people out of jobs
permanently (turning them into Zero Marginal Product workers) those left
/solidly in/ the job market will be eventually able to command much higher
salaries and benefits, while the ZMPs scrape by with either a) welfare if we
leave things as they are, b) live a decent life off a guaranteed basic income
if we're wise enough to do that, or c) starve, if we continue to do what we've
been doing for 30 years. Those on the margins will be the ones dealing with
the hypercompetition and will have to work harder and harder to stay above the
line. So he's right again about "they instantly show who is resourceful and
who isn't—who will go the extra mile and who will coast to the finish", but
not for the reasons he thinks. The way we got here wasn't some grand choice by
the people, it's the result of political choices: radical deregulation (mostly
a bad story), the destruction of labor unions (had to happen), automation
(technological unemployment as the result, unstoppable), and as a result, a
changed culture of doing more with less. He uses the term "welcomes", but
aside from those who enjoy meritocracy and all its upsides _AND_ downsides, I
would say most do NOT welcome it. If given the choice, most would choose to
bring back some semblance the Golden Age (which I believe is impossible and
should not even be considered, as the landscape has changed far too much to
make that a possibility.)

So there is overlap in the two stories: hypercompetition leading to people
having to work harder and harder to stay alive at the margins, and low-hanging
fruit being picked requiring us to work harder to innovate. The unspoken idea
that if _everyone_ works harder we will all be able to succeed and innovate is
naive; working harder to _innovate_ will be necessary but not sufficient.
Working harder to _succeed financially_ will only work for /some/, and as time
goes by, a smaller and smaller slice of the population.

Mr. Ohanian has romanticized a (for most) tough new reality. I believe this is
unwise. We should look at it clearly and with eyes wide open so we can improve
the future by putting in policies that support the innovators while keeping
all the jobless and medium-term future jobless people from starving; telling
people that they can succeed if they only work harder and obtain more
education should be considered dangerously misguided.

~~~
pa5tabear
Kudos. I've thought some of these ideas, but I've never strung them together
in my mind such a complete manner.

Now to nit-pick:

-Is talking about "marginal" innovators as the only people with safe work really accurate? I think many jobs which rely on people interaction and soft skills will not be killed off by technological advancement.

-I think telling people to get education is absolutely a fine thing.... if we replace the word "education" with "value adding skills". There are still going to be plethora of non-innovating positions that require skills. The problem is that the majority of students go to college to learn stuff that is mentally comfortable and are sustained on student debt that might well never be paid back. Yes, historically an education has always paid back over one's lifetime earnings, but I'm not sure that will continue in the future described.

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cliveowen
"Companies[...]no longer look for someone to come in from 9 to 5 and uphold
the status quo.[...]To baby boomers, these trends are scary, eating away at
the foundation of a steady job and life that they helped instill. But we
millennials welcome these new paradigms"

Woah, woah, woah! Speak for yourself man, I like steady jobs.

~~~
kn0thing
I'm all for steady jobs, it's just the goal is less about '9-5 work for one
company.' Especially in tech, the idea of a 'workday' is so rightfully
questioned or outright abolished at most workplaces. Getting things done
matters more than being in a chair. And I don't think many of us expect to
work for only one or two companies our entire lives.

~~~
cliveowen
The risk of shifting from the 9-to-5 mindset to "getting things done" is that
people will end up (and some already are) working 70/80 hours a week and die
young of heart attack.

The best thing about a steady job is that it takes worries out of your mind,
you're not always stressing about losing your job and making ends meet. That's
the most important thing that many tend to underplay.

~~~
elements
>The risk of shifting from the 9-to-5 mindset to "getting things done" is that
people will end up (and some already are) working 70/80 hours a week and die
young of heart attack.

This is the scenario that worries me- a massive race to the bottom in order to
get "ahead". Most jobs aren't that important, and don't merit that much of the
employee's time. At an e-commerce place I used to work, I overheard a c-level
exec tell a guy who was putting in lots of overtime, "Remember, we're not
curing cancer here." I think it's great that the exec was encouraging the guy
to not place too much importance on his job, but it's too bad that it was
necessary in the first place.

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akadien
This is absurd naivety. I know so many people who were the uber-hacker robots
that looked down with contempt on older guys with kids. When the robots got
married and had kids, everything changed to "work-life balance" and afternoon
soccer practice three times a week. I'm old enough that my kids are almost
grown and gone, yet young enough to still code a lot. It's all so ironic now.

------
droithomme
The summary is that Alex has invested in two companies that he'd like people
to consider are the solution to a crisis he describes.

He also pooh-poohs a scheme by Peter Thiel which is a privately financed
personal pilot project for 20 talented young adults a year by investing in
their work without requiring ownership of whatever they come up with. He
criticizes this plan for only applying to 20 people even though it was never
meant to scale to the populace, it has always been about giving very talented
young adults who are already working on something interesting an alternative
to college debt. He then as a counter example points to a system with
literally millions of students as input which has produced a student in
Mongolia who was accepted to MIT, the same student who is mentioned in
numerous articles as the great success of this system.

And we have his credentials as having cashed in with Reddit. Reddit it cool
and valuable, but it's also not profitable after all these years, which should
be considered when talking about things that are expected to yield some sort
of economic value and not just a cash out for a property that never manages to
create positive cash flow.

~~~
al1x
Thanks for the summary. Reading articles is so 5 years ago.

From what I've read it seems that Reddit is unprofitable more by choice than
by anything else though. They refuse any serious attempt to monetize with ads,
thinking (foolishly, I would say) that it would scare their audience away. The
types of ads they do run are silly and light-hearted. An Amazon affiliate ad
for the book "Crafting With Cat Hair" was a personal favorite. So while you do
have a valid point -- they're not (or barely) profitable, I think it should be
framed in this context for understanding: they're not profitable _by choice_.
I personally don't think making a switch and putting "real" ads up on their
site would make a damn bit of difference. Why should anyone care? They're a
business, they _should_ make money. People are used to ads. They're No Big
Deal at all. Besides, where else would be people go? It's not like there's a
better alternative.

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wil421
Interesting read, I do not partake in Reddit very often (the comments are
mostly more than meaningless, harsh like a school yard bully). Although I have
found a couple subreddits that do not fit my preconceived view of redditors.

Alexis' article has a lot of truths in it, supplemental education is a
necessity in the IT field, tech changes sooo fast. Most people wont attend a
college that is a front runner in its respective fields. Often times the
professors are teaching slightly outdated technologies or versions of
technologies. MOOC (massive open online courses) and learn to code sites help
fill this gap. Perhaps they may become more common as people take a look back
on how much they invested in school and how they could make it more cost
effective while still becoming knowledgable in their interests/professions.

~~~
kn0thing
It's all about the subreddits, wil421. Just like twitter is only as
interesting as we choose to make it (to whom we subscribe) so is reddit.
What's your passion? There are amazing comments in massive communities like
[http://askscience.reddit.com](http://askscience.reddit.com)

~~~
wil421
I guess I havent got past the general audience subreddits. Thanks for
responding, I am going to find a couple this week to start reading. You've
inspired me.

------
shawnreilly
I agree that multiple approaches towards learning will facilitate
entrepreneurship and innovation, but I think this article missed something
important; the Self-Learner. College Education and Supplemental Education have
something very basic in common; the information is provided to you.
Conceptually speaking, this implies that there is a limitation to the amount
that you learn. Because the person learning is reliant on being provided with
information to learn, they will only learn what is provided. Conceptually
speaking, this seems like a somewhat controlled (in-the-box) approach towards
learning, and does not really remind me of entrepreneurship and innovation. In
real world practice, this does not hold true because people are always looking
for more to learn. People are not limited, especially in today’s Information
Age. Being able to find new information to learn with no limitations is an
extremely powerful concept. And I think this is what was missing from the
article. I call it the Self-Learner, but I'm sure there are many different
names for it; The Tinkerer, the Enthusiast, the Hacker, etc. This is someone
that finds so much enjoyment in learning about a specific topic or craft that
they pursue it as their Passion. Depending on their level of enjoyment and/or
drive to learn, I believe that the Self-Learner approach provides an unlimited
potential with regards to learning. So where College Education and
Supplemental Education might eventually run out of material to provide to you,
the Self-Learner never runs out of material because they are always driven to
learn more. And the longer they pursue their Passion, the more they learn, and
the better they become at their craft. I think this is an extremely important
aspect of entrepreneurship and innovation. I think you'll find that most
successful innovators practice self-learning in one form or another throughout
their life. They may have been participating in College Education and
Supplemental Education, but it was the stuff they learned on their own that
really gave them the skills to do something amazing.

------
chadwickthebold
What innovation crisis?

~~~
mberning
My thought exactly. If there is a crisis of innovation I think it hardly stems
from a lack of skills or desire. I am constantly amazed by the level of
technical expertise on display in every even remotely technical community I am
part of. If a crisis exists I think it stems primarily from the current
economic climate and risks associated to that as well as how hard it is to
rebound after failure.

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johnrob
What exactly is an innovation crisis? And how is that the country containing
silicon valley has one?

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dmead
alexis gets far too much attention for coming up with a clever name for a link
sharing website. i don't care if his nosql install has two tables.

~~~
kn0thing
Totally agree. I read that even was going to call it "reditt" and then his
friend Melissa said "reddit" made more sense. Lucky chump.

~~~
dmead
hey bro, cool story.

------
mark_l_watson
I saw him give a talk at Google yesterday (my short take on it
[http://markwatson.com/blog/2013-10/google-author-talk-
alexis...](http://markwatson.com/blog/2013-10/google-author-talk-alexis-
ohanian.html). He had a lot of good ideas, some reflected in this article. He
didn't make any age related comments yesterday, perhaps because he had someone
with grey hair and beard sitting in front of him (that would be me :-)

He seems like a great guy who cares about people and the future.

------
piratebroadcast
Alexis is more concerned with crafting and selling his own brand than anything
else. Its become really obvious lately.

~~~
kn0thing
Couldn't agree more. That dude hadn't done anything in 8 years since he and
Steve started reddit.

~~~
piratebroadcast
Hows the book sale going, Alexis?

~~~
kn0thing
Pretty well, #4 national bestseller, but more exciting is all the people
tweeting at me that they've started programming, or just doing the stuff
they've always just been thinking about doing online. Even a few people
motivated to get engaged politically.

What are you working on these days?

------
siculars
I haven't even read the article but the title alone is pure hyperbole. The US
has no innovation crisis. To borrow a phrase: If Europe would have built
Facebook, Europe would have built Facebook.

------
jsnk
I think some people are missing the point of the article. Alexis is talking
about how there is a growing paradigm of doing things differently, educating
oneself differently, and making a living differently. There still is the
received view that you are supposed to educate yourself going through 4 year
university program and you make a living working 9-5 at some Megacorp. Inc.
This paradigm still works well for a vast majority of people, but at the same
time, a considerable portion of population is starting to find it hopeless.
There is a serious anomaly in the received view for millions of young people.
I know several friends who are recent grads (Non-CS/engineering) and they are
finding it extremely difficult to find an entry job in their field. Alexis is
saying that there is another way of doing things.

I wrote about my experience meeting Alexis just this morning
([http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regr...](http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regret_selling_reddit)).

