Startups have become something of a career path or lifestyle. It has developed into a scene, with its own media coverage and drama. I see a lot of clueless college students wanting to "do startups" as if it were any old job.
My perspective is this: Found or join a startup if have a specific product/service you want to build at a large scale. You'll earn your wealth through the equivalent amount of pain (http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html).
But coming to SF and floundering around is no better than aimlessly moving to LA to become a movie star. There are a lot better ways to spend your youth.
Edit to address my last point: Sure, there are many benefits to coming out here. But there's no benefit in coming here to just be a "scenester."
Except that working at a no-name software shop will pay significantly better, and then you can take your SF developer experience to middle America and get decent paying corporate job and a McMansion.
I think you underestimate the amount of money that Bay Area developers make. $2k/month is $24K/year, which is a relatively small fraction of your after-tax income when you're making $150K/year.
One thing people don't take into account when figuring out cost-of-living adjustments: while expenses like rent, taxes, and meals out are typically a percentage of income, expenses like durable consumer goods and savings are measured in absolute dollars, and are fungible between locations. So while it sucks that cost-of-living might still eat up 80% of your income, the remaining 20% is a measly $8k/year at a $40K/year middle-America programmer job, but $30K/year at a $150K/year Bay Area tech job.
And the difference gets even more stark with added income - if you make $300K/year (quite doable as a senior engineer at a major tech company in the Bay Area), your taxes go up, but every other expense category remains the same, and so you end up banking about $100K/year. It's not unreasonable for a programmer in the Bay Area to save up half a million over a 4-5 year stint at a company; ask someone in Kansas or Ohio how long they think they'll have to work to save up half a million.
Fresh-out-of-school salaries at Google/Facebook/Twitter are in the low six figures (2 years ago I think they were around $105K), get promoted to senior dev after 2-3 years and $150K/year is very doable. It's probably lower at J-random-startup that nobody has ever heard of, but most VC-funded startups will pay market rates.
We are comparing to acting hopefuls. Is the crem-de-la-crem of the programming world- the ones that get top salaries at Google/Facebook/Twitter- really the right people to compare?
300K for a senior engineer? Maybe a few people at Google. I've heard of some 200K jobs at Apple for low level systems programming people that are hard to find.
Well, not really. It's possible to get valuable, career-relevant experience at just about any software shop, name or no. With the exception of some people skills, that's not usually the case when waiting tables.
This kind of comment makes me wonder what percentage of HN has zero idea of what's it's like to be legitimately broke/poor. Even if you're joking, since you include the winky face, what about actual poor uneducated people who will never have a chance to work in a no-name software shop?
What does that have to do with anything? I'm just bemusedly thinking of the parallels between the kid who moves from Small Town, USA to be a star in Hollywood, and the kid who moves from Small Town, USA to make it big with his own startup in SV.
"No-name software shop" was probably the wrong choice; a closer tech analogue to waiting tables to fund that acting dream would probably be working IT/helpdesk.
Depends on the alternatives though. Much better to be "floundering around" and amongst a group of people with similar goals then trying to do the same in Topeka Kansas (arbitrary nothing against that city.) To start you could end up meeting people who do something that will give you opportunity. Environments like this are rich in contacts as well that you can make. (Not a reason to drop out of something that you are on a path to but if you can't find that path it certainly will give you a leg up.)
Actually, now that there is a "Silicon Beach" centered around southern Santa Monica and Venice, I suppose some people flounder around in a startup WHILE trying to become a movie star. Best of both worlds!
There will always be people who want something because of what other people will think of them for it. Among my cohort growing up this has often manifested as becoming one of the big three: Doctor, Lawyer or Engineer (very much in that order). I have seen this shift toward adding "entrepreneur" to the list, and its impact on younger members of the same peer group. Make no mistake, these are not "scenesters", but the type of people who aggressively overachieve in things, even if they do not possess a purity of intent.
I would rather see a glut of entrepreneurs who don't know why they want to be one, over a glut of lawyers who don't know why they want to be one.
Many people seem to believe that if you want to do a startup, you have to do it when you're young. Young people can afford to take a lot of risk, because they have few responsibilities to hold them back. And if they fail, there'll be plenty of opportunity to make up for lost time. What few people seem to realize is that there is a second phase in your life where almost exactly the same is true, namely, when you're old. The only thing that is no longer true is that you won't be able to make up for lost time in case of failure. But if you lived a good life, you don't have to, because you've already made up for lost time in the past. And there are some extra perks, like you've probably got money to fund yourself. And you should know a thing or two that you didn't when you were young. And BTW, I'm not just blabbering here. I'm 60 and I'm doing it. Granted, I haven't been successful so far, but having the time of my life anyway. No fears, no regrets, and high like a kite on adrenalin 24/7.
Thanks for saying this. I'm an early twenty's kid who's decided to forgo the fashionable startup scene in favor of an extremely well-paid (given my age) position in a top-ten tech giant. I have a hunch that it would be more sensible to sharpen my skills when I'm young, and focus on becoming a happy and fulfilled person, only to emerge as a powerhouse of compounded experience and technical and social skill.
As someone who's already emerged on the other side of that process, can you speak to one's capability to capitalize on that experience and personal growth throughout one's life? Does middle age have to be a time of complacency and conservatism?
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[...] can you speak to one's capability to capitalize on that experience and personal growth throughout one's life?
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Given the fact that I haven't been successful with a late-in-life startup, some may deny me the credibility to speak to that. That being said, I do believe that yes, you can capitalize on past growth and experience. That's assuming you can pull off that Zen thing of keeping your beginner's mind. Know what you know, know what you don't know, and strive to be an expert with a beginner's mind.
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Does middle age have to be a time of complacency and conservatism?
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Complacency, no, that doesn't sound good to me. I believe you should always be able to describe yourself with an adjective or a combination of adjectives such as "ambitious," "dedicated," and the like. Of course that could be dedication to a family, accompanied by less ambition in your professional life. But that's still different from complacency. Conservatism, yes, that would describe my own middle age pretty well. Everybody's rhythm of life is different of course. But it makes a lot of sense to have one extended period in your life where you plant a tree and watch it grow. The middle of one's life is a pretty good time to do that.
one point al3x didn't talk to: not all startups will teach you to be an awesome engineer. If a startup is really hiring the best of best, a less experienced programmer is not likely to make the cut. Ever look at your code from 6 months, a year, 5 years ago? and how bad it is? Many tech startups don't have time for that, the quality of your work can make or break a startup. Elite startups want "ex-googlers".
So if you want to get good, you need to work with people that are better than you, who have already learned from their mistakes so you don't have to. Find the strongest shop that will hire you. It will not be the best shop. It probably won't be an elite startup. But more mature companies can afford to pay for your learning curve. You also will probably make more money, enough to pay off your student debt and save up to bootstrap when you're more experienced.
I run a bootstrapped company and we hire the cheapest engineers we can find. I interview for competence in the one thing they understand, and then just how fast they learn. I cannot overstate the number of people out there that are incredibly smart, but can't describe basic information like how the HTTP protocol works. It is completely baffling. These people can be explained how the protocol works in 10 minutes, and spend 8 hours at home looking at the Chrome web inspector, and completely grock the protocol. I find myself a seed planter. These people are smart enough to figure it out, but for some reason they don't do it without a 10 minute verbal overview.
My advice to any to young person is to judge the job by the quality of the mentor. Smart people feel ecstasy when learning new things, and if you have anxiety about your job, then you are likely in the wrong position.
i totally understand and respect your position and that's definitely a strategy that can work.
The other end of the spectrum is, you could contract someone like Tony Morris[1] at $250 an hour for 20 hours a week, and he will build your product faster than a team of untrained engineers, or more likely, build a product that untrained engineers aren't capable of building, with a defect rate close to zero.
Not every strategy is right for every business, but generally, the harder the technical challenges, the more cost effective it is to pay for a superstar.
Yeah, but I think the over-arching idea that the OP was getting at, was "what if we can breed these 'superstars'?"
That would certainly seem feasible if you interview for personality traits, interests and learning skills, more than actual/concrete knowledge and working skills. And of course, this would be a lot more cost-effective as well. In that case, I would say that the key would lie in paying more attention to human psychology/intelligence research than to tech blogs/circles to find out more about 'superstars'.
To a point that is possible. However there are key lessons that don't really sink in until after you have made certain mistakes and have seen the consequences. For instance I understood the value of forcing variable declarations, and of having multiple layers of safeguards after a typo in a variable name caused me to take down Bloomberg's ftp server about 15 years ago.
Judging from ability and personality, it was clear at that point that I had potential. And I received some excellent mentoring. But potential and mentoring do not ensure a smooth path to success.
While that's true, it still seems a bit orthogonal to the point, because the argument being made is essentially about efficiency, not necessarily effectiveness. If we think about all the people that have had such experience changing epiphanies, then take the subset of those who might actually be able to communicate these valuable experiences across in a programming interview, suddenly your selection pool becomes rather small. Which is oddly reminiscent of the current 'talent shortage' issue. Thus, approaching the problem from a different angle which considers this concept of 'experience' to be more of a byproduct of a certain set of traits than a trait itself, you suddenly open up your list of possible candidates to something a lot more workable.
Because after all, there is nothing preventing people selected for personality traits to reach these same epiphanies that 'experienced' people have (regardless of mentorship), it's just a matter of whether or not you as an employer would be willing to accept this 'risk'. Given the current state of affairs with regards to 'talent', I could see many finding the risk permissible. Not to mention the fact that the set of 'smart people with potential' is not mutually exclusive with the set of 'smart people with experience'; of course, selecting purely from the set of people that meet both criteria would still fall under the realm of chasing unicorns, but the point is that the two are not exclusive.
The point that was made was that smart people with potential are cheaper to hire and easy to train. My point is that smart people with potential and training are great, but aren't actually as good as smart people with potential and experience.
The trick is, of course, that smart people with both potential and experience tend to be easy to identify..and very expensive.
Well yes, but the fact that they are expensive is a byproduct of their rarity (which results in us talking about cheaper engineers), and that can be symptomatic of a system with an efficiency problem. The argument then is about confirming that it is.
Expensive, yes. But expensive compared to value produced?
Every decent programmer has stories of a time they put in 10 hours of work to save a highly paid person 20 hours/month for the rest of time. I say stories because there are many such. On my resume I list a number of cases where I added X millions/year to the bottom line of small-medium companies. It is not a complete list. What value should an efficient market put on a programmer who does that repeatedly?
For those willing to work as an employee in the Los Angeles area, the value the market places is significantly under $200k/year. Now you tell me, is that expensive relative to value?
Expense wasn't even remotely the issue I was addressing; the expense of such 'experts' makes sense within the scope of our system. It is the rarity that seems out of place.
> That would certainly seem feasible if you interview for personality traits, interests and learning skills, more than actual/concrete knowledge and working skills.
That's a good chunk of the way we (ThoughtWorks) interview, along with general smarts and good company fit. It's easier to teach a very smart person [language x, skillset y] than it is to teach a random person who knows [language x, skillset y] how to be very smart.
> And of course, this would be a lot more cost-effective as well
Only if you can retain them, once they get smart and realise how good they are. Gratitude (and staying with the company who invested in you) aren't popular these days.
You mean the guy that one could argue is solely responsible for the Code of Conduct header on every TypeSafe affiliated Google Group?
Yah, that guy. Sure, for $250/hour he's probably fairly amicable.
He's categorically brilliant (in FP implemented Scala, certainly), but good luck grokking his mile long type signatures when he's gone from the project.
Saying that, if part of his consultancy is to train the team in FP and explain his code, then there is "real" value in the hiring; otherwise, where would you know to begin when updating the system down the road?
Most of our defects are not software defects, they are product/marketing/strategy/SEO/SEM defects.
If American Express wants to launch some app with defined features, then Tony sounds like a great guy. We kinda understand our customers, but not really. We throw pasta at the wall and see if it sticks. Once it sticks, I can hire Tony to make it great. Tony will never accept us as a client for good reason.
I don't have decades of programming experience. But with whatever limited experience I have I can tell you. Especially with software knowing what to do is the most difficult part, doing it isn't even a problem.
A product is ultimately a discovery which you have to do in iterations. It won't be until the last iterations you will know what to do. Once things are clear you don't a rock start to get things done, any one can do it now. Rock stars are needed speedup those iterations, do the discovery super fast and get the clarity.
i might be missing something but is tony morris someone who is famous for being really good at programming or something? i googled him and couldn't find anything concrete, and yet you and the guy you replied to seems to already know who this guy is and have some kind of assumption about his abilities. i'm sincerely asking.
In Haskell he's nobody special; however, in Scala he's known as one of originators of Scalaz, and has made contributions to the development of the Scala language itself. TM is very strong in category theory and has no problem speaking categorically about the correctness of his views.
He's a polarizing figure in the Scala community and seems to enjoy pissing people off (again, the code of conduct banners seen on Scala Google groups can be by and large attributed to TM, which is an accomplishment, thus the infamous claim).
In TM's defense, as a teacher he does force the reader to stretch beyond their current (limited) understanding. If he came across as less of an a$$hole then he'd probably have a larger role in Scala and the programming world as a whole.
Most important thing in your first job is your boss. You are going to learn a massive amount, not just the job skills, but how to work in a group/company. The distance is massive between learning the right things from someone who does things in a first class way, and the wrong things from someone mediocre or worse.
Second is the company. You join the right company, and it's a solid growing company, or a rocket ship, you have lots of opportunity to learn and grow. Conversely, if it's a truly awful company known for unethical practices or engineering nightmares, it can end up haunting you, both in teaching you the wrong things and a possible red flag on your resume if you stay too long.
In a flat organization, your boss is going to be irrelevant. I would gauge a company by whether the interviewers teach or belittle. I personally find belittling okay, and can learn in that environment. "fuck you, if you are such an expert, then you can explain it to me. If you can't explain it, then you are probably full of shit." I have no problem saying that, but most people won't/shouldn't.
I get high from learning no matter whether the people are assholes or teachers. Most people need good mentors that are not managers. Any organization where managers have time to teach are too hierarchical.
A manager can be a mentor regardless of the type of organization. What is important if you want to improve a particular skill set is that the people that are managing you truly understand what it takes to do your job well and can provide feedback on what you are not doing well from a "do-ers" perspective - more of an apprenticeship model.
I have personally found that mentors are great for career advice and resolving questions, but never have enough "skin in the game" to invest their time in my development.
I used the word mentor incorrectly. What you want is peer teachers, not mentors. Mentors by the corporate definition are largely useless. You contact them 1-2 per month at best, which is pointless.
What you want is a person that observes your code, behavior, interactions, demeanor, etc., and tells you how to do better. It is impossible to have perfect introspection. You need to find a guide more than the corporate definition of "mentor". People need apprentice masters more than mentors, I wish I had used a better term.
that's pretty much what I meant... if you've just graduated that person is not really your 'peer', maybe not your 'boss' either ... a lot of times real world roles and relationships don't line up with org charts.
interesting... After about 3 years I agree. But a first job, someone's got to show you the ropes and get you up to speed with processes, testing, coding standards, help you get unstuck from time to time. I guess by boss I don't necessarily mean team manager, but whoever that is, mentor, direct senior. If nobody has that role, you'd better be pretty self-directed. 'Flat' better not be a synonym for free-for-all with no process, standards, code review, or you might learn some bad habits if you're not a natural (and even then.)
Most important thing in your first job is that the team is well balanced. And that you are collaborating with people who are amazing, rich and had history of doing great things before. [As to your boss, of course having a nightmarish boss fresh from some traditional caste system could be disastrous and can end up haunting you. But that's an outlier case.]
Great point. A good rule of thumb in jobs is that if you are the undisputed top <X>, make sure that you are being compensated very, very well. Because you just sold out. It is quite hard to reach new levels of expertise without explicit, task-related mentoring, and if you're trading off that kind of growth, do it explicitly.
Back when I was a manager, I used to find it somewhat depressing to interview people who had gone to startups or non-tech firms for 5-10 years, reached "senior developer" or "architect" roles, and whose levels of expertise were indistinguishable from the median recent stanford grad. Certainly, they knew more "things" but had failed to grow in either scope or depth.
Certainly, they knew more "things" but had failed to grow in either scope or depth.
It's really easy to let career development and general-purpose learning go to slack when you believe this thing you're spending 80 hours per week on is going to make you rich and change the world-- and when you're surrounded by people who (equally irrationally) believe the exact same thing.
This would be (and still is) a great sentiment, but the problem is that so many startups and small development shops are looking for something that most fresh graduates/junior level developers can't offer. It's a real shame, because it appears as if there's often little to no budge, and I worry for the future of the market (and by this I mean for the other 98% of the US which isn't SF or NY) because it's a real issue that's going to start rearing its head, if it hasn't already.
If you work on a startup, almost by definition you'll be doing a lot of different stuff, and changing a lot of things. That is a great environment to learn new different stuff (even out of the engineering field). Maybe not deep knowledge, on the other hand...
And, of course, working with great people will make you learn faster and better.
There are also plenty of startups that don't value or recognize technical skill and where it's easy for a junior engineer to get hired. Those are terrible as well, because (a) they'll make you stay mediocre and (b) you end up learning the wrong lessons.
like that HN'er's story of wiping a production DB accientally and the company (a social gaming company) blaming him and bullying him into resigning. (instead of asking why they had given a Jr. Dev write access to production in the first place)
Giving a "junior dev" access isn't the issue; after all, that dev probably writes code that can execute SQL.
The problem there was not having any safeguards against running arbitrary commands and not being able to just rollback from the transaction logs. Seriously, it should be a small annoying incident. Screwed up some data? OK, stop things, restore, rollback to the transaction before you screwed it. Apologize and move on.
Giving the Jr Dev access wasn't the problem; your site should be Jr Dev proof (i.e. have backups). If that wasn't a problem, then they only have themselves to blame for investing in someone they obviously didn't want.
Besides, just because you're inexperienced doesn't excuse stupid behavior, and I'm struggling to think of how one might accidentally drop a database after logging into a production environment—I would suspect that people were already lax about it if a Jr Dev was doing it.
If I recall correctly, he was developing a new feature, and the only way to test his work was by creating and dropping test tables, on the production db. One day he dropped the wrong thing. I don't think he had any technical or academic background, and there was no oversight.
> the only way to test his work was by creating and dropping test tables, on the production db.
Really? He couldn't restore a backup locally and test against that? You guys couldn't roll back via transaction log? Mistakes ALWAYS happen, and it's just unfortunate that the Jr Dev was the first person to get screwed by one.
>Maybe the best way to meet your goal is starting a non-profit or going into politics.
I'd like to know whose, or which, goals are better met going into politics.
Politics, at least in America, are a machine that eats good ideas and shits murder, and anybody with half a brain and the desire to change the world should know, from even casual observation, to steer clear.
For example, Elon Musk and entrepreneurs like him have done more to move the world away from fossil fuels and towards alternative energy in the last decade than the U.S. government (at any level) has in the 25 years they've been aware of climate change. Musk is inventing the future, and in Congress they're still arguing over whether climate change exists or not. And that's just how fast things move in that arena. It's unavoidable.
At this point in history, even if you don't care about money at all, even if hate for capitalism runs deep in your blood, starting a business is the only means available for make a positive impact in the world on a reasonable time scale.
And I should also point out, going into politics or non-profits means you would actually be spending more time raising money than you would if you were running a VC-backed startup. So, if your goal is to get really good at raising money, the author's sentence makes sense. For any other meaning, it doesn't.
> For example, Elon Musk and entrepreneurs like him have done more to move the world away from fossil fuels and towards alternative energy in the last decade than the U.S. government (at any level) has in the 25 years they've been aware of climate change. Musk is inventing the future, and in Congress they're still arguing over whether climate change exists or not. And that's just how fast things move in that arena. It's unavoidable.
OK, this hyperbole stretches reality much too far in several ways...but let's just examine its scientific and economic assertions. Is Elon Musk's Tesla car the best thing for the environment in the last year? 2 years? OK, let's just say "yes".
Better fuel efficiency standards is decidedly less sexy than an electric car. But small improvements across a fleet of millions and millions of vehicles easily outweigh even the best case scenario for electric cars in the foreseeable next five years.
And before you say, "Well, Tesla's achievement will inspire an unquantified amount of innovation, etc. that will lead to something even bigger"...well, I can counter that the economic impact and consequences of even small changes to fuel consumption will drive just as many, if not more innovation.
And Jesus, can we really use Tesla as a prime example of independent innovation after the recent news that it paid back its federal loan? And yes, they did pay it back early, but are you going to argue that they took a half-billion low-interest loan just for the fun of it?
And how do you think that loan came about in the first place? Politics. It's not a stretch to say that Tesla's future was pretty shaky before that loan.
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Anyway, not to be a negative Nancy...the can-do and fuck-the-Man spirit is not something to be squelched. But it helps no one to be oblivious of the many nuances and tradeoffs we make when we organize ourselves into civilized society. And it's arguably detrimental to society at large to imply that politics and non-profits is the realm for half-brained nitwits...unless you're totally unaware of the concept of cause-and-effect.
We have 16 years at current burn rates to end fossil fuels, and there is 0 political will to do anything on the scale it will take to do that. The emissions standards were great, I agree, but in the face of the challenge they're meant to address, ultimately meaningless.
The emissions standards Obama proposed in the campaign were far more ambitious, and it went along with a plan to put a price on carbon that is 100% dead in the water with no chance of ever being revisited in the next 4 years, if ever.
Every little bit counts, but when you think about what's possible with the scale of the U.S. government, versus what's actually happened, it's depressing.
...and what's your argument here? Even if that 16 year figure were true and even if 100 Elon Musks came about to take on the climate challenge...that's still not enough to fix the climate problem. And again, you're conveniently forgetting that policies of the Obama administration allowed Elon Musk to be in the position he is in the first place.
> Every little bit counts, but when you think about what's possible with the scale of the U.S. government, versus what's actually happened, it's depressing.
[insert metaphor about big ship turning vs small ship]
Optimism is good. But to disregard the many messy, complicated things that put us in the current status quo in favor of some Hollywood save-the-world fantasy is no less delusional than the optimists in politics and non-profits that you deride.
>even if 100 Elon Musks came about to take on the climate challenge...that's still not enough to fix the climate problem.
Those are just words. I say that 100 people with the same talent as Elon Musk working at the same scale on climate change would already have the problem solved.
>But to disregard the many messy, complicated things that put us in the current status quo...
The U.S. government starts wars over access to fossil fuels. It murders people by the thousands for it. It provides billions of dollars in subsidies to the most profitable corporations on Earth to ensure that its citizens don't pay too high of a price for it. It puts people in jail for disrupting the illegal sale of public land to corporations who want to exploit it to find more fossil fuels.
It is now even fighting with other countries for the right to exploit land for oil extraction that is only navigable because of climate change.
And you want me to believe that a measly couple hundred million to a few billion dollars for renewable energy is evidence that politics works?
For every example you can present where the U.S. government has had a marginal impact on the viability of alternative energy companies, there are many, many more where it is artificially extending the era of cheap fossil fuel, often through violence. So on this particular issue, it's not just that government is ineffective, it's that it is actively doing harm. As we speak. At the same time that all the worst predictions of climate scientists are coming to pass.
For everybody wondering where '16 years' comes from, Google 'Global warming's terrifying new math' by Bill McKibben, so that you can shift from attacking my credibility to his.
I read that article (again - I read it when it was first published) and it doesn't mention the number 16 anywhere.
Look, I am broadly sympathetic to your point of view (I think). I agree we need to take drastic measures to control CO2. I think that fracking and methane hydrate are going to be fucking disasters if we don't start actively sequestering CO2. Actually, I think the methane thing seals the deal - the reductionists have utterly lost and we now need to concentrate on harm mitigation.
None of which changes the fact that you pulled "16 years" out of your ass and what for? What did it get you? I'll tell you - it got you everyone ignoring your main point and concentrating on the (indefensible) number you made up. Well, I hope you learned your lesson.
>In fact, study after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year – and at that rate, we'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today's preschoolers will be graduating from high school.
The article was written in July of 2012. At the time of writing the estimated global carbon budget (the amount of carbon we can burn without increasing global temperature more than 2 degrees celsius) was 565 gigatons.
Carbon emissions in 2011 were estimated at 31.6 gigatons, a 3.2% increase over 2010, according to the article, and assuming a 3% growth rate in carbon emissions, we'll hit the limit in 16 years.
For the record, according to the journal Nature Climate Change (via the BBC, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20556703), total carbon emissions were higher in 2011 than reported in McKibben's article, given that we reached an estimated 35.6 gigatons in 2012, reported to be an increase of 2.6% over the previous year.
So, yeah, it's in the article, I'm sorry you have a hard time giving such an important piece of information a close reading, but there you go.
And I didn't call you a liar. The world isn't black and white like that, OK?
Nonetheless, you singled out this easily-missable page 2 speculation and cast it out like a solid gold internationally accepted fact. That's what I, and perhaps others, took issue with. I'm not disagreeing with you just to be an asshole. Nothing drastic is going to happen in 16.0 years.
The funny thing is I basically agree with you, but you should stop hanging your entire arguments on obscure, debatable predictions from page two of articles on some site last year.
> >I hope you learned your lesson
> Indeed.
Learn the right lesson. People are not out to attack you, well not me anyway. Just change the way you construct the argument.
Gee, sorry for trying to be helpful and trying to have an adult discussion.
Right, yeah, whatever; on the question of did X article from Y years ago happen to contain the number 16 then you were right and I was wrong. Congrats.
> starting a business is the only means available for make a positive impact in the world on a reasonable time scale
There is a great deal of validity to what you say, but blanket statements like this are absurd. What capitalist venture is going to make an impact on gay marriage? What was the business model of MLK Jr.'s speeches?
I would argue that Khan Academy is doing more to correct disparities in our education system, including of the kind caused by centuries of institutionalized racism, by making high-quality tutoring available for free on the Internet, than any modern-day legislator or activist.
Large companies like Google are able to set standards in their industries around things like health benefits, which, while not providing the social recognition many gay marriage advocates are after, does provide one of the material benefits of marriage without waiting for the government's blessing.
And meanwhile, the systems that our government uses to suppress movements like King's (in his day it was COINTELPRO) have gotten frighteningly more effective. The Occupy movement was subject to a massive, coordinated campaign of extreme police repression before it even started.
Given how bad police repression of the civil rights movement already was, imagine what would have happened if anything as pervasive as the Patriot Act or computer-assisted social network analysis had been available.
It´s an example that might work in the case of Telsa, and few other companies, but in general ?
Most of the damage to the environment has been made by companies making their own interests, and by the politicians that allowed it to happen.
The only obligation the owner/CEO of a company has is towards his employers/employees, and if it aligns with a general benefit for the community at large than fine, if not... well though luck it´s not really their job, is it ?
That's why a body whose main function is (supposedly) caring for the benefit of the community is necessary and I agree with the author's point that you can have a positive impact in different ways.
It doesn't make sense to say that we don't need government/politicians, we need GOOD ones, doing the job they are paid for.
Government passed a bill that gives a sizable tax refund to those that buy electric vehicles. They also loaned Tesla 451 million dollars (that they eventually repaid, sure). Those actions have helped Tesla exist as a business.
"Yet, there is no enduring formula for creativity and rebellion."
This is a fine sounding statement, but it's false. We've been accumulating and refining techniques for having new ideas for centuries, at least. Leonardo da Vinci mentioned several in his writings.
The word "formula" is very important in his statement - yes we have techniques for coming up with new ideas, but we do not have a formula for it. A formula produces a consistent and reproducible result. If we actually had such a thing it'd be the real-life equivalent of a magic lamp; make a wish for a new idea about x and out it comes.
The reality of the situation is far too messy for such a clean solution to exist. There are an infinite number of variables, biases, and contexts that foster or hinder "creativity" and the very notion of "rebellion" is defined entirely by context. So while we may have techniques that increase our chances of coming up with new ideas, we're no where near a factory for real creativity.
EDIT: I define real creativity as "reasoned new ideas" - it's trivial to write a formula for combining things randomly, but I don't think anyone here would argue that as actual creativity.
If he means formula in that narrow a sense, then his larger point is mistaken. Most of being a good doctor is not reducible to formulas either, but that doesn't prevent medical schools from working.
Only a small fraction of what humans learn consists of formulas in the narrow sense. And an even smaller fraction of the most valuable things they learn.
I guess you could make the million monkeys argument, but that's just playing with the law of large numbers. The original statement was intended to apply to a single person or at most a small number of individuals.
Even beyond that though, I'm not sure that "ask for ideas" (which is all the RFS is) could really be construed as a formula for creativity. It's a mechanism for surfacing creativity that springs from elsewhere.
You'd have to ask PG whether or not the RFS stuff has really been that helpful. From my experience in YC, the most "successful" companies had nothing to do with the RFSs.
We've been accumulating and refining techniques for having new ideas for centuries, at least. Leonardo da Vinci mentioned several in his writings.
Several? The only one I remember from reading DaVinci's journal was along the lines of "have the students work alongside each other," referring to his apprentices. The idea was that seeing each other's work would motivate each apprentice to excel and one-up one another. The YC dinners would be the modern incarnation of that.
It's a good idea. I thought that it was the only remark DaVinci wrote down about fostering creative process, though. Most of his journal is dedicated to observations from his research projects.
I dunno Paul, I think I agree with Alex on this. I see where you are coming from, because I think there are things you can do to encourage this kind of creativity, but there aren't guaranteed ways to ensure that it happens.
I get the feeling that you might be thinking about creativity in a more general sense than Alex might be though, but thats total speculation on my part.
The attempts to develop those techniques mostly showed how big is the extent to which creativity is unconscious (almost completely) and how little control we have over it. I can't think of a single case where a person we admire for their creativity admitted to using mind maps, bisociation, metaheuristics etc.
The enduring formula is the Feynman algorithm:
1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.
Well if you're reducing formulas for creativity down to stuff like mind maps, then of course you're scornful. These are pretty well known and accepted solutions to creativity. Almost certainly very far from the optimal one (if that exists), but still:
1. Crowdsourcing, especially incentivised via capitalism.
2. Drugs.
3. Education. Yes, this can also stifle creativity, hence why we don't want everyone learning the same curriculum. But there is no surer way to stop creativity than to allow redundant knowledge to develop twice (which is not to say that we shouldn't do this as part of education, just with direction).
6. Logic is pretty damn good for solving problems.
So, no, there's no general algorithm to produce 'creative' thoughts, much less against a given solution, but we have learned an immense amount in the past 10k years on how to actively stimulate creativity. Just because many creative ideas were not encountered methodically means nothing but that creativity is not restricted to intent, and the fact that some ideas that we are actively pursuing that will require creative thought (by definition) can't be obviously solved just means we haven't done so yet, not that we cannot methodically find the solution.
Going even further, I think the rate at which humans create is far more proof that there exists some general algorithm for creativity than for its non-existence; in fact, the only proof I'm aware of that attempts to do so is the incompleteness theorems/the halting problem proof. And even those put no bounds on how much knowledge is off limits to us, assuming that we are deterministic and thus bound by those proofs. The human race has more issues with the deluge of research outpacing our ability to comprehend it—perhaps we should work more on understanding existing knowledge rather than creating new knowledge.
True, we have been refining techniques for incremental improvement. But what of disruptive technology? Can something that is chaotic and non-deterministic have a deterministic set of steps to achieve? Is it reproducible, ceteris paribus? That's how I parse "creativity and rebellion".
There's a distinction to be made between synthetic creativity (brainstorming, workshops, etc.) and that natural creativity that doesn't come on demand and goes in more rebellious directions.
If you broaden the original statement, it's wrong, but "no enduring [single] formula" is a near-tautology. Alex must mean that if you're not creative and sharp, you won't prevail in the marketplace, which of course is likely. But clever folks can benefit from formulas, checklists, and exercises.
One could manufacture prompts all day - imagine yourself displacing incumbents by doing something new (or just doing it in a new way) - how is that happening? How are they fighting back? Why can't they stop you?
It's intrinsically motivating to win, and though you can enjoy winning in ways that aren't proved by economic measure, everyone understands market success.
Well, sure. There are formulas and techniques for creativity and rebellion in the same way there are formulas and techniques for winning a 100 meter sprint. But formulas and techniques don't turn an overweight, middle-aged guy into a world class sprinter.
1) Many jobs are at startups now, and those startups are roughly similar, therefore it's not cool anymore ("is the novelty even there").
That is just bad logic. It may be that startups replicated high pressure low gratification corporate jobs, but that's not inherent in the argument that there are more startup jobs. It could also be the case that the tech economy has really shifted from large corporations to small agile (and sometimes fun to work at) startups.
2) Startup jobs turn into corporate jobs, so you shouldn't take them in the first place.
That change is not a given, nor is it that the change will be done poorly, nor is it that the employee won't want the change by then. Anyways, if you get 1-3 years of startup experience that you enjoy, make contacts, have a chance at a payout, then there's nothing wrong with taking the startup job with the knowledge it may change and you may want out later--in fact, in every US employment contract, it's a given that the employee or the company may change their minds later.
I do agree with the idea that we need to demystify the startup scene. Being beholden to a VC is no different than to a corporate middle manager, they're both trying to carve out their little empires with your work. I think the interpersonal cost is real in certain cases, and the comment about fetishizing disruption is right on. But the 2 logical errors above weaken the message, especially since they are above the more lucid observations.
1) The author isn't arguing that. He is objecting to the portrayal of startups as more free, open, and fluid than traditional enterprise. Unless I'm bad at reading the author didn't even mention the ratio of startup:traditional jobs, so that isn't relevant. And the objection wasn't to the fact that all startups are roughly equivalent (which was, though, a point made). The objection was that startups are roughly equivalent to traditional enterprise in structure, form, and execution (i.e. Super Cool Startup is just as non-free, non-open, and non-fluid as Enterprise Shop Inc., and this is systemic). The equivalence comes from the startup scene having been wholly co-opted by a system (VC-istan, anyone?) that amounts to traditional enterprise (formulaic, mass-producing, repeatable templates). This is a textbook binary deconstruction: the startup/corporate dichotomy as it exists in popular consciousness is false.
Food for thought, see pg's comment in this thread: apparently there is now a formula for creativity and rebellion. Questions: if you can formulaically rebel, how is that rebellion? By definition your 'rebellion' is deterministic -- how is that possible? If 'creativity' can come by formula, what are you creating? The 'new' is just a function of what you already knew, i.e., it already existed. So the 'new' is by definition not new at all.
2) Again, the author didn't make this point. He argued that people considering taking a startup job should consciously look through popular delusion and consider the bad with the good. There was no mention that one should or shouldn't take a particular kind of job.
"As there was in the first dot com bubble
there is a current proliferation of startups,
incubators, accelerators, angel/seed funding,
and so forth. ... accompanied by a shared set
of values, norms, and language."
I'm currently doing a start-up. I went the University incubator route and have regretted it ever since. Feels so pedantic...
I liked this part: "Startups have been systematized, mythologized, culturally and socially de-risked; reduced down to formulas and recipes. Yet, there is no enduring formula for creativity and rebellion."
Most of these startups would be just regular corporate projects except for the fact that corporate stinginess and lack of vision is at an all time high. Startup "CEOs" are just project managers on a shoestring race to the bottom, as observed in the long hours and extreme personal sacrifice involved.
The reason the strategy works so well is that corporate politics are even more stifling to experimentation than VC-istan (but not by much).
In ten years, there'll be an open-allocation (Valve style) company that has figured out how to solve this for realz.
Some companies seem to be like a VC in disguise: I would think of Supercell(http://blog.idonethis.com/post/48277151394/least-powerful-ce...) and Google when it had 20% free time.
I liked the 20% free time model, people have some freedom to pursue their goals without worrying so much about money. It probably leads to more innovation being done as it takes money out of people's concerns.
I don't know how it's done now on Google.
"There are so many ways to make a dent in the world", he says, but fails to suggest any.
So what if the startup thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? It's still better than the alternative. What else are you going to do? Go waste your time in a big corporation learning how to withstand endless, meaningless tedium?
If you're young you can probably afford to take some risk, so go take some risk! Take a shot at accomplishing something cool. The big boring corporations will always be there. If your startup experience sucks, so what? You're still better off than you'd have been if you'd spent the time playing small cog in a big machine.
There are plenty of small to medium sized business where you get to learn and have an impact. I tend to favor those - I have the autonomy to contribute without the overhead of 6 different managers.
I agree, the whole post seems to be written by someone writing a sad and sullen reflection of their last decade or two.
I think having a mix of both startups and high profile tech companies in one's CV is great backing to do your own startup, enter contracting or find yourself in a challenging and stimulating career job at your employer of choice.
I think the article makes some good points about potential bad eggs in the startup world but is not a balanced true representation of the landscape.
Honestly, my observation is that there's nothing out there that "gives you" that opportunity. You have to make it. Fight for it. Steal time if you must. The idealized university-like company that makes you more productive as a part of it than you would be with 100% freedom over your time is, at this point, an extreme rarity. The basic-research labs have been pretty much shut down.
The problem with shitty startups is that they mislead people into believing that they're opening so many doors that it's worth letting the networking and independent skill building (each of which should get 10 hours per week; ideally that's out-of-work but do it at the expense of your day job if necessary-- fire up a MOOC during a workday lull; diversify) go to slack. Then, they pass four years of 60-hour weeks only to find that the executive-level or research (everyone wants to be an executive or in R&D; either controlling others or free from control) roles promised them were given to new hires or don't exist, and they realize they've wasted 4 years of their lives.
The lesson isn't "never work for startups" because there are great startups and (obviously) awful big-company jobs. It's "don't believe the hype and let your networking and independent learning go to hell". You only go all-in as a founder, not as some subordinate employee. The latter is just stupid; but you see it all the time.
And this is why I stopped playing that particular game and started playing a very different, but no less systematized and traditional game: being a consultant software developer with clients that pay per project or per hour, rather than in four-year equity vesting cycles.
This is a great cautionary polemic to those who may jump in without understanding what they really want. I'm sure it has flaws, but the intent of the author seems to be fair and careful warning to the unthinking. Fine advice, and if you still want to do a startup having analysed this piece, then you're in the right business!
"If you’re not part of the intended audience and are very very mad that a stranger on the Internet has a different opinion than you, I encourage you to direct your energy into an alternative argument that a young person might benefit from reading."
As a twenty year old who left school (in late 2011) and is currently working for a startup, the article really struck a chord with me and I must admit that it is very accurate, particularly the section, "Startups have an ongoing interpersonal cost."
That being said, I have very few regrets and have learned more than I could have ever imagined since leaving school. But there are days I wish I stayed for both personal (ex. making friends is hard and it is insanely easy to become woefully lonely) and professional/career (ex. I spend many hours on top of work studying algorithms and mathematics I would have been taught in university) reasons.
I really liked this article, it doesn't just apply to startups. Engineers are like the rockstars of today. Instead of the Sunset Strip, everyone is headed to the Bay Area for their own shot at glory.What's to be remembered is that nothing should be done except for the inherent love of what you're doing, and nothing should be done purely for the sake of "success". Be a decent person, have respect and courtesy for others, and you can enjoy life, whatever the vehicle of your creativity is.
I'm a freelancer that has started his own company, and I contract with a lot of companies, one in particular could have been considered a startup at one point, but I'm not sure you'd call it that now.
I think of VC as debt. I've worked really hard to stay out of debt. Apart from a house, my goal is to never take a loan out or borrow money for anything. We have two pretty crappy cars, but we paid cash for them, and honestly, after some repairs and such, they've been running fine.
To bring it home: I treat a lot of my business the same way. I'm extremely skeptical of doing work on "borrowed money." This once-startup contract I have has been profitable (by good margins) for 5 years now, and I've been working on a $2 million project for them about 7 months now, but it was all with money the company already had.
I've turned down lucrative work in the past because they had financiers involved. I tend to work on smaller, more manageable projects (with the exception of the aforementioned example) because of this. Maybe a little more work at times (to find work), maybe a little less money, but I've never had an issue getting paid (except that one time when the business literally got washed away in Hurricane Sandy), I've not had to meet crazy deadlines or feel that sort of pressure, and I'd still consider myself to be doing very, very well.
All that said, and I am a college dropout. But I wouldn't recommend people do drop out of college, especially for a VC gig.
Business influence, autonomy, responsibility, variety, opportunity, risk, unclear solutions to open problems : things a small new startup are likely to offer to a 2[0-9] year old and a large business is less likely to.
The question is, do your personality and abilities suit a startup environment? Or is one more fitted to a structured environment? Maybe a short internship would tell.
If someone inexperienced says they want to do a startup, my advice would be to join a business with 40 to 80 employees in a market that interests you, learn how to tell who are the productive people in sales, marketing, operations and development and start a business with a couple of them. Work out which ones are hard working, effective and entrepreneurial and want to begin a business. Knowing who is excellent in areas you are weak in is a critical skill to learn (and I find extremely hard to judge unless working fairly closely with them). Many many businesses don't know who the real key employees are, or are under-valuing/under-appreciating them.
I had opportunity to join the most effective dev and marketer in a business I was working in when 24 and I didn't jump on the opportunity so I missed out (stupid me). I created a similar opportunity many years later, and it is working out very well (although rough for a couple of years).
Conversely, learning how to tell who are lemons, and you must not join is also critical. Just because a few people are doing a start-up that sounds good doesn't mean it is a good idea to join those people. One must also learn to have enough insight to work out if one is a lemon oneself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Another great place to learn these skills and to pick the really skilled is in an incubator or shared space. That has also worked for me.
I have collected my favorite quotes and talking points from this piece, Michael Church's "Don’t waste your time in crappy startup jobs", and Aza Raskin's "Psychological Pitfalls And Lessons of A Designer-Founder".
In some professions this guy would be considered young. Its kind of amusing to read. He has made it so even though there is some bitterness in his writing, he has obviously benefited from the system, and unlike being a struggling actor you are making some bank at a startup with a potential to make it big. Compare that to making ends meet as a waiter.
Why? Age is of little importance and can be misleading. It is not uncommon between people here to have started developing software professionally as teenagers or even as kids. By the time someone is in early 30s that someone may as well have been coding for a quarter of a century. And on the opposite, you can have somebody just starting at that age, with minimal or zero engineering experience.
You see the same problems in students going to film school because they like to see themselves as a director. You see the same problems in big studios making blockbusters for money.
To be Primer, you have to have a specific, burning idea. To be Fassbinder, you need to have something to say (and be a genius).
Else, you can only aspire to be Cars 2 or The Phantom Menace.
I started, and invested my own money (6 figures, that I earned) in a b&m business in my 20s, lost a lot of time, money, and experienced a lot of bullshit... but I learned a lot. That preamble is because, while I have no experience with your typical SV startup, I have put my own time and money at risk.
By joining a startup you are pretty much guaranteed a salary, an office to go to, and you have to weigh the risks of lower salary vs options, but so what? That's no more risk then someone working a corporate 9-5 and chooses to actively manage their portfolio, which really is minimal risk imo (wrong?). As an outside observer it seems to be in the financiers interest to perpetuate the sexiness of startups to "market" their investments. Can someone that is more into the startup culture clear this up for me? What risk is there in joining a startup as an employee other than what I have described?
Think of what's being built as a machine for taking several great ideas and spreading them to areas to which they haven't yet spread.
While there's much talk of disruption in startups, their goal isn't to destroy, it's to build something better and the destruction results therefrom. Considered that way, the institutionalization of startups doesn't contradict their mission any more than writing in a higher level language makes one less of a programmer.
I agree with most of the details; most people's incentives aren't pure. While that may not be ideal, yet far it has accelerated innovation.
First off, I agree with much of what you said. I think there is a way to be insanely devoted to your craft and still maintain your relationships. Sure, you might not be the social butterfly who goes to parties every night, but if you can't maintain some small semblance of a life, what's the point? Unless you're some entrepreneur martyr..
"A startup is just a means to an end. Consider the end, and don’t seek to revel in the means."
-I disagree with this. The journey is often the most exciting, exhilarating part. Creating something from nothing is what I want to live for.
To extrapolate form the rest of his post, I think he phrased that part poorly. I think he really meant to advise not to revel in merely being a participant in a startup, as if that should provide you with satisfaction in and of itself. If you're in the startup world and have chosen your position well enough to be enjoying the journey, I don't think you're the target audience. He's really targeting the people who might become entrepreneurial martyrs.
Thank you for posting this. I know it's from last year, but there are realities here that should be understood by every engineer who is considering working for a startup.
Be as hard-core about your negotiation skills and awareness of employment terms, as you are about your coding skills.
First become known (or even famous) for what you do, then apply yourself to an actual, unsolved problem (in a very small time window) then people with positions and money will notice you, and then they will arrange somehow that Yahoo will buy your shit.)
My perspective is this: Found or join a startup if have a specific product/service you want to build at a large scale. You'll earn your wealth through the equivalent amount of pain (http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html).
But coming to SF and floundering around is no better than aimlessly moving to LA to become a movie star. There are a lot better ways to spend your youth.
Edit to address my last point: Sure, there are many benefits to coming out here. But there's no benefit in coming here to just be a "scenester."