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Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

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Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#111

Post by krat0sprakhar »

whack wrote: post #103
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

> I realize that me posting this isn't going to do anything.

FWIW, comments like yours are helpful to people like me in that they provide the assurance that I'm not alone in largely disagreeing with the sentiment expressed in the top HN comments in threads like these.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#112

Post by fanzhang »

whack wrote: post #103
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

When I first joined ten years ago, most discussions were highly technical, or oriented towards doing a startup with no politics on either side. The politics stayed in their own threads.

I agree that the forum has been on a ten year trends towards slipstreaming in politics, ideology, and dogma on more and more articles. They follow very similar templates: a standard liberal rant about how we need more benefits for the people or a standard libertarian rant about how the markets will take care of it all. As a result, it becomes less interesting because the points made are similar.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#113

Post by BurningFrog »

bambax wrote: post #87
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

Yeah. > Self-driving cars, for example, could potentially put 5 million people involved in transportation jobs out of work. And creating 5 million new jobs for them seems impossible with net monthly job gains typically in the hundreds of thousands. “Five million jobs seem like a lot of jobs. It is a lot,” Andreessen says. But looking at the big picture shows that “every year in the U.S. on average about 21 million jo…

These 5 million transportation jobs will not disappear on the same day. It will probably take a decade or so.

This has happened many, many times over the 250 years since the Industrial Revolution. Each time, the old jobs have been replaced by newer and better jobs, and each time people have worried about mass unemployment and misery that did not happen.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#114

Post by [deleted] »

fanzhang wrote: post #112
whack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

When I first joined ten years ago, most discussions were highly technical, or oriented towards doing a startup with no politics on either side. The politics stayed in their own threads. I agree that the forum has been on a ten year trends towards slipstreaming in politics, ideology, and dogma on more and more articles. They follow very similar templates: a standard liberal rant about how we need more benefits for the…

[deleted]

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#116

Post by archagon »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

> I know that sounds harsh, but we seriously need to stop the hero worship in SV culture and begin building a society that benefits everyone, not a society that works itself to the bone just to eat the cake of a larger corporation and enrich the early investors.

This sort of oligarchy is probably emergent from the way we structure our economy on a base level. What factors incentivize corporations to form into pyramids, with most of the wealth accruing on top? Can we instead incentivize smaller, cooperative-style companies with more democratic managerial styles and more equitable distribution of wealth? It wouldn't work for every business, but it's barely been tried at all, and I'd love to see the kind of SV culture that would emerge from these parameters. (I guess Valve is a notable example, but I can't think of many others. I suppose the OSS community?)

Unfortunately, I don't think telling people to stop hero worship is going to do the trick. Things are going to have to change on a more fundamental level.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#117

Post by nickbauman »

whack wrote: post #103
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

While I think Andreesen has some interesting things to say, Matt Wulfeck has a valid criticism. These are people who have been around when lightning struck but now they think they make the rain.

Don't forget, Andreesen has had his share of spectacular failures too. He just had more resources to bet with going forward from them.

Anyone other than me find it funny that Mark not only talks to a very small circle of people for "validity" of his ideas, he's proud to have figured out how to avoid even that in this article?

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#118

Post by hathawsh »

whack wrote: post #103
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

This effect always seems to come with popularity. Once upon a time, Slashdot had some amazingly insightful discussions, leading to a growth in popularity, which led to increased noise. That noise led to increased cynicism and eventually burnout. The same thing has sadly happened to every popular tech news site I know of.

The secret is to keep searching for a new place to have high quality discussions. You never know where it will pop up. (If it's a place where people expect to find it, then all the popular kids will go there and make noise.) I wouldn't give up on HN yet though, it still has quality discussions most of the time.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#119

Post by brianberns »

mvpu wrote: post #26

"Take the ego out of ideas" is sound advice for investors , not entrepreneurs . Ego is a loaded word, but if you define it, in this context, as an irrational belief that you are right and the world will catch up, then it's essential for every entrepreneur. "New ideas" get no support. You're the only support. You have to strongly believe that the world will get there, do whatever it takes to convince them to get there…

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#120

Post by tyingq »

rmason wrote: post #39
icelancer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not aware of Opsware/Netscape I guess.

Remember the time he went walking with Mark Zuckerberg and Zuck says I know you did something famous back in the day, what exactly was it? Answer: I'm the father of the browser. He had a career before Netscape, he wrote the Mosaic browser for the Mac and Windows while he was still a student at the University of Illinois. After having to install tcp/ip on my Windows machine (Trumpet Winsock) that is the first browser…

Netscape's web server was also a pioneer...offering the first well defined way (NSAPI) to avoid the fork and exit slowness of CGI. Was Rob McCool's work, but during Andreessen's tenure.
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