Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You weren't meant to have a boss

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 312 posts

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#71

Post by rms »

kingkongrevenge wrote: post #58
pg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that farmers of commodities like corn and wheat have the government wrapped around their fingers. But the reason they're big enough to do that is that their market scales. No one has invented a fresh carrot that can sit on a shelf for six months the way a candy bar can.

The subsidies follow the disproportionate voting power and political influence of the relevant mid-west states, not the inherent marketability of corn. Veggies and nuts are mostly grown at massive industrial operations in California with desert sunshine and irrigation systems. It's definitely a scalable operation not much different from corn and soy. Not to nit-pick, but carrots keep really well even at room temperat…

>The prevalence of crap in the US diet comes from a deliberate government plan to pump out more cheap calories.

It was deliberately done by the government? I probably shouldn't be surprised... I always assumed it was the corn farmers pushing for subsidies that did it. Do you have any more information on this?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#73

Post by foonamefoo »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #45
dfranke wrote: post #3

If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people, here's how I'd do it: rather than tiers of management on the order of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, I'd just have two levels. At the top would be a small committee that controls allocation of money and from time to time publishes non-specific guidelines about where they'd like the company to go. One person on the committee is in charge of hiring salesmen, who once hired…

One very serious problem with that idea. Team X isn't insulated from lawsuits that Team Y gets hit with (or contracts that have the potential for massive costs, for that matter). Suppose Team X isn't doing well. Probability of getting fired is 50%. They decide (independently) to do Z, with a 90% chance of increasing their team's profits (and not getting fired) as well as a 10% chance of major lawsuit that will crush…

You also just described the major problem with the government artificially allowing such a thing as a limited liability (I'm talking about legal, not debt) corporation.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#74

Post by seebe »

Clear! After CS.EE Eng school I completed comissioning as an officer in the British Army. The hieracy, groups, rules, and orders were perfect to fight other Armys. "Peace keeping" in Ireland was not nearly as well suited. I left and joined a US start with 10 poeple (long story). The 10 person start became 3000, (10-60-120-240-480,900 now 3000 people). Relecting I feel like I'm back in the Army. Small groups 10-100 people can run rings around 3000.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#75

Post by kingkongrevenge »

rms wrote: post #71
kingkongrevenge wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subsidies follow the disproportionate voting power and political influence of the relevant mid-west states, not the inherent marketability of corn. Veggies and nuts are mostly grown at massive industrial operations in California with desert sunshine and irrigation systems. It's definitely a scalable operation not much different from corn and soy. Not to nit-pick, but carrots keep really well even at room temperat…

>The prevalence of crap in the US diet comes from a deliberate government plan to pump out more cheap calories. It was deliberately done by the government? I probably shouldn't be surprised... I always assumed it was the corn farmers pushing for subsidies that did it. Do you have any more information on this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz#Career

> Butz revolutionized federal agricultural policy and reengineered many New Deal era farm support programs. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out," and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow."

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#76

Post by henning »

pg wrote: post #64
JoeProgrammer wrote: post #62

Unfortunately, student loans constrain the freedom of action of many recent graduates. They have to have that income to make the payments, which can be quite high. This of course favors upper middle class people as young company founders.

Yes, that is a real problem. I thought of mentioning this in the essay. The problem is the same as with visas: the government's definition of work is a job working for someone else. I hope eventually they'll wise up and change the rules about student loans, because the intent of the rules about repayment is not simply to get the money back as soon as possible, but to discourage people from merely slacking after colle…

I'm sure megacorp lobbyists in DC will get right on that, Paul.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#77

Post by whacked_new »

fleaflicker wrote: post #63

Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/

Unsurprisingly and understandably so. PG's essays resonate most strongly with a particular type of person. There are enough assertions that do not generalize across diverse populations and nobody who reads his essays should actually expect them to. The population in this site are not are self selected to the extreme. I for one am happy to see multiple opinions.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#80

Post by ken »

uuilly wrote: post #19

I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers an…

I've heard some Amazon employees say something similar (but maybe not as enthusiastically) about Amazon. One person described their structure to me as "like terrorist cells": it's understood (and encouraged) that 3 different teams are all trying to implement the same thing, in completely different languages and with completely different interfaces. They might not even know the others exist, until they ship. Hopefully at least one will survive.

In some cases, more than one does. Amazon has at least 3 different data stores you can use, last I saw.

Post reply on HN