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Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

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Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#81

Post by eitland »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #74
eitland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting into Norway doesn't seem too hard - but I'm open to be told why I'm wrong. Here is what I found: "Broadly speaking, the award of a residence permit depends on two things: your country of citizenship and your ability to financially sustain yourself and any dependents. This generally means you need a job offer, or you must prove financial sustainability if you are coming to Norway to study or for some other rea…

>your country of citizenship and your ability to financially sustain yourself and any dependents. This generally means you need a job offer, or you must prove financial sustainability if you are coming to Norway to study or for some other reason. By American standards Norwegians are all racist assholes.

Because of the quote above or something else?

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#82

Post by Consultant32452 »

eitland wrote: post #81
Consultant32452 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>your country of citizenship and your ability to financially sustain yourself and any dependents. This generally means you need a job offer, or you must prove financial sustainability if you are coming to Norway to study or for some other reason. By American standards Norwegians are all racist assholes.

Because of the quote above or something else?

Because of the quote above. It's kind of tongue in cheek. That immigration policy is basically the core of the Republican immigration policy. In the US this is considered "far right wing," racist, cruel, etc. But no one applies this standard internationally, so basically no one considers Norway or any other country with a similar immigration policy to be racist.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#83

Post by ravitation »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #80

Controversial opinion incoming, but I've found their writings less valuable over time and see them more as opinions with an elitist tone. This is coming from someone who owns a copy of Rework and might just go over it again for it's unique quality of life advice. Lately I've really noticed that you don't just get advice anymore, you also get a little bit of commentary on how the rest of the tech industry is dumb or i…

If this were a Medium post, I'd give you lots of claps.

And I'd highlight this...

> They're just telling us that Basecamp had the best year ever and they don't feel like improving on it so they're not hiring at the moment.

And...

> There are plenty of businesses that are happy with where they're at and settle-in, Basecamp is different because they're a tech company and they feel the need to blog about it.

I do enjoy their approach, quite a lot actually. But I'd enjoy it more if they spent more time sharing real experience and learnings (and failures), and less time projecting often absurd things on mainstream "entrepreneurial culture" while telling me how they're so much better.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#84

Post by s73ver_ »

GuiA wrote: post #78
s73ver_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, to be perfectly honest, most of us don't want to start our own companies. I know for me, personally, that there's a whole lot of extra stuff that comes with running a company, stuff that I have absolutely zero interest in doing, that I would be required to do if I wanted my company to succeed. Second, I also don't really have any good ideas for what the company would do.

Life will always involve doing shit that you don't want to do. As an employee for a larger company, if your manager tells you to do crap you don't want to do, well you generally have two choices: do it, or quit. If you're running your own thing, you suddenly have a few more choices: you can reassess whether that thing needs to be done in the first place. You can suck it up and do it yourself, but perhaps you're a lit…

You were downvoted because, quite frankly, your post, and this response, quite frankly, came off with the attitude of "If you don't start your own company, you're an idiot." That, combined with the kneejerk response of "start your own company!" combined with the fact that many of us just plain don't want to do that; we don't want the assload of hours and commitment it comes with that we'd rather spend with our families generally means that such suggestions do not contribute to the discussion.

Not to mention, this is "Hacker News", not "Entrepreneur News". While there is a good deal of overlap, most of the content here is technology related, not business related. I don't see many articles being posted here on how to choose a health plan for your company, for instance.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#85

Post by s73ver_ »

laythea wrote: post #69
s73ver_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, to be perfectly honest, most of us don't want to start our own companies. I know for me, personally, that there's a whole lot of extra stuff that comes with running a company, stuff that I have absolutely zero interest in doing, that I would be required to do if I wanted my company to succeed. Second, I also don't really have any good ideas for what the company would do.

Surely if you had a good idea for a company, the currently zero interest stuff would suddenly become a bit more interesting. Then it would seem that this is more about the lack of any good ideas than the actual starting of a company.

Nope. I want to engineer stuff, not be sales or HR.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#86

Post by GuiA »

s73ver_ wrote: post #84
GuiA wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life will always involve doing shit that you don't want to do. As an employee for a larger company, if your manager tells you to do crap you don't want to do, well you generally have two choices: do it, or quit. If you're running your own thing, you suddenly have a few more choices: you can reassess whether that thing needs to be done in the first place. You can suck it up and do it yourself, but perhaps you're a lit…

You were downvoted because, quite frankly, your post, and this response, quite frankly, came off with the attitude of "If you don't start your own company, you're an idiot." That, combined with the kneejerk response of "start your own company!" combined with the fact that many of us just plain don't want to do that; we don't want the assload of hours and commitment it comes with that we'd rather spend with our famili…

I reread my posts carefully after reading this reply, and have a hard time seeing what part(s) of my posts convey "If you don't start your own company, you're an idiot". If you could quote said parts, that'd be helpful.

"That, combined with the kneejerk response of "start your own company!" combined with the fact that many of us just plain don't want to do that; we don't want the assload of hours and commitment it comes with that we'd rather spend with our families generally means that such suggestions do not contribute to the discussion."

Again, not sure what makes it a "knee jerk response"; pointers would be appreciated. As far as the "assload of hours", "never seeing your family", etc... this is exactly what Jason Fried and DHH are writing about. These are _not_ requirements to running a sustainable business. If you read Fried and DHH's writings and find yourself nodding in agreement at every word, I guess there are 2 takeaways one could get from it: the obvious "I really should work at Basecamp!", and the perhaps a bit less obvious "whoa, you can run a sustainable business without killing yourself, and those 2 guys are documenting their process - I could do the same!". I think the latter is not to be overlooked.

If you feel strongly that starting a company isn't for you, nothing wrong with that. But harshly attacking HN posters who merely suggest that this could be a worthy option just defies common sense and civil discourse.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#87

Post by s73ver_ »

GuiA wrote: post #86
s73ver_ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were downvoted because, quite frankly, your post, and this response, quite frankly, came off with the attitude of "If you don't start your own company, you're an idiot." That, combined with the kneejerk response of "start your own company!" combined with the fact that many of us just plain don't want to do that; we don't want the assload of hours and commitment it comes with that we'd rather spend with our famili…

I reread my posts carefully after reading this reply, and have a hard time seeing what part(s) of my posts convey "If you don't start your own company, you're an idiot". If you could quote said parts, that'd be helpful. "That, combined with the kneejerk response of "start your own company!" combined with the fact that many of us just plain don't want to do that; we don't want the assload of hours and commitment it co…

When someone says, "Man, that place is great; I wish I could work there," and you respond with, and I quote from your original post, "Start your own, run it like you want it to be run," that is a kneejerk response.

And you weren't "harshly attacked." You were called out for putting too much into the cult of the startup. And yes, at the beginning, you do have to put in those hours. Ask the people who started Basecamp; in the beginning they did put in those hours. Once those hours were no longer necessary, then they eased back.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#88

Post by crdoconnor »

tinymollusk wrote: post #48
crdoconnor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shrug VCs seem to prefer 1 hypergrowth startup and 20 failures in their portfolio to 17 solid, growing, profitable startups without hypergrowth and 4 failures.

This is because the portfolio strategy (1 hypergrowth + 20 failures) is the best strategy from the VC perspective. It's nearly impossible to know which startups will succeed (high uncertainty decision making), and very difficult to know how big the successful ones could be (open ended results). If it were simply as easy as building 17 solid startups to just 4 failures, I'm sure there would be more investment in that…

>This is because the portfolio strategy (1 hypergrowth + 20 failures) is the best strategy from the VC perspective.

Duh? You say that as if it should be considered surprising. It would be surprising if it were an irrational preference, not a completely rational preference.

The real question is why the economy is geared towards such an uneven distribution of returns. I don't think it's a law of nature (e.g. economies of scale) because for pretty much all corporations there are massive diseconomies of scale that offset that. You just have to work at one of them to see how manifestly inefficient they are, and yet they still dominate and investors still exhibit an exceptionally strong preference for them.

I think may be an artefact of the American tax and legal system which allows the use of size and wealth as market leverage to an extreme degree. Investors prefer to see one big Uber/Microsoft/Google over a hundred smaller Uber/Microsoft/Googles because that one big company, can legally use its size to crush smaller, more efficient competitors and thus achieve monopoly or oligopoly power which it can safely use to wring profits out of customers without fear of being undercut.

If the legal and tax system cracked down on this phenomenon instead of covertly encouraging it (e.g. with stuff like tax holidays for Apple) I think VCs would probably adjust their preferences accordingly.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#89

Post by taw-an »

dasil003 wrote: post #43
taw-an wrote: post #4

sure, but how do the employees feel about it? what happens when support work balloons but you have the same amount of staff? this is just an excuse to extract more profits coated in technofounderbabble.

How do the employees feel about it? I’d bet a lot of money they’re in the top 5% retention among tech companies. Also they’re probably pretty happy to avoid the constant churn and failed projects of working in a company desperately chasing hypergrowth. I imagine customers are pretty happy too knowing that they aren’t at risk of the company being flipped and the product discontinued or bloated in order to attract the…

how is it ironic? that was exactly my point.

Re: Things are going so well we’re doing a hiring freeze

#90

Post by tinymollusk »

s73ver_ wrote: post #70
tinymollusk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good and true point. How invalid do you think this counterargument is? If anyone could identify early-stage companies with a 75-100% chance of being profitable, wouldn't we see an investor niche that supports this? (I can think of one counter-counter argument: the hype created by VCs is so big that the investor and founder markets are acting irrationally.) Would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

"If anyone could identify early-stage companies with a 75-100% chance of being profitable, wouldn't we see an investor niche that supports this?" We can't do that for the current style of VC investing. Why would we need to do it for a more modest form? The other bonus is that profitable startups usually need less VC money. So given the same amount of funds, VCs could spread their investments out over even more compan…

I'm a little confused, but I think you restated my point. The portfolio approach appears to be the optimal strategy in an open game like startup creation, where the upside is potentially infinite and the uncertainty is really high.

I guess I was asking if there are other explanations for why this is, or if the strategy appears to be optimal to others.

If it is the best strategy, any discussion about unicorns versus profitably invested smaller startups is moot, because it's based on the assumption that the investment class should do something that's strategically suboptimal.

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