After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#11

Post by currymj » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #7

pj_mukh wrote: post #5

tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terr…

> Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love o see excised When did this start, actually? Where did it come from? I don't remember it really being a thing in the early noughties, but by the end of the decade it was deeply entrenched.

If you hire mostly men directly out of top US colleges you'll get a lot of this just by default, because that's the culture on those campuses. I get the sense that in the past, relatively fewer people came to tech through that particular pipeline.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#12

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

perennate wrote: post #4

dawhizkid wrote: post #2

According to the Wikipedia page the company was founded in 2000...I don’t think you can be called a “start-up” when you’re almost 20 years old...

The article brings this up (but you can of course disagree with its conclusion): > I was initially mystified by how a company that’s been around since 2000 could still call itself a start-up. It turns out it’s not unusual for software companies to hold on to the start-up classification long after the point when businesses in other industries would be considered established. Software companies are forever “pivoting”—c…

It's not a startup after 18 years. Most companies, and especially tech, have to constantly adapt but that doesn't make them a startup. Was Apple a startup when they got into MP3 players from computers? No.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#13

Post by Woberto » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #5

tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terr…

I'm confused, you're saying TopHat, the one "changing for change's sake," is doing a bad job, but you're also saying GP is wrong for calling them out?

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#14

Post by opportune » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

The author didn't seem work with devs (who were on the other side of the country) or investors, so I have trouble fully accepting their generalizations of tech startups as a whole. Sure, they experienced a lot of tech-specific phenomena like free drinks at the office, but it sounds like most of the problems were just due to interacting with a lot of obnoxious young salesmen.

The part where they act surprised at the use of normal business acronyms (they're 40 and weren't familiar with the term "ROI" ??) kind of hurts credibility too

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#15

Post by verteu » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

Sounds like that bizarre "brogrammer" archetype that journalists claimed represented Silicon Valley engineers.

I'd imagine high-growth startups hire many low-experience SDRs like the ones described in the article -- is it possible people are conflating this 'tech' sales culture with engineering culture?

Perhaps this is even done purposefully to provide a politically-correct narrative for the low proportion of female engineers.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#16

Post by fmajid » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

The author really enjoys the sound of his own voice (written in this case), doesn't he? I couldn't make it past 20% of the logorrhea.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#17

Post by pj_mukh » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

Woberto wrote: post #13

pj_mukh wrote: post #5

tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terr…

I'm confused, you're saying TopHat, the one "changing for change's sake," is doing a bad job, but you're also saying GP is wrong for calling them out?

Sorry, I might've messed up the subject of the sentence?

"I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and they were Terrible"

TopHat's predecessor was terrible and TopHat's innovations are very much welcome (which also made them quite profitable).

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#18

Post by pcunite » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #2

According to the Wikipedia page the company was founded in 2000...I don’t think you can be called a “start-up” when you’re almost 20 years old...

startup = young

They want to appear "hip" and "cool" ... forever.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#19

Post by burgerboy » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #3

I am incredibly sick and tired of this stereotype: > The most common is the engineer who, slaving for hours in the proverbial garage, programs his (or, infrequently, her) way to glory and gets showered with millions by venture capitalists. He is the tech cliché—nerdy and socially awkward. At least 90% of the technical co-founders I know are well spoken, well dressed, and perfectly capable of attending social events.…

When it stops being an accurate representation it will stop being a stereotype.

Great job not being like that I guess? I don't know how your experience has any relation to the article nor the norms of reality.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#20

Post by verteu » Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #5

tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terr…

> Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech

In engineering? Could you elaborate a bit more? I've worked in SV tech for a decade and every large company was about 50% nerdy white engineers and 40% quiet Asians.