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

The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#21

Post by kayoone »

winxordie wrote: post #19
kayoone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, what a horrible problem to have in the first place.

For me at least that's equivalent to solving the knapsack problem, but hey - if it's easy for you to optimize usage of absurd amounts of capital according to your utility function, then more power to you.

what i was trying to say is, that first you have to work insanely hard and/or have a huge amount of luck to be in a situation where you actually have that problem. Then when you have reached that, you can think about how to solve it, which i fould find a very nice problem to deal with.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#22

Post by koenigdavidmj »

sasvari wrote: post #5

Maybe this is the small-scale return of private research units like Bell Labs or (Xerox) PARC (although both of them still exist, they are not as significant as they once were) for the Web: put a group of awesome guys together and just let them cook a bit and see what's coming out ...

We call that being a `research scientist', which basically means playing on the company's dime.

Of course, you generally have to have a Ph.D. and prodigious output of papers to get the job.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#23

Post by sdrinf »

wyclif wrote: post #16
steveklabnik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about being more specific about the intentions. Yes, lifestyle businesses could be simply 'a business', but startups are also 'a business.' Try reading your post with s/lifestyle business/startup/g;... it's the same point. More specific language isn't a bad thing.

As I said above, I understood what you meant. I just find the phrase slightly damning--and indicative of a problem in this space. I see a trend in commentary on tech blogs and conferences that imply that as a developer, either you're creating the next Google or Facebook acquisition, or you've traded the big payout for a "lifestyle business" that is probably turning a profit and carrying no debt, with no hybrid exampl…

Your problem isn't with the phrase then: it's the connotation. That problem would not be solved by not calling stuff as-it-is, mostly because the root cause is journalism -from their point of view, you're either next Facebook (and thus, story-worthy), or nobody.

Let me suggest a viable alternative, that would actually solve your problem: be more selective about the kind of infosources you're letting yourself influenced by, OR be more cognant about the fact, that you're letting yourself influenced by writings of underpaid philosophy-grads. More generally: ask the question "how do I know what I think I know" a bit more often. Or just take the red pill, and dig into techcrunch archives, say, 3 years back, and compare with reality. All of these can work wonders for your perception.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#24

Post by wmf »

trotsky wrote: post #14

Get someone really young who wants responsibility and they may even work for next to nothing in exchange for big equity stakes in their projects – sort of a modified Y Combinator model. It doesn't sound very gentlemanly to me to be rich enough that you've decided to open a business just to screw around (hence force referred to as "the club house") but to target employees that are young and dumb (tm) enough to accept…

I would assume these gentleman hackers are smart enough to realize that you don't use the same compensation structure for a maybe-profit company with no business model as for a for-profit startup. I hope Arrington is just speculating (incorrectly) in this case and these "gentlemen" aren't drastically underpaying their employees.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#25

Post by Timothee »

wyclif wrote: post #16
steveklabnik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about being more specific about the intentions. Yes, lifestyle businesses could be simply 'a business', but startups are also 'a business.' Try reading your post with s/lifestyle business/startup/g;... it's the same point. More specific language isn't a bad thing.

As I said above, I understood what you meant. I just find the phrase slightly damning--and indicative of a problem in this space. I see a trend in commentary on tech blogs and conferences that imply that as a developer, either you're creating the next Google or Facebook acquisition, or you've traded the big payout for a "lifestyle business" that is probably turning a profit and carrying no debt, with no hybrid exampl…

To me, "lifestyle business" does represent a certain subset of businesses, but tends to be used, as you said, for any company that is not raising money to go for the big exit.

In my opinion, "lifestyle business" implies that the business is done to generate cash in a regular manner with little input. The business itself doesn't matter so much in the end and the main goal is to sustain the revenues rather than necessarily expanding the business. This is exactly what "The 4-hour Work Week" is talking about. Real-estate investments can be like this as well.

On the other hand, you have bootstrapped businesses like 37signals, GitHub or plain web/design agencies which tend to be wrongly lumped into this category. If these were lifestyle businesses, then any store owner, plumber, contractor would have a lifestyle business as well.

On an unrelated note, it seems very premature to put Path.com in the same category as Twitter and Facebook.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#27

Post by pluies »

The article is interesting, but dear... The picture he uses is awful. The basic composition is fine, but the blatant overuse of HDR is incredibly annoying.

Sorry for the off topic, but I had to get that off my chest. :)

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#28

Post by marciovm123 »

It's like the cost of meaningful tech research has dropped so much with software that the "public money -> universities" model can now be replaced by "wealthy individual -> hacker shop" model. Interesting parallels to art world; worked well for the Medicis.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#29

Post by trotsky »

wmf wrote: post #24
trotsky wrote: post #14

Get someone really young who wants responsibility and they may even work for next to nothing in exchange for big equity stakes in their projects – sort of a modified Y Combinator model. It doesn't sound very gentlemanly to me to be rich enough that you've decided to open a business just to screw around (hence force referred to as "the club house") but to target employees that are young and dumb (tm) enough to accept…

I would assume these gentleman hackers are smart enough to realize that you don't use the same compensation structure for a maybe-profit company with no business model as for a for-profit startup. I hope Arrington is just speculating (incorrectly) in this case and these "gentlemen" aren't drastically underpaying their employees.

I think you're right, this is much more likely to just be an arrington-ism than anything else.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#30

Post by StavrosK »

steveklabnik wrote: post #17
wyclif wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said above, I understood what you meant. I just find the phrase slightly damning--and indicative of a problem in this space. I see a trend in commentary on tech blogs and conferences that imply that as a developer, either you're creating the next Google or Facebook acquisition, or you've traded the big payout for a "lifestyle business" that is probably turning a profit and carrying no debt, with no hybrid exampl…

I agree, it's unfortunate when 'lifestyle business' is used in a derogatory manner. I'd rather just take the term back, like "monkeypatching." Words can mean good things in one crowd, and bad things in another. (and I'm not the OP. ;) )

I agree with that. I already use the term as something to aspire to. Indeed, a "lifestyle business" is my dream job.
Post reply on HN