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The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

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Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#31

Post by [deleted] »

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. ;) )

[deleted]

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#32

Post by bioh42_2 »

blakeweb wrote: post #20
wheaties wrote: post #18

So, um, where do I sign up with these folks?

To generalize from my very limited experience, people doing this use the same hiring strategies as companies, but 1) rely on personal connections and relationships more, since they're often trying to stay a bit under the radar, and 2) are more connected with academia than your average hirer. One approach could be to network at non-mainstream events in your area that are more about creating and seeing cool stuff than…

I don't know if I'm "awsome" or not, but is this bioinformatics thing... what ever it is, for real? Or it just a few enthusiast having fun learning? (Nothing wrong with that, it's just not something that would dislodge me form my "for reals" big corporate bioinformatics dayjob in the North East.)

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#33

Post by abstractbill »

wheaties wrote: post #18

So, um, where do I sign up with these folks?

If you specifically want to sign up with Birch's Monkey Inferno, feel free to get in touch with me (bill@justin.tv) and I'll pass your contact details along - I know a couple of people who are involved.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#34

Post by blakeweb »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #32
blakeweb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To generalize from my very limited experience, people doing this use the same hiring strategies as companies, but 1) rely on personal connections and relationships more, since they're often trying to stay a bit under the radar, and 2) are more connected with academia than your average hirer. One approach could be to network at non-mainstream events in your area that are more about creating and seeing cool stuff than…

I don't know if I'm "awsome" or not, but is this bioinformatics thing... what ever it is, for real? Or it just a few enthusiast having fun learning? (Nothing wrong with that, it's just not something that would dislodge me form my "for reals" big corporate bioinformatics dayjob in the North East.)

To answer your question as best I can: it's exploratory at the moment, like the examples in the original article. The immediate goal is to pursue directions one of which will hopefully produce software and knowledge clearly valuable enough to warrant significantly increasing resources devoted to it--the next inflection point. Risks and rewards are high at this stage. I won't go into a why starting or joining a startup is fantastic, though, as PG does that just fine[1].

Capturing created value outside of the research arm of a big pharma company is of course a key challenge in bioinformatics, and I'd love to meet or chat with you if you're thinking about this too.

In the missionary vs mercenary divide that John Doerr uses to segment startups, I'm now a missionary. The end goal is to cure disease.

[1]: http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html; http://paulgraham.com/boss.html; http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#35

Post by Helianthus16 »

sdrinf wrote: post #23
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…

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 influenc…

A phrase _is_ a set of connotations, so I would argue that his problem is indeed with the phrase.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#36

Post by bioh42_2 »

blakeweb wrote: post #34
bioh42_2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I'm "awsome" or not, but is this bioinformatics thing... what ever it is, for real? Or it just a few enthusiast having fun learning? (Nothing wrong with that, it's just not something that would dislodge me form my "for reals" big corporate bioinformatics dayjob in the North East.)

To answer your question as best I can: it's exploratory at the moment, like the examples in the original article. The immediate goal is to pursue directions one of which will hopefully produce software and knowledge clearly valuable enough to warrant significantly increasing resources devoted to it--the next inflection point. Risks and rewards are high at this stage. I won't go into a why starting or joining a startu…

I don't need convicing that it is easy to inovate outside of big pharma. Altough bioinformatics startups do require quite a bit more cash then pure software startups.

However, the biggest part of capturing value is the regulatory burden.

In other words, lets say you have a great way to discover biomarkers. Even more so, you go ahead and DO discover a pile of biomarkers with great potential.

Then you attemp to sell those biomarkers to big pharma, and that is when you find out:

Even with all their beurocracy and horrible return on R&D investments, big pharma is sitting on a huge pile of biomarkers.

Pushing any one tratment through the pipeline costs a metric tonne of cash and takes 10 year before you even know if it's worth to keep going.

That is why there's a huge backlog of potential drugs, biomarkers, treatments, etc.

Thus merely finding new things with potential is only slighlty better then nothing.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#37

Post by blakeweb »

bioh42_2 wrote: post #36
blakeweb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer your question as best I can: it's exploratory at the moment, like the examples in the original article. The immediate goal is to pursue directions one of which will hopefully produce software and knowledge clearly valuable enough to warrant significantly increasing resources devoted to it--the next inflection point. Risks and rewards are high at this stage. I won't go into a why starting or joining a startu…

I don't need convicing that it is easy to inovate outside of big pharma. Altough bioinformatics startups do require quite a bit more cash then pure software startups. However, the biggest part of capturing value is the regulatory burden. In other words, lets say you have a great way to discover biomarkers. Even more so, you go ahead and DO discover a pile of biomarkers with great potential. Then you attemp to sell th…

Agreed. You've got to address the real problems, or you won't get anywhere.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#38

Post by noodle »

can't we have both? a gentleman hacker farm? a small countryside farm where you can go to bootstrap your own startup. i mean, we've kind of discussed similar in the past and i still actually kind of like the idea.

Re: The Rise Of The Gentleman Hacker

#39

Post by godDLL »

wheaties wrote: post #18

So, um, where do I sign up with these folks?

I work for a business that is exactly like that, owned by a Gentleman general entrepreneur.

It's very weird, a little C/C++ in the morning, some PHP in the afternoon, and then massaging some huge datasets with Python and JavaScript in the evening could be just your regular day, in fact, I think I had at least three just like that. It could be fun, if you like that sort of thing. It can also be absolutely exhausting.

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