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Downsides to working at a tech giant

blog.garrytan.com

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Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#141

Post by eitau »

ogre_codes wrote: post #17

My big mistake? Not being buddies with Peter Thiel in 2003. Don't make my mistake, go back in time and be buddies with Peter Thiel in 2003. Just the fact that he had a buddy who could cut him a check for $70,000 before his startup succeeded says a whole lot about the situation he was in. If you have a buddy who tosses around this kind of cash, your options are different from the options available to the overwhelming…

I have a friend exactly like that and it’s been basically worthless for me. I don’t really engage with him any more.

His car is worth more than my house. He seems to think that gives him the right to allocate my labor to his pet projects. Had I quit my job when he urged, years ago, I would have had a boss with untreated ADHD and unlimited money waste a half-decade of my life.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#142

Post by scarface74 »

garry wrote: post #71
scarface74 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to working for a small money losing company backed by VCs who hoped to be bought out by big tech companies....

Well this is why it's important to work on something that you believe in. I think there is a fatalism to think all small companies are going to fail. Individual employees should use their own judgment when thinking about whether a startup will work— they are often more right than not since startups tend to be self-fulfilling prophecy. If lots of smart people like you want to join too, then it actually becomes a lot m…

It’s not about the company “failing”. Very few tech startups are bootstrapped. At some point they take investor funding. At that point it doesn’t matter what the “smart people” want or the founders. The only thing that matters is what the investors want - they want “an exit”. Statistically:

- the chances of a company not just closing their doors are low.

- out of those, the chances of a company becoming a “lifestyle business”, a profitable ongoing private business are close to zero once you take investor money. Investors aren’t looking for profitable private companies hoping to get a minor dividend. They are looking for their investment to get acquired or go public.

- speaking of which very few companies exit with going public instead of being acquired by big tech. Look no further than YC. Only two YC companies have ever gone public.

- Out of those that do go public, even fewer don’t end up getting acquired by big tech and/or are profitable. Again look at YC. Two public companies and Dropbox has admitted that it has no idea whether it will ever be profitable.

As far as “smart people”. All startups think they have “smart people.”

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#143

Post by catalystic »

minimaxir wrote: post #92
catalystic wrote: post #70

I feel a lot of the folks here are focusing on the wrong parts here. The $200M loss was a cheap way of getting user attention, but hey it worked! The core of what he was trying to convey was the sooner you get to understand real user / customer problems the better off you'll be in life as an entrepreneur. He stayed away from this in his early days as he opted for stability and that he seems to regret.

> The $200M loss was a cheap way of getting user attention, but hey it worked! Many Hacker News submissions get flagged to death for such tactics alone.

I feel they should be as well. If left unmonitored, this can lead to spammy / crappy experience. In this case the individual speaking is a well known and experienced figure who has a lot of insights to offer, hence I feel this made the cut.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#145

Post by dang »

ogre_codes wrote: post #136
dang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a shallow dismissal, which the HN guidelines ask you not to do, and especially not out of indignation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It's obvious from early in the article that Garry wasn't "buddies" with Thiel. He had just graduated, and a college friend was the connection. That means your point reduces to: people who go to elite colleges encounter opportunities as a result. No one disagre…

I don't think pointing out that the article only applies to a very tiny minority of readers is a shallow dismissal. I seriously doubt the overwhelming majority of people reading this article lost $200m from any single decision in their lives. Hell, most of us haven't lost $1 million from any single decision in our lives. If anything, what this article most effectively points out is the fact the value of being born wi…

The article plainly doesn't apply to only a very tiny minority of readers. It's an argument to talented people not to undervalue themselves.

The sensational detail of "a check from Peter Thiel" is blowing the stack here, and flushing everything else the article says out of memory. I think it's worth keeping to the point.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#146

Post by dang »

garry wrote: post #103
ericjang wrote: post #53

A lot of the comments are rightly pointing out the logical fallacy of survivorship bias in the article, but I don't think Garry intended to say that "choosing to work for Palantir in 2003 was the expected-wealth maximizing career decision and that's why you should join a startup". I think the title and lede, "working for Microsoft cost me $200M" is intended to be provocative and encourage clicks on the article, while…

Apologies for the clickbait— I'm trying to build a YouTube following and having some collaborations drop this week. Just trying to make it work on that platform. The values and what is acceptable on different social networks is so different! I didn't really think it would appear on here, so tuning it for different audiences is hard.

We've tuned the title above for this audience. If there's a better one that represents the point of the article, happy to change again.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#148

Post by ignoramous »

jacquesm wrote: post #93
garry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you get offered 1% of Apple? I mean, getting offered equity at the start of a thing is what I was trying to talk about.

No, but he did have the option to buy that lottery ticket. If Apple had gone bust there would have been nothing to write about. By the same measure I can review my life and take every decision I took with hindsight and re-calculate what my net worth would be if I had taken the other fork, I'm pretty sure I could come up with a few hundred million as well but that doesn't matter, you only get one life. Next time you h…

> No, but he did have the option to buy that lottery ticket.

From Garry's blog [0], it looks the it was more than just buying a lottery ticket. Peter Thiel cut him a great deal, by all accounts, and he still let it go. The equivalent to that, imo, would be to have refused ticket offered to you for free which then won the lottery.

[0] (Peter Thiel said) "Cash this check, quit your job. This is a zero risk opportunity for you." I said, "Thank you very much, Mr. Thiel, but I might get promoted to Level 60 next year."

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#150

Post by thaumasiotes »

neves wrote: post #73
thaumasiotes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be too late for the lottery numbers! I can't find it now, but I remember reading about a guy who was arrested in China for buying winning lottery numbers after they'd already been announced. The semi-surprising thing, to me, was that he did this more than once. Seems like a clear example of when you should take the win, and then leave in dignified haste.

This is usually money laundering. A Brazilian politic had won the lottery 7 times.

This isn't a case of an unknown mechanism. The guy noticed that the lottery didn't close for a few minutes after the winning numbers were announced, making it possible to just watch the announcement and then buy the numbers.

As such, there is no reason to believe it's anything more than it appears.

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