His complaint that more engineers won't go to work for larger tech companies instead of either working for smaller startups or starting their own company is rather hypocritical. A cursory read of his wikipedia page shows that he has never joined a large tech company.
Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
91–100 of 133 posts
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#92He paints a picture of “Google pretending to be Switzerland, but doing back deals with everyone, and Apple being left alone to build the Deathstar.”Guess where that will leave most startups. Nice analogy. Time to move to Dantooine and work on my X-wing startup.
Meanwhile I'll be harvesting Kolto and cutting back-room deals to sell to both the Republic and the Sith.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#93This isn't just whining. My theory is that 500 2 person companies have a worse chance at making a real splash than if the 100 best ideas from that group had 10 good people working on them. That's part of what he's saying - it's harder now for good startups to grow when everyone wants to and is incentivized to make their own web startup. The other part he's saying is that people can have a larger marginal impact on th…
Facebook was once one of those startups.
And so was Napster, his first company.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
"offset somewhat by the bay area cost of living" This is a much bigger problem than many people realize; Ryan Avent discusses it in his ebook The Gated City ( http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... ) and on this Econtalk podcast: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/10/avent_on_cities.htm... . Basically, housing costs in Silicon Valley are eating up all the salary increases tech companies ar…
Hm. See, I don't think paying twice as much for a place to sleep is that big of a deal for a younger Engineer. I mean, if you are a young single person, so you pay a grand for a studio rather than $500 in some flyover state. or $600 for a room rather than $300. Not really a big deal when your salary starts at $80K/year. As you get older and want to buy a house and have a family? Eh, during the bubble, it was a proble…
"you can get a small 3bdroom house for $300-$350K in a very safe area"
I'm curious where that is? In my area, the only house I saw for sale in that price range was a 1 bedroom house literally behind a strip joint.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why does the future have to be like the past?" That's what everyone says in a bubble: "History won't repeat itself this time!" Unfortunately, while industries and companies change and evolve, human nature (specifically fear, greed, and hype) doesn't change. The wise learn from history while the rest keep repeating the mistakes from 15-20 years before.
It is pedantic to assume that history will repeat itself no matter what in every possible industry!...Things are not always just as simple to be explained in terms of periodic cycles.
And it's not pedantic to assume that history won't repeat itself simply because you're blinded by euphoria and hype? I'm not saying that history always repeats itself, but the human nature that causes boom and bust cycles doesn't change.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the engineer's goal is to have the biggest possible impact on the world?
That's a fair goal, and I believe the answer breaks down like this: You can work for a big company that serves billions of people, claiming that you are making an impact on the world, while in reality doing nothing. On the other hand you can start your own company, perhaps only directly impacting a few hundred people, and still accomplish the goal of maximizing your change on the world (as that was your ceiling).
If you write software for a big company then that piece of software could impact the lives of millions of people.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm. See, I don't think paying twice as much for a place to sleep is that big of a deal for a younger Engineer. I mean, if you are a young single person, so you pay a grand for a studio rather than $500 in some flyover state. or $600 for a room rather than $300. Not really a big deal when your salary starts at $80K/year. As you get older and want to buy a house and have a family? Eh, during the bubble, it was a proble…
"you can get a small 3bdroom house for $300-$350K in a very safe area" I'm curious where that is? In my area, the only house I saw for sale in that price range was a 1 bedroom house literally behind a strip joint.
it was just barely on the Santa Clara side of Lawrence expressway (but not very far so) there's a highschool right there (willcox high? yeah. the place was about a block north of that.) go a few blocks further north (or, rather, a few blocks towards 101) and you get to the Lawrence caltrain station, which isn't a nice area, but isn't scary (I once lived in an apartment across the street from the Lawrence caltrain.) It was an older place, of course, and looked very suburban. I think it was closer to $350 than $300 but I'm certain it wasn't above $350 (We didn't look at anything that had an asking price higher than $350)
It wasn't big; just under a thousand squarefeet, if I remember right, not counting the garage or the shed. 3bdr, 2 bathrooms; one of the bathrooms was an un-permitted conversion of a closet. (oh man. so many houses in this area have been badly converted to hold more people than was originally intended.)
The roof was in fairly okay shape; it seemed structurally pretty good. It badly needed new carpet, appliances and paint inside and out.
When was last time you looked? Things are bad right now, I mean, if you are trying to sell; I looked at rather a large number of houses over a period of a few months (we stopped looking, oh, two or three months ago) nearly all the properties we looked at were either short-sales or bank owned. Most of the places we looked at? last sold for close to 2x the current asking price.
But yeah, there seemed to be plenty of livable stuff in the Sunnyvale area for under $350K, and it gets cheaper as you get closer to San Jose.
This wasn't the cheapest thing we looked at, but most of the cheaper single family homes had more significant problems like a roof that should have been replaced five years ago.
There was a very small 2 bedroom house on America over near arques and central expressway in sunnyvale. Well under $250 if I remember right, but it needed way more work than I wanted to put in. (incidentally, it also had a poorly-done bathroom addition; this one opening to outside. at least it was enclosed.)
I could go on for hours about all the poorly-done bathroom additions we saw. At one house, someone just took a toilet and plumbed it in to the corner of their enclosed back patio. They also had a completely free-standing shower insert plumbed in to the same area.
but yeah; in that price range you see a lot of stuff that needs a whole lot of work, but you will also find a few places that are livable with new carpets.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#98"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook, and they in turn will have a hard time attracting the best talent because those people can get funded to start their own projects as well." Obviously I just read TC's article and didn't see what Parker said, but what's notably missing from t…
There's a rich tradition of self-interested complaint in this industry. This reminds me of Fred Wilson's complaining about startup lawyer fees[1], Aaron Greenspan's complaining about the Money Transmission Act[2], and pg's Patent Pledge[3]. Not that people shouldn't speak for the causes of their choosing, but you do lose some rhetorical impact if you only do so once you have a horse in the race. [1] http://www.avc.co…
At least in my case (I'm Aaron) I don't think that a fair comparison at all.
Sean Parker is concerned that not enough talented people work at a company he has a stake in. That's fair, but only that company can benefit if his concern is alleviated (at the cost of others).
I'm concerned that an entire industry of companies has been quashed by anti-competitive laws, not just in California, but nationwide, raising prices for merchants and consumers across the country due to monopolistic business tactics that have been well-documented. It's affected my company, as well as about ten I've gotten e-mails from and probably a hundred that never started up in the first place or don't want to admit that they're caught up in it, too. Therefore it seems a bit broader than my own self-interest. And you can call me selfish, but I don't see any other self-interested parties stepping up to the plate on this one.
The counterpoint to the horse-in-the-race argument is that there is absolutely no way I would have known anything about money transmission laws unless I had a horse in the race. Some of these topics are pretty esoteric and I think that it's good when specialists speak up about them.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#99"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook..."
- says Sean Parker, the guy who owns between 2 and 7% of Facebook. Well yes, of course.
Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”
#100This is shit.
I heard something similar from Joel Spolsky not that long ago.
It's like a George Wallace speech. The old guard, giving speeches targeted at the "do nothing class", urging them to help suppress a revolution.