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Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

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Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#101

Post by nikcub »

lansing wrote: post #64
nestlequ1k wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a certain type of personality (very prevalent in the valley) who won't work for a big company like facebook, twitter, or google for any amount of money. I would imagine these types of people make up the majority of the YC class. Maybe they'll get bought via a talent acquisition but as soon as their golden handcuffs are off, they are out doing their own thing again. The reason they allow themselves to get boug…

You claim that this class of people won't work for a "big company" for "any amount of money," yet in the next breath you admit that they will work for those companies in the context of a "talent acquisition." What is a "talent acquisition" if not an alternate mode of compensation to persuade individuals to "take a corporate job" who previously considered themselves above such positions? Yeah, it sounds more impressiv…

Exiting a company as soon as you can after a talent acquisition to go on and become an entrepreneur again is very very very common. Most recently I can think of Arrington, Levchin, Nguyen.

I would even guess that the majority of founders who are acquired by Google, Yahoo etc. leave in the first 12 months.

It is either to get the first run on the board, or to give a startup that would otherwise fail a graceful exit - but these people are entrepreneurs and do not fit into large companies.

Sean Parker should be asking what is Facebook doing to attract these types of people, not bitch about these people not wanting to join and blaming free-market funding, of all things.

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#102

Post by rcoder »

mattdeboard wrote: post #82
jseliger wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

Uh, I dunno. I lived in the Bay Area (Santa Clara & San Jose, specifically.. far from the city but still enjoyably commutable by rail) for a couple years. I then moved to Indiana and took a 65% pay cut. The bay is expensive, but it's not THAT expensive. As long as you live within your means and understand that 80k in the bay area is not the same as 80k in Indiana (where I live now) you can have a very nice lifestyle.…

As someone who just moved from Portland OR to the Bay Area in order to take a "corporate" engineering job in SF (and got a >40% raise in the process) I can say with confidence that the cost of living here, even outside the city (specifically Berkeley for me) is easily 2.5x what is was back in PDX, even with a 60 minute commute and meals comped at the office.

It's not just housing (which costs easily 2x what it does in or near any 2nd-tier tech city) - transportation, food, and mundane but pleasant things like pints of microbrew and movie tickets are way more expensive, too.

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#103

Post by mdda »

robryan wrote: post #74
allantyoung wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? I just found your comment interesting but I'd like to know what you're talking about.

Sounds like he means the open source tools startups are generating can be used to target areas they are ignoring.

In that case "useful idiots" is a bit harsh (and not accurate from my reading of [1]).

The creation of this much open source software is a true public good. The people producing it (both at small companies and big ones) may be working away at misguided projects, but it's wonderful that as a byproduct they're producing software useable by everyone. In the future, it may be obvious that the open-source side-effects of this SV generation were more value-creating than the businesses created directly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#104

Post by sliverstorm »

rcoder wrote: post #102
mattdeboard wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I dunno. I lived in the Bay Area (Santa Clara & San Jose, specifically.. far from the city but still enjoyably commutable by rail) for a couple years. I then moved to Indiana and took a 65% pay cut. The bay is expensive, but it's not THAT expensive. As long as you live within your means and understand that 80k in the bay area is not the same as 80k in Indiana (where I live now) you can have a very nice lifestyle.…

As someone who just moved from Portland OR to the Bay Area in order to take a "corporate" engineering job in SF (and got a >40% raise in the process) I can say with confidence that the cost of living here, even outside the city (specifically Berkeley for me) is easily 2.5x what is was back in PDX, even with a 60 minute commute and meals comped at the office. It's not just housing (which costs easily 2x what it does i…

...pints of microbrew...

That's not The Bay, that's Not Living Near Microbreweries.

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#105

Post by sliverstorm »

georgemcbay wrote: post #30

I don't think he is completely wrong but I think this is just another (higher-end) instance of the age-old tradition of companies saying it is too difficult to find engineers while being unwilling to pay fair value for said engineers. To be clear, I know that Facebook does pay quite well by industry standards (offset somewhat by the bay area cost of living) for top talent, but if this situation is causing them an iss…

You seem to be adopting the point of view that whatever pay is required to attract an engineer is the right pay. But what about when that pay eclipses the engineer's marginal value-add to the company? I think it not unreasonable to speak up if you feel there is a short-sighted market force overvaluing a resource.

Imagine you are a farmer, and the value of grain falls below the cost to produce it. Do you accept what The Market has decided, and continue growing grain for a loss?

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#106

Post by [deleted] »

davidhansen wrote: post #75
lbarrow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'm not in a position to comment on the amount of funding in the early-stage startup world, but this particular comment by Parker reads like another executive whining that engineers are too independent.

Not just the independence aspect, but the hubris with which he complains about the most brilliant minds choosing to not work on, well, a social network site . It's 2011; we are traversing inflection points of development in solar energy, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and seeing the early, dramatic fruits of stem cell research, and Parker is bitching that the best of the best aren't keen on improving software that s…

[deleted]

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#107

Post by justincormack »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #65
justincormack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a bizarre argument though, you are saying that capitalism works fine so long as companies are run as soviet states? The Soviet Union showed basically no benefits to the command economy... And the great leaders of large businesses look rather more like command economy leaders than products of a free market. I think you need a better argument than that that large corporations are here to stay, not a passing fad…

That is a bizarre argument though, you are saying that capitalism works fine so long as companies are run as soviet states? No, I'm saying that embedding command economies (structured as companies) in a capitalist economy allows us to gain the benefits of a well run command economy while mitigating their harms.

Yeah thats what I meant. First prove there is such a thing as a well run command economy then, and then that the company system will generate such a thing...

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#108

Post by neilk »

niketdesai wrote: post #88
long wrote: post #83

Earlier 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).

Or you could serve billions of people, have a huge impact, and still not have enough technical colleagues to do an ops versus features baseball game.

http://bit.ly/WikimediaJobs

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#109

Post by lubujackson »

[deleted] wrote: post #106
davidhansen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the independence aspect, but the hubris with which he complains about the most brilliant minds choosing to not work on, well, a social network site . It's 2011; we are traversing inflection points of development in solar energy, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and seeing the early, dramatic fruits of stem cell research, and Parker is bitching that the best of the best aren't keen on improving software that s…

[deleted]

I don't get comparing inventions to a company. Facebook is NOT all of social networking; the world would get on fine without Facebook. There's nothing important you can't do on Facebook that you (fundamentally) couldn't already do through email. That said, Facebook was the first social site to manage relationships well and scale well. But, as they say, "let's not start sucking each others dicks quite yet."

Re: Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

#110

Post by neilk »

nikcub wrote: post #101
lansing wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim that this class of people won't work for a "big company" for "any amount of money," yet in the next breath you admit that they will work for those companies in the context of a "talent acquisition." What is a "talent acquisition" if not an alternate mode of compensation to persuade individuals to "take a corporate job" who previously considered themselves above such positions? Yeah, it sounds more impressiv…

Exiting a company as soon as you can after a talent acquisition to go on and become an entrepreneur again is very very very common. Most recently I can think of Arrington, Levchin, Nguyen. I would even guess that the majority of founders who are acquired by Google, Yahoo etc. leave in the first 12 months. It is either to get the first run on the board, or to give a startup that would otherwise fail a graceful exit -…

> I would even guess that the majority of founders who are acquired by Google, Yahoo etc. leave in the first 12 months.

That is absolutely not the case.

You often don't even hear about most Google acquisitions, or you don't know what they were even working on until they get released as Google Egg Timer or something. And even after vesting a lot of acquired employees still stick around. Some of them have families by then.

Yahoo tries hard to make them quit in disgust, but even they hang on to founders longer than that.

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