Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#61

Post by bentlegen » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

tareqak wrote: post #42

https://twitter.com/IlariKaila/status/1600120645211201536 Ilari Kaila @IlariKaila · 1h Replying to @paulg Why did you delete this banger? | | | Paul Graham @paulg · 1h Replying to @IlariKaila I forgot that mentioning Marx attracts angry fools. Since I could make my point without mentioning him, I just reposted it without.

I always find this take that innovation wouldn’t happen in a non-capitalist society very strange, as if humanity hadn’t produced countless innovations before modern constructs like the corporation existed.

I also think its incredulous to focus on one (admittedly, very) positive outcome of capitalism without acknowledging its externalities, like pollution, inequality, etc. I suppose pg believes the current system will lead to a post-scarcity society in which none of those exist. Perhaps that’s true, but I hope the planet survives long enough to get there.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#62

Post by alexanderballou » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

I think it's also worth considering that automation will enable founders to grow companies with less and less funding.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#63

Post by moolcool » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

If we're going to devalue and degrade the labour of anybody who isn't "founder" because of its ability to be automated, then let's follow the thread to its logical conclusion and say that it's the only VCs who really "create value". Just as AI will be able to take the legwork out of turning a concept into code, coming up with these concepts might well be an even easier task to automate. Of course though, it takes a wise human to know which AI generated concept to fund, and in that spirit, let's all put our hands together for the billionaires who will define this future for is. Really give it up!

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#64

Post by adamsmith143 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

jtgi wrote: post #28

ceronman wrote: post #16

He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false. If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if…

No, negating “employees created all the value” does not mean, “founders create all the value”. It means employees didn’t.

So who is the magical missing third party that created value?

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#65

Post by yetanotherforg » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Msw242 wrote: post #44

yetanotherforg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think all of that automation comes from? I promise you, every single start-up you know of is violating somebody's copyrights on their open source. I've seen this in every company I've worked with for the past 30 years. There is always code inside of private applications which was copied and pasted from GPL'd code.

Not every single startup. It's not hard to read the licenses, and I have a fiduciary duty not to open up my company to unnecessary liability

Have you ever copied and pasted anything from StackOverflow? Did you ask them if they copied it, if they had permission to copy it, or where it was copied from so you could attribute properly? If so, my hat is off to you Sir.

I did have a discussion recently with some friends as to their ethical reasons against GPT and co-pilot generated code.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#66

Post by HideousKojima » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

VictorPath wrote: post #55

jerrre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying a wage = sharing your profits, just not on a % base, but a fixed amount. But in the end it's still: less profits for the founder, and more profit for the employee.

The argument he is arguing against is that the workers create the wealth, and profit is that unpaid surplus labor time that the LPs/VCs/founders expropriate from the workers creating wealth. You can't "share" profits with workers when workers are creating all the wealth, the LPs/VCs etc. expropriate profits from workers.

So if the people providing the funding weren't there, where would the salary for the workers who are currently getting their surplus labor expropriated come from? If these workers are getting unjustly exploited, then what's to keep them from starting a co-op together where they share all profits? Plenty of co-ops exist in modern day capitalist societies, including several successful ones like WinCo in the US and Mondragon Corporation in Spain. No one is forcing these employees to give up their "surplus labor" to investors.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#67

Post by ojbyrne » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

I feel like he’s missing the second order effect. If everyone can automate everything, then there would have been (or will be) 900 Instagrams and 1 (or 20) that would have had a $1000 exit.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#68

Post by VictorPath » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #41

jerrre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying a wage = sharing your profits, just not on a % base, but a fixed amount. But in the end it's still: less profits for the founder, and more profit for the employee.

Also this is not about a dystopian village with one single employer that exploits workers that cannot move. Startup employees agree with free choice to work somewhere for the agreed upon profit share, be that % based or fixed, or mixed.

No post body was provided.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#69

Post by adamsmith143 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

moolcool wrote: post #63

If we're going to devalue and degrade the labour of anybody who isn't "founder" because of its ability to be automated, then let's follow the thread to its logical conclusion and say that it's the only VCs who really "create value". Just as AI will be able to take the legwork out of turning a concept into code, coming up with these concepts might well be an even easier task to automate. Of course though, it takes a w…

Why not go all the way and replace the fallible, gullible, arrogant human VCs with much smarter AI VCs who can determine which AI generated companies are likely to succeed with higher fidelity?

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#70

Post by theturtletalks » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #34

Given the current market I'd say you have to achieve some basic success before hiring anyone, at least if you're bootstrapping. From my experience it's quite difficult to find early-stage employees that are both affordable and good enough to handle the breadth of technical tasks needed in the early phase of a business. So, yeah, automation can take away a lot of pain, and how far you can get really depends on how wel…

I automated my e-commerce business and turned that into a SaaS. Found customers organically and have become my own “customer” multiple times. Solo founders like me are on the rise and you’d be surprised how far a little automation can take a business.