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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#421

Post by rightbyte »

valdiorn wrote: post #165
saalweachter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an engineer at a successful startup. We grew, we went bankrupt, we laid off most the company, the founders kicked in enough to keep us going and we restructured to give the remaining people larger shares. We became profitable and finally sold to another company. My payday was about $70k, which was a nice bonus, I was happy to get it. I moved on to big tech. The company withered away, the company that bought it…

> The domain keeps getting renewed This is a funny thing with companies that get taken over. My dad used to run an ISP, one of the first ones in my home country. I'm talking 28.8kbit modems. The company was sold and shut down more than 20 years ago. The company that bought them out got bought out, that company then got bought and, and this repeated a few times. The domain still keeps getting renewed, and for a while…

Thanks for the archive link. I was pumping myself up since you didn't seem to name-drop the company. I love these sort of anecdote stories.

Re: I am done. I give up

#422

Post by rpadovani »

caterpi11ar wrote: post #386
rpadovani wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on. I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45%…

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population". What if we worded this in a different way: "I have a skill which is more in demand than the skills of 95% of the population"

And this is why I say that I understand the economics behind it.

Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

So, while I am able to earn more, I am happy to share part of it with the society as a whole, and this is why I am happy about my level of taxes, compared to the services provided.

There are wastes? Of course there are! So many! But the solution to "governments waste money" is not "less money to the governments", is "more accountability".

This is of course my view of the world, but I still haven't found anybody that explains why my job deserves to be in the top 5% earner in my country, apart from being just a consequence of the fact that my job scales to billions of users due its very nature (that is completely inconsequential from the choices I have made), while other jobs have physical limits and they don't scale.

Re: I am done. I give up

#423

Post by taylorhou »

philippz wrote: post #57

You got a lot of good advice here. So I'll keep it short. I'm 32 now. I spent my last 12 years building companies. They all failed; I didn't earn a penny, and I didn't even get venture capital, and it made me feel like a failure. And I'm talking serious attempts. 6 years, 2 years, 1 year and in between a lot of research & freelancing to evaluate other ideas. I'm leading a 40 people team, and it's going well. How did…

Same here. My first "startup" was dropshipping textbooks to fellow college students when I was a freshman 14 years ago. Learned a ton at a series B "startup" straight out of college in customer support and within 7 months, was fired. Spent 5 years as a founder at remarkhq where we couldn't figure out the business model to get paid while frame.io raised a massive amount of money to copy us and eventually led them to $1B acquisition with Adobe. Then went and joined a friend's stock market for real estate startup dynasty.com that pivoted and was subsequently acquired for $75M. Realized at said real estate startup that there was a massive industry wide problem that property managers suck so just started solo consulting to finally make real money for myself and future family I was told by my wife. I was 28 when I started my current startup (apmhelp.com) and never thought it would actually be something beyond a consulting business. Here I am 5 years later $5M ARR having just closed a $50M facility. It's still not all roses however as this year has been a rollercoaster. Literally today we layoff another 10% so that we can live to see another year. Startups are fucking hard and it takes everything to go at it again and again but I don't work a single day of my life. I wouldn't swap it for anything (long term). Best of luck! Don't give up either!!

Re: I am done. I give up

#425

Post by prmoustache »

valdiorn wrote: post #165
saalweachter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an engineer at a successful startup. We grew, we went bankrupt, we laid off most the company, the founders kicked in enough to keep us going and we restructured to give the remaining people larger shares. We became profitable and finally sold to another company. My payday was about $70k, which was a nice bonus, I was happy to get it. I moved on to big tech. The company withered away, the company that bought it…

> The domain keeps getting renewed This is a funny thing with companies that get taken over. My dad used to run an ISP, one of the first ones in my home country. I'm talking 28.8kbit modems. The company was sold and shut down more than 20 years ago. The company that bought them out got bought out, that company then got bought and, and this repeated a few times. The domain still keeps getting renewed, and for a while…

Or it may be that the only asset of the company left is a brand and giving out the domain to the world would might make that brand unsellable in the future.

Re: I am done. I give up

#426

Post by cromulent »

b93rn wrote: post #158
jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

Luck is winning the lottery.

Warren Buffet calls it "winning the ovarian lottery", yes.

https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovaria...

Re: I am done. I give up

#427

Post by philippz »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #263
philippz wrote: post #57

You got a lot of good advice here. So I'll keep it short. I'm 32 now. I spent my last 12 years building companies. They all failed; I didn't earn a penny, and I didn't even get venture capital, and it made me feel like a failure. And I'm talking serious attempts. 6 years, 2 years, 1 year and in between a lot of research & freelancing to evaluate other ideas. I'm leading a 40 people team, and it's going well. How did…

How did you sustain yourself during periods of failure?

Freelancing and I had a co-founder (also technical) all along with whom I worked very closely in terms of survival. E.g. sometimes he was freelancing for the both of us while I was networking, researching, and evaluating opportunities.

Having a co-founder that is complementary to your personality and skill-set is highly valuable. We've been working together for 10 years now.

Re: I am done. I give up

#428

Post by FollowingTheDao »

As someone else living with mental illness and :gave up" in 1999, I hear you. You did not give up, you were not defeated, you had a realization of your true nature.

I hate the internet and all that comes with it, it has commoditized everything and turned everyone into a self promotor, an advertiser of the self. It's all a pyramid scheme, and the moment more people like us drop out the more quickly the pyramid collapses.

Re: I am done. I give up

#429

Post by vouaobrasil »

In my opinion, thinking about success and failure is already the wrong path. I would say do things you find intrinsically worthwhile instead. For example, right now I'm developing an online course because I think it's fun to do. If no one signs up, then I'll do something else. If I do get students, I'll do something else anyway...in fact, I never even think about the word "failure". It's just something to do that enriches your life and move on from.

Re: I am done. I give up

#430

Post by vidarh »

pavlov wrote: post #200
kubb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

I started my first couple of companies in Norway, and it certainly makes a difference to the feeling of risk to live in a place where the risk of failing just didn't enter my mind at all.

In fact, I'd almost certainly have gotten more a month in welfare support if I'd been unable to find a new job if we'd closed my first company down than what we paid ourselves.

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