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Why YC went to DC

ycombinator.com

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Re: Why YC went to DC

#141

Post by janalsncm »

mjewkes wrote: post #114
zer00eyz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isnt about workers. Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search. It's going to crush google, and MS. You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you. Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech. Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix. In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to th…

If you are truly netflix-to-be, you should be able to affordably incentivize your 12 key employees with equity. An exit for Employee < 50 at a netflix-to be will be in the hundreds of millions.

Sure, if you knew you were getting a $100M exit in 5 years a rational agent would even agree to a $0 salary. A bank would gladly give them a $1 million loan for all of their life expenses until then, given the certainty of being repaid.

Unfortunately, these things aren’t certain and are contingent on many things including those that have nothing to do with technology.

It’s unfortunate because people have a bias towards guaranteed present value (cash) over expected future value (equity) which gives incumbents a natural advantage.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#142

Post by readyman »

stetrain wrote: post #95
downrightmike wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicare This puts you in the same company of abusing the system as Walmart, the nation's biggest welfare queen. Employers should just have to give health benefits. You want workers, you pay benefits. Period. Maybe then you all will get on board for a single payer system. Its what you want, but only in fits and starts. quit fucking around already.

I really don't want my at-will employment status to be the arbiter of whether an unforeseen health issue will bankrupt me. Tying either private insurance or public insurance eligibility to your employer seems like a bad pattern we should be trying to get away from.

Good luck convincing employers of that.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#143

Post by bumby »

ethbr1 wrote: post #137
bumby wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that it solves the "in this job until I die". But as you allude to, it creates its own issues and it's not clear to me if, on balance, its better. Churn can also create an ineffective (or superficially effective) organization because the hardest problems can't really be solved in a short tenure. (If it could the Executive Branch would be considered highly effective because it has churn every 4-8 year…

The USAF would certainly agree with you! ;) On the whole, I think it's still a net positive. The drag of unmotivated, apathetic, and/or inflexible employees is incredibly high, and then there's the additional efficiency drag of the systems that must put in place to ensure they meet minimum performance (i.e. filling out make-work forms to track performance). Better to simply create a system by which they're weeded out…

>Better to simply create a system by which they're weeded out.

I agree with this. It's really just another way to say there should be mechanisms to hold people accountable.

>Which I guess dovetails with the military "up or out" process.

I don't think the military does a great job of this. From what I could see, it only forces out the absolute absymal performers (e.g., those who can't pass a PFT or have multiple DUIs etc.) I would argue it takes far too long (often only implemented once they've been in a decade or more and haven't made SNCO). This does a disservice to both the organization (the person is still around for a decade) and also the service member (they have now dedicated over a decade to a career that is a dead end, and usually over halfway to retirement).

Re: Why YC went to DC

#144

Post by gpsx »

willsmith72 wrote: post #20

little tech? i don't buy it. the entire point of YC is growth

I am assuming YC will be lobbying on their own interests, which, at least for typical VCs is getting some of their small companies to go big, rather than promoting success among all their companies. They probably won't be lobbying for the companies that do not get/take VC funding, which are the less capatilized ones that probably need more representation. And, their interests with go big or go bust doesn't always align with the funded companies' interests, since optimizing for their portfolio of many is different from optimizing for the founders' portifolio of one.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#145

Post by zer00eyz »

zarathustreal wrote: post #118
zer00eyz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isnt about workers. Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search. It's going to crush google, and MS. You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you. Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech. Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix. In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to th…

If a dozen people worked hard enough to gain the knowledge that gets them “rest and vest” at Google, they deserve it. Monetary reward is the reason we’re working at all. It’s not for the greater good. You’re certainly not going to convince anyone to give the government power to deny them their right to take the money and run

It's not about the workers. It's not about the market.

Hiring all the staff at an inflated rate to put a competitor out of business is good for the staff that got hired.

Without competition the dominant player makes more, without other places to work dominant player pays less.

> It’s not for the greater good.

Your not getting paid because your valuable your getting paid out because its anti-competitive. Paying you more to bankrupt a competitor is no different than dumping product to put them out of business ... Secure your market position and then jack up the prices and lower the salary.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#146

Post by stackskipton »

benslavin wrote: post #100
stackskipton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was in DC area but isn't any more, talent in DC area is not anything to write home about. We have a ton of talent on paper because government requires gobs of tech workers and prefers they have advanced degrees but since it's just boring enterprise work, the spark of innovation is snuffed out quickly. Most of startups in the area are catering to the government. There are already VC/PE/Startup accelerat…

Having lived in the DC area for almost two decades, I don't agree. There are absolutely pockets that match your description but, if that's all you see I think you might be stuck in a bubble. I see so much more. There are cool companies that have been and are being built here (I was going to list them, but the Washingtonian "DC Tech Titans" list has lots of good examples), many not B2G... and people who still have 'th…

Washingtonian is very pay to play. However, I'll point some that appear private like Cvent are in DC area because their early customers were trade groups that put on big conferences. These trade groups are here because they lobby the government. So doesn't appear government focused at first but is.

Others may have private sector customers but do huge amount of business with government. Appian, looking at you.

Yes, almost all my work in DC area was with companies nowhere near the government but it was very difficult and I stayed with jobs longer than I wanted. Also, hiring was very very difficult. We would churn through tech resumes and interviews because either inflated salary due to clearance or just people who wanted to push button and get paid well for it. It was always very frustrating.

Also, why do people seem to think there is tech hubs around big cloud datacenter? When did people start caring about being close to their workloads?

Re: Why YC went to DC

#147

Post by sillysaurusx »

robertk wrote: post #60
sillysaurusx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is our dataset still available? I thought it was taken offline. Where do you go under that link to get it? E.g. https://the-eye.eu/public/AI/pile/readme.txt says it’s gone (and "old news"? I disagree).

Shawn, there is a mildly redacted version available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/monology/pile-uncopyrighted

Thank you.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#148

Post by pram »

jrockway wrote: post #46
candiddevmike wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like VR in 2018. I'd love to see a Silicon Valley season for the current tech environment.

I think 2018 was the year of FinTech, which translates mostly to "altcoins". I was looking for a job in the summer of 2018 and that's what all the ads were for. Ended up working for an ISP though, which was nice.

Haven’t seen any “Web 3” shills for a long time, gone right out of style it has!

Re: Why YC went to DC

#149

Post by jrockway »

pram wrote: post #148
jrockway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 2018 was the year of FinTech, which translates mostly to "altcoins". I was looking for a job in the summer of 2018 and that's what all the ads were for. Ended up working for an ISP though, which was nice.

Haven’t seen any “Web 3” shills for a long time, gone right out of style it has!

Everyone spent the cash they were going to invest into startups on NFTs, I guess.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#150

Post by guyfromfargo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #56
siliconc0w wrote: post #9

If you need more things to fix: * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions. * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicar…

Of these, the Section 174 debacle (software R&D amortization) is arguably the problem that needs to be addressed most urgently.

Completely agree. I am a bootstrapped SaaS owner and we cleared about $1M in revenue, $1,200 in profit, and $90k in taxes.

Bootstrapping a tech company in a post Section 174 world doesn’t even seem feasible. I can’t believe this issue isn’t being taken more seriously.

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