131–140 of 179 posts
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Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.
So you're saying the "Peter principle" extends beyond tech employee performance and to tech company funding.
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> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.
If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.
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> Welcome to late-stage capitalism. Good reads/resources about this? I started reading "What's Our Problem" [1] but find it difficult to find "non-partisan" resources nowadays. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102146148-what-s-our-pro...
I don't think there is any scholarly basis for the term "late-stage capitalism". It's just a meme that kids started using. Power-hungry, unprincipled people will exist regardless of a country's economic system. But people are very imaginative in attributing various social ills to capitalism in particular.
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Well, back when I was looking for work, a couple of companies asked for my HN handle (actually, it's one of the reasons that I got an account, here). It was fairly obvious, that I would not be considered, if I didn't have one.
> a couple of companies asked for my HN handle That's kind of shitty. I'm writing this down as in the last 2-3 years I've started to care less and less about any perceived veil (or hypocrisy, to be more honest) on websites like this one but it's still interesting to see that companies filter out potential employees based on that manifested hypocrisy. That explains a lot of how come SV is in the slump that it is right…
All of us, and I mean ALL OF US have dark fantasy lives. Freud called it our "Id."
It's not meant to be worn outside our heads.
One of the common refrains that you'll hear from fans of "hatemongers," like Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh, is "They're just saying what everyone is thinking!".
There's a reason that we don't say everything that we think.
That's not hypocrisy. That's being a good member of society.
I have good friends -like, actually really good friends, who hold beliefs that I disagree with -sometimes, quite strongly.
We don't talk about that stuff, when we're together.
That's not hypocrisy, either. That's being friends. We find that there are a lot more values that we hold in common, than in opposition.
Modern social media has made it fashionable to use society as a public toilet for our Ids. I don't think that it has improved things.
If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…
If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…
Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.
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Very few extend this to their own livelihood or survival. It's easy to do when you're not playing with your own resources, or they're just crumbs.
It's hard to disentangle motivations as treating people well is also usually good business too but in my experience a lot of people are motivated by doing good as well as making an income. If you look at the history of YC, Paul and Jessica started it primarily to help out the young would be founders without much expectation of making money. And in the story here it seems his main motivation was to stop the founders b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.
The need to scale is inevitable if you consider 2 trends: startups have become mainstream and the internet is orders of magnitude bigger. When YC applications consisted mostly of PG essay readers the chance of success per company was higher. Also some niche ideas can now work because of a more developed communications infrastructure, easy payments, better targeting, etc. And knowing which companies are high quality i…