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The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

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Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#61

Post by Carrok »

fragmede wrote: post #52
jitl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s infinitely easier to become an alcoholic by buying alcohol at a grocery store. brewing is pretty much the least direct most delayed gratification way to get drunk. i guess it can be pretty cheap if you optimize for that but it sounds like jim made enough money and high flying friends it’s unlikely to be major factor.

Though, after you've home brewed the beer, you've now got potentially gallons of beer in a giant pot that you have to bottle yourself. Or you could be lazy and just drink it yourself. True, you could just go down to the store and grab a 30-rack of mass produced beer if you wanted to be an alcoholic, but having a vat of beer in your kitchen that isn't going to drink itself and is gonna go bad if you don't, is a differ…

A standard home brewing batch is 5 gallons. Or 40 pints.

While it is a crazy world and I don’t want to say no one has ever done what you described, it would be an outlier to say the least.

Home brewed beer is generally bottled or put into a keg and tapped.

(Almost) no one is just drinking warm uncarbonated beer from the fermenter.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#62

Post by stevenwoo »

blobbers wrote: post #2

woah woah... a bartender becomes the head of engineering at a high flying start up? This isn't the .com. Did the bartender also go to MIT? Drug fueled founder parties? Orgies? I've clearly been doing silicon valley wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective... but not this? I've seen board game fueled parties where maybe one or two people do drugs, but it remains very nerdy? And no sex parties. Mostly sausage par…

Re: sausage party - Based on the salary of these guys, if they wanted they could easily afford nightly visits at something like the now closed strip club, the Mitchell Brothers theater in San Francisco. I went for a bachelor party in early 2000s, and every dancer who got close enough to have a conversation with you propositioned you with sex acts for a price in a private room. I worked at a startup in Houston in the early 1990s and the founder went to strip clubs it seemed every time he was in town, he took the whole company one time (it was less than 20 of us) and that strip club seemed to work on a similar if less brazen vibe. The other startups I’ve worked for did not have strip club trips. :)

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#63

Post by Aurornis »

vrosas wrote: post #58
Aurornis wrote: post #40

> Jim had participated in drug-fueled “founder parties”, group orgies and all other crazy experiences in San Francisco. This naturally led to the breakup with his fiancée and a nervous breakdown. The Bay Area is a weird place. There are countless companies staffed by smart people doing amazing things. There are also countless people cosplaying as smart people and founders who are going through all of the motions, but…

SF is such a weird vibe in general. I've watched a lot of founders/tech bros go to burning man for the first time, completely miss the point of it but adopt an air of superiority for attending. I watched a founder weave in his experience on peyote into a company all hands. They also, for reasons I simply cannot fathom, go out and buy a green Range Rover. And as someone who's been in the ENM space for a long time, SF…

> I've watched a lot of founders/tech bros go to burning man for the first time, completely miss the point of it but adopt an air of superiority for attending.

I can't say I see a lot of green Range Rovers in other cities, but I assure you this one is universal across places and industries.

I have friends who go to Burning Man and don't post anything on their social media or bring it up in conversation because they don't want to be one of those people. Others go once and it becomes 50% of their personality for the next year.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#64

Post by toomuchtodo »

carlosjobim wrote: post #59
egonschiele wrote: post #44

Real bummer of a story. > He approached me because he was really into startups and wanted to become a tech entrepreneur, and make the big bucks It's a shame that so much of tech culture has become about money. Money was always a part of it, but living in the Bay in 2010, there was more of a focus on building things. But once people started getting rich, especially off bitcoin, it brought in a whole host of people who…

Tech startup is one of the few remaining ways still allowed for plebs to build wealth unless they're born into it, because digital stuff isn't influenced by real estate feudalism.

Also why generative AI scares people who want to build wealth with tech, as it removes a vehicle to create moats to build wealth and concentrates existing wealth that can avoid having to hire labor. At least the illusion of meritocracy and skill (versus connection and luck) leading to wealth is evaporating.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#67

Post by mordechai9000 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #39

It's really hard for me to understand that people who have the chance to achieve basic financial independence (say $1M net worth) don't take that chance and make sure to stay financially independent forever. If you do that, you're almost guaranteed to stay in the top 2% globally for the rest of your life. You've made it in life, at least financially. The approach of not taking advantage of the lucky and privileged si…

I think $1M net worth in the US these days is a nice little nest egg, but not anywhere near financial independence. Unless your needs are simple, you can relocate somewhere to live very cheaply, and you don't have any dependents.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#68

Post by Aurornis »

smuhakg wrote: post #26
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drug-fuelled OpenAI gay sex orgies What?! Source?

Source: https://futurism.com/researcher-openai-sex-drug-parties More prison gay than anything else. I'd go down on a man for a million dollar OpenAI offer even though I'm into women. I don't think commenters here realize how desperate people can become for money.

Weird article. The original Tweet is all about the "hacker house scene" and it refers to some people she met who went on to work for OpenAI.

The journalist is trying hard to tie it all back to OpenAI, but the original Tweet only mentions OpenAI as an eventual destination for some of the people involved in what she witnessed.

The shared "hacker house" scene in SF is really weird, though. Especially the more you get into EA/rationalist circles. There were groups that were basically cults emerging out of some of them.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#69

Post by Johanx64 »

daishi55 wrote: post #22

I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”. If there’s no great idea to go with it, it just seems like vanity. And sure it does work out really well anyway sometimes, but it’s just something I can’t get behind aesthetically.

> I don’t trust anyone who has the general, abstract goal of being a “founder”.

The goal isn't abstract - read it as - goal of "not being a wage-slave" and have a shot at being more. It's an ambition type of thing.

Re: The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder

#70

Post by paulddraper »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
egonschiele wrote: post #44

Real bummer of a story. > He approached me because he was really into startups and wanted to become a tech entrepreneur, and make the big bucks It's a shame that so much of tech culture has become about money. Money was always a part of it, but living in the Bay in 2010, there was more of a focus on building things. But once people started getting rich, especially off bitcoin, it brought in a whole host of people who…

> Money was always a part of it, but living in the Bay in 2010, there was more of a focus on building things. But once people started getting rich, especially off bitcoin, it brought in a whole host of people whose primary passion seemed to be money. This is funny to read because I remember hearing someone complain about the exact same thing in the Bay Area, but their dates were shifted by about 10 years before yours…

Yeah, I was reading along but the date 2010 surprised me.

In reality, you could probably put any date in there and it would work.

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