Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mistakes You Should Never Make

sethbannon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 348 posts

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#271

Post by pyoung »

larrys wrote: post #185
rdwallis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load. Nobody speeds all the time. Even people who speed a lot will try to slow down for speed traps. So everyone who speeds even those who speed only every now and then have to be constantly making a choice for when to speed. They must constantly assess whether the benefits of speeding in this specific moment outweigh the disadvantages. There are dozens of va…

"I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load." Never? Never speeding also means not always keeping up with traffic which might be flowing at a higher rate of speed. Consequently you are chancing a greater risk of an accident by not keeping up with traffic and not speeding.

Not exactly. Those that are speeding have accepted the higher risk of accident in exchange for getting to their destination slightly faster (if at all). The choices of the speeders have externalities in the form of a higher risk of accident for all other drivers around them, regardless of others speed. The drivers who obey the law bear none of the of the responsibility for that increase in risk. If you want to argue that speed limits should be raised because everyone is breaking them anyways, I think that is a fairer point of view. But to blame people who are following the law for the externalities caused by those breaking the law is absurd.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#272

Post by freerobby »

pjungwir wrote: post #131
slg wrote: post #83

I know this is a minor point of the article, but as someone with a degree from Harvard Extension I need to weigh in on that part of the story. I hate people who make this lie of ommission. Harvard Extension isn't Harvard College or Harvard Business School, but it still provides a very good education with great flexibility at an even better price. However, there is a small minority of people that continuely try to pas…

I also took a few Harvard Extension School classes (mostly Greek and Latin, but also Distributed Computing). I didn't earn a degree, just took a few things that interested me. It's on my resume as Harvard Extension School, and I have to actively correct people who think it's more than it is. My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card." What's really embarrassing is when someone introduces…

There are two separate problems with HES identity and association.

The first is that HES's own guidelines instruct students to list their degrees in ways that can be confusing. See: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lamont/2013/09/18/harvard-exten...

The second problem, and I think the reason behind the first problem, is that the formal way to list a degree on a resume is not by the school one attended but by the university that grants the degree. That is, an HBS graduate would list their degree as an MBA from Harvard University; an HLS graduate would list their degree as a JD from Harvard University. Harvard's method of identifying the school is that it awards unique degrees according to which school was intended. Thus an MBA will always come from HBS. A JD will always come from HLS. There is no BA or MA from Harvard Extension School, but rather a BLA or MLA. In this way, the correct listing of a BLA from Harvard Extension School is distinguishable from a BA from Harvard College, but of course, only for a person who knows the difference (or doesn't assume the "L" is a typo). This is, in my view, more a problem of poor convention than of anything else.

Yes, there are also people who plainly abuse language to mislead people. They make people like myself ('07 ALMM program) very self-conscious when it comes to talking about my education there. I never brag about the Harvard name. If pressed I refer to my program as "Harvard's night school for working adults" (because let me assure you - nobody knows what the hell "Extension School" mean anyway). It's a shame that there's no clear, accurate way for HES students to talk about their programs without denigrating their own accomplishments or risking being impostors.

Finally, there is one bit of praise I would like to bestow upon HES that cannot be said for any of Harvard's other schools: HES is the most meritocratic academic system I have ever seen. Your success boils down to whether you can do the work and whether you put in the time. It doesn't matter what your grades were in high school. It doesn't matter how much money your family has donated. It doesn't matter if you can throw a football. The requirements for admittance are as black and white as they come. If you show up, do the work, and get good grades, you'll get admitted. If you take three classes and can't consistently get Bs or better, you will be rejected no matter how much money or legacy you waive in front of the school. I hope someday the rest of academia will consider this model.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#273

Post by megablast »

jlevy wrote: post #250

As internal counsel for YC, it was very upsetting to learn about the ongoing troubles at Amicus. It was particularly distressing to hear about the payroll tax issues, given that YC has funded excellent companies that specialize in accounting and payroll for small businesses, such as Indinero and Zenpayroll. The tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC…

The naughtiness he is referring to is clearly not the mistake they made in not paying payroll tax. He mentions later that it is about offering features that did not exist yet, which is very common.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#275

Post by calibraxis »

jacquesm wrote: post #268
calibraxis wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine; you think I'm off base, but that's not my problem. :) Contrast your emphasis on a couple statements for PUBLIC consumption, vs. the article's claim: "One of the big values of Y Combinator was that we were able to hear strictly off-the-record stories of many successful startups' WFIO [‘We’re Fucked, It’s Over’] moments." In any case, many of us have been inside corporations, and observed the clear dynamics.

I have a few of those WFIO stories myself and I would not air them because there is no use crying over spilt milk and I like to protect the reputations of my co-founders and employees alike. That's perfectly ok. You're not required to spill the beans or air your dirty laundry in situations like this. In fact, the whole thread here is because the OP decided to come clean (for some value of 'clean') about all this, and…

No problem if you disagree; just a couple observations:

- any "shock" people have about corporations/investors routinely lying is hopefully fake. Or at least brief.

- simply read the charts and see how transparently YC misleads those who don't think through basic statistics: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/04...

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#276

Post by pygy_ »

jlevy wrote: post #250

As internal counsel for YC, it was very upsetting to learn about the ongoing troubles at Amicus. It was particularly distressing to hear about the payroll tax issues, given that YC has funded excellent companies that specialize in accounting and payroll for small businesses, such as Indinero and Zenpayroll. The tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC…

I think that you misunderstood his post (even though you may have more information than I do).

The end note is indeed ambiguous, but the body of the post of the post is more detailed and I had understood that he was talking about the alumni rather than YC itself.

I’ve been most surprised by the outpouring of support from other entrepreneurs (mainly from the Y Combinator network) who heard we might be going through tough times, and reached out just to let me know they were there for me.

Besides that, the he mentions YC and pg as inspiration, throughout the post, but there's no mention of an active support.

What more, he claims that the taxes issue was an oversight rather than an willful decision. It is thus irresponsibility rather than naughtiness, which requires intentionality. Also he doesn't try to justify it as pg-defined naughty behavior.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#278

Post by sethbannon »

jlevy wrote: post #250

As internal counsel for YC, it was very upsetting to learn about the ongoing troubles at Amicus. It was particularly distressing to hear about the payroll tax issues, given that YC has funded excellent companies that specialize in accounting and payroll for small businesses, such as Indinero and Zenpayroll. The tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC…

As tlrobinson and jacquesm noted, I certainly didn't mean to imply that YC in any way supports companies not paying payroll taxes -- as I advise in the post, companies shouldn't cut corners when it comes to that stuff.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#279

Post by jacquesm »

calibraxis wrote: post #275
jacquesm wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few of those WFIO stories myself and I would not air them because there is no use crying over spilt milk and I like to protect the reputations of my co-founders and employees alike. That's perfectly ok. You're not required to spill the beans or air your dirty laundry in situations like this. In fact, the whole thread here is because the OP decided to come clean (for some value of 'clean') about all this, and…

No problem if you disagree; just a couple observations: - any "shock" people have about corporations/investors routinely lying is hopefully fake. Or at least brief. - simply read the charts and see how transparently YC misleads those who don't think through basic statistics: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/04...

Now we're solidly into threadjacking territory, we're not going to make this about gender in start-ups. You can argue about that until the cows come home, it has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is the activities of the founders of YC and their relationship with YC. To know more about the subject you want to pull this thread into you'd have to know a ton more about the YC applicant pool than is publicly available and since there is not much good any company can do in this respect it's considered a minefield. For the record, all the people working for me are females, the start-ups that I've founded all had at least one female in the founder group and yet none of that proves anything. I'm sure you could make a pretty graph out of that.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#280

Post by lifeisstillgood »

jlevy wrote: post #250

As internal counsel for YC, it was very upsetting to learn about the ongoing troubles at Amicus. It was particularly distressing to hear about the payroll tax issues, given that YC has funded excellent companies that specialize in accounting and payroll for small businesses, such as Indinero and Zenpayroll. The tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC…

This I find hard. This thread is a major eye-opener, quite heavily dividing the HN world. No one thinks Seth/Amicus did well here, but there is a world of difference between supporting a company or founder and condoning illegality.

This smacks of hanging someone out to dry. And that bothers me, unless you have much more backstory with Amicus than is obvious here.

This thread has shaken me - I initially sided with OP because he sounded a great deal like me - and I respected the effort such honesty takes.

I am not sadly a man of great personal integrity. I vow never to lie but only because I have found it leads to more stress and trouble than the alternative. Always being honest I am working up to - ChuckM's grandfather sets a high bar.

Ultimately I have no insight into this case, no idea who's story is more close to reality. But I value openness and admitting of mistakes - it makes my own stumblings more bearable.

So I respect Seth for opening up here. He may well lose this company, he may well suffer prosecution for back taxes. And he should take his licks. But if he has dealt openly and honestly with his investors and employees he will I expect be back again, backed by investors who will this time insist on a firm of good accountants

Incompetency in administration may be a crime, but it's more forgivable than lying.

Post reply on HN