Mistakes You Should Never Make • Hacker News Board

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#291

Post by lambda » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:55 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #155

pjungwir wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard Extension School is an adult education program, like night classes. Your teachers may be Harvard faculty (but never were in the 7 classes I took there), and the other students are not Harvard undergrads. Also there is no application: they take anyone with a credit card. (There may be an application if you want to earn a degree rather than just take desultory classes; I don't know.) That's all not to say the c…

So what does "getting into Harvard" mean - getting into Harvard College? What about the rest of colleges besides Harvard College and Extension School?

Harvard College is the undergraduate institution. It is one of the most prestigious undergraduate colleges in the US.

However, it is but one of several schools that make up Harvard University, which include graduate schools like Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and professional schools like Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard School of Medicine.

There is overlap between the different institutions at Harvard; the Faculty of Arts and Sciences teaches undergraduate classes at Harvard College, graduate classes at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and performs research.

Harvard Extension School differs from many of the other schools in that it is not selective; anyone can simply pay to take a class. That means that merely attending Harvard Extension School confers considerably less prestige than attending Harvard College or one of the other schools at Harvard; all it means is that you paid for some courses.

Saying you "dropped out of Harvard" makes it sound like you were really brilliant and had a lot of promise but founding your own company held even more promise than finishing your degree. Saying that you dropped out of Harvard Extension just says that you took a few night classes and never really got around to finishing anything.

I took a few courses at Harvard Extension in high school. Some of them were really good, some of them not so much. A top notch school tends to offer a much more consistent program than Harvard Extension school. I've also attended another Ivy League school (group of very prestigious, fairly selective schools in the Northeastern US) as a full time student, as well as a flagship state school, and I can say that based on my personal experience, I'd rank Harvard Extension a little below the state school (which also had some really great classes and some mediocre classes), not up with the Ivy League school.

More info on all of the schools that make up Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu/schools

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#292

Post by fredophile » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:58 AM UTC

pyoung wrote: post #271

larrys wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Driving at a rate faster or slower than the flow of traffic increases the risk of an accident more than an equivalent increase in speed. Here's a detailed article about it: http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#293

Post by govindkabra31 » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:12 AM UTC

sethbannon wrote: post #11

jlas wrote: post #3

Wait, so are you telling me that in 3 years no one noticed that taxes weren't being deducted from their pay?

The Bank of America payroll system we used was automatically withholding the payroll taxes from all of our paychecks every two weeks. It then just left that money in our company's bank account instead of sending it to the government because I never discovered the "submit tax" button.

wow.. so did you wonder, in each statement in those 3 years, what that money being put in your account is for?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#294

Post by maxbrown » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:17 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #218

sethbannon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that you made this HN account only to comment on this post. I've learned that getting into a back-and-forth with anonymous posters on HN is never a good idea, but I'll respond just this once. 1. You're absolutely right. I majorly screwed up here. I say so as much in the post. 2. I think people can reasonably disagree here. An example: a potential customer asks a sales guy during a demo "...and will we be able t…

2. The reason engineers tend to hate tactics like this is that it shifts responsibility for fuck-ups from you, the CEO, who should be managing and prioritizing features so you get the best bang for the buck, to them, the engineers, who are now on the hook for a feature that may or may not be able to be built in the time frame you promised. Things go wrong in engineering, and there are unexpected snags and slowdowns,…

I see your point, it can put added pressure on developers, but don't you think (in a healthy company) that "shifts responsibility for fuck-ups" is a bit overstated?

Certainly transparency in sales is preferable, but is promising a (unexpectedly important to that customer) feature to close a major deal a "fuck-up"? There are some potential issues to steer clear of - team burn-out, feature bloat, etc. - but I would just consider it a sales expense/opportunity. If executed/communicated appropriately it could potentially create more trust rather than less.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#295

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:18 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #257

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 tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC supports its companies through good times and bad, but we do not support illegality." FWIW I didn't get that impression from the post. Here's what I assume he was referring to: "4. Naughtiness Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. The…

[deleted]

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#296

Post by lambda » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:23 AM UTC

So, revealing one of these mistakes would come off as a brave revelation of a personal mistake; a lesson learned and moved on from

All of them together seem to come across as being simply dishonest. Being years behind on taxes because you never bothered to have a proper accountant look at your finances, calling people co-founders one day and then treating them like employees, selling non-existent features to your customers and collecting credit card information with no product to back it up, saying you "dropped out of Harvard" when you "took a few courses at Harvard Extension", not telling your investors about what's going on, all adds up to pretty much being entirely dishonest with everyone you interacted with.

One of these mistakes could be forgivable; I've known some very good people who were terrible at accounting and so wound up with lots of back taxes to pay. A good salesman may sell a feature that's not quite ready yet; it's sometimes frustrating for the developers, but as long as it's more the exception than the rule it's OK. Focusing on your product more than your investors may be OK if you just have so much to do and you really are bringing them a lot of value.

But all of them at once? That doesn't leave you with very many excuses; you weren't so busy building features that you didn't have time for investors, you were using your customers, and the IRS, and your "cofounders" as extra investors and even with all of that you weren't able to make it work out.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#297

Post by lambda » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:25 AM UTC

nyc_str8tsh00t wrote: post #269

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…

Good to see YC step forward on this. I'm not a HN regular, but I've been following this thread all day because I have a friend who worked at Amicus, and several others who have worked with their software. I know there are always many sides to any story. I wasn't there, just like most of you weren't there, but all I can say is Seth's version of this story does NOT fit with what I've heard, and everything I've heard ha…

I'm curious; what have you heard that makes these sound like lesser crimes? I feel like from my reading of this, it sounds like he's admitting to being pretty dishonest in a lot of ways (though obviously weasel-worded), so I'm curious what more we're not hearing about; if this is supposed to make him look better, then whatever's left must be pretty bad!

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#298

Post by timv » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 2:54 AM UTC

jasonwocky wrote: post #285

tptacek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's taxed as regular income, but the premise under which it's exempt from the payroll taxes every other worker has to pay is that it's not normal income, but rather the return from an investment in the company. For people in our industry, it's hard to see a definition of "reasonable" that would be financially beneficial. You start a tech company. You pull $100k out every year, putting you right smack in the middle o…

> To support that (sorry) scam, you claim $50k is your "reasonable" salary --- putting you way on the low side of the industry. How convenient. I don't know. What salary would you take for your honest-to-god dream job?

Is your "dream job" one where you are paid a pittance while the company owner makes a tidy profit from your endeavours?

Many people will take a pay cut for their dream job, but very few are willing to be exploited in the process.

If a company owner is taking a very low salary in order to maximise company profit (and minimise tax) then they (as an employer) are exploiting themselves (as an employee) to do so.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#299

Post by king_jester » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 2:57 AM UTC

Aqueous wrote: post #231

king_jester wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone does a bunch of shitty things that directly affects the lives of others, anger is a wholly reasonable response. While it's nice that the OP is being open about mistakes, you don't deserve a pat on the back for telling the truth, it's the default behavior we expect of people.

Do we? Human beings tell half-truths and lies pretty frequently. I bet if you examine the history of your own utterances for the past several years. you'd find that you do, too. There are obviously different scales of truth-telling and deception. "It's your baby." is a lot different than, "Ah - I can't make it. I'm just too tired!" But it's still lying. In fact human lying is so frequent that a lot of the smaller lie…

I don't agree that lying in business is a requirement to run a business and do so well, although you are right in that lying is common in a variety of ways. But I don't have any intention of lowering my expectations nor should anyone have to. Why should workers just have to live with shitty working situations and bouts of unemployment created by liars that lead businesses into bad situations?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#300

Post by jlevy » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 4:30 AM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #276

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 to…

I am happy that you think I misunderstood his post (and yes I have more information than many about the situation). When I read the post I thought it was implicit that YC supported Seth fully. That is not the case. There are mentions of YC throughout the post, and a couple of references to the YC network. I was hoping to clarify that the YC network doesn't automatically include YC. My one example may have been misconstrued and there are many parts and sides to this story. As long as it is clear that there is not unconditional support at YC for Seth's handling of the situation, then that is all that matters.