Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
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Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
1–10 of 121 posts
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#2Sad, but true.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#3This is easily one of the most honest and true posts I've read about Valley culture in a long, long time.
Having been through this exact process, I can assure you that this is how it really works.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#4So I liked this, like everything else Diego writes, but this graf doesn't ring true to me:
Joe and Wayne work on building something they know GooBook could acquire without looking stupid. Something they might be able to do in-house, except their most talented engineers are desperately working on ways to extract more money out of ads, or to reduce the costs of their gargantuan infrastructure. Some are stationed in Antarctica building a self-cooling datacenter; others are diverted from creative projects into the new 99.9999999999% uptime initiative: one second of downtime costs a million dollars. Forget that stupid 18% free-time web app project, and come help make some mon-ay. The quarterly report must look good. Shareholders demand it!
Working on self-cooling data centers sounds awesome to me, & also penguins. But more importantly: the 99.9999999999% uptime initiative that saves a million dollars for every second rescued sounds awesome to me. Developers are rarely so privileged as to work on problems that are simultaneously hard, well capitalized, and easily quantifiable.
"Mon-nay"? This paragraph reminds me painfully of how mouthy I was when I was 24 and had just had the company where I was an early employee be acquired by a BigCo.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#5Disturbingly accurate.
• Make a sufficiently shiny, yet imminently disposable product.
• Hoard employees (each one bumps your valuation by ~$1.5 million), be loud, get acquired.
• Kill product. (You never cared about it anyway -- it was just a vehicle for ego and attention. Now that you've got your $5 million, you don't need the validation of all those silly pawns/customers anymore.)
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#6So I liked this, like everything else Diego writes, but this graf doesn't ring true to me: Joe and Wayne work on building something they know GooBook could acquire without looking stupid. Something they might be able to do in-house, except their most talented engineers are desperately working on ways to extract more money out of ads, or to reduce the costs of their gargantuan infrastructure. Some are stationed in Ant…
Also, $6m really isn't that much these days. Might get you a nice house in the Silly Valley and a few years of living expenses, but that's not "set for life" money if you're in your 20s.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#7So I liked this, like everything else Diego writes, but this graf doesn't ring true to me: Joe and Wayne work on building something they know GooBook could acquire without looking stupid. Something they might be able to do in-house, except their most talented engineers are desperately working on ways to extract more money out of ads, or to reduce the costs of their gargantuan infrastructure. Some are stationed in Ant…
Of course it's awesome to work on those problems. The point I was trying to make is that in this case the company has to choose between innovating for the long term, and solving urgent problems that mean lots of $ in the short term. Internal venture projects tend to be put on the back burner when your best engineers could save 50M by optimizing the hell out of your backend.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#8So I liked this, like everything else Diego writes, but this graf doesn't ring true to me: Joe and Wayne work on building something they know GooBook could acquire without looking stupid. Something they might be able to do in-house, except their most talented engineers are desperately working on ways to extract more money out of ads, or to reduce the costs of their gargantuan infrastructure. Some are stationed in Ant…
Also, $6m really isn't that much these days. Might get you a nice house in the Silly Valley and a few years of living expenses, but that's not "set for life" money if you're in your 20s.
Are you serious? $6m sounds like more than enough to retire on at any point for most people.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#9So I liked this, like everything else Diego writes, but this graf doesn't ring true to me: Joe and Wayne work on building something they know GooBook could acquire without looking stupid. Something they might be able to do in-house, except their most talented engineers are desperately working on ways to extract more money out of ads, or to reduce the costs of their gargantuan infrastructure. Some are stationed in Ant…
Also, $6m really isn't that much these days. Might get you a nice house in the Silly Valley and a few years of living expenses, but that's not "set for life" money if you're in your 20s.
6MM is way the fuck more than almost anyone pulls out of their startup, but that aside, his point was you take the 6MM to buy breathing room for your next startup, which "really" swings for the fences.
Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, $6m really isn't that much these days. Might get you a nice house in the Silly Valley and a few years of living expenses, but that's not "set for life" money if you're in your 20s.
Are you serious? $6m sounds like more than enough to retire on at any point for most people.
If you want to live like a 20-something for the rest of your life, sure. Your cost structure changes as you get older and have things like houses, spouses, cars, and children.