The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone • Hacker News Board

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#11

Post by drone » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #5

jacquesm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers, doctors, retail, construction etc, etc. The world is a lot more varied than being an engineer or being relegated to entrepreneurdom.

There are more lawyers than there are lawyering jobs. All the lawyer people I know are complaining and many are closing their offices because they can't get enough clients. Doctors can't get jobs because so many people are vying for the same jobs it's difficult to even get a specialty. Nobody will hire you without a specialty. Retail ... yeah, you're competing with everyone from high school students to college grads…

Europe isn't the only place to be a doctor or construction worker, ya know?

Pretty much any doctor worth their salt can get a job in the US (we have a shortage of medical professionals) -- in fact, consider also RN's, hospitals have been putting out massive recruiting campaigns for RNs.

Construction is booming here as well, depending on the region of course, but there is more construction work going around these days than any time since the crash, and wages are going back into the six figures for many.

Yes, there are too many lawyers, but they get sucked up by companies in other roles anyhow.

So, I guess your perspective depends on your location, eh?

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#12

Post by progx » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:22 PM UTC

Stop writing about Stop something, only to get some visitors to your page.

If anybody stop doing something, because somebody said to stop, then nobody will do anything.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#13

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #10

The cool thing about starting your own business is that you can build it however you like. You can work 80 hour weeks or 10 hour weeks. Your choice. You can neglect your friends, family and health, and work yourself into the ground. Or not. Again, entirely up to you. Surprisingly, the end result will probably be roughly the same. If you're good at building software, and work in bursts like most of us do, then a few g…

The freedom is indeed one of the biggest draws but I've found that with any degree of success there is also an automatic reduction in freedom because your responsibilities go up. Hard to balance that.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#14

Post by harrisonweber » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #10

The cool thing about starting your own business is that you can build it however you like. You can work 80 hour weeks or 10 hour weeks. Your choice. You can neglect your friends, family and health, and work yourself into the ground. Or not. Again, entirely up to you. Surprisingly, the end result will probably be roughly the same. If you're good at building software, and work in bursts like most of us do, then a few g…

I think what you're highlighting is the difference between startups and small businesses.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#15

Post by harrisonweber » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #6

Swizec wrote: post #2

I honestly think that these days if you're young and are not an engineer or something similar that's got jobs chasing you, being an entrepreneur (not necessarily a startup) is the only option. Also, people in general believe their choices are the best choices and will go to great lengths to tell everyone that their own choices were better. Just one of those gorgeous biases we've got.

There's more to retail than shelf-stockers. Would you count running a brick-and-mortar store as being an entrepreneur?

I would. Again, small biz VS startup.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#16

Post by VaedaStrike » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:33 PM UTC

I think that while it's certainly not for everyone I think there's a powerful reason to overly emphasize and encourage it.

Not to promote needless suffering, but rather simply because, at the end of the day, they are one of the principle sparks that makes the other jobs possible. My relatively stable corporate existence, even if plagued by all the hallmarks of big dumb corporatism(s), is a blessing (and I do consider it a blessing, especially for where I'm at in my life) that was made possible by a key core of individuals who were the ignition points for the seeming stability I have access to now.

I believe that the very reason to push, even to some excess, even to the point of some idealizing, of start-up life is among a few vital needs that must be fulfilled in a society if that society has hopes to insure longer term availability of stable options among all possible economic paths.

Like industrialized agriculture, for all of it's ills, evils and problems, the shear population, as it exists and continues, demands some version, some manifestation, of a system that shares at least some of the key attributes.

Start-up culture is both the seeding and blood letting that makes stable private and public professions possible. In many ways it's the agriculture of our day. Subject to whims of forces akin to climate and nature, but who's volatility makes all the growth and upward movement possible.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#17

Post by acjohnson55 » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:35 PM UTC

"One thing that is not spoken about in the early-stage tech world is how many startup founders come from money or stability. I’m by no means saying this applies to all founders or early-stage startup employees. But if you dig a little, you will see the “risk” that some of these people are taking is not as risky as they may seem."

This is really true. The business risk may be very real, but the personal risk for many is relatively limited. For some people, going without a steady income is to truly be without a safety net and risk having to sleep in a shelter. For me, when I started my company, I went in knowing that if we ran out of money, I could get a nice dev job within a few weeks and not only bounce back, but bounce forward (or at least sideways). If things went really sour, I might even have to move back to my hometown for a couple months. Gasp!

In this world, agency is a privilege that's hard to measure. I feel like sometimes people underrate their own and mythologize their self-madeness, but overrate that of others and pathologize them as lazy or cowardly.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#18

Post by skrebbel » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:36 PM UTC

harrisonweber wrote: post #14

jasonkester wrote: post #10

The cool thing about starting your own business is that you can build it however you like. You can work 80 hour weeks or 10 hour weeks. Your choice. You can neglect your friends, family and health, and work yourself into the ground. Or not. Again, entirely up to you. Surprisingly, the end result will probably be roughly the same. If you're good at building software, and work in bursts like most of us do, then a few g…

I think what you're highlighting is the difference between startups and small businesses.

Right. So a startup has to be about working 80 hours a week or it's not a startup?

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#19

Post by chromaton » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:37 PM UTC

There are many paths other than "work as a corporate drone" or "go all in on a risky startup". There are a good number of resources out there which can help you figure out how to set up a small SaaS business online or become a consultant. For example, check out Patrick (patio11) McKenzie's blog, or the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast.

The thing is, if you read Hacker News, Tech Crunch, and the like, they give the impression that you need venture capital to be a success. This is due to editorial bias on the part of the site owners. Start looking farther afield and trying things on your own and you'll notice that the promotion of venture capital is quite self serving.

Re: The Startup Life Is Not For Everyone

#20

Post by myke_cameron » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 2:37 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #5

jacquesm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers, doctors, retail, construction etc, etc. The world is a lot more varied than being an engineer or being relegated to entrepreneurdom.

There are more lawyers than there are lawyering jobs. All the lawyer people I know are complaining and many are closing their offices because they can't get enough clients. Doctors can't get jobs because so many people are vying for the same jobs it's difficult to even get a specialty. Nobody will hire you without a specialty. Retail ... yeah, you're competing with everyone from high school students to college grads…

_Doctors can't get jobs because so many people are vying for the same jobs it's difficult to even get a specialty. Nobody will hire you without a specialty._

Source? There is a huge demand for primary care doctors right now ( source: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-06/national/41812... ), and anecdotally, I work for a company that runs primary care practices and we recently hired a recruiter because we are having trouble finding the handful of doctors a year we need to keep growing.