101–110 of 393 posts
That people are paid here well is a result of the huge imbalance of wealth in the world is another discussion topic.
This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…
Part of the fallacy of this is the implication that you need "good" engineers for most startups. I think, frankly, that many startups need a website with a google form + some excel sheets to get started and if the thing takes off they can hire someone who can use google to bang on stackoverflow. Very few things require genuinely novel pieces of code to work. Yes, lots of value can be captured using code, but you coul…
For the few startups that do experience significant growth, it's much easier to find talent (engineering and otherwise).
Looks like this week is "Maybe Startups Aren't Inherently Great" week on Hacker News. :p That being said, the number of startups in San Francisco is fine as long as there is corrective balance. At the least, startups which are failing will die faster due to rent alone.
Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture. The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myse…
Even if you're a bona fide engineer, but not enrolled in the order, calling yourself one opens the floodgates of hell where spaghetti coders do the same and get hired by retarded HR departments to take the lead on some mission-critical software.
I like this. I am a self-learned developer. When my peers call themselves engineers, I spit my coffee.
Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture. The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myse…
> I've never written anything that lives in a real production environment You've never maintained a production app and you're getting offers as director of engineering?
> Everything is too expensive. I’m from New York... I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent). The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a…
What the author describe is a lavish (according to him) standard of living, judged startups to be dumb by their name/description (but they got investor money). He concludes that we are in a bubble.
Here are the metrics that matter:
* Are current startups generating enough money to pay salaries.
* Are current startups raising enough funds to make ends meet.
* Are there new startups funded.
* Is the number of exits/IPOs higher to create new millionaires.
* Is the number of failed startups higher to create new unemployed engineers and free capacity.
If someone is interested to know these numbers, maybe finance me for a couple months of research and get the right facts.
Money has been close to free for years. As the interest rate ticks up everything will change. It's already starting to. More expensive borrowing, less leverage, and better places to put dollars than venture. The one thing I really agree with though is the funny thing that happens here with the word "engineer". If you can make a website you somehow qualify for the title software engineer. By Bay Area standards, I myse…
> [...] and yet I don't even remotely consider myself an engineer. I phone screened somebody not so long ago who asked me if it was the "kind of job where you have to write a lot of code", because they "weren't that sort of software engineer". Didn't quite know what to make of that.