121–130 of 312 posts
What specifically did the programmers in the cafe say or do to lead you to believe that there was "something odd about them"? Perhaps you remember one or two details that actually got you thinking about this.
It was mainly their body language and facial expressions.
I imagine a sort of confused purposelessness with a touch of embarassment, all concealed with forced cheer.
Your essays never cease to inspire, delight, and amaze.
I feel VINDICATED upon reading them.
Always precise, yet loosely coupled.
Ideas and concepts that seem to exponentially expand within the mind of the reader.
I have personally experienced feeling like an entirely new being after going to work for myself . . . and I am going on my sixth year.
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I've heard some Amazon employees say something similar (but maybe not as enthusiastically) about Amazon. One person described their structure to me as "like terrorist cells": it's understood (and encouraged) that 3 different teams are all trying to implement the same thing, in completely different languages and with completely different interfaces. They might not even know the others exist, until they ship. Hopefully…
Theres a view in economics that you 'can not play market' within the boundaries of the firm. That is to say if there is an overseeing committee that can end a project prematurely then you are not really having market forces operate 'within' the firm and are doomed to failure. There have been a couple of companies that have tried to do this. It is documented in the following book by Nicolai Foss: http://www.amazon.com…
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if you're serious about getting out check out some of the jobs we have up at http://snaptalent.com/ads.html There are some YC companies on there, but also some other really cool startups.
I can't see any ad's at that URL ... maybe something is broken? One thing thats kept me in my big company job is that I am in a part of the UK where there isn't a massive choice of places to work - there are other big companies, but few if any startups :(
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It's true that farmers of commodities like corn and wheat have the government wrapped around their fingers. But the reason they're big enough to do that is that their market scales. No one has invented a fresh carrot that can sit on a shelf for six months the way a candy bar can.
The subsidies follow the disproportionate voting power and political influence of the relevant mid-west states, not the inherent marketability of corn. Veggies and nuts are mostly grown at massive industrial operations in California with desert sunshine and irrigation systems. It's definitely a scalable operation not much different from corn and soy. Not to nit-pick, but carrots keep really well even at room temperat…
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Just based on the summary, it sounds like he has a lot of good ideas and one bad mistake: profit-sharing is socialized. So if the company does well then the employees do well, but individual contributors would have trouble getting rewarded.
It may not be as bad a mistake as you think. There's some experimental (if unintuitive) evidence that rewarding individual contributions in organizations is harmful, even to that individual's motivation. The extrinsic motivation extinguishes the individual's intrinsic motivation. Many high achievers have an attitude of "achievement for the sake of achievement." Individual rewards crush that spirit. Joel Spolsky wrote…
Capitalism isn't about profits, it's about motivation.
For those who are working at small company, stay where you are. It is true you don’t learn much at big companies. It is not much about how well you do things, but it is how well you are connected and how well you can exaggerate.
>Credit card debt is a bad idea, period. It is a trap set by evil companies for the desperate and the foolish. Best line of the whole article.
Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/
Everyone is quoting things like $700/mo and $1100/mo. Even the guy with the high deductible plan alluded to paying $116/mo for a $5k deductible.
Am I the only one that pays $55/mo for a $1k deductible plan? I must be lucky or something. And that aside, seriously, you buy insurance for catastrophes... not to save $150 on a doctors visit. Why the heck would you spend $1100/mo on insurance?
No wonder these people think startups are hard. They'd need a VC round just to cover their insurance premiums.
I am a 27 year old programmer and have worked for two small companies ( < 20 employees ) and for one company of 200+ employees. The only thing I can say about working for the large company is that it felt like breathing through a straw. Go work for a small company or as Paul Graham suggests, go start up your own. Leave the big companies for the burnt-out folk with kids and debt.
I'm 26 and just passed my fifth year at a very large company (18000+), with four years in IT and the past year in Software Engineering. I've been looking for an oppurtunity at a smaller company, since my current one is stifling my ability to learn and be productive. The issue I'm finding is that small companies are typically looking for someone with more experience than I could currently offer. Has anyone else come a…
Last time I looked for a job I actually crossed out any place that wanted more than one year experience with anything. I guess I'll never be a Senior Java Engineer or a Senior .NET Architect or a Senior Oracle DBA, but is that really a loss? Asking for five years experience in some technology is like actively seeking out people that are content to actually do the same thing for five years. Any small company that wants that is going to get trounced by a competitor that learns new tricks.