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You weren't meant to have a boss

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#181

Post by optimal »

kingkongrevenge wrote: post #58
pg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another related movie (was on Sundance this past weekend): http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/film.htm

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#182

Post by markdc »

geebee wrote: post #155
pg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I heard a radio show (I think it was NPR) about this recently. "Speciality Crops" don't get much in the way of government subsidy. What's a "specialty crop"? The general rule appears to bet that if it is a recognizable vegetable that would appear in it's natural form on your dinner table, it's a specialty crop. Interestingly, many of the nation's (and world's) specialty crops are either locally grown, or are shipped…

Only 1/3 of US ag is subsidized, but its a disgrace. The programs damage the environment, cheat consumers, and pay the wealthy. Off the top of my head, the major program crops are corn, wheat, soy beans, cotton (!), milk, peanuts, and sugar.

More here: http://www.freetrade.org/node/609

"in 2005, farms with average household incomes of $200,000 per year accounted for 9 percent of all farms but received 54 percent of government payments."

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#184

Post by fendale »

danw wrote: post #124
fendale wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

Where in the UK are you? You can always quit and move if theres nothing available

I am in Belfast - Don't really want to move, I have a lot of friends here that would suck to leave behind!

Lots of American investment is hitting Belfast these days, so there are a reasonable number of IT jobs, but they tend to be big companies or bigish companies outsourcing to here, so the work isn't the best.

Don't get me wrong, the company I work for is good despite its size, but like many here I wanna start my own thing - I will keep mulling/hacking on my ideas until I get something that seems good enough to release ...

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#185

Post by pg »

ungood wrote: post #114

What a load of bullocks. Humans are a social species. They are supposed to work in groups, and any group needs leaders and followers - one is not more important than the other. Comparing the life of a "company man" to that of a lion in a cage is a straw man argument. Some people, myself include, are more than happy to put in our 40 hours at our jobs (I happen to enjoy mine), and than get to go home and define ourselv…

I never said anything like that.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#186

Post by pg »

libertarian wrote: post #169

There are a couple of questions (otherwise great article). One small is right only as long as it is economically viable. Do you believe Google would still be viable as a search engine if they had remained at 50-100 people size (or whatever you think is the optimum size?) Second, most YC companies don't yet have business models. That is not a knock on them - I am simply making a statement of fact. Given that many (or…

I wasn't saying big companies don't work, just that it's bad for one's brain to work for them.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#187

Post by xlnt »

uuilly wrote: post #19

I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers an…

Are you advocating fist fights literally or metaphorically? And if it's a metaphor, I'm not sure what the literal suggestion is.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#189

Post by chiliberto »

Whew! Brilliant article. I've been having a lot of conversations about this lately. I'm a freelancer. I became one because I wanted to get out of the cubicle. Now I'm doing all sorts of stuff. I'm working on amazing projects, things I never planned on (or could even conceive of.)

The hard part is that I'm working a ton. But I love it! I'm happier than I've ever been. I feel stronger. I feel like I can do anything--and I will, without hesitation. I am worried about the future at times. But I guess that comes with being in the wild, like the lions you're talking about. Great analogy! That really pumps me up.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#190

Post by jamiequint »

KB wrote: post #110
pg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One route you could take would be to look for a startup with young founders. They won't insist on experience, because they don't have it themselves. Another would be just to look for a good startup. All a good startup cares about is how good you are, not how many years it took you to get that way.

Its also possible I haven't been looking in the right places either. From what I've noticed, its hard to pinpoint jobs at small companies since they don't seem to advertise as much as the larger ones. However, Jamie from snaptalent was nice enough to email me and pointed me to their job ads page. Unfortunately there's only one company on the east coast listed so far, but I'm hoping once they get rolling with more job…

We (over here at snaptalent) just put up joinstartups.com We'll keep this up to date with all the startup jobs (and only the startup jobs) from our network
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