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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

#191

Post by jamiequint »

fendale wrote: post #184
danw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

We don't have any UK jobs at the moment so for now we've made our ads magically disappear when hit from any non-US IP addresses, we'll be out there soon though :)

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#192

Post by emfle »

pg wrote: post #151
npk wrote: post #40

In the context of "The people who come to us from big companies often seem kind of conservative." --- how do founders coming out of academia fair? Specifically, founders with, at least, a few years towards a phd.

They seem smart but sometimes impractical. Fortunately smart people can learn to be practical.

Can you give examples of impractical things they do? (Or practical things they don't do).

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#193

Post by tbourdon »

I usually take PG with a grain of salt but he hit the nail on the head with this one. Another phenomenon I've seen when working in larger groups/organizations is the predatory ways developers will pursue the core/api/library work so as to expand their freedom and limit their dependence on others. The essay's comments about the programmer at Google reminded me of this as I've seen it time and time again in my career. Whereas in the smaller groups/companies I've worked, all the developers were responsible for the entire stack. It felt more communal and I think the groups were healthier and more productive.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#194

Post by martin »

Xichekolas wrote: post #129
fleaflicker wrote: post #63

Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/

Oddly the thing that stood out in those comments was the discussion of living expenses, and specifically health insurance. 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 catastrophe…

$55/mo? Here in NY, you'd be lucky to get a Band-Aid for that. The cheapest plan I've seen here is the state-subsidized Healthy NY, which is ~$200/mo for crap coverage.

My girlfriend is going back to school in the fall, and she's facing the decision of what to do about insurance. Seemingly, no reasonable option exists.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#195

Post by jgr »

M0 theory intro http://www.buildfreedom.com/content/reciprocality/r1/intro.h... http://www.datamodel.co.uk/Reciprocality/www.reciprocality.o...

The idea that folks become addicted to boredom or ritual via producing dopamine. People have suggested that startups are run by "mappers" (associative thinkers) then are taken over by packers (people who like ritual, rote-work).

Many techies are "natural immunes".

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#196

Post by CharlesEGrant »

I roll my eyes whenever I see something like this ascribed to human nature and evolution. Passing by the post hoc ergo propter hoc nature of the argument, it doesn't allow for human diversity. Humans are very diverse, some of thrive in small bands, and some of us thrive in huge hierarchical organizations. There is no "one" human nature. Look at reproductive strategies: harems, polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, serial monogamy, celibacy, all touted as by one group or another as the one true, natural, reproductive strategy for humans. You could argue that the evolution has best fit us to live in tropical savannas, but the Inuit, Lapps, and Siberians would take it very much amiss if you told them they should abandon the arctic because humans had not evolved to live there. Evolutionary biology does not consist of telling "just so" stories to explain the virtues of your tribe.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#197

Post by agotterer »

martin wrote: post #194
Xichekolas wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly the thing that stood out in those comments was the discussion of living expenses, and specifically health insurance. 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 catastrophe…

$55/mo? Here in NY, you'd be lucky to get a Band-Aid for that. The cheapest plan I've seen here is the state-subsidized Healthy NY, which is ~$200/mo for crap coverage. My girlfriend is going back to school in the fall, and she's facing the decision of what to do about insurance. Seemingly, no reasonable option exists.

I was paying $550 a month in NY for United PPO while I was doing freelance/contract work. I ended up in the hospital for a week. Bill came out to something like $45,000, I didnt pay a cent. Lesson here is it's not worth getting cheap junk insurance.

I don't think I would get coverage from healthy new york based solely on their website appearance. I'm shocked they aren't using the blink tag, seems so appropriate.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#198

Post by hollerith »

jamiequint wrote: post #191
fendale wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

We don't have any UK jobs at the moment so for now we've made our ads magically disappear when hit from any non-US IP addresses, we'll be out there soon though :)

Users from non-US IP addresses never want to apply for US jobs?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#199

Post by tim2 »

pg wrote: post #64
JoeProgrammer wrote: post #62

Unfortunately, student loans constrain the freedom of action of many recent graduates. They have to have that income to make the payments, which can be quite high. This of course favors upper middle class people as young company founders.

Yes, that is a real problem. I thought of mentioning this in the essay. The problem is the same as with visas: the government's definition of work is a job working for someone else. I hope eventually they'll wise up and change the rules about student loans, because the intent of the rules about repayment is not simply to get the money back as soon as possible, but to discourage people from merely slacking after colle…

Yes, this is far, far more severe than any credit card debt that that a student could possibly get into.

Related to this, I know several people who had to drop out of school recently because they hadn't built up credit and didn't have parents to co-sign on school loans.

Perhaps you should write on this some time, but I don't see how that could actually solve anything.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss

#200

Post by strey »

xlnt wrote: post #187
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.

It is important for people to have a fighting spirit. Otherwise they'll be controlled by those who do.
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