It's the same with schools. My kids are at an eco school with a maximum of 12 in a class, and 3 classes in the whole school, by choice. They will not 'expand' but encourage other schools to start up and follow their model. It is all about sustainability. Like the Transition Towns initiative - small communities leading the way, because governments don't initiate. They don't lead.
http://www.transitiontowns.org/
You weren't meant to have a boss
221–230 of 312 posts
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this to be a major thesis in many of your essays, but I've got to know... do you feel it would be bad for your brain to work in google research or (gasp) microsoft research or academia? I mean, I would bet working for Norvig is a more significant mental workout than founding many of the yc companies.
I think the main constraint is the lack of creativity and the variety of tasks one has to perform in a big company. In a startup there are so many challenges and so many things to learn its always changing,
From personal experience, MS Research (and reportedly, Yahoo Research) is an awesome place to work for researchers; lots of freedom to do what you want and push the boundaries of what's possible. What you learn there is very different from what you learn doing a startup, of course, but the point about lack of creativity or freedom aint valid.
Interestingly, Google research is not very good in this respect due to their focus on products. Restricts creativity; if you really want to do products and be creative, get into a startup instead.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the main constraint is the lack of creativity and the variety of tasks one has to perform in a big company. In a startup there are so many challenges and so many things to learn its always changing,
From personal experience, MS Research (and reportedly, Yahoo Research) is an awesome place to work for researchers; lots of freedom to do what you want and push the boundaries of what's possible. What you learn there is very different from what you learn doing a startup, of course, but the point about lack of creativity or freedom aint valid. Interestingly, Google research is not very good in this respect due to thei…
I have the same impression about ms research which is what prompted the post. I have no idea what financial compensation is at either place, but there is little, if any, financial risk and everyone I've talked to at ms research loves what they do. These comments are coming from the furthest thing from corporate drones or intellectual lightweights. They have a substantial amount of intellectual freedom and I'm assuming a decent lifestyle. So why is startup life so _obviously_ better than this?
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#224I 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 mo…
What I would tell Siberians is to wear coats because humans had not evolved to live there.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#225Paul, I think you need to take the next step here which is getting out of the venture business. The whole venture industry is based on your startup founders becoming bosses or being acquired by companies with bosses. Even if they end up rich afterward, the availability of the money is directly tied to other programmers getting duped into working unnaturally (with bosses). Have you considered leading your startups tow…
We actively encourage startups to stay as small as possible for as long as possible. And like all investors we would prefer the startups we fund to go public rather than get acquired. I bet if you outsourced all the inessential stuff you could grow a company to that stage without needing more than 150 people, which you could do with only two layers.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#226>Or rather, a large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided tree structure.
Valve, the makers of Half-Life and Portal, work like that. No one has a dedicated role, there is no hierarchy, there's just a guy with a vision and a large team of widely-talented people who work on what they want to work on. Obviously it works, too :)
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't saying big companies don't work, just that it's bad for one's brain to work for them.
I find this to be a major thesis in many of your essays, but I've got to know... do you feel it would be bad for your brain to work in google research or (gasp) microsoft research or academia? I mean, I would bet working for Norvig is a more significant mental workout than founding many of the yc companies.
In earlier versions of the essay I had a sentence saying that in a sufficiently pure research job, you're effectively working for yourself. I don't know about Google specifically, but I get the impression Bell Labs at its height was like that.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#228After reading all the nasty comments about this article on reddit and other blogs, I can only come to one conclusion: none of them bothered to RTFA.
I get the point totally - humans don't work well when in large organizations. I've gone from massive companies down to a organization of 1. I'm not as stable, I'm more stressed, my income is lumpy. But I have ideas. Buckets and buckets of ideas. I have so many I have to write them down in a book to stop them from clouding my mind. And I have learnt - so much. Not so much about programming - I already knew plenty on that subject. No, I have learnt about the 'way the world really works'. I have learnt how to solve people's needs, how to sell things, how to handle people who don't agree with you. I have learnt how to dig deep and find the courage to keep plugging away, just so I can keep that dark corporate cubicle and mindless 'team building' exercises at bay.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
From personal experience, MS Research (and reportedly, Yahoo Research) is an awesome place to work for researchers; lots of freedom to do what you want and push the boundaries of what's possible. What you learn there is very different from what you learn doing a startup, of course, but the point about lack of creativity or freedom aint valid. Interestingly, Google research is not very good in this respect due to thei…
I have the same impression about ms research which is what prompted the post. I have no idea what financial compensation is at either place, but there is little, if any, financial risk and everyone I've talked to at ms research loves what they do. These comments are coming from the furthest thing from corporate drones or intellectual lightweights. They have a substantial amount of intellectual freedom and I'm assumin…
No, startup life isn't better than this. But the point is that either of them is better (probabilistically, I think - I know of plenty of my research friends who hate doing what they do) than being a creatively restrained minion in a large company.
Btw, compensation wise, MSR is one of the best as well. The only (and quite serious) downside to MSR is their stupid insistence on using Windows everywhere. Researchers absolutely hate that.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#230Have not the last 50,000 years of evolution primarily been of social structures and culture? Consequently, is being 'wild' necessarily a positive attribute? Doesn't this (and comparisons to animals) to some degree reflect de-evolution?
Multicellular life is faster, smarter, and more successful than unicellular life. The corporation is usually way slower, dumber, and typically does not outlast any of its component organisms. The difference is that the components of the corporation are individually intelligent and self-aware. The corporation's "thoughts" are comparatively slow and stupid. Maybe one day there will be some Borg-like way of making human…
Argh! I hate these casual invocations of evolutionary biology that are really self-serving fables. By numbers of individuals, diversity, and by mass, bacteria and blue-green algae make up most of the biological world. Multi-cellular life only appears dominant to you because that's who you eat and who you mate with. Evolution cares not a whit for smart, dumb, slow, fast, it only cares who has the most babies who live to make other babies. Making arguments for the virtues of entrepreneurs is fine, just don't try to dress them up as scientific truths, unless you actually can muster the evidence.