231–240 of 393 posts
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Ad hominem
The author complains about that behavior, labeling it a sign of how 'spoiled' engineers are. The author also engages in this behavior. Pointing this out, and labelling it hypocrisy, does not constitute an ad hominem attack. Because what the author has done is the definition of hypocrisy.
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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…
StitchFix started as an Excel sheet. https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2rjqt2/stitch_fix...
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Ok, as a perennial voice for free markets I agree with your observations, but not your point. Having lived through it I see the damage it is doing to individuals who will take years to recover. Too many engineers today, perhaps like sports players, take a big salary, project it across 30 years and then say "Wow I've got millions headed my way, do I really need to bag my lunch?" I've watched as they became both broke…
I agree with everything you said but I think you're underestimating the importance of fighting lifestyle inflation at all costs. It's incredibly hard to justify a six-figure burn rate under any circumstances, even in San Francisco. If you've got a job making multiples of the median household income in the US, it's incredibly irresponsible to live in a manner that wouldn't support a pretty major pay cut at any point.
I was stoked to move to cheaper area and work remote for these reasons, but it put a serious brake on career/income growth. And all it takes is some old-school mgmt to come in and then you are treated like some pariah.
"There are thousands of dumb startups" This. Most of the blame is cast on the big companies (Twitter, Facebook etc) but the reality is that there are hundreds of smaller companies choosing SF and the valley in general. And again I say, until companies allow people to work from wherever this will be fueled more. Finding talent is getting ever more difficult already, if you expand your search area to the entire country…
"There are thousands of dumb startups" This is a feature not a bug. The whole VC model the Bay Area thrives on is based on the premise of hitting on only a small percentage of successful startups and you never know what's going to be a hit. Many successful startups have pivoted out of "stupid" ideas. I'm sure at one point "Blogging 140 characters at a time" was considered a stupid idea.
No, let's just make yet another app which brings insignificant incremental deveopment to calendar viewing apps.
Be serious.
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It's the dotcom stuff all over again. I remember interviewing some guy who wanted to be my VP of engineering. Have you ever fired anyone? "Nope" Have you ever shipped a product and supported it for more than a year? "Nope" Do you have any quality engineers that would come with you? "Nope" Have you ever managed a manager? "Nope" I noped his ass out the door. Fear not, this craziness will pass.
You can thank companies giving out VP or Director titles to their first technical hires for that. At my last company, my boss was the first technical hire. His title was Director of Software Engineering. He got that title and the responsibilities that came with it solely because he was the first technical hire. He had no management experience at all. He was a great engineer, but he couldn't manage his way out of a pa…
I think engineers/developers/hackers tend to undervalue the skills necessary to manage a project well. Basically considering the work a lot easier than writing code or building something and thinking that anyone can do it (including themselves in your example).
I think the reason for this is because a lot of people can do a shitty job managing a team and it's not as obvious as when people do a shitty job programming (or at least there are more people that can be a bad manager undetected than can be a bad programmer).
It's harder to bullshit technical skills, but a bad manager could have good enough social/political skills to get power and it's probably also more likely to attract people looking for power. Engineering seems to provide a filter to avoid some of this naturally.
That said being a really effective PM, Manager, VP is a skill different from programming and with a similar depth that shouldn't be dismissed easily. This is more obvious to HN probably because startup founders often have to get better at it in order to build a company. Since it tends to rely a decent amount on empathy and social skills in addition to being able to understand the technical pieces/prioritization it's also harder to know how good you'll be at it when starting.
It is something you can get better at though, just takes investment/learning like anything else.
Reminds me of Tom West from Soul of a New Machine.
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Yea, no. JM Keynes said eons ago that with increases in efficiency we will eventually be able to get to a 15-hour work week. So, a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that, and the counter-argument is that this is not a productive use of capital? Besides, TFA complains that all these people are working on silly startups, which is presumably not a productive use of capital e…
> a particular industry in a particular area was able to get to an approximation of that On the backs of whom? How much are those Uber drivers, grocery deliverers, and artisanal salad chefs making? It is good that one group of people is moving forward, we just have to be careful that we aren't doing it at the expense of other groups. The impression I get is that in the US today, it's not just that some people are get…
I don't believe there is such a law of economics.
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Sorry, but this is a totally heartless comment. By saying things like "Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave" you're completely overlooking the human costs and implications. Things don't just change overnight. It's an slow, painful, eventual decline. Things shouldn't need to be pushed to a breaking point for us to make necessary changes to alleviate these problems.
Wait, what are the problems? "Everyone rides an Uber" is great for the Uber drivers. "People spend too much on organic produce" is great for the farmers. "Even bad engineers are in high demand" is great for the mediocre engineers. Housing is a problem, but this post didn't mention it. So before we start making changes, what are the problems in your opinion? And, then, what changes are you proposing?
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Unless microtransactions for content take off, and they haven't, ad tech is necessary to incentivize content on the web. 90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in. Hacker News, being one big ad for ycombinator, doesn't need to bother. So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot. Lastly, ther…
"90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in." That's ok. The internet would be better off without most junk websites, and the ones I like, I'm willing to pay for.
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…
In Canada, you get sued if you call yourself an engineer when you're not part of an order of engineers. 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 themsel…
I do cringe, though, at the extreme overuse of the term in software; I have two parents who are legit PEs in the US and drilled the distinction in with me.
At the very least, it should be reserved for someone with a broad theoretical and practical background who solves more complicated problems ... but you know how title inflation goes.
local IPAs are $15 Is that actually true?
I've actually never seen a beer over $12 before. $5-7 is the norm.