I'd say working for a company is more like being in a circus than a zoo. You have to perform silly tricks and act like you wouldn't rather be napping.
You weren't meant to have a boss
231–240 of 312 posts
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#232I agree, mostly... Anytime you work for anyone else you give up a part of yourself. The more they pay you, the more of your soul you have to sell. The only way to be free is to do your own thing. For some that's starting their own business. For others it's walking in, working for awhile, learning what you want, and walking out the door when you're done (not when the company is done with you).
Oh, and what's the deal with note #1? That was a silly and unnecessary note to add.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#233Earlier 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.
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.
I imagine Bell Labs would have been an incredible place if only based on people that worked there. I wonder how close IBM and HP were at their research peaks. Also, I should mention that I wasn't intentionally picking on yc companies and perhaps that was the wrong choice. Some of the technology coming out of a few of them seems to be more interesting than some of the best labs. I know that isn't the goal, but it certainly isn't bad side effect! I really only meant to pick on the droves of obscure, uninteresting startups.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#234The challenge I see is how to do a really big project with small independent groups of people. Open source is one concept that helps. In that paradigm, not everyone has to start from scratch. You can grab someone else's code and add functionality to it.
My pet project of the moment is to develop an "Industry wide SOA" with a defined interface between the services. This would allow entry into (in this case the medical) industry by smaller groups that can't do it all. See the beginning of the idea at: http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/med-research/archives/open-soa...
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#235Excellent article. I am a lifelong corporate IT guy who has a life long fantasy of working in a startup company. In my most recent job in which I have been on for 13 years, the IT shop consisted of about 30 people when I started. We were very entrepreneurial when I started and used to be rock stars who would crank out solutions for the business. Now we are 200 people moving at snail speed spending most of our time on…
Your article inspired this post on my blog.
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/madgreek/archives/programmers...
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#236My employer, a large pharmaceutical company, even uses the word "ONE" in it's intranet portal; oneabc.abc.com
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#237commented on jeff atwood's blog in regards to this - i think he misinterpreted the point of your article to some minor extent (and so did I since I read the quotes only at that stage). he seems to have homed in on a few particular points (which may have admitedly been too much of a generalization on your part - everything is open to interpretation), but I loved your discussion of the tree concept.
hoping this doesn't put you off (I'd imagine it bought a lot more attention to your site and let you tighten up anything that could have been mis-interpreted), keep up the great writing.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? Egypt and Sumeria were organized like North Korea today, worship of the head of state. And Napoleon was a tyrant trying to impose his will on an entire continent. If freedom is incompatible with Napoleonic dreams, that is not a bug. Freedom fighters have often chosen the guerilla way. A better example for your point would be the Americans in WWII. But even then, soldiers are not robots and the best commander…
You're thoroughly missing my point. PG's argument is that man was designed, via evolution, to live relatively autonomously. My point is that even a casual glance at history disproves that. The German and Swiss states, for all their autonomy, couldn't stand up to Napoleon's hierarchical tyranny. In fact, it took a far more tyrannical society, Russia, to put Napoleon in his place. Hierarchy is sometimes necessary for s…
Hierarchy is probably necessary for any society. Tree structures are efficient.
But tyranny is inefficient. It's all about ruining the bonds of trust that hold society and the economy together, just to benefit a small number of people.
All your examples are tyrannies. There is a word for people who invoke naive Darwinism to justify tyranny, but it escapes me at the moment.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit card debt is foolish... credit cards themselves are great. Definitely prefer to swipe plastic rather than carry around pieces of paper.
Thus the debit card was invented.
Yes, but you try canceling a purchase on a debit card. Plus, I get points for free flights on my cc.
Re: You weren't meant to have a boss
#240I'll have to ask my Birkenstock-wearing living-in-Berkeley friends what they eat now... :-)