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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#371

Post by SR2Z »

fragmede wrote: post #358
Analemma_ wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand complaining about cynicism, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not coming from a real place. All the complaints people are voicing elsewhere in this thread are true: - it's true that you will get jack squat if you're employee #4 or later (and in the process you'll work more hours with less job security than at a FAANG) - it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value t…

"Jack squat" is still in the millions of dollars for holders of a golden ticket, but it is fundamentally a gamble. > it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value to the economy in the last fifteen years "basically" is what Wikipedia calls a weasel word. If you're determined to look at the world through a particular lense, by discarding any points to the contrary, you're basically rig…

> "Jack squat" is still in the millions of dollars for holders of a golden ticket, but it is fundamentally a gamble.

I was interviewing with a bunch of mid-stage (series A/B) startups for senior/staff roles. Without exception, every single one offered me so little equity that the only way they'd EQUAL big tech pay was if they hit a slam dunk and became multibillion dollar monsters.

> no one wants to believe they're the grump ruining everyone's fun, but would you take all that emotional effort to go challenge the grumps, who are just going to argue, aren't going to appreciate anything you do, and are just a bunch of cynical unhappy assholes, or would you just go find a different digital lawn?

The situation above was without factoring in dilution and across a few different sub industries. I think it's pretty reasonable to make fun of founders for this.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#372

Post by mrguyorama »

pjc50 wrote: post #158
eamag wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT: whatsapp, instagram, airbnb, slack, uber, snap

Fact check: almost totally correct, most founded in 2009 except Airbnb which was 2007. Interesting. Seems like 2009 was a good year for startups; I guess building at the market bottom is a good way to ride the market up.

The gig economy at least in part grew out of a giant wave of unemployment.

There were also suddenly a lot of people without a home to sleep in, and suddenly a lot of homes on the market.

Basically, right after a crash is the best time to do anything.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#373

Post by tasuki »

dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

I guess it's mostly the same people on HN as those 12 years ago. Apparently I'd created my account in 2012 and at that point I'd been lurking for some time.

Well I'm still here but I've gotten a lot older. And you have, too!

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#374

Post by ekms »

dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

I stopped reading hn regularly a couple years ago just because the top-voted comments were so reliably negative cynical takes. And not just for articles related to startups.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#375

Post by hmmm-i-wonder »

absolutelastone wrote: post #265
hmmm-i-wonder wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really address that the burnout/startup/hustle culture is part of the risk/reward valuation employees make to work at a startup. If I can get the same compensation working at a FAANG with less stress, better hours and more balance/control over my life, and the resume entry may be 'more interesting' in some ways, but its hard to argue with FAANG on a resume either why wouldn't I? the choice to risk all of…

This is the opposite of my experience. Big tech is far more hours and stress. And the work is much narrower and boring. The system is designed to make people into commodities and make you do work in the way that most benefits managers senior to yourself. Solve this narrow piece of a problem using this specific method alongside 5 other people doing other narrow pieces, versus a startup where you can just own the whole…

IMO the stress is different. In startups you own things a lot more personally, and depending on how you handle stress that can be more challenging than the stress at big tech.

Hours can very much depend on the big tech and startup individually, but big tech is certainly moving in the wrong direction here, and in the typically big corporation/enterprisey worst way possible (increased employee monitoring, shallow and manipulable KPI's that act more as perverse incentives than actually improve anything and that increasingly show the disconnect between upper management and engineers)

> And the work is much narrower and boring. The system is designed to make people into commodities and make you do work in the way that most benefits managers senior to yourself. Solve this narrow piece of a problem using this specific method alongside 5 other people doing other narrow pieces, versus a startup where you can just own the whole thing and iterate it faster.

I agree and its my primary complaint/dislike for my job. I would love to, and probably will change to a startup or other job with a company I actually care about and a role I find valuable, but I expect the pay to be a significant drop when I do. Until then I'm leaning on the salary to reduce the amount of time I need to work overall significantly and putting in my time so to speak.

For now big tech is winning, but if startups and employee equity start having the potential payoffs they used to then it changes the balance of the above equation by quite a bit.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#376

Post by knome »

dsugarman wrote: post #218
dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.

the only thing that I've seen growing that I hope is pushed back is the growing number of jokers. I see people posting here like it's reddit or slashdot. it's not, and that's part of what makes it valuable. every joke comment is a loss of signal in the forum.

jokes are great, but unless it's a joke that has some truth squirreled away in it that's worth knowing and well transmitted by the joke, it shouldn't be here. especially on its own. little joke at the end of a long relevant anecdote? great. just replying because you had a moment of wit you'd like to share? think twice and don't, please.

there are plenty of places to be a comedian. I enjoy it myself on more than a few. but I would prefer it not be here.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#377

Post by TeMPOraL »

wat10000 wrote: post #193
Macha wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always me, and I've been here 15 years. It was pretty much a tech forum then (arguably more then than now, there's much more discussion of culture war issues now, even when stories are flagged it's ever-present in the comments). I think the time when HN was primarily startups was much further back and much briefer than most people nostalgically remember.

I mean, it’s not called Startup News. There’s a group that assumes real hackers all want to do startups (and the site is run by some of those), but that isn’t really the culture. We mythologize Woz and Gates and Page, but also K&R and Knuth and Dijkstra.

> We mythologize Woz and Gates and Page

Interesting that you both put Woz in this group, and omitted Jobs. To me, one of the better analogy of the difference between two groups/interests is Woz vs Jobs.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#378

Post by fuzzfactor »

schappim wrote: post #61
mezod wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great take, do you mind to elaborate on the last point? :)

By way of background, we sell STEM electronics hardware that has really low margin because it's designed to be excessively priced for education. This need to be extremely efficient has caused us to do all sorts of things, like create shipping and fulfillment robots that pick products from the shelf and help our pickers and packers out[1]. I found that it's a lot harder to do things with atoms than just software. As a…

>designed to be excessively priced for education.

Do you mean accessibly priced?

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#379

Post by swiftcoder »

liontwist wrote: post #259
swiftcoder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other bit here is that hacker news attracted a lot more engineers (vs more entrepreneurial-leaning folk) in the intervening time - and engineers never really made bank on startups. Even in successful startups the engineers are typically lower on the pay-out ranking than the less-technical founders and the VCs...

That’s a good point. Also the engineer personality tends to be extremely risk averse.

I'm not sure I agree with that - good engineers should be experts at managing risk. True risk aversion is an impediment in most fields that engineers are called to solve problems in.

That said, we're also pretty analytical, and when one could warm a seat in FAANG for ~$400k/year, even many successful startups weren't outperforming that TC.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#380

Post by hmmm-i-wonder »

kijin wrote: post #264
hmmm-i-wonder wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really address that the burnout/startup/hustle culture is part of the risk/reward valuation employees make to work at a startup. If I can get the same compensation working at a FAANG with less stress, better hours and more balance/control over my life, and the resume entry may be 'more interesting' in some ways, but its hard to argue with FAANG on a resume either why wouldn't I? the choice to risk all of…

Some people just like the hustle culture. They can't seem to stand the boredom of a sustainable company with years of runway. So it obviously depends on your personality. For some, the thrill is worth the risk. For others, it's a huge bag of nope. I for one am clearly moving toward the latter group as I get older.

>I for one am clearly moving toward the latter group as I get older.

For me, I'm strongly moving towards the mentality that a startup I care about would at least give me outcomes I care about and an environment I can enjoy without the BS of big tech corporate and the need to prioritize stability, but its largely because I can increasingly afford to consider risks and lower income positions because my current job and income that isn't a startup.

The time/stress trade offs at big tech are increasingly diminishing vs startups (hussle culture taking over there now too), so if I'm going to have to deal with it it might as well have the least amount of BS possible... Its interesting how I prioritized stability early on in my career, and now consider less stable/risky roles that are more interesting or exciting, while you seem to be going the other direction. There are certainly a lot of different journeys through life.

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