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How the Valley treats experienced people

rachelbythebay.com

381–390 of 508 posts

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#381

I kind of feel like the author is referring to Zuckerberg's famous comment about young people being smarter. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was suitably shocking and stupid so it's a candidate anyway. The thing I like about Rachel's take on this is that she gets right to the key thing: regardless of what field you're in, or how you spend your time, the vast majority of us are going to be neither horrible fa…

Zuckerberg said this to attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford in late March, 2007 [1] "I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.) "Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight f…

Fixed year of reference.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a point of view, I might even agree with Zuck's asinine statement. When I was in my 20's, I had no idea how many things I truly did not know. So, in my limited "fresh out of college" way, I was pushing maximum intelligence. As the years have flown by, I've learned just how vast many fields are. Introspectively, I've learned that I'm not the brightest mind in any given room. As a matter of fact, I've just barely…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

pre cise ly

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would so have a full fab and electronics shop by now if I lived in a place like birmingham. Last year for thanksgiving we were in Knoxville. Was looking at abandoned warehouses that I could flip. Downtown is tiny but nice and supplemented by the university. I’d have to take up rooting for the vols tho.

Moved from Knoxville to the Bay Area recently. If I had my own startup, it would definitely be in one of those old brick buildings near downtown.

I will say the traffic along the main highway and series of strip malls is not fun though. Nor is the lack of any mass transit to the airport. However rental cars are dirt cheap there.

I was LUSTING over this place though (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9679553,-83.9199396,3a,60y,4...) was for sale at $2.2M when I was there last year. If only I could sell my house for 2x and I could think of a business to keep that place maintained would be about as dream of a place as I can think of.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#385
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Luck is a huge part of success. The sad reality is, no matter how irrational is, people don't want to be around someone who is considered unlucky. Especially at a startup. I don't agree with this at all, but I'm saying it because I don't want to pretend that that psychological influence doesn't exist.

I've never seen anybody that had a "lucky" or "unlucky" reputation. Some people are considered to "have been lucky" at some point in time, but nobody considered to have a "luck" or "non-luck" trait. In other words, I've never observed what you describe, never even heard of it

For the sole purpose of giving a friendly stranger on the internet a "worlds first" :)

I've been told a past boss, verbatim, "Wow, you have shit luck." The tl;dr is that I was working for a university and thus hired "as a college hire." and post-hire the corp had no easy way to rectify this, leading to a permanently set-back promotion track. A series of compounding misunderstandings on this led to this remarkable conversation with such other kernels as "you're kinda screwed, maybe they could fix it on rehire."

That's the tip of the iceberg though, to say I've had a "colorful" life is an understatement, and while I enjoy the bar stories I get to tell, there's certainly a perception that I'm unlucky.

E.g. During schooling I was placed in a random rooming arrangement with a violent drug addict, who later was deported after multiple arrests for beating his girlfriend; but this was after ~ a year of the school covering it up, throwing out his drugs before police showed up, and saying that my attestations weren't worth pursuing further.

I realize that got dark fast but I mean to bring it up to say, who the hell has these sorts of stories. It's like a sitcom. Even looking in on myself it seems absurd, so I can understand why people call it "luck."

To bring this back to the crux of the discussion, I'd use it to say I certainly see some vestige of "luck" in that certain things happen randomly, ala my room assignment, and you may have gotten the good flip on a few key ones; and thus the GP's point is very well taken. I also agree with GP's direct child, although it makes me sad, since I think my "bad luck" has given me exposure to quite a range of experience, one does get strange looks from being repeatedly perceived as the recipient of "bad luck". ("Oh maybe there's something he's not telling us, maybe he's the common cause, etc")

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile in the south you can make those same six figures and have a 5 bedroom house with a mortgage of 1.5k Or live in a nice area for 800 a month. Or live in a shit area for 400. SV math does not work out. You are taxed to much. Pay to high rent and have the pleasure of needing a shit map to walk in your city. I keep seeing this same argument about getting to pay 1.5k to live with a bunch of other people to save s…

> SV math does not work out Sure it does. For one, they're taking home an extra thousand dollars per week in SV even after all the taxes. Also, they don't have to live in Birmingham, AL or whatever the hell.

Not having to live in SFBA is worth much more than that to quite a few people. In my calculus, it'd be at least $15K a month for me to even think about moving back to SV.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#387
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are ever in a similar situation you might want to look at what Mark Cuban did to manage this risk - described here: http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anat...

You can only really do that if you have hundreds of millions and can negotiate with a major bank to get it done. Most companies don't trade options until after the lockup, and even if they did, you are restricted from doing so by the contract. You also have to put up a huge amount of capital upfront to purchase the options. For Mark Cuban, this could be done on credit to the bank, but likely not possible for a single…

> It was only during a unique period of irrational exuberance that banks were open to underwriting options for such new and untested equities.

Keep in mind that any time a bank underwrites an option, particularly if it’s for a short position, there’s no guarantee they will honor it when shit hits the fan. Legally, they are obligated to. But in practice you may only recieve a percentage of what you were promised.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending your entire life as a young adult doing that sounds dystopian. May that never become the norm.

Eh it depends, I live with a roommate because I choose to. We're friends, we do things together, it's nice. I could live without one, my rent would be marginally more, though I'd still probably bank close to the same. But the social aspect is really nice.

Living with roommates by choice isn’t that bad. Needing to live with roommates for financial reasons when one really would rather have a private space to come home to is hell.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#389
post #36

Ageism is real in many verticals. It is healthy to acknowledge that. It’s equally important to face facts related to age: I am noticeably less focusable, and my memory is not as good. I slowly become less fluent in adopting new tech, and it shows (or feels). Most importantly, I have many out of work responsibilities - parents (not getting younger) and kids (not getting older in sufficient pace). Consequently, odds of…

You are arguing that, as an older employee, you actually are worth less?

I’m not arguing, just mentioning it as a fact. In places where my experience would not play critical role, it would make economical sense to hire someone 20 years younger.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#390
post #192
post #88

If one thinks 35+ is to old to code, well I have news for you. At 35+ you learn how to manage time and prioritize better. Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems, marriage and children. When you are young, you are hired as an engineer to work 40 hours, which we all know very well that working for startups that means 80 hours or you are not putting good effort. Well with a family that’s not possible, as y…

I think ageism even has an impact on this generation. The quality of software produced is much lower than it could be because we mostly have young guys doing all the work. Ageism is also why we repeat of trends every generation. Our industry simply has no memory.

this. I don't expect the hubris to cease, but an aknowledgement of the failures of hubris to deliver concretely would be most satisfactory
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