Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#391

Post by hintymad » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 12:44 AM UTC

I'd go with that the industry has changed and that the makeup of the HN users has changed. I'd venture to guess that a much larger percent of HN users back in 2013 were really into startups than merely tech news.

What's really interesting is that the industry has changed. Back in 2013 or earlier, there were still many new scenarios. The mobile ecosystem was rapidly expanding, we probably tried new apps on a weekly basis if not daily. The cloud was still relatively new and many companies were either trying to figure out how to use cloud or leverge cloud. The enterprise world was getting interesting too, many infrastructure systems were popping up left and right. There was this genuine vibe that our life and work could benefit from tech. Now I'm not so sure. It feels like many people are quite content with the life, and it is increasingly harder to see what changes we'd really desire. As a result, the optimism about startups has also abated.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#392

Post by sirspacey » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

What changed is the audience

Founders are in private group chats now

Man I miss it being real here instead of Reddit Jr

Grateful for those of you who still hang out

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#393

Post by gsf_emergency » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

copyleftdj wrote: post #201

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…

>be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups. For me what hn use to be an interaction between art and tech in the theme of hackers & painters. Tech along is not so interesting IMHO unless it's in the context of art and/or humanity.

Upvotes and downvotes are about art vs humanity.. ("painting with #s"[0])

see below

[0] an inane activity which has often been unduly embraced/denounced

>In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art in New York accepted four early designs of paint by number by Max Klein for its Department of Architecture and Design, donated by Jacquelyn Schiffman.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#394

Post by kijin » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

mitjam wrote: post #308

kijin wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about that kind of risk. It's just a synonym for the amount somebody is going to lose if the company fails, regardless of what the amount means to them personally. VC invests $1M in a startup, they are risking $1M. You just work at a company, get paid every month, and don't buy any stock, you are risking $0. That's all. If the company does well and the VC makes $5M back, it probably won't mean much…

The risk of investing time in a startup is in the lost opportunities (ie. opportunity cost). It can be dollarized with discounted cash flow as an approximation. Could you earn more at a large company than at a startup? What are your options? Do you even have better options? How high and how likely must the "lottery ticket payout" be to break even? And don't forget the time value of money: How much could you gain by i…

There are opportunity costs no matter which job you take, from startup to FAANG. So of course this is assuming that you joined the startup after carefully considering other employment options, as you absolutely should. No disagreement there. :)

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#395

Post by johnny22 » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #362

dsugarman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not cynical, but my relationship with technology has surely become adversarial. I still remember the days when self-driving cars seemed just around the corner and inevitable. When Google was organizing the world's information and ethically pure. When I trusted software to do the right thing. But nowadays... Good luck finding any trustworthy megacorp. We've commoditized trust for profits (e.g. from Couchsurfing to…

> I still remember the days when self-driving cars seemed just around the corner and inevitable.

Inevitable or not.. I did not consider the other things this would enable. like mass surveillance! I thought it was going to be a relationship between me and my car. I did not realize the relationship was actually me, my car, and the company tracking my every move.

That is how my relationship with tech became adversarial.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#396

Post by itake » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 2:37 AM UTC

meritage31 wrote: post #171

itake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tracks. I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Early engineers often have first dibs on higher level roles, like CTO or director over people that join late. Your initial grant might not be great, but being director at such a company is huge

>> I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Startups hire those people when they are risky and the future is unclear. Once there is traction, the VCs and insiders bring in friends for cush Director/VC posts. Quite often the people who took the real risks get left out.

You’re not wrong, but I don’t think 100% of the high level roles are filled this way.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#397

Post by itake » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #313

meritage31 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I think the real value employees get is riding the rocketship in their career. Startups hire those people when they are risky and the future is unclear. Once there is traction, the VCs and insiders bring in friends for cush Director/VC posts. Quite often the people who took the real risks get left out.

And that seems like safe capital preserving thing to do. A director role isn’t a prize for loyalty, it’s a job with a skill set. Your second programmer isn’t going to be as good at is as some guy who has been a director 6 years else where

The CTO of Grab (my employer and $10b company) was an early engineer hire. Same for a lot of the L7+ talent.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#398

Post by itake » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 2:46 AM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #163

itake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only realy reason to join a startup is that you either believe in the "mission" or that you believe it will bring you joy to work in that way. Or the startup was a stepping stone in your career. Big Tech wouldn't hire you, b/c you have a different background, so you work at a startup to develop experience and then switch to Big Tech.

I mean yeah kinda. But the skills for a startup map poorly to big companies. Startup: you look at something, plan, execute, learn skills as you go. Big company: here is x, do as I say. You must use these things from these teams, don't make it yourself. Coping with the step down in responsibility is hard. Going from owning the entire stack to not even having a real decision in planning is very hard to deal with, espec…

The mindset change isn’t that different. This is just part of the experience of growing and maturing in your career.

I think people with startup backgrounds in big tech tend to hustle harder in their careers than people that were “born” in that environment.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#399

Post by forbiddenvoid » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 3:47 AM UTC

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…

This is definitely true. I'm working on a project to recap 2024 HN.

Two things that immediately jumped out at me:

1. 40% of the posts/comments in all of 2024 came from accounts created IN 2024. There are a LOT of new people on HN.

2. The most commented post of the year was a news article about Donald Trump's election victory, so TV news-esque content is definitely getting more traction than expected.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#400

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Jan 22, 2025, 8:13 AM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #3

> the financial argument for startups becomes harder to justify. Given the failure rate I think it's always been hard to justify for the vast majority of people.

If they're being realistic, for sure, but there was a period where investor money was flowing freely and the news of investment rounds, IPOs, and individual financial success was a regular occurrence on HN. I don't know if that has lessened, but the discourse around it definitely has.