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An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

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Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#41

Post by wastedhours »

nate wrote: post #3

An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly…

Cannot agree more with the concept of just showing up. It's remarkable what you can get done by being, friendly, open, honest, just asking, and then delivering.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#42

Post by zackmorris »

paulcole wrote: post #5
nate wrote: post #3

An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly…

> Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up. Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for white guys and the uphill battle faced by others.

Upvoted you to help get you out of the negative.

I experienced agism for the first time when I turned 40. What used to be pretty much a guaranteed first interview after applying, turned into getting lost in the stack of resumes and never getting callbacks.

I decided to take a break from tech a year and a half ago after the worst burnout of my life. And with COVID-19, I've decided to extend that another year or two. There are just too many systemic problems in tech and I don't like the direction it's all going (survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, hyper-competitive, etc etc etc). So I've decided to do service work in the meantime in the areas that I've neglected, which right now is handyman work, moving towards renewable energy. I've always felt inspired by Jimmy Carter's work with Habitat for Humanity.

I knew about the various forms of prejudice in tech (that evolve from a feeling of being a reject growing up) but hadn't experienced them personally yet. So many young men especially have this feeling that everyone else is mistaken, and that they can do no wrong because they are the uber geek. Which clashes with their real-life experience of never being able to get a date, being broke all the time, working dead end jobs, etc. So they tend to overlook people who don't fit their expectation of what an expert looks like. Some of them grow out of it, but sadly a lot of us get trapped perpetuating the same patriarchy/misogyny/bigotry and similar systems of control without even realizing it. That's why I think it's so important to actively work towards justice and equity once we become aware of these issues.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#43

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

jessaustin wrote: post #37
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second paragraph proves my point that it's a rather contentious statement. "Just a reminder," beyond implying that it is already known, is partly just an introduction to the main point. And the main point is an aggressive accusation.

Who is being accused? Of what? ISTM a general statement about the world accuses no one in particular of anything.

A good way to tell if a comment is rude or accusatory is to replace the people you're talking about with people you like.

> Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for Jews and the uphill battle faced by others.

The above comment doesn't sound good and shouldn't be accepted by the community. Neither should the comment against whites.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#44

Post by derivagral »

xenospn wrote: post #32
weka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

My friend is a solutions architect at AWS. He put me in touch with whoever is responsible for the plan. Had a 5 minute phone call with them and got approved for the credits. Judging by how big AWS is, I'm sure everyone knows someone who works there.

That assumption is exactly the point, isn't it?

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#45

Post by throwaway234349 »

ihaveajob wrote: post #33
benrbray wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, I think the biggest problem is that due to structural and historical racism, race is correlated with economic status in the United States. It sucks to be poor, no matter what color you are. If you're not surrounded by people who have had success in their careers / education, it's hard to know which opportunities are available to you. Often, you only know about your parents and their career choices.…

Correlation is definitely an important factor, but there are multitude of studies demonstrating an important inherent race/gender/origin bias in many important decisions, from hiring to housing to financing and more. It comes to mind an experiment carried in France where they sent fake housing applications where the only difference between two sets of applicants was a Muslim-sounding name vs a Christian one. The resu…

I think it's important to consider the effect size when we talk about race or class bias. My personal feeling is that class (money) plays a much larger role than race (at least in the U.S. , I can't comment on France). I believe that now, when certain minorities have lesser outcomes than the white majority, it is primarily due to a higher prevalence of poverty.

Consider East Asians, a minority who have historically been victims of racial injustice in the U.S. As recently as 1945, Japanese people were placed in internment camps in the United States. Despite all of this racism, they have better economic and health outcomes than the white majority. Why? I believe it is due to class.

If we were to spend more energy fighting economic inequality I think we would see better outcomes for racial minorities. That is not to say that racism doesn't exist today, and that it's not important to fight against racial injustice. Both are important, but I tend to see much more discussion of race than class.

As far as resume studies go, here is one that shows significant bias based on class: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000312241666815... .

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#46

Post by tasogare »

ihaveajob wrote: post #33
benrbray wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, I think the biggest problem is that due to structural and historical racism, race is correlated with economic status in the United States. It sucks to be poor, no matter what color you are. If you're not surrounded by people who have had success in their careers / education, it's hard to know which opportunities are available to you. Often, you only know about your parents and their career choices.…

Correlation is definitely an important factor, but there are multitude of studies demonstrating an important inherent race/gender/origin bias in many important decisions, from hiring to housing to financing and more. It comes to mind an experiment carried in France where they sent fake housing applications where the only difference between two sets of applicants was a Muslim-sounding name vs a Christian one. The resu…

This works both way. Another study in France asked by associations about anonymous résumé was made. The surprising result was that with anonymous ones, the non-white people were discriminated more. Why? Because more often than not, when a recruiter was looking at a foreign sounding name, he was more lenient about gap-year, not-the-best-school etc. So in the end the idea of imposing anonymous résumé was ditched.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#47

Post by jjice »

nate wrote: post #3

An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly…

This applies to so many things. It's incredible how far you can get with a simple question. Worst case scenario, you get a "no", and nothing changes. Best case, you can get something like 5K from AWS.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#48

Post by skinkestek »

paulcole wrote: post #5
nate wrote: post #3

An important takeaway is to "send out any email at all". Like the time with our first startup in YC W06. Our first client was the result of me just cold emailing a CEO of a startup I saw featured in Wired magazine. "Hey I like what you're doing. Maybe we can find something to do together." Short. Not expecting much. No pitch. Just genuine appreciation and interest in brainstorming a collaboration. And it unexpectedly…

> Over and over in my career I was amazed at what happened when I just bothered showing up. Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for white guys and the uphill battle faced by others.

> Just remember to acknowledge how exceedingly well this works for white guys and the uphill battle faced by others.

This isn't as straightforward as you make it sound.

It definitely isn't straightforward for white guys with poor parents either.

And unlike certain other groups there aren't anyone standing up for them. If they cry out they'll only make it worse for themselves as people will laugh at these "insanely privileged white guys whining".

So can we stop this, or at least be a little more nuanced; stop pretending that just because someone is a white male they are automatically playing life on easy mode as someone said? Because it isn't true.

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#49

Post by icheishvili »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #36
vincentmarle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In case anyone doesn't know this, for just about any venture-backed company that has gone through YC or another incubator or raised from an early-stage VC, you can pretty much automatically get $100k of credits from Google or AWS. This seems very backward, because you also don’t really need those credits anymore at that point.

$100k is another employee for free. That's a significant sum for an early stage startup.

Why should startups backed by powerful institutional capital get more credits from AWS than ones that are bootstrapped and hurting for cash much more?

Re: An Email got us $5k in AWS Credits

#50

Post by harryh »

icheishvili wrote: post #49
chickenpotpie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100k is another employee for free. That's a significant sum for an early stage startup.

Why should startups backed by powerful institutional capital get more credits from AWS than ones that are bootstrapped and hurting for cash much more?

AWS credits aren't charity. They're an investment by Amazon that they hope will lead to future AWS revenue.
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