Downsides to working at a tech giant • Hacker News Board

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#61

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #45

MattyMc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I worked for Microsoft this year. Had an amazing experience, learned a ton, built a great network, had benefits and was well compensated. I did this all while taking almost 0 risk. The idea that working for a tech giant is "maintaining the status quo," but working for a startup is "making something new," is perhaps not accurate. Working at a startup can be great. Working at a tech giant can be great…

When you work for a giant corporation of any sort, you are inherently breaking capitalism as it is. There's no foreseeable way around this , it's irresponsible, and all the suffering you're seeing it the world is the cost of many many millions of people giving themselves a pass on this. I strongly urge you to recognize that any of the life benefits you get from working at one of these places are reaped from the lives…

As opposed to working for a small money losing company backed by VCs who hoped to be bought out by big tech companies....

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#62

Post by cryptica » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

>> He asked, "How much a year do you make at Microsoft?"

>> It was $72,000 a year, really the lowest of the low coming right out of college. He got out his checkbook and wrote me that check.

>> "Cash this check, quit your job. This is a zero risk opportunity for you."

>> I said, "Thank you very much, Mr. Thiel, but I might get promoted to Level 60 next year."

Wow. This is probably the most impressive combination of arrogance and stupidity that I've ever read about or witnessed in my life.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#63

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

The response to this post is startling. Would it received the same reception had it been written and posted a decade ago, I wonder. Has HN gotten more jaded- and mature?

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#64

Post by seph-reed » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #59

senordevnyc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all the suffering in the world is the fault of giant corporations? How giant do they have to be to go from being the building blocks of capitalism to breaking it?

Obviously not all. You know how english is with these words. There's a gradient. The point at which there's no point in going up against them is definitely too far. Competition is important to a healthy capitalist economy.

I think... I think if it's not obvious to people why supporting companies that undermine competition is bad.. I think maybe I should stop commenting here entirely. I'm going to log out, and not log back in. I'll be happier, you guys can enjoy yourselves too.

Cheers and good luck.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#65

Post by timboisvert » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

If you have a family or you have a chronic illness, working at a big company -- at least in the US -- generally means better health benefits. I'd wager that health insurance alone is the most compelling reason why many people choose big companies over startups.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#66

Post by senordevnyc » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #59

senordevnyc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all the suffering in the world is the fault of giant corporations? How giant do they have to be to go from being the building blocks of capitalism to breaking it?

Obviously not all. You know how english is with these words. There's a gradient. The point at which there's no point in going up against them is definitely too far. Competition is important to a healthy capitalist economy.

And yet I'm unclear on where any of the big tech companies have a lock on their market such that there's no point in competing with them. Google has huge market share in search, but Bing and DDG and others are still competing.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#67

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

seph-reed wrote: post #45

MattyMc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I worked for Microsoft this year. Had an amazing experience, learned a ton, built a great network, had benefits and was well compensated. I did this all while taking almost 0 risk. The idea that working for a tech giant is "maintaining the status quo," but working for a startup is "making something new," is perhaps not accurate. Working at a startup can be great. Working at a tech giant can be great…

When you work for a giant corporation of any sort, you are inherently breaking capitalism as it is. There's no foreseeable way around this , it's irresponsible, and all the suffering you're seeing it the world is the cost of many many millions of people giving themselves a pass on this. I strongly urge you to recognize that any of the life benefits you get from working at one of these places are reaped from the lives…

Please don't take HN on generic ideological tangents. They're repetitive, tedious, and off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#68

Post by zadkey » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

It seems like he has found the problem with companies.

"Even though these companies pay a lot of money, in real terms, what software is doing in society is creating a lot more value than what they pay you. Google's pure profit per employee is actually $1.6 million per year, after all costs."

"If you're in the engineering, product, design, marketing, sort of the builder's side of that organization, you've got to know that you're creating a lot more value than that, possibly 10 times, maybe 100 times that value, and the only way you can really access that is by owning equity, and that means either being a founder or working at an early stage startup that gives significant equity. "

In other words, companies either purposefully or absentmindedly fail to pay regular employees anywhere close to their real value. This is the real problem. Not getting in a profitable startup early on isn't the problem. It's the mindset that it's somehow okay to pay employees very small fractions of what they are really worth.

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#69

Post by webkike » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

Damn, sorry you didn’t make $200m profiting off a company that makes ICE more efficient

Re: Downsides to working at a tech giant

#70

Post by catalystic » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

I feel a lot of the folks here are focusing on the wrong parts here. The $200M loss was a cheap way of getting user attention, but hey it worked!

The core of what he was trying to convey was the sooner you get to understand real user / customer problems the better off you'll be in life as an entrepreneur.

He stayed away from this in his early days as he opted for stability and that he seems to regret.