91–100 of 774 posts
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I agree. I've had a couple of stints as a manager, now as a CTO for a small startup, and it's giving me so much insight into thinking about engineering from a business perspective. As an IC it's hard to get that birds eye view, but it's possible.
Can you mention one or two such insights about thinking about engineering from a business perspective?
I work for non-tech generating 100million+ in revenue. Cushy job, fully remote, good pay and full autonomy with flexible hours working as an IC. I recently talked to a startup, similar pay, culture would be a better fit since it was mostly techies and I'm a nerd by nature.....but things just got awkward as soon as I asked about their revenue....they were bleeding money and I was told they were being acquired by a big…
Across every investment class there has been a trend of buyers needing to become more financially irresponsible in order to participate in the market. Need to buy a house? bid 20% more than asking, if you don't - someone else will.. in cash. Need to build a ride-hailing app? prepare to pay people to ride indefinitely. Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue. All around, there ha…
There's a lot of money, but also not enough concentrated in one spot to do really useful ventures like large infrastructure projects. So instead the money is distorting everything.
Imagine if lending was less cheap for home owners but it was still cheap for governments or really large companies to be able to build train lines or advanced manufacturing or affordable medium density housing.
I see the problem as too much credit is able to be spent with too little focus. So silly stuff is being funded because the money is becoming meaningless.
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the fact that you stopped to ask those questions makes me think that you're at minimum, an above average developer. caring about the business and its fundamentals is important beyond just slinging code.
Interestingly, I've heard many instances where interviewees asked startups about their revenues and the startups just wouldn't tell them, saying that it's growing, or some other vague nonsense. Even in the case of inquiring about the amount of equity one gets, many startups would not tell them the actual percentage of the company they'd get, instead opting to tell them the number of shares, without actually telling t…
if they're not, I'd be worried about the financials, the culture, or both.
Refusing to disclose the number of outstanding shares is a huge red flag.
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I think there's some panic, yea, but the P/E doesn't tell the whole story. Take Facebook or maybe Google (just to pick on, others like Apple have their own headwinds to face) - how does advertising fair in a recession? Maybe the P/Es have retracted to look appealing, but here in about 2 years when ad revenue is down 30% those same P/Es look expensive. Personally I think if you are investing with a longer-term horizon…
Google has been around for 20 years so we can see what happened to advertising revenue during the last recession. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...
One thing I'd recommend is asking how was Google as a company different in say, 2008 where revenues increased despite the recession compared to now.
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> You're telling me you can't spare $100k? That's not how it works. You're not the only person asking this VC for $100k. A thousand other people are, too. A policy where he spares it for (what he considers) a bad investment like yours means sparing it for all the other bad investments, too. That would cost a lot more than just one check.
I'm saying that he was already neck deep in bad investments, which he happily funded. That's the main point I'm talking about. I'm not saying my idea deserved investment, just that this whole industry has been full of bullshit for years.
I work for non-tech generating 100million+ in revenue. Cushy job, fully remote, good pay and full autonomy with flexible hours working as an IC. I recently talked to a startup, similar pay, culture would be a better fit since it was mostly techies and I'm a nerd by nature.....but things just got awkward as soon as I asked about their revenue....they were bleeding money and I was told they were being acquired by a big…
That said. I'm obviously heavily biased but I have realized MOST non-finance employees know very little about the financial health of their employer or even how the business model operates, or even what is the current/future strategy of the company.
When something MAJOR is announced, M&A/leadership changes/etc, the questions the room typically ask are: 1) will we still get 401k match 2) will we get fired 3) will the office relocate. People don't really care too much about the company, they care about how it's volatility impacts them. I don't think it's such a bad thing, but just pointing it out. In startup land, volatility is huge and the highs and lows can occur with rapid frequency. You have to be an assessor of risk when changing any jobs and this is part of it.
Every time I got the urge to hit Leetcode and start interviewing for a new gig with a 50% pay increase, I remember 2007-2009 and getting laid off from 3 different companies as the economy imploded. And it's hard to remember now, but things never really felt truly safe, even with in-demand tech skills, until 2016 or so, when suddenly recruiter email started really exploding with competitive offers.
Watching the market cool down leads me to believe we're going into another downturn, and I'm becoming more confident I made a good bet by not jumping ship in the last year or two.
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I think there's some panic, yea, but the P/E doesn't tell the whole story. Take Facebook or maybe Google (just to pick on, others like Apple have their own headwinds to face) - how does advertising fair in a recession? Maybe the P/Es have retracted to look appealing, but here in about 2 years when ad revenue is down 30% those same P/Es look expensive. Personally I think if you are investing with a longer-term horizon…
What about a recession would cause FB or Google to leave the advertising business, and not have some the largest advertising revenue whenever the recession is over? It is more of a choice can your money be invested somewhere better in the short-term and then hop back on to FB and Google before they get too expensive. It is probably the same for all large tech companies. I don't see any titans falling in the next few…
A decent percentage of Google ad spend is waste/useless/whatever. So during a recession companies are probably tightening their ad spend and getting more precise.
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> You're telling me you can't spare $100k? That's not how it works. You're not the only person asking this VC for $100k. A thousand other people are, too. A policy where he spares it for (what he considers) a bad investment like yours means sparing it for all the other bad investments, too. That would cost a lot more than just one check.
I'm saying that he was already neck deep in bad investments, which he happily funded. That's the main point I'm talking about. I'm not saying my idea deserved investment, just that this whole industry has been full of bullshit for years.
The problem I have with the Economist these days - they've changed a lot recently as has the Financial Times - is that they are one of the big cheerleaders for creating bubbles out of tech they clearly don't understand. This starves the startups that have compelling and reachable business models and goals because the funding goes to (quite possibly financially scammy) moonshots with vague goals somewhere over the hor…
I would also be interested to see examples of the problem you're describing.