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This should really be "8 reasons to turn down that startup job as your first job" as most of the bullet points are really only geared towards someone in or leav

This should really be "8 reasons to turn down that startup job as your first job" as most of the bullet points are really only geared towards someone in or leaving college. This should be obvious from the website's name but without context it took me a minute before I realized. That being said the #7 point of "The world needs fixing, not disrupting" seems to lose sight of what disruption really is and conflates it with simply taking advantage of people. Disruption fixes things. In fact I think one could easily argue that disruption fixes things far more effectively than anything else. Telling someone to go find "real problems to solve" is simply useless. I don't understand the point of trying to make the "service economy" a place "Where entitled white boys figure out how to replicate their private school dorm experience for life". Sure there are issues in this area with SOME start-ups but going right into calling it a race issue without providing anything useful just screams useless rant. Just drop #7, rename to 7 reasons and update the HN title to make it more obvious of the target demographic. Just my thoughts.

fredkbloggs 11y ago
I agree with you 100%. You're going along reading a bunch of very reasonable and helpful advice, then BAM, politics, stereotyping, and class warfare! One can observe that most of the "problems" that today's startups are solving are not very interesting or inspiring without resorting to politically charged language and personal attacks (and for the record, I agree that the ideas he lists are silly at best). Have to give credit, though; he saved it for the end. If that's #1, I don't bother reading the rest and I would guess many others wouldn't either. So that's clever at least.
wyclif 11y ago
Thing is, #7 doesn't apply because he's referring to Amazon, and they are far, far away from startup territory. Sure, there are actual startups that have work/life balance issues that are as toxic (or more) as Amazon's, so I suppose it applies to them. I liked his other reasons, though.
facetube 11y ago
Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time or FMLA, every bad health day you have is another couple hundred dollars foregone that could have gone to medical bills, and then the IRS piles on with self-employment tax to add insult to (literal) injury. Disruption in the US health care system would be great; until that happens, my excitement over having cat litter delivered to my door in an hour or less will, sadly, be dampened by the fact that some Americans are literally doing their own minor surgeries over a bathroom sink right now. Wart removal is a really common one, presumably because it routinely bills out $250-$350 per visit in larger practices, and the typical visit count is high.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Your an employee with cancer, and your for profit insurance still deny's your insurance, you quickly run out of paid and unpaid leave through the FMLA and your still up shit creek with cancer. The employee designation doesn't seem much better as far as I know. The real problem are laws that try to offload welfare to employers when it should be paid through a govt. tax system. You have to take whatever IC income you get and divide it by 1.4 to get the equivalent pay as an employee after benefits. How is it like for people with no savings on medicaid or mediCAL?
  - facetube 11y ago
    Being an employee in the US can, in some cases, help preserve both your job and your employer-facilitated health insurance while you're sick. The company needs to have 50 or more employees for it to apply, IIRC, and you need to have worked there for at least a year. There are slightly more generous laws in some states. It's quite close to nothing, but still slightly better than nothing. I definitely agree that employment (or lack thereof) should have nothing to do with health care.
- j-pb 11y ago

fredkbloggs 11y ago

I agree with you 100%. You're going along reading a bunch of very reasonable and helpful advice, then BAM, politics, stereotyping, and class warfare! One can observe that most of the "problems" that today's startups are solving are not very interesting or inspiring without resorting to politically charged language and personal attacks (and for the record, I agree that the ideas he lists are silly at best). Have to give credit, though; he saved it for the end. If that's #1, I don't bother reading the rest and I would guess many others wouldn't either. So that's clever at least.

wyclif 11y ago

Thing is, #7 doesn't apply because he's referring to Amazon, and they are far, far away from startup territory. Sure, there are actual startups that have work/life balance issues that are as toxic (or more) as Amazon's, so I suppose it applies to them. I liked his other reasons, though.

facetube 11y ago

Honest question: have you ever worked a job in that service economy and fallen seriously ill? Things turn in to a shitshow really quickly when six-figure bills start raining in from oncology, your for-profit insurer starts denying claims after you've cleared the massive $5,000 deductible and $6,250 out-of-pocket maximum, you're technically "self-employed" and have no access to employee protections like paid sick time or FMLA, every bad health day you have is another couple hundred dollars foregone that could have gone to medical bills, and then the IRS piles on with self-employment tax to add insult to (literal) injury. Disruption in the US health care system would be great; until that happens, my excitement over having cat litter delivered to my door in an hour or less will, sadly, be dampened by the fact that some Americans are literally doing their own minor surgeries over a bathroom sink right now. Wart removal is a really common one, presumably because it routinely bills out $250-$350 per visit in larger practices, and the typical visit count is high.

mahyarm 11y ago
Your an employee with cancer, and your for profit insurance still deny's your insurance, you quickly run out of paid and unpaid leave through the FMLA and your still up shit creek with cancer. The employee designation doesn't seem much better as far as I know. The real problem are laws that try to offload welfare to employers when it should be paid through a govt. tax system. You have to take whatever IC income you get and divide it by 1.4 to get the equivalent pay as an employee after benefits. How is it like for people with no savings on medicaid or mediCAL?
- facetube 11y ago
  Being an employee in the US can, in some cases, help preserve both your job and your employer-facilitated health insurance while you're sick. The company needs to have 50 or more employees for it to apply, IIRC, and you need to have worked there for at least a year. There are slightly more generous laws in some states. It's quite close to nothing, but still slightly better than nothing. I definitely agree that employment (or lack thereof) should have nothing to do with health care.
j-pb 11y ago