3 ms·

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where

I didn't do more than browse the article because I didn't need to hear the arguments to accept the conclusion. I think the only place perhaps in the world where working in a startup could be seen as any way superior to working at an established business is in Silicon Valley, where enormous amounts of VC money come together to create a modern Rome. Certainly we need Rome, the modern world wouldn't have existed without it, but Romans themselves are myopic and self-obsessed. They need to be, otherwise it wouldn't be Rome. I love that Silicon Valley exists, but I wouldn't want to live there. I love the people that go there and exist on the bleeding edge of innovation. I'll happily sit here behind the curve and have a normal life with a house and car and kids. I'll root for the dreamers that go there and hope that they too can one day achieve their dream life. I don't need that glory.

jerf 11y ago
It isn't necessarily an either/or proposition. Between remote offices, remote work, or local startups, you can live in $NOT_SV and pick certain elements of the SV lifestyle that you may appreciate. You don't get full unrestrained choice, but, well, you never do anyhow, so shrug. Tech workers can still have it better than most could even dream of.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Remote work is one of those Roman ideas that I just can't bring myself to be interested enough in to try. Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? Give me a regular desk and let me see my coworkers in person every day. Besides, from what I've gathered from the job postings here, SV startups mostly don't hire remote workers. You're expected to move to Rome. Local startups offer substandard salaries, the very real proposition that your company will run out of money, and inevitable reticence on the part of the founders to clue you in as to how the company is really doing. No thanks.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? That actually sounds awesome to me. I know I'm unusual, though.
  - jerf 11y ago
    I'd submit that what you have there isn't that what I've said is wrong, but that what you've "picked and chosen" from the SV lifestyle is nearly the null set. That's fine for you, no sarcasm, I am glad you are happy and I have no great love for SV myself, but it doesn't make my point wrong. Me, I live in the Midwest and work in a quite substantial local office of a SV-based company that is now midsized. I get the job I want (in particular I want to work in a place where programmers are the core value providers of the company, not a cost-center afterthought, which is what is generally true of the other companies where I live), in the place I want, because I do not want to live in SV, and do appreciate being near family. Granted my choices are less, but I only really need one job "right now" and enough fallback that I have choices; I do not need thousands and thousands of options. I know it can be done. I know it's not an either/or, because I have in my hands an existence proof of something that is not either/or.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      I wasn't necessarily arguing with you, just trying to highlight that even just having a little bit of SV startup influence on your life is still "living in Rome". The phrase, "All roads lead to Rome" comes to mind. You want Rome in your life, having Rome there is way way better than not having it there. But Rome is dangerous, precisely because of the infectious nature of Roman ideas. When you 'live in Rome', you are ceding control over your life over to Rome in exchange for a more exciting future. You've sold the family farm, uprooted yourself and moved to the big city. I don't want to live in Rome. I don't want Roman ideas controlling my life. I want to live out here in the periphery, maintaining as strict a boundary as I can between myself, my lands, my family, and Rome. I don't want little bits of Rome on my lands. If Rome wants to come to me, offer me a fat salary and a cush job right inside my kingdom, I'm going to examine that gift horse extremely carefully to make sure it's not hiding a bunch of soldiers inside, or, more likely, ethical failings on the parts of the founders that can wreck my life along with my kingdom. I can't fight Rome, Rome is unstoppable, but by keeping my head up and not falling prey to ego and hubris, I can enrich myself and my kingdom through Rome rather than get destroyed by it. Hacker News is how I get exposure to that ecosystem while still maintaining control over my life. It's perfect for me, no less than I need, no more than I can handle.
encoderer 11y ago
The phrase for your mentality is "early majority". You share that taste with ~35% of the population.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I'm hardly Rome-free. America is the Rome of the world, technology is the Rome of America's economy. Programming is the Rome of technology. Ruby is the Rome of programming. (that last one is debatable)
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    The two most famous rails sites, twitter and groupon, currently use scala and node respectively. I guess that last part is quite debatable. Python, golang, and Java(+jvm languagages such as scala/clojure) all have a TON of users at very large and interesting firms. I was just reading today about the new york times open sourcing their golang microservice framework.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      The essential elements of a Rome-like ecosystem are willingness to innovate, the ecosystem exerting a pulling force on the surroundings drawing resources inexorably towards it due to ideas built structurally into the empire, and the aforementioned myopia and self-obsession stemming from pride. Power and innovation. I think that programming can be further subdivided into web development and everything else, and then Rails as a platform compared to other frameworks. Rome had its own evolution, and so each individual Rome is also in a different part of its evolution. When Rome fell, it did so not because of any real weakness on the part of the Romans, but because they'd succeeded in exporting what made them powerful to the surrounding lands. Rome couldn't maintain dominance faced with its provinces each wanting self-rule. So I consider Rails in the last throes of empire. Its legions will still fuck you up, but it can't fight the whole world anymore. Still the best web dev framework out there, every other framework ends up reimplementing Rails, but it can't be all things to all people anymore.
wh-uws 11y ago
You're lucky. The drive is both a gift and a curse.
loopbit 11y ago
Actually, as an European (as in, in a completely different environment than SV), I'd recommend the opposite with a small tweak, add "small company" to the startup meaning. Most big companies I've worked with in Europe have horrible new employee training package or no training at all. I haven't worked in a single one that took fresh out of college types and allowed them to work in different departments. The most common scenario when a new graduate gets hired into a team doing X is to throw him in, get whatever documentation the team has, even maybe someone to ask questions and the expectation is that he will do X for the next few years. Opposed to this is the environment in a small company/startup, where you'll be forced to do a bit of everything and even lend a hand with stuff that is not your job at all. You'll have the chance to see different technologies, see the whole process end to end AND then, decide what you want to do. BTW, is salary that important for people starting their careers? Salary advancement yes, even what salaries you might expect with 2/5/10 years of experience, of course. But for a first job? Does it matter that much? My first salary was crap (600€/month in the year 98), but allowed me to work in multiple environments (web, databases, sysadmin, embedded system...) and when the time came to look for a new place, allowed me more freedom to choose what I wanted to do (the biggest problem I had finding a job, in the middle of the .com crisis, was convincing employers that, yes, I had indeed worked with all those technologies in 'only' 2.5 years). I multiplied by 5 my salary with that second job, which was a more than decent salary in the country at the time.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  We're on the same page here. I don't work at a big company, I work at an established one. The key factor is that they're not still trying to validate their business plan, not the size. I want one that's been around for at least ten years. Less than that and I have to ascertain for myself whether the company's going to be around long enough for me to get what I went in there for. The goal here is mitigating existential risk to your employment situation. There's outside risk, the chances of your company going under, and internal risk, the chances of getting fired or laid off before you've accomplished your goals. Working at an established company mitigates external risk, working at a small one helps mitigate internal risk because you can get to know your company very well and keep alive to shifts in politics. For me, the small, established company is ideal. I work at such a company now and will only jump to a similar company for a significantly higher salary. Small bumps aren't worth the switching costs.

jerf 11y ago

It isn't necessarily an either/or proposition. Between remote offices, remote work, or local startups, you can live in $NOT_SV and pick certain elements of the SV lifestyle that you may appreciate. You don't get full unrestrained choice, but, well, you never do anyhow, so shrug. Tech workers can still have it better than most could even dream of.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Remote work is one of those Roman ideas that I just can't bring myself to be interested enough in to try. Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? Give me a regular desk and let me see my coworkers in person every day. Besides, from what I've gathered from the job postings here, SV startups mostly don't hire remote workers. You're expected to move to Rome. Local startups offer substandard salaries, the very real proposition that your company will run out of money, and inevitable reticence on the part of the founders to clue you in as to how the company is really doing. No thanks.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > Sit at home all day with nobody but the cat for company while everyone else is at work / school? That actually sounds awesome to me. I know I'm unusual, though.
- jerf 11y ago
  I'd submit that what you have there isn't that what I've said is wrong, but that what you've "picked and chosen" from the SV lifestyle is nearly the null set. That's fine for you, no sarcasm, I am glad you are happy and I have no great love for SV myself, but it doesn't make my point wrong. Me, I live in the Midwest and work in a quite substantial local office of a SV-based company that is now midsized. I get the job I want (in particular I want to work in a place where programmers are the core value providers of the company, not a cost-center afterthought, which is what is generally true of the other companies where I live), in the place I want, because I do not want to live in SV, and do appreciate being near family. Granted my choices are less, but I only really need one job "right now" and enough fallback that I have choices; I do not need thousands and thousands of options. I know it can be done. I know it's not an either/or, because I have in my hands an existence proof of something that is not either/or.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I wasn't necessarily arguing with you, just trying to highlight that even just having a little bit of SV startup influence on your life is still "living in Rome". The phrase, "All roads lead to Rome" comes to mind. You want Rome in your life, having Rome there is way way better than not having it there. But Rome is dangerous, precisely because of the infectious nature of Roman ideas. When you 'live in Rome', you are ceding control over your life over to Rome in exchange for a more exciting future. You've sold the family farm, uprooted yourself and moved to the big city. I don't want to live in Rome. I don't want Roman ideas controlling my life. I want to live out here in the periphery, maintaining as strict a boundary as I can between myself, my lands, my family, and Rome. I don't want little bits of Rome on my lands. If Rome wants to come to me, offer me a fat salary and a cush job right inside my kingdom, I'm going to examine that gift horse extremely carefully to make sure it's not hiding a bunch of soldiers inside, or, more likely, ethical failings on the parts of the founders that can wreck my life along with my kingdom. I can't fight Rome, Rome is unstoppable, but by keeping my head up and not falling prey to ego and hubris, I can enrich myself and my kingdom through Rome rather than get destroyed by it. Hacker News is how I get exposure to that ecosystem while still maintaining control over my life. It's perfect for me, no less than I need, no more than I can handle.

encoderer 11y ago

The phrase for your mentality is "early majority". You share that taste with ~35% of the population.

vinceguidry 11y ago
I'm hardly Rome-free. America is the Rome of the world, technology is the Rome of America's economy. Programming is the Rome of technology. Ruby is the Rome of programming. (that last one is debatable)
- SEJeff 11y ago
  The two most famous rails sites, twitter and groupon, currently use scala and node respectively. I guess that last part is quite debatable. Python, golang, and Java(+jvm languagages such as scala/clojure) all have a TON of users at very large and interesting firms. I was just reading today about the new york times open sourcing their golang microservice framework.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    The essential elements of a Rome-like ecosystem are willingness to innovate, the ecosystem exerting a pulling force on the surroundings drawing resources inexorably towards it due to ideas built structurally into the empire, and the aforementioned myopia and self-obsession stemming from pride. Power and innovation. I think that programming can be further subdivided into web development and everything else, and then Rails as a platform compared to other frameworks. Rome had its own evolution, and so each individual Rome is also in a different part of its evolution. When Rome fell, it did so not because of any real weakness on the part of the Romans, but because they'd succeeded in exporting what made them powerful to the surrounding lands. Rome couldn't maintain dominance faced with its provinces each wanting self-rule. So I consider Rails in the last throes of empire. Its legions will still fuck you up, but it can't fight the whole world anymore. Still the best web dev framework out there, every other framework ends up reimplementing Rails, but it can't be all things to all people anymore.

wh-uws 11y ago

You're lucky. The drive is both a gift and a curse.

loopbit 11y ago

Actually, as an European (as in, in a completely different environment than SV), I'd recommend the opposite with a small tweak, add "small company" to the startup meaning. Most big companies I've worked with in Europe have horrible new employee training package or no training at all. I haven't worked in a single one that took fresh out of college types and allowed them to work in different departments. The most common scenario when a new graduate gets hired into a team doing X is to throw him in, get whatever documentation the team has, even maybe someone to ask questions and the expectation is that he will do X for the next few years. Opposed to this is the environment in a small company/startup, where you'll be forced to do a bit of everything and even lend a hand with stuff that is not your job at all. You'll have the chance to see different technologies, see the whole process end to end AND then, decide what you want to do. BTW, is salary that important for people starting their careers? Salary advancement yes, even what salaries you might expect with 2/5/10 years of experience, of course. But for a first job? Does it matter that much? My first salary was crap (600€/month in the year 98), but allowed me to work in multiple environments (web, databases, sysadmin, embedded system...) and when the time came to look for a new place, allowed me more freedom to choose what I wanted to do (the biggest problem I had finding a job, in the middle of the .com crisis, was convincing employers that, yes, I had indeed worked with all those technologies in 'only' 2.5 years). I multiplied by 5 my salary with that second job, which was a more than decent salary in the country at the time.

vinceguidry 11y ago
We're on the same page here. I don't work at a big company, I work at an established one. The key factor is that they're not still trying to validate their business plan, not the size. I want one that's been around for at least ten years. Less than that and I have to ascertain for myself whether the company's going to be around long enough for me to get what I went in there for. The goal here is mitigating existential risk to your employment situation. There's outside risk, the chances of your company going under, and internal risk, the chances of getting fired or laid off before you've accomplished your goals. Working at an established company mitigates external risk, working at a small one helps mitigate internal risk because you can get to know your company very well and keep alive to shifts in politics. For me, the small, established company is ideal. I work at such a company now and will only jump to a similar company for a significantly higher salary. Small bumps aren't worth the switching costs.