5 ms·

How a job is created

66 points by mmaunder 17y ago

jackowayed 17y ago
How to eliminate the need for more jobs: Use 10 different colors of text in your article, causing half of your readers to kill themselves. Seriously, 1 accent color is more than sufficient.
- jason_tko 17y ago
  He's creating jobs for graphic designers. :)
  - tsally 17y ago
    Or eye-care professionals.
richieb 17y ago
Cringley had a similar article few days ago: http://www.cringely.com/2010/02/the-cringely-2010-not-in-silicon-valley-startup-tour/ http://www.cringely.com/2010/02/the-cringely-2010-not-in-sil...
timr 17y ago
Oh, come on. Saying that a job is created by "growing existing businesses" or "creating new businesses" isn't insightful or useful; it's a tautology. It's like saying that winning a war is simply a matter of killing more people than the other side. Easy as pie. I know that we all like to get huffy and pretend that our favorite ideology is the one that has all the right answers for making jobs, or eliminating poverty, or creating world peace, but ultimately, adults have to acknowledge that there are going to be problems in the world that politicians can't solve. Obama can't make your startup succeed. Congress can't make someone want your product. But they can do more basic things, like making sure that you won't starve to death when you fail, or ensuring that falling ill while starting your company won't bankrupt you (or kill you). They can make sure that the lights turn on, that clean water comes out of your faucet, and that you're reasonably safe at home and work. You've got to take it from there.
- seldo 17y ago
  Absolutely. Creating a better safety net WOULD really help innovation -- being terrified of not having health insurance is a huge barrier to joining startups for many people. And the current government has so far done nothing to help that, and the republicans even less.
  - palish 17y ago
    What a strange fear -- being afraid of not having health insurance. I haven't had a "real job" or health insurance for about a year now, and I don't care at all. If something bad happens to me, I'll put the bill on my credit cards. I doubt anything will happen though. I'm young, healthy, and don't get into car accidents by being stupid. Statistics are on my side here, and I feel completely comfortable living without health insurance for awhile. Unless you have some kind of condition, is there any situation in which the fear of not having health insurance is actually justifiable? I mean, if you want to avoid paying off a huge hospital bill over time, then ok... but come on, if you're starting a startup, gambling a 0.001% chance (or whatever) that you might have to pay 4-5k off over a few years seems like an insanely good bet. Also, I heard from a friend (who is very probably wrong about this) that you don't actually have to pay off a hospital bill. It won't count against your credit score. Is this true? I would never do something like that, but... if not paying the bill doesn't count against your credit score, then I can see why people might not pay it.
    - jorgem 17y ago
      >> Unless you have some kind of condition Apparently, a lot of people do... otherwise the nation wouldn't spend such a large percentage of the GDP on medical care. Be thankful you're not old, yet.
      - prodigal_erik 17y ago
        Yeah, some kind of condition? I'm made out of meat, doesn't that count?
    - 17y ago
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tjmc 17y ago
I'm always wary of founders that say "we want to be the next [large company name]". It immediately identifies them as followers rather than leaders and shows their focus is on making money or achieving status above solving problems for customers. No wonder he's asking for a handout.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  I don't think that was his point. His point was just, "Hey, government, you know who created a whole bunch of jobs? Google! I'm trying to also grow into becoming a giant company like Google did." In this context, saying "I'm trying to be the next Google", is just like an NFL team saying, "We're trying to be the next New Orleans Saints." All it really means is, "I'm trying really hard to succeed."
  - tjmc 17y ago
    What more important to him though - growing as big as Google or creating something so good that his company might get that big? The way he frames his goal is a classic "tell" regarding his focus.
potatolicious 17y ago
> "I’m trying to create jobs so hard that I work without a salary. Not only that but I invest my life savings into the cause of creating jobs. I also work harder at my job of creating jobs than most people work at their normal job." I found this bit quite disingenuous. Yes, he is a business owner, and yes, he is part of the demographic of job creators - but "job creation" is not his title nor his primary intent (unless I've grossly misunderstood his startup idea). Founders are in it to create a product and get rich - some have higher-order ideals for what they want to do on their road to riches, but to pretend that you are not acting out of your own self-interest is disingenuous. Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but that bit sounds to me like trying to appear as a populist folk hero when you're really not.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  "Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but that bit sounds to me like trying to appear as a populist folk hero when you're really not." Cut him some slack. He's from Seattle, it's a common attitude there. Having lived up there for a while, the start-up scene seemed to mostly focus on it's "we're not from San Francisco so nobody respects us" inferiority complex.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    Actually, I live here - but I'm not in a startup ;) People here are nice enough - distant, antisocial, but nice.
    - dnsworks 17y ago
      Don't get me wrong.. I actually liked a lot of Seattle .. At least the coffee shops, donut shops, and cupcake shops (Seattle is good at foods which cater to seasonal depression eating!).. Plus I met my two favorite Hacker News users there (troyd and carlcoryell). But beyond that, Seattle as a place for start-ups is just strange. At every happy hour, startup meetup, startup coffee event, whatever, invariably the theme always turned into this self-righteous "Seattle is just as important as the Silicon Valley, why don't we get the same respect? I mean we have Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, and .. uhm .. that other company".
philk 17y ago
This is a tremendously simplistic analysis of the situation: a) The sentence "You create jobs by helping grow existing businesses and helping create new businesses." is practically a tautology. b) "Creating jobs" is a complicated issue in the first place. If I start a new company with fifty employees but drive a competitor who used to employ sixty employees out of business, have I created any jobs? c) "Creating jobs" is not the problem. "Creating good jobs" is closer to the problem. You could easily create jobs by cutting welfare and offering all of it's former recipients government jobs paying $50/day to dig holes, but this would not be a positive outcome. d) Creating good jobs in the long term is largely a problem of improving productivity. This means investments in education and infrastructure, and reducing drags on efficiency. e) He's got a line in there arguing in support of bankers. Banking, like tax preparation or law is a a field that is more "administrative overhead" than a productive industry. Unless we are providing these services to foreigners these fields provide little benefit to the country. In conclusion I'm not really sure what the point of his article is to do except complain that the government isn't helping him enough.
- timr 17y ago
  Also, let's not forget that there's a huge class of people who aren't old enough or wealthy enough to retire, but whose current jobs are going away quickly. Those folks aren't going to be working as programmers at startups in the brave new world. Creating "good" jobs then becomes something more like "creating good jobs that can can keep the current population employed". I don't hear many people talking in those terms anymore.
  - philk 17y ago
    I suspect we'd be better off if we invested in education for these folks and retrained them to do something people actually want nowadays. They might not be working as programmers at startups but there's still a lot of worthwhile tasks we could get these people doing with the right preparation and support.
    - timr 17y ago
      "I suspect we'd be better off if we invested in education for these folks and retrained them to do something people actually want nowadays." Problem is, evidence suggests that retraining doesn't work very well. Here's a heartbreaking series of stories about furniture workers who were laid off when their factory outsourced their jobs. The reporter followed them as they took a community college training program, and tried valiantly to get jobs at the Google data center opening nearby: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121516133 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215161... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121567306 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215673... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121576791 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215767... Unsurprisingly, virtually none of the people got jobs at Google, and the ones who didn't ended up doing things like working at WalMart at much lower wages. It's a myth to pretend that we can re-educate enough blue-collar workers to make a dent. We're going to have to find another way, and my suspicion is that it's going to involve a resurrection of trade barriers until older workers can retire.
steveplace 17y ago
It is not the responsibility of the US federal government to guarantee employment. They are being treated as they should.
Yrlec 17y ago
It's not a matter of creating or destroying jobs. It's a matter of productivity. During the past 200 hundred years, employment rates have stayed more or less the same (compared to the revolutionary improvements in standards of living we have accomplished). What has gone up is our producitvity. Sometimes improved productivity creates jobs (through new business) and sometimes it destroys them (people become redundant) but for society overall it's a net win.

66 points by mmaunder 17y ago

How to eliminate the need for more jobs: Use 10 different colors of text in your article, causing half of your readers to kill themselves. Seriously, 1 accent color is more than sufficient.

jason_tko 17y ago
He's creating jobs for graphic designers. :)
- tsally 17y ago
  Or eye-care professionals.

richieb 17y ago

Cringley had a similar article few days ago: http://www.cringely.com/2010/02/the-cringely-2010-not-in-silicon-valley-startup-tour/ http://www.cringely.com/2010/02/the-cringely-2010-not-in-sil...

timr 17y ago

Oh, come on. Saying that a job is created by "growing existing businesses" or "creating new businesses" isn't insightful or useful; it's a tautology. It's like saying that winning a war is simply a matter of killing more people than the other side. Easy as pie. I know that we all like to get huffy and pretend that our favorite ideology is the one that has all the right answers for making jobs, or eliminating poverty, or creating world peace, but ultimately, adults have to acknowledge that there are going to be problems in the world that politicians can't solve. Obama can't make your startup succeed. Congress can't make someone want your product. But they can do more basic things, like making sure that you won't starve to death when you fail, or ensuring that falling ill while starting your company won't bankrupt you (or kill you). They can make sure that the lights turn on, that clean water comes out of your faucet, and that you're reasonably safe at home and work. You've got to take it from there.

seldo 17y ago
Absolutely. Creating a better safety net WOULD really help innovation -- being terrified of not having health insurance is a huge barrier to joining startups for many people. And the current government has so far done nothing to help that, and the republicans even less.
- palish 17y ago
  What a strange fear -- being afraid of not having health insurance. I haven't had a "real job" or health insurance for about a year now, and I don't care at all. If something bad happens to me, I'll put the bill on my credit cards. I doubt anything will happen though. I'm young, healthy, and don't get into car accidents by being stupid. Statistics are on my side here, and I feel completely comfortable living without health insurance for awhile. Unless you have some kind of condition, is there any situation in which the fear of not having health insurance is actually justifiable? I mean, if you want to avoid paying off a huge hospital bill over time, then ok... but come on, if you're starting a startup, gambling a 0.001% chance (or whatever) that you might have to pay 4-5k off over a few years seems like an insanely good bet. Also, I heard from a friend (who is very probably wrong about this) that you don't actually have to pay off a hospital bill. It won't count against your credit score. Is this true? I would never do something like that, but... if not paying the bill doesn't count against your credit score, then I can see why people might not pay it.
  - jorgem 17y ago
    >> Unless you have some kind of condition Apparently, a lot of people do... otherwise the nation wouldn't spend such a large percentage of the GDP on medical care. Be thankful you're not old, yet.
    - prodigal_erik 17y ago
      Yeah, some kind of condition? I'm made out of meat, doesn't that count?
  - 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

tjmc 17y ago

I'm always wary of founders that say "we want to be the next [large company name]". It immediately identifies them as followers rather than leaders and shows their focus is on making money or achieving status above solving problems for customers. No wonder he's asking for a handout.

jackowayed 17y ago
I don't think that was his point. His point was just, "Hey, government, you know who created a whole bunch of jobs? Google! I'm trying to also grow into becoming a giant company like Google did." In this context, saying "I'm trying to be the next Google", is just like an NFL team saying, "We're trying to be the next New Orleans Saints." All it really means is, "I'm trying really hard to succeed."
- tjmc 17y ago
  What more important to him though - growing as big as Google or creating something so good that his company might get that big? The way he frames his goal is a classic "tell" regarding his focus.

potatolicious 17y ago

> "I’m trying to create jobs so hard that I work without a salary. Not only that but I invest my life savings into the cause of creating jobs. I also work harder at my job of creating jobs than most people work at their normal job." I found this bit quite disingenuous. Yes, he is a business owner, and yes, he is part of the demographic of job creators - but "job creation" is not his title nor his primary intent (unless I've grossly misunderstood his startup idea). Founders are in it to create a product and get rich - some have higher-order ideals for what they want to do on their road to riches, but to pretend that you are not acting out of your own self-interest is disingenuous. Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but that bit sounds to me like trying to appear as a populist folk hero when you're really not.

dnsworks 17y ago
"Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, but that bit sounds to me like trying to appear as a populist folk hero when you're really not." Cut him some slack. He's from Seattle, it's a common attitude there. Having lived up there for a while, the start-up scene seemed to mostly focus on it's "we're not from San Francisco so nobody respects us" inferiority complex.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  Actually, I live here - but I'm not in a startup ;) People here are nice enough - distant, antisocial, but nice.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    Don't get me wrong.. I actually liked a lot of Seattle .. At least the coffee shops, donut shops, and cupcake shops (Seattle is good at foods which cater to seasonal depression eating!).. Plus I met my two favorite Hacker News users there (troyd and carlcoryell). But beyond that, Seattle as a place for start-ups is just strange. At every happy hour, startup meetup, startup coffee event, whatever, invariably the theme always turned into this self-righteous "Seattle is just as important as the Silicon Valley, why don't we get the same respect? I mean we have Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, and .. uhm .. that other company".

philk 17y ago

This is a tremendously simplistic analysis of the situation: a) The sentence "You create jobs by helping grow existing businesses and helping create new businesses." is practically a tautology. b) "Creating jobs" is a complicated issue in the first place. If I start a new company with fifty employees but drive a competitor who used to employ sixty employees out of business, have I created any jobs? c) "Creating jobs" is not the problem. "Creating good jobs" is closer to the problem. You could easily create jobs by cutting welfare and offering all of it's former recipients government jobs paying $50/day to dig holes, but this would not be a positive outcome. d) Creating good jobs in the long term is largely a problem of improving productivity. This means investments in education and infrastructure, and reducing drags on efficiency. e) He's got a line in there arguing in support of bankers. Banking, like tax preparation or law is a a field that is more "administrative overhead" than a productive industry. Unless we are providing these services to foreigners these fields provide little benefit to the country. In conclusion I'm not really sure what the point of his article is to do except complain that the government isn't helping him enough.

timr 17y ago
Also, let's not forget that there's a huge class of people who aren't old enough or wealthy enough to retire, but whose current jobs are going away quickly. Those folks aren't going to be working as programmers at startups in the brave new world. Creating "good" jobs then becomes something more like "creating good jobs that can can keep the current population employed". I don't hear many people talking in those terms anymore.
- philk 17y ago
  I suspect we'd be better off if we invested in education for these folks and retrained them to do something people actually want nowadays. They might not be working as programmers at startups but there's still a lot of worthwhile tasks we could get these people doing with the right preparation and support.
  - timr 17y ago
    "I suspect we'd be better off if we invested in education for these folks and retrained them to do something people actually want nowadays." Problem is, evidence suggests that retraining doesn't work very well. Here's a heartbreaking series of stories about furniture workers who were laid off when their factory outsourced their jobs. The reporter followed them as they took a community college training program, and tried valiantly to get jobs at the Google data center opening nearby: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121516133 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215161... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121567306 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215673... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121576791 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215767... Unsurprisingly, virtually none of the people got jobs at Google, and the ones who didn't ended up doing things like working at WalMart at much lower wages. It's a myth to pretend that we can re-educate enough blue-collar workers to make a dent. We're going to have to find another way, and my suspicion is that it's going to involve a resurrection of trade barriers until older workers can retire.

steveplace 17y ago

It is not the responsibility of the US federal government to guarantee employment. They are being treated as they should.

Yrlec 17y ago

It's not a matter of creating or destroying jobs. It's a matter of productivity. During the past 200 hundred years, employment rates have stayed more or less the same (compared to the revolutionary improvements in standards of living we have accomplished). What has gone up is our producitvity. Sometimes improved productivity creates jobs (through new business) and sometimes it destroys them (people become redundant) but for society overall it's a net win.