5 ms·

I'd like to break this down a bit. Firstly, why is this so frustrating. On a practical level, it's frustrating for engineers because to operate as engineers we

by new299 10y ago

I'd like to break this down a bit. Firstly, why is this so frustrating. On a practical level, it's frustrating for engineers because to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies. It's not just the fakeness, it's the bad management that comes with it. They dilute the pool of possible good companies that we could work for. They also increase the cost of doing something actually worth while. Salaries get higher, cost of living increases. So that's why these companies are annoying to engineers. It's not just people being bitter exactly... --- The next question is why does this happen? Firstly, tech investors are not great at DD of science/basic technology startups. Maybe they hire external consultants to do the DD (due diligence). Maybe they rely on their friends (prior investments/contacts). So they roll the dice, invest in some company that looks safe (founders worked a Google etc. etc.) and their friends like. Then you get one big investor who throws a bunch of cash in. A large number of other investors throw in as well. They assume that first, big investor did the DD. This is an easy play for the investors. They don't have to do much work. It's easier than say, doing the DD on a smaller seed stage play. Once it gets bit enough, I guess they assume that they can crush other players in the same area just because they have a stack of cash. TL;DR: They don't do the DD, it's easier to make big bets than lots of small ones. It would probably be better for us, if the cash that was thrown at Magic Leap went to fund 2000 seed stage investments. But investors would find that too hard to do... That's my take anyway. I'd be interested to better understand what others think.

throwaway21jan 10y ago
a16z hasn't been too lucky with DD lately. Not just Magic Leap, I've heard that Improbable was struggling to fulfil its promises, and was being sued as a result.
- new299 10y ago
  But they've only raised 22MUSD how can we expect them to have done anything yet? ;) Suing them seem like an odd thing to do.
  - throwaway21jan 10y ago
    It's not a16z suing them.
    - new299 10y ago
      I guess there's something I don't understand. I couldn't find any information about them being sued. I can't figure out who else would sue them for not meeting their targets aside from shareholders who feel they were deceived.
throwanem 10y ago
> to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies Surely you don't mean software engineers. There's a whole big wide world outside the ongoing bubble, and in entire honesty I've never quite found "move to the Valley, work for a startup" to be the no-brainer it's so often been represented. In particular, the quality of life really doesn't seem to be there, at least not reliably; we hear horror stories all the time from people who've gotten hosed in what seem to be the same relatively small set of ways, at a rate that suggests there's more going on than random chance or sour grapes. And the cost of living in that part of the country is no joke, too. Remote working would solve that, but very few companies take it at all seriously - many fewer than want to be perceived as doing so. It's understandable why they don't, but the transparent duplicity is a bad look. Without remote? Sure, the pay's probably better than you'll find almost anywhere else, but you either plow three quarters of it into cost of living, or spend four hours a day commuting. Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy director and a team full of smart, capable people who have everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to solve problems the organization would otherwise find entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, except in an industry context and with less politics to worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is knowing where to look and how to bring value. And unicorn valuation isn't the only startup bubble, either. From where I sit, comfortably outside it, the whole tech entrepreneurship scene has gotten amazingly up itself in the last few years, just like it did in the run-up to the last bust. Buying into the mythos might feel nice, but unless you're a founder it also makes you easier to exploit than you might otherwise be, and even if you are, it ties you to a sector that's itself beholden to more or less every vagary of financial fortune. Sure, engineering is a profit center in a company like that, whereas in the enterprise world it's usually a cost center. But next time the market takes a nosedive, who's in better shape? Someone in a profit center of a company that found its runway suddenly shortened to negligibility and collapsed for want of money? Or someone in a cost center of a company with the cash reserves and ample profitability to get through lean times effectively intact?
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  >Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley >biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that >among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy >director and a team full of smart, capable people who have >everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to >solve problems the organization would otherwise find >entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, >except in an industry context and with less politics to >worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is >knowing where to look and how to bring value. True. But please tell the second part to the story too. Those innovative teams, can discover cold-fusion, and they will be locked in and ignored- or even worser, there idea would be patented to be held hostage in lawyercabinetscryo until a advancing humanity is willing to pay the ransom. Those startups have only runway to loose and everything to gain- they will not throw away a discovery this way.

by new299 10y ago

throwaway21jan 10y ago

a16z hasn't been too lucky with DD lately. Not just Magic Leap, I've heard that Improbable was struggling to fulfil its promises, and was being sued as a result.

new299 10y ago
But they've only raised 22MUSD how can we expect them to have done anything yet? ;) Suing them seem like an odd thing to do.
- throwaway21jan 10y ago
  It's not a16z suing them.
  - new299 10y ago
    I guess there's something I don't understand. I couldn't find any information about them being sued. I can't figure out who else would sue them for not meeting their targets aside from shareholders who feel they were deceived.

throwanem 10y ago

> to operate as engineers we have to work for these companies Surely you don't mean software engineers. There's a whole big wide world outside the ongoing bubble, and in entire honesty I've never quite found "move to the Valley, work for a startup" to be the no-brainer it's so often been represented. In particular, the quality of life really doesn't seem to be there, at least not reliably; we hear horror stories all the time from people who've gotten hosed in what seem to be the same relatively small set of ways, at a rate that suggests there's more going on than random chance or sour grapes. And the cost of living in that part of the country is no joke, too. Remote working would solve that, but very few companies take it at all seriously - many fewer than want to be perceived as doing so. It's understandable why they don't, but the transparent duplicity is a bad look. Without remote? Sure, the pay's probably better than you'll find almost anywhere else, but you either plow three quarters of it into cost of living, or spend four hours a day commuting. Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy director and a team full of smart, capable people who have everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to solve problems the organization would otherwise find entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, except in an industry context and with less politics to worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is knowing where to look and how to bring value. And unicorn valuation isn't the only startup bubble, either. From where I sit, comfortably outside it, the whole tech entrepreneurship scene has gotten amazingly up itself in the last few years, just like it did in the run-up to the last bust. Buying into the mythos might feel nice, but unless you're a founder it also makes you easier to exploit than you might otherwise be, and even if you are, it ties you to a sector that's itself beholden to more or less every vagary of financial fortune. Sure, engineering is a profit center in a company like that, whereas in the enterprise world it's usually a cost center. But next time the market takes a nosedive, who's in better shape? Someone in a profit center of a company that found its runway suddenly shortened to negligibility and collapsed for want of money? Or someone in a cost center of a company with the cash reserves and ample profitability to get through lean times effectively intact?

Pica_soO 10y ago
>Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley >biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that >among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy >director and a team full of smart, capable people who have >everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to >solve problems the organization would otherwise find >entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, >except in an industry context and with less politics to >worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is >knowing where to look and how to bring value. True. But please tell the second part to the story too. Those innovative teams, can discover cold-fusion, and they will be locked in and ignored- or even worser, there idea would be patented to be held hostage in lawyercabinetscryo until a advancing humanity is willing to pay the ransom. Those startups have only runway to loose and everything to gain- they will not throw away a discovery this way.