3 ms·

They're missing the real story of what's going on right now. Because of a variety of circumstances, like... * recession * weak job market * convergence of m

by dstein 16y ago

They're missing the real story of what's going on right now. Because of a variety of circumstances, like... * recession * weak job market * convergence of mobile/web/social technologies * cloud computing reducing startup costs ... we are experiencing one of the biggest technological entrepreneurial boom times in history. That's why Google can't hold onto their brightest developers... but it's probably also happening to every big company in the computing industry.

kkowalczyk 16y ago
While it's true that we have entrepreneurial boom, I don't think it's caused by the things you listed. Recession/weak job market for programmers is a thing of the past, at least in Silicon Valley. See the hiring volume of Google and other established companies and Google and others publicly declaring it's a "war for talent". In a recession a company doesn't give 10% raise to every employee and has 2000+ open jobs. Startup costs for web-based companies have been ridiculously low for the past 5 years. Several years ago I've been leasing a decent server for $100/month. Reducing this to $50/month has no meaningful impact on startup costs. As to convergence - I don't see how that's relevant. There's always some "next big thing" that fires up people's imagination and fueling their startup ambitions. If I were to opine, I would say that the biggest reason for the boom is stratospheric raise of Y Combinator and other companies following that model + raise of TechCrunch which focuses on reporting happenings in the startup world.
- dstein 16y ago
  You've got it backwards. Techcrunch and YC are not in any way responsible for the economic environment that has been forming over the past decade. We're experiencing the second wave of the tech boom from the 1990's. TC and YC are cheerleaders for what was already occurring. * Recession/weak job market for programmers is a thing of the past, at least in Silicon Valley. The job market is weak, in terms of quality jobs and pay. Outside SV the job market for job seekers is absymal. There are many skilled programmers who don't live in SV and can earn more money developing websites and web apps than they can in the job market. Companies are being left with open jobs and unable to fill them because the talent is being eliminated from the job pool. * Reducing this to $50/month has no meaningful impact on startup costs. I was referring to the large-scale cloud computing, not replacing virtual dedicated hosts with VPS. I don't have exact numbers but I'd gamble that it costs 2 orders of magnitude less money to develop a large-scale datacenter than it did a decade ago.

by dstein 16y ago

kkowalczyk 16y ago

While it's true that we have entrepreneurial boom, I don't think it's caused by the things you listed. Recession/weak job market for programmers is a thing of the past, at least in Silicon Valley. See the hiring volume of Google and other established companies and Google and others publicly declaring it's a "war for talent". In a recession a company doesn't give 10% raise to every employee and has 2000+ open jobs. Startup costs for web-based companies have been ridiculously low for the past 5 years. Several years ago I've been leasing a decent server for $100/month. Reducing this to $50/month has no meaningful impact on startup costs. As to convergence - I don't see how that's relevant. There's always some "next big thing" that fires up people's imagination and fueling their startup ambitions. If I were to opine, I would say that the biggest reason for the boom is stratospheric raise of Y Combinator and other companies following that model + raise of TechCrunch which focuses on reporting happenings in the startup world.

dstein 16y ago
You've got it backwards. Techcrunch and YC are not in any way responsible for the economic environment that has been forming over the past decade. We're experiencing the second wave of the tech boom from the 1990's. TC and YC are cheerleaders for what was already occurring. * Recession/weak job market for programmers is a thing of the past, at least in Silicon Valley. The job market is weak, in terms of quality jobs and pay. Outside SV the job market for job seekers is absymal. There are many skilled programmers who don't live in SV and can earn more money developing websites and web apps than they can in the job market. Companies are being left with open jobs and unable to fill them because the talent is being eliminated from the job pool. * Reducing this to $50/month has no meaningful impact on startup costs. I was referring to the large-scale cloud computing, not replacing virtual dedicated hosts with VPS. I don't have exact numbers but I'd gamble that it costs 2 orders of magnitude less money to develop a large-scale datacenter than it did a decade ago.