13 ms·

Lived Fast, Died Young, Left a Tired Corpse

126 points by mattyb 16y ago

michael_dorfman 16y ago
Like a lot of Coding Horror articles, there's less here than meets the eye. Unless I am missing some subtle subtext, the content is basically "Netscape did some cool things, back in the day", to which those of us over a certain age can only reply "No duh." A deeper analysis of the Netscape case would be a fascinating read. This, however, isn't it.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  I think the snippet about "Code Rush" being available online was useful, and perhaps there's a deeper analysis of Netscape available there.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  I think he's going for "Netscape, unlike (my example) webvan.com, did some cool things, back in the day". It's not that it's any less bankrupt; it's not that the Netscape coders didn't work long hours (indeed, see jwz's well-known ramblings); the point is that Netscape left an impressive legacy (in Navigator/Firefox, in a host of highly succesful people, ...). Netscape is dead, but all the hard work was not (entirely) for nothing. Also see TomOfTTB's comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2162290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2162290.
thwarted 16y ago
That was over ten years ago. For context, Mark Zuckerberg was all of sixteen when the original web bubble popped. Yes, you will have incredibly lucrative job offers in this bubble. That's the easy part. As Startup.com and Code Rush illustrate, the hard part is figuring out why you are working all those long hours. If this is supposed to some kind of reminder as to what we're doing with our lives, it's not going to work to stop a bubble. Those who will work those long hours this time aren't old enough to have lived through it the first time. The people who were the foot soldiers of the bubble ten years ago are not the ones who are going to be the foot soldiers in the next bubble: I seriously doubt anyone who worked the long hours ten years ago is going to consciously make a choice to do so again. It's not just that our collective memory is short, it's that there are so many new, young, impressionable, minds with no memory to influence their decisions.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  This is just how I read it and I might be reading a lot of my own experience into things but I was a very young foot soldier the last time (still in my teens) and I think there's an important point here. The thing about the last bubble is most of the foot soldiers that I knew weren't working to cash out. They were working to change the world. Don't get me wrong. Money was a nice consolation prize but still. The problem today is most of the people I meet in startups seem to have the same goals. For all the talk I can't recall meeting a founder who openly admitted to building a company just to flip it. Yet they're repeating the mistakes of the late 90s because our industry has very little institutional memory (perhaps all that looking forward makes us forget to look back) I think his point here is that those of us who were there need to remember what happened and make a point of imparting those lessons to those who weren't there. Because they were too young to really see what was going on.
- spitfire 16y ago
  So what you're saying, is that it's good to be king? If you lived through the first dotcom as a foot-solder you now have some experience and wisdom behind you and access to lots of cheap, unsophisticated labour willing to work long hours. Sort of like Mark Zuckerburg now.... Maybe he is smart after all.
- js2 16y ago
  I started my post-collegiate career in 1997, joining a startup. You know why? I love technology and it was a great job. In 2000, I joined another startup. You know why? I love technology and it was a great job too. In 2009, I joined yet another startup. You know why? I love technology and it's still a great job. Will this startup crash and burn? Maybe. If it does, I'll roll the dice and try again. Over fifteen years, I've worked with lots of great people, on mostly exciting work, solving new problems, often with technology that didn't exist last year. Sometimes it takes long hours, and sometimes I can scale back a bit. Some of us do what we do because we have fun doing it. In the mean time, my work has enabled me to support a family and contribute meaningfully to society, even if I'm not changing the world 100% of the time. $0.02.
bigwally 16y ago
Amazing how we go from; Stock market bubble to Netscape to Facebook to Stock market bubble. Jeff Atwood should write for CNN or USA today.
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  Well, Coding Horror's the CNN/USA Today of blogs (and TechCrunch is the National Enquirer).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisaycock 16y ago
    And Valleywag is the US Weekly.
- kj12345 16y ago
  The contention is that Netscape was part of the last bubble and Facebook could be part of a new bubble, but that the constant focus for developers should be on achieving their goals and not getting sidetracked by the power of these trends. Seems pretty coherent to me.
stretchwithme 16y ago
With all of the printing of money going on and no other sound investments around to absorb it, its no wonder another bubble is developing. You literally cannot even safely buy municipal bonds these days. So anything that has been growing will get bubbled. Until, of course, it cannot be bubbled no more and an extreme lack of people willing to overpay arrives.
chopsueyar 16y ago
e-Dreams?
jsmcgd 16y ago
Personally I look forward to the day when there is a bubble because then and only then will the bubble speculation stop, if only for a brief while.
- there 16y ago
  but what about the dreaded double-dip bubble?!
  - ahi 16y ago
    you mean the dubble bubble.
motters 16y ago
I'm not seeing any signs of bubblenomics going on around here. Where's the beef?
- kprobst 16y ago
  Perhaps we're jaded with visions of the previous one, with its excesses and unrelenting and misplaced hubris. Maybe the next one will be muted, but it doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. On the other hand not all bubbles are bad.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Y'know, I think the "bubble" is primarily in the price of one asset, which isn't even publicly traded: Facebook shares. And I could be wrong about that one too if they ever develop a better revenue model.
gamble 16y ago
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but I suspect that part of the reason Facebook's recent investors have accepted such a ridiculous valuation is that they expect the everday ubiquity of Facebook to drive a flood of dumb money into Facebook after the inevitable IPO.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  Someone is definitely taking that attitude. I bet on Goldman Sachs when this came up a while ago, describing their actions as 'Pump and Dump', but there's no reason their customers couldn't be doing the same. The problem is that we've then very clearly got the first two layers of a bubble pyramid, and the roadmap for the next crash becoming all the more clear. Honestly, some days I do wonder if we wouldn't be better off as a society radically restricting the operation of the various investment markets. The current system seems almost designed to create financial instability through irrational exuberance, deliberate bubble creation and wild crashes while they work out how to build the next house of cards...
  - benohear 16y ago
    No shit. My take on boom and bust is: - Boom is the process by which the money of the middle classes is transferred to the top few % - Bust is when they announce that the transfer is complete
    - johngalt 16y ago
      So don't participate in the financial markets. At the moment there is a lot of money chasing very few good bets. Figure out a way to be a good bet, and rake it in.
      - benohear 16y ago
        Isn't there a direct contradiction between not participating and "finding a good bet and raking it in"? EDIT: Also, I'm not sure "not participating" works anymore. The last bust was not paid for by people gullible enough to buy into it, but by government debt. In the long run that means it will be paid for at least in part by inflation (which again hits people with savings).
narrator 16y ago
This onion article is now more relevant than ever: http://www.theonion.com/articles/recessionplagued-nation-demands-new-bubble-to-inve,2486/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/recessionplagued-nation-dem...
Luyt 16y ago
What are they eating unhealthy in that movie! Boxes full of sugary donuts, cream cakes, piles of empty Coke bottles. I hope that nowadays they serve better food at those kind of companies.
- lukifer 16y ago
  I can't help but wonder if there was a method to their madness. The brain requires vast amounts of caloric energy to do anything interesting, and maybe all that corn syrup went to good use: solving problems and writing code. Anecdotally, one of the best programmers I've ever met was bean-pole skinny and fueled himself with a big glass of OJ in the morning, cheeseburgers and fries at every lunch, and eating candy all day while writing code. (Of course, he also got lots of physical exercise). Just a thought.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    The problem is that a sugary diet will lead to insulin resistance, which will lead to the need for more sugar ...
  - merijnv 16y ago
    Fructose is actually poison (not in the sense of "you die now", but in the long term alcohol sense) with almost no energy benefit. The high fructose corn syrup and sucrose (50% fructose, 50% glucose) used in most candy are remarkably inefficient sources of energy. The fructose provides practically zero and although the glucose in sucrose is good, there are better sources for it. For source, watch "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM) and/or look up the research it references.
    - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
      What Lustig doesn't mention is that sugar is what your brain runs on. Eating too much sugar is not good for actual marathons but it works great for coding marathons.
cloudwalking 16y ago
It seems to me there is a fundamental difference between today's market and the dotcom bubble. Right now, sites with ridiculous valuations actually provide a great deal of value. Facebook has >500,000,000 people using it and makes a great deal of money. Groupon also makes a great deal of money. Google too. Sure, it seems like we might be in a bubble, but at the same time things seem different.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  But you have to remember that out of that bubble came a lot of companies that also provided value. Google came out of it (Google was from the last era, not this one). Akamai came out of it. VMWare came out of it. The more things seem different, the more they're the same. The big diff between now and then was that the first era was all about IPOs. Now its all about acquisition. I personally think the acquisition route is more ethical, since presumably the companies buying understand that your company may never be worth $X on its own, but strategically may be valuable. Whereas the IPO route seem like more of a Ponzi scheme.
  - richcollins 16y ago
    The same people that buy IPO stock own stock in the companies that make bad acquisitions.
ecounysis 16y ago
Are tech bubbles all that bad? They are periods of economic optimism where money flows into tech companies furthering R&D and technological growth in a society. In the long run this is a very good thing. Where would we be now if it weren't for the last bubble, or the one before that?
jtchang 16y ago
The tick lines on the graph shown are drawn in an exponentially decreasing fashion. Makes it look like we are moving really close to pre-1999 days when in fact we have a bit more room to "bubble".

126 points by mattyb 16y ago

Like a lot of Coding Horror articles, there's less here than meets the eye. Unless I am missing some subtle subtext, the content is basically "Netscape did some cool things, back in the day", to which those of us over a certain age can only reply "No duh." A deeper analysis of the Netscape case would be a fascinating read. This, however, isn't it.

ojbyrne 16y ago
I think the snippet about "Code Rush" being available online was useful, and perhaps there's a deeper analysis of Netscape available there.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
I think he's going for "Netscape, unlike (my example) webvan.com, did some cool things, back in the day". It's not that it's any less bankrupt; it's not that the Netscape coders didn't work long hours (indeed, see jwz's well-known ramblings); the point is that Netscape left an impressive legacy (in Navigator/Firefox, in a host of highly succesful people, ...). Netscape is dead, but all the hard work was not (entirely) for nothing. Also see TomOfTTB's comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2162290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2162290.

thwarted 16y ago

That was over ten years ago. For context, Mark Zuckerberg was all of sixteen when the original web bubble popped. Yes, you will have incredibly lucrative job offers in this bubble. That's the easy part. As Startup.com and Code Rush illustrate, the hard part is figuring out why you are working all those long hours. If this is supposed to some kind of reminder as to what we're doing with our lives, it's not going to work to stop a bubble. Those who will work those long hours this time aren't old enough to have lived through it the first time. The people who were the foot soldiers of the bubble ten years ago are not the ones who are going to be the foot soldiers in the next bubble: I seriously doubt anyone who worked the long hours ten years ago is going to consciously make a choice to do so again. It's not just that our collective memory is short, it's that there are so many new, young, impressionable, minds with no memory to influence their decisions.

TomOfTTB 16y ago
This is just how I read it and I might be reading a lot of my own experience into things but I was a very young foot soldier the last time (still in my teens) and I think there's an important point here. The thing about the last bubble is most of the foot soldiers that I knew weren't working to cash out. They were working to change the world. Don't get me wrong. Money was a nice consolation prize but still. The problem today is most of the people I meet in startups seem to have the same goals. For all the talk I can't recall meeting a founder who openly admitted to building a company just to flip it. Yet they're repeating the mistakes of the late 90s because our industry has very little institutional memory (perhaps all that looking forward makes us forget to look back) I think his point here is that those of us who were there need to remember what happened and make a point of imparting those lessons to those who weren't there. Because they were too young to really see what was going on.
spitfire 16y ago
So what you're saying, is that it's good to be king? If you lived through the first dotcom as a foot-solder you now have some experience and wisdom behind you and access to lots of cheap, unsophisticated labour willing to work long hours. Sort of like Mark Zuckerburg now.... Maybe he is smart after all.
js2 16y ago
I started my post-collegiate career in 1997, joining a startup. You know why? I love technology and it was a great job. In 2000, I joined another startup. You know why? I love technology and it was a great job too. In 2009, I joined yet another startup. You know why? I love technology and it's still a great job. Will this startup crash and burn? Maybe. If it does, I'll roll the dice and try again. Over fifteen years, I've worked with lots of great people, on mostly exciting work, solving new problems, often with technology that didn't exist last year. Sometimes it takes long hours, and sometimes I can scale back a bit. Some of us do what we do because we have fun doing it. In the mean time, my work has enabled me to support a family and contribute meaningfully to society, even if I'm not changing the world 100% of the time. $0.02.

bigwally 16y ago

Amazing how we go from; Stock market bubble to Netscape to Facebook to Stock market bubble. Jeff Atwood should write for CNN or USA today.

w1ntermute 16y ago
Well, Coding Horror's the CNN/USA Today of blogs (and TechCrunch is the National Enquirer).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  And Valleywag is the US Weekly.
kj12345 16y ago
The contention is that Netscape was part of the last bubble and Facebook could be part of a new bubble, but that the constant focus for developers should be on achieving their goals and not getting sidetracked by the power of these trends. Seems pretty coherent to me.

stretchwithme 16y ago

With all of the printing of money going on and no other sound investments around to absorb it, its no wonder another bubble is developing. You literally cannot even safely buy municipal bonds these days. So anything that has been growing will get bubbled. Until, of course, it cannot be bubbled no more and an extreme lack of people willing to overpay arrives.

chopsueyar 16y ago

e-Dreams?

jsmcgd 16y ago

Personally I look forward to the day when there is a bubble because then and only then will the bubble speculation stop, if only for a brief while.

there 16y ago
but what about the dreaded double-dip bubble?!
- ahi 16y ago
  you mean the dubble bubble.

motters 16y ago

I'm not seeing any signs of bubblenomics going on around here. Where's the beef?

kprobst 16y ago
Perhaps we're jaded with visions of the previous one, with its excesses and unrelenting and misplaced hubris. Maybe the next one will be muted, but it doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. On the other hand not all bubbles are bad.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Y'know, I think the "bubble" is primarily in the price of one asset, which isn't even publicly traded: Facebook shares. And I could be wrong about that one too if they ever develop a better revenue model.

gamble 16y ago

Perhaps I'm being cynical, but I suspect that part of the reason Facebook's recent investors have accepted such a ridiculous valuation is that they expect the everday ubiquity of Facebook to drive a flood of dumb money into Facebook after the inevitable IPO.

eftpotrm 16y ago
Someone is definitely taking that attitude. I bet on Goldman Sachs when this came up a while ago, describing their actions as 'Pump and Dump', but there's no reason their customers couldn't be doing the same. The problem is that we've then very clearly got the first two layers of a bubble pyramid, and the roadmap for the next crash becoming all the more clear. Honestly, some days I do wonder if we wouldn't be better off as a society radically restricting the operation of the various investment markets. The current system seems almost designed to create financial instability through irrational exuberance, deliberate bubble creation and wild crashes while they work out how to build the next house of cards...
- benohear 16y ago
  No shit. My take on boom and bust is: - Boom is the process by which the money of the middle classes is transferred to the top few % - Bust is when they announce that the transfer is complete
  - johngalt 16y ago
    So don't participate in the financial markets. At the moment there is a lot of money chasing very few good bets. Figure out a way to be a good bet, and rake it in.
    - benohear 16y ago
      Isn't there a direct contradiction between not participating and "finding a good bet and raking it in"? EDIT: Also, I'm not sure "not participating" works anymore. The last bust was not paid for by people gullible enough to buy into it, but by government debt. In the long run that means it will be paid for at least in part by inflation (which again hits people with savings).

narrator 16y ago

This onion article is now more relevant than ever: http://www.theonion.com/articles/recessionplagued-nation-demands-new-bubble-to-inve,2486/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/recessionplagued-nation-dem...

Luyt 16y ago

What are they eating unhealthy in that movie! Boxes full of sugary donuts, cream cakes, piles of empty Coke bottles. I hope that nowadays they serve better food at those kind of companies.

lukifer 16y ago
I can't help but wonder if there was a method to their madness. The brain requires vast amounts of caloric energy to do anything interesting, and maybe all that corn syrup went to good use: solving problems and writing code. Anecdotally, one of the best programmers I've ever met was bean-pole skinny and fueled himself with a big glass of OJ in the morning, cheeseburgers and fries at every lunch, and eating candy all day while writing code. (Of course, he also got lots of physical exercise). Just a thought.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  The problem is that a sugary diet will lead to insulin resistance, which will lead to the need for more sugar ...
- merijnv 16y ago
  Fructose is actually poison (not in the sense of "you die now", but in the long term alcohol sense) with almost no energy benefit. The high fructose corn syrup and sucrose (50% fructose, 50% glucose) used in most candy are remarkably inefficient sources of energy. The fructose provides practically zero and although the glucose in sucrose is good, there are better sources for it. For source, watch "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM) and/or look up the research it references.
  - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    What Lustig doesn't mention is that sugar is what your brain runs on. Eating too much sugar is not good for actual marathons but it works great for coding marathons.

cloudwalking 16y ago

It seems to me there is a fundamental difference between today's market and the dotcom bubble. Right now, sites with ridiculous valuations actually provide a great deal of value. Facebook has >500,000,000 people using it and makes a great deal of money. Groupon also makes a great deal of money. Google too. Sure, it seems like we might be in a bubble, but at the same time things seem different.

kenjackson 16y ago
But you have to remember that out of that bubble came a lot of companies that also provided value. Google came out of it (Google was from the last era, not this one). Akamai came out of it. VMWare came out of it. The more things seem different, the more they're the same. The big diff between now and then was that the first era was all about IPOs. Now its all about acquisition. I personally think the acquisition route is more ethical, since presumably the companies buying understand that your company may never be worth $X on its own, but strategically may be valuable. Whereas the IPO route seem like more of a Ponzi scheme.
- richcollins 16y ago
  The same people that buy IPO stock own stock in the companies that make bad acquisitions.

ecounysis 16y ago

Are tech bubbles all that bad? They are periods of economic optimism where money flows into tech companies furthering R&D and technological growth in a society. In the long run this is a very good thing. Where would we be now if it weren't for the last bubble, or the one before that?

jtchang 16y ago

The tick lines on the graph shown are drawn in an exponentially decreasing fashion. Makes it look like we are moving really close to pre-1999 days when in fact we have a bit more room to "bubble".