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If you're actually set on the ideas laid out there, don't join a pre-existing company. Find a domain you're passionate about advancing, learn what you need to v
by kick 7y ago
If you're actually set on the ideas laid out there, don't join a pre-existing company. Find a domain you're passionate about advancing, learn what you need to validate your hypothesis on improvement, then do what you need to do to advance it. If you don't have any passion about whatever you'd be doing, there's not really any point; the world doesn't advance because of people who don't care about what they're doing. Those people make a whole bunch of money, though.
- sanderjd 7y agoThis answer is a shame though. It would be more efficient for a lot of passionate people to join companies with an existing head start instead of starting a bunch of small efforts. More wood behind fewer arrows. A big part of this problem is that our society glorifies entrepreneurship more so than coming together in large cohesive groups to collectively do something big. For example, much of what this article discusses are political problems. Those problems need large political movements and institutions, not startups.
- kick 7y agoThe answer is a shame, but until collective ownership becomes more common, it's the right one.
- soared 7y agoPut more simply: Quit your job, learn to be an expert in a new field, raise capital, start a company, change the world. Simple.
- kick 7y agoYou don't need to be an expert in a field to raise capital or start a company. Most of the most valuable companies in the world weren't started by experts, and most of the most influential ones as well. Venture capitalists will throw money at just about anything.
- TheDong 7y agoThe parent comment is asking for tractable ways for a person to help improve things. Starting a company is not tractable for almost anyone. If you have kids, are poor, etc, you need some form of income. If you don't fit the right mold, you're unlikely to get VCs to invest in you. Starting a company is not a feasible option for most people, and the average company fails and ends up causing nothing but harm for all involved (in the form of lost years of their life they could be doing something that didn't fail so). Your answer amounts to "you can't do anything. It's impossible unless you're so privileged or already independently wealthy that you can start a company". Your answer sounds like "Well, Bill Gates made the Bill Gates foundation, just make your own research institution".
- kick 7y agoA software engineer is privileged. You're acting as if he or she was a fast-food worker. If you want to actually change things, you've got to use what privilege you have to advance things.