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I highly doubt the Gab fiasco would receive even a fraction of the attention it did if it was framed as a failure of YC to choose good startups rather than pers

I highly doubt the Gab fiasco would receive even a fraction of the attention it did if it was framed as a failure of YC to choose good startups rather than personal failings of the founder. I note the conspicuous lack of actual counterexamples in your post (notably Gab itself was never YC funded)...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is some kind of emergent phenomena and not deliberate manipulation. I agree that it doesn't make too much sense for it to be deliberate manipulation, and YC still appears to be more transparent than most VC groups.

kodah 5y ago
My conspicuous lack of examples is mere laziness. If you want to prove it, just go look. This board is open. What I will say from reviewing your comments is that you're obviously discontented with software. In many ways I don't blame you, this industry is a young person's game, and even in my thirties I am dying. I can feel it when I'm annoyed that someone reprioritized parts of my project to fit their demands and concerns, even when they'd be solved by how the team had decided to tackle them. I sense it when I get frustrated with people in my life and my only reaction, in order to avoid lashing out at them, is to act like I am devoid of feeling. I have this mode where my eyes glaze over, my voice softens, and I relax - it's totally unnatural, I'm a former Marine, passion and energy are part and parcel to who I am, yet I show those to people in software and they get butthurt with the quickness of reverse time dilation. If these comments and skepticism are the result of that, then you're falling into the sink hole I was in where I had a beef and reflected that on the wider industry. I still have beefs but they're pretty specific and I don't translate them to the wider world anymore. Maybe all that's unrelated though, but in the case it's not I hope these words help.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  Thanks - I am indeed discontented with software, though not exactly for those reasons. It's interesting that you think it's a young person's game, that's probably true when you're an employee (at certain companies) but I think founders above 30 are generally known to build better businesses. IIRC one of YC's founding theses was that younger (than 30) people deserve a chance to get funded and prove their worth. I think software, like science, isn't anything like what it was supposed to be. Not in the sense that the world has changed, but more in the personal sense. Playing around with pipettes in your kitchen is a vastly different (and oh so apolitical...) world than the ivory towers of academia. Even so, what I'm actually unhappy with is the idea of being a cog in a machine, however large and impressive the machine may be. It's not about the insignificance of the cog - it's about the unimaginative and inextensible role the cog plays. As someone who has many talents beyond software, I think I'd be able to employ myself more efficiently than any third party could.
  - kodah 5y ago
    Sharing this with you, which was on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457

kodah 5y ago

My conspicuous lack of examples is mere laziness. If you want to prove it, just go look. This board is open. What I will say from reviewing your comments is that you're obviously discontented with software. In many ways I don't blame you, this industry is a young person's game, and even in my thirties I am dying. I can feel it when I'm annoyed that someone reprioritized parts of my project to fit their demands and concerns, even when they'd be solved by how the team had decided to tackle them. I sense it when I get frustrated with people in my life and my only reaction, in order to avoid lashing out at them, is to act like I am devoid of feeling. I have this mode where my eyes glaze over, my voice softens, and I relax - it's totally unnatural, I'm a former Marine, passion and energy are part and parcel to who I am, yet I show those to people in software and they get butthurt with the quickness of reverse time dilation. If these comments and skepticism are the result of that, then you're falling into the sink hole I was in where I had a beef and reflected that on the wider industry. I still have beefs but they're pretty specific and I don't translate them to the wider world anymore. Maybe all that's unrelated though, but in the case it's not I hope these words help.

sombremesa 5y ago
Thanks - I am indeed discontented with software, though not exactly for those reasons. It's interesting that you think it's a young person's game, that's probably true when you're an employee (at certain companies) but I think founders above 30 are generally known to build better businesses. IIRC one of YC's founding theses was that younger (than 30) people deserve a chance to get funded and prove their worth. I think software, like science, isn't anything like what it was supposed to be. Not in the sense that the world has changed, but more in the personal sense. Playing around with pipettes in your kitchen is a vastly different (and oh so apolitical...) world than the ivory towers of academia. Even so, what I'm actually unhappy with is the idea of being a cog in a machine, however large and impressive the machine may be. It's not about the insignificance of the cog - it's about the unimaginative and inextensible role the cog plays. As someone who has many talents beyond software, I think I'd be able to employ myself more efficiently than any third party could.
- kodah 5y ago
  Sharing this with you, which was on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457