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Anyone feel that everything from the Facebook Hail Mary pivot to Meta, to the gutting of Twitter, to the cargo cult mass layoffs, and now all this entire SVB af

Anyone feel that everything from the Facebook Hail Mary pivot to Meta, to the gutting of Twitter, to the cargo cult mass layoffs, and now all this entire SVB affair has just completely ripped off the mask of the tech industry? It used to be obvious charlatans like Theranos or not-even-tech hucksters like WeWork, marginal one-offs like Fast, an easily derided industry like crypto. But in the last few months, both established FAANG companies, once-hyped unicorns, now even YC startups are being drawn into vast resonating cascades of incompetence and fail. Interest rates have risen and the entire industry (Apple aside) has been exposed as naked all along. All of the pontificating tech thought leaders and VCs of the last decade? Nothing against the whims of the Fed.

TechBro8615 4y ago
Incompetence has been spreading throughout all industries for the past few years. I frequently think back to this Ask HN from September 2020 asking if anyone else has noticed the trend. [0] That said, it seems a bit (outrageously) disingenuous to blame this on "tech" incompetence, when these startups are failing through no fault of their own, and when in fact the failure is due solely to the incompetence of bankers. The CFO of Lehman Global Investment Bank was an executive at SVB, having started there in 2007 just one year prior to Lehman going bankrupt. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24421934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24421934
muzz 4y ago
Only YC is out there with this kind of histrionics (and maybe a few others like David Sacks). You don't see it from any other prominent Silicon Valley figures
swatcoder 4y ago
Hah! Welcome to the old timers club, my friend. This has all happened before and will all happen again. If this is the real bust we’ve been due for on this cycle, a few years will pass and you’ll watch a new generation of inexperienced young founders believe they have it all figured out, while filthy rich outsiders throw play money at them like a casino game, and you watch mirthfully from your modest and stable careerist work as it all goes up up up and down down down again.

TechBro8615 4y ago

Incompetence has been spreading throughout all industries for the past few years. I frequently think back to this Ask HN from September 2020 asking if anyone else has noticed the trend. [0] That said, it seems a bit (outrageously) disingenuous to blame this on "tech" incompetence, when these startups are failing through no fault of their own, and when in fact the failure is due solely to the incompetence of bankers. The CFO of Lehman Global Investment Bank was an executive at SVB, having started there in 2007 just one year prior to Lehman going bankrupt. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24421934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24421934

muzz 4y ago

Only YC is out there with this kind of histrionics (and maybe a few others like David Sacks). You don't see it from any other prominent Silicon Valley figures

swatcoder 4y ago

Hah! Welcome to the old timers club, my friend. This has all happened before and will all happen again. If this is the real bust we’ve been due for on this cycle, a few years will pass and you’ll watch a new generation of inexperienced young founders believe they have it all figured out, while filthy rich outsiders throw play money at them like a casino game, and you watch mirthfully from your modest and stable careerist work as it all goes up up up and down down down again.