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One of my landlords was a guy like "Alex", and had a similar fate. I can't say I shed a single tear for him or Alex. What services did Alex render in this stor

One of my landlords was a guy like "Alex", and had a similar fate. I can't say I shed a single tear for him or Alex. What services did Alex render in this story to justify being a "rising star"? That one account likely earned him significant compensation -- multiples of what I made doing 80 hour weeks in my 20s at 20k/yr -- for a significant chunk of his earning career. For what? A few phone calls to someone who didn't want to be contacted. The rent seeking component of the American economy needs to be competed out of existence. Their margin is everyone else's broken back.

pepy 4y ago
Alex did nothing to get that account, he did not put any meaningful effort into better that client's experience and did nothing to lose it. It was all outside of his actions and any benefit he received was purely accidental.
brandonmenc 4y ago
In other SVB threads commenters are like, if you have this much money it should go into a CD ladder or whatever instead of sitting in a big pile where only $250k of it is actually insured by the FDIC. Maybe that's one of the things Alex wanted to sell him.
intelVISA 4y ago
Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords?
- x-complexity 4y ago
  > Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords? There is a false equivalency made here, in that it assumes that the debate regarding labor & the debate regarding capital are interchangeable. Landlords (& possibly account managers like "Alex") derive their compensation from the maintenance & management of the capital's safety & utility: The quality of said capital (whether cash or real estate) should remain constant if they did their job. The debate enters in when the capital owners/managers put in little documented effort & receive large compensations in response. For Software Corps, their compensations are derived from difference between the value created from the creative, technical, & outreach labor put in from their SWEs, designers, marketers, etc., and the cost of compensating that labor + maintaining the necessary equipment to make the labor usable. For this, the debate enters in on how much they should be compensated for the labor put in. The two debates are not strictly equal.
- csomar 4y ago
  HashiCorp is one of the most Open Source friendly companies out there. Most of their stack is open sourced, open, and very fairly licensed. I'd say HashiCorp is an exemplar.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  > Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs You’ve managed to be simultaneously very right and so wrong
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  OSS contributors compare to some bank middle manager in what way?
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords? I don't have much respect for people who make their living off of capital rather than labor.
swatcoder 4y ago
For a more traditional small businesses, Alex would be helpful in opening a line of credit, setting up payroll through the bank’s system, suggesting a money market account or CD rotation to park cash, etc — all with a personal familiarity with you and your business, while genuinely invested in helping it financially grow (because that’s good for the bank). Having a good banker that you trust is very helpful when you’re running a small/local business or bootstrapping. And yes, just like an B2B SaaS or freemium game that gets lucky and lands a low-maintenance whale, a banker can sometimes earn a lot for doing very little. But that occasional exception doesn’t mean that they’re useless and “need to be competed out of business”
- jojobas 4y ago
  A more traditional small business would have some assets other than whiteboard scribbles and slide decks, and life expectancy of more than a couple of years.
balls187 4y ago
> What services did Alex render in this story to justify being a "rising star" He didn't. What is perhaps a touch of poetry is the author learning (the hardway) about the lessons with managing large amounts of cash, while simultaneously learning the hardway about being a customer account manager. As another commenter wrote, Alex blew his opportunity.

pepy 4y ago

Alex did nothing to get that account, he did not put any meaningful effort into better that client's experience and did nothing to lose it. It was all outside of his actions and any benefit he received was purely accidental.

brandonmenc 4y ago

In other SVB threads commenters are like, if you have this much money it should go into a CD ladder or whatever instead of sitting in a big pile where only $250k of it is actually insured by the FDIC. Maybe that's one of the things Alex wanted to sell him.

intelVISA 4y ago

Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords?

x-complexity 4y ago
> Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords? There is a false equivalency made here, in that it assumes that the debate regarding labor & the debate regarding capital are interchangeable. Landlords (& possibly account managers like "Alex") derive their compensation from the maintenance & management of the capital's safety & utility: The quality of said capital (whether cash or real estate) should remain constant if they did their job. The debate enters in when the capital owners/managers put in little documented effort & receive large compensations in response. For Software Corps, their compensations are derived from difference between the value created from the creative, technical, & outreach labor put in from their SWEs, designers, marketers, etc., and the cost of compensating that labor + maintaining the necessary equipment to make the labor usable. For this, the debate enters in on how much they should be compensated for the labor put in. The two debates are not strictly equal.
csomar 4y ago
HashiCorp is one of the most Open Source friendly companies out there. Most of their stack is open sourced, open, and very fairly licensed. I'd say HashiCorp is an exemplar.
dilyevsky 4y ago
> Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs You’ve managed to be simultaneously very right and so wrong
the_gipsy 4y ago
OSS contributors compare to some bank middle manager in what way?
thwayunion 4y ago
> Big corps (like HashiCorp) make their margins on SWE and FOSS' backs - do you owe them the same ire as landlords? I don't have much respect for people who make their living off of capital rather than labor.

swatcoder 4y ago

For a more traditional small businesses, Alex would be helpful in opening a line of credit, setting up payroll through the bank’s system, suggesting a money market account or CD rotation to park cash, etc — all with a personal familiarity with you and your business, while genuinely invested in helping it financially grow (because that’s good for the bank). Having a good banker that you trust is very helpful when you’re running a small/local business or bootstrapping. And yes, just like an B2B SaaS or freemium game that gets lucky and lands a low-maintenance whale, a banker can sometimes earn a lot for doing very little. But that occasional exception doesn’t mean that they’re useless and “need to be competed out of business”

jojobas 4y ago
A more traditional small business would have some assets other than whiteboard scribbles and slide decks, and life expectancy of more than a couple of years.

balls187 4y ago

> What services did Alex render in this story to justify being a "rising star" He didn't. What is perhaps a touch of poetry is the author learning (the hardway) about the lessons with managing large amounts of cash, while simultaneously learning the hardway about being a customer account manager. As another commenter wrote, Alex blew his opportunity.