8 ms·

It's tempting to dismiss this as just e-lebrity gossip, but I think that this kind of rottenness is probably more dangerous to the Valley than threats from Wash

It's tempting to dismiss this as just e-lebrity gossip, but I think that this kind of rottenness is probably more dangerous to the Valley than threats from Washington or talk of bubbles. If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. If somebody is an unscrupulous douchebag, don't to business with them, don't read their blogs, don't upvote their articles. Treat them like the trolls they are.

avoutthere 15y ago
Nothing is more dangerous to the Valley than threats of force from Washington.
- sumukh1 15y ago
  "As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good startup is the startup itself" - http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _ecosystem_ is the _ecosystem_ itself Edit: We live in a democracy. If there is something that stands to significantly harm us, then we should (and can) do something about it. A recent example would be SOPA. The biggest threat we face is not from Washington, it's ourselves. If we become so torn-apart that forces from Washington can destroy us, it's our fault. It's rather easy to focus on problems being caused from an external force, but there are often larger and more dangerous threats internally. That brings up back to the startup quote, it's easy for a startup to focus on competitors (external threat) instead of working on their own product (which is really the biggest thing that will make or break them).
  - jamesaguilar 15y ago
    Is there any rational reason to derive this from pg's statement? Word substitution does not work in all cases. For example: > As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _human_ is the _human_ itself.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - martythemaniak 15y ago
      I definitely see the similarities and would agree with it. Nearly every successful entrepreneur will talk at length about the incredible importance of company culture on success (as that culture in turn permeates through the product, customer service, hiring process etc). I don't see why the same principles would become invalid at the slightly higher level of startup ecosystem.
      - jamesaguilar 15y ago
        It's plausible, but a corporate ecosystem is a lot different than a corporation. For example, the utility functions are different, the role and authority of leadership, the risk involved for each participant. Actually, it's quite a different beast. Plus, I can think of plenty of ways external influences COULD kill the startup ecosystem. Congress could pass laws that make it much harder to start companies. Developers could figure out that the startup value proposition is not that great if you're not a founder. The market for internet ads could dry up (a significant risk to many startup business models). Big companies could develop techniques to quickly iterate on products rather than ceding ground to more agile startups. Laws could change that make it more expensive to acquire startups. Other industries could be created that make startups less enticing to young people. Taxes and security laws could change in a way that makes it much harder to distribute equity to employees. Any of these things could kill the startup ecosystem depending on the magnitude of the change, and probably a lot of other stuff I'm not even thinking about. The idea that the ecosystem could kill itself also seems pretty preposterous to me. There are parts of the country where there isn't much of an ecosystem, but startups still exist. Startups aren't created because of an ecosystem, but because it is financially and economically advantageous to do so for some people. Yeah, overall this view that the ecosystem is invulnerable from outside pressures and highly vulnerable to interior ones strikes me as fairly naive.
  - xradionut 15y ago
    "We live in a democracy." We don't live in anything close to democracy. It's hard for a populous to change a corrupt system when all the cards are stacked against the greater public.
    - snowwrestler 15y ago
      Silicon Valley is not the greater public, it is a collection of very talented, motivated, rich people. It could be very influential in Washington, but until recently has chosen to avoid it instead.
    - jarek 15y ago
      http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populace http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populace noun http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populous http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populous adjective
  - ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
    And patents, and litigation, and bureaucracy, etc...
- philwelch 15y ago
  Threats from Washington are the natural consequence of shitty, unethical behavior. Which really brings it back to what the OP is about.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Not shitty and unethical per se, but any behavior that compromises the value function of a given ecosystem will cause regulators to step in, in an attempt to correct it.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. For me its just another sign that 'tech' is growing up. Pretty much any industry creates an economic flow, and the flow is a source of power (some would argue the only real source in peace time), and one can harness that power by having influence over the flow. Back when the Homebrew Computer Club was meeting and Steve and Steve were there and nerds gathered at the ByteShop to see the latest S-100 board that Geoge Morrow had dreamed up, the total flow was measured in less than a million dollars a year. Few 'professional' power brokers even noticed. Today the total economic impact of 'tech' is approaching a trillion dollars by some estimates, with that kind of flow comes real power. You also get a different class of players in the game. We joke about people who would sell out their families for a million dollars, however that number gets uncomfortably large as you go up in decimal orders of magnitude. 10 million, 100 million, a billion ? The stakes are higher today, some people are the barrier to entry you have to get past. It hasn't been a "gentleman's game" for some time now. Kinda sad really.
- martythemaniak 15y ago
  I think one of the challenges with growing up is that you have to work increasingly hard at preserving that which made you special. As others have argued, "Don't be Evil" is Google trying to inoculate itself against growing up too much and always having a nagging reminder to strive to be the company they were in their youth. Perhaps the valley was never a gentleman's game, but it was (and still is) much more so than other industries.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    Really? I remember reading about all the crap between Apple/Microsoft/Xerox (in the late 80s/90s) none of it could be described as even close a 'gentlemen's game". Are we that different to any other industry?
    - polyfractal 15y ago
      Or all the recent nonsense about non-compete hiring practices between top tech firms.
sgarg 15y ago
I completely agree. Would you trust Yelp for restaurant reviews if Yelp invested in the restaurants it provided reviews for? Of course not. Like you said, the only way to really punish behavior like this is to stop using their product.
- droithomme 15y ago
  Wow, interesting example of a company which the comment presumes is ethical.
philwelch 15y ago
Speaking of bubbles, the optimistic part of me thinks that this really is a bubble, and that the next time the Valley crashes, all the sharks and trolls will be reaped and only honest people will be left to rebuild. It's better to imagine it than the alternative.
beedogs 15y ago
In other words, stop visiting TechCrunch. I'm way ahead of you.
- taf2 15y ago
  or be bother with blogs that write about it... yeah, i want to turn a blind eye... yep - i'll do that until we hit 100K in revenue.
- nnethercote 15y ago
  I read TechCrunch for a while. I stopped when I realized that I always felt dirty afterwards, much like I do if I look at a celebrity gossip magazine.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  The mere suggestion that this story is true makes me want to just quit IT, go back to college, and go into a more honest industry. Is this seriously what we're all working at? A complex power play to get yourself rich at the expense of any morals or integrity? How much is /your/ soul worth? We have real problems in the world, but instead we have a bunch of boys with computers trying to rule the world through their control of media. Is the world seriously this disgusting and I just haven't realized it yet?
  - fossuser 15y ago
    Every industry has people within it that are unethical or try to game the system for their own benefit at the expense of others. If anything the technology industry is unique in how much good it has done, relative to the bad.
    - cbs 15y ago
      If anything the technology industry is unique in how much good it has done, relative to the bad. Every industry makes this rationalization.
      - 15y ago

avoutthere 15y ago

Nothing is more dangerous to the Valley than threats of force from Washington.

sumukh1 15y ago
"As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good startup is the startup itself" - http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _ecosystem_ is the _ecosystem_ itself Edit: We live in a democracy. If there is something that stands to significantly harm us, then we should (and can) do something about it. A recent example would be SOPA. The biggest threat we face is not from Washington, it's ourselves. If we become so torn-apart that forces from Washington can destroy us, it's our fault. It's rather easy to focus on problems being caused from an external force, but there are often larger and more dangerous threats internally. That brings up back to the startup quote, it's easy for a startup to focus on competitors (external threat) instead of working on their own product (which is really the biggest thing that will make or break them).
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  Is there any rational reason to derive this from pg's statement? Word substitution does not work in all cases. For example: > As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _human_ is the _human_ itself.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - martythemaniak 15y ago
    I definitely see the similarities and would agree with it. Nearly every successful entrepreneur will talk at length about the incredible importance of company culture on success (as that culture in turn permeates through the product, customer service, hiring process etc). I don't see why the same principles would become invalid at the slightly higher level of startup ecosystem.
    - jamesaguilar 15y ago
      It's plausible, but a corporate ecosystem is a lot different than a corporation. For example, the utility functions are different, the role and authority of leadership, the risk involved for each participant. Actually, it's quite a different beast. Plus, I can think of plenty of ways external influences COULD kill the startup ecosystem. Congress could pass laws that make it much harder to start companies. Developers could figure out that the startup value proposition is not that great if you're not a founder. The market for internet ads could dry up (a significant risk to many startup business models). Big companies could develop techniques to quickly iterate on products rather than ceding ground to more agile startups. Laws could change that make it more expensive to acquire startups. Other industries could be created that make startups less enticing to young people. Taxes and security laws could change in a way that makes it much harder to distribute equity to employees. Any of these things could kill the startup ecosystem depending on the magnitude of the change, and probably a lot of other stuff I'm not even thinking about. The idea that the ecosystem could kill itself also seems pretty preposterous to me. There are parts of the country where there isn't much of an ecosystem, but startups still exist. Startups aren't created because of an ecosystem, but because it is financially and economically advantageous to do so for some people. Yeah, overall this view that the ecosystem is invulnerable from outside pressures and highly vulnerable to interior ones strikes me as fairly naive.
- xradionut 15y ago
  "We live in a democracy." We don't live in anything close to democracy. It's hard for a populous to change a corrupt system when all the cards are stacked against the greater public.
  - snowwrestler 15y ago
    Silicon Valley is not the greater public, it is a collection of very talented, motivated, rich people. It could be very influential in Washington, but until recently has chosen to avoid it instead.
  - jarek 15y ago
    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populace http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populace noun http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populous http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/populous adjective
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  And patents, and litigation, and bureaucracy, etc...
philwelch 15y ago
Threats from Washington are the natural consequence of shitty, unethical behavior. Which really brings it back to what the OP is about.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Not shitty and unethical per se, but any behavior that compromises the value function of a given ecosystem will cause regulators to step in, in an attempt to correct it.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. For me its just another sign that 'tech' is growing up. Pretty much any industry creates an economic flow, and the flow is a source of power (some would argue the only real source in peace time), and one can harness that power by having influence over the flow. Back when the Homebrew Computer Club was meeting and Steve and Steve were there and nerds gathered at the ByteShop to see the latest S-100 board that Geoge Morrow had dreamed up, the total flow was measured in less than a million dollars a year. Few 'professional' power brokers even noticed. Today the total economic impact of 'tech' is approaching a trillion dollars by some estimates, with that kind of flow comes real power. You also get a different class of players in the game. We joke about people who would sell out their families for a million dollars, however that number gets uncomfortably large as you go up in decimal orders of magnitude. 10 million, 100 million, a billion ? The stakes are higher today, some people are the barrier to entry you have to get past. It hasn't been a "gentleman's game" for some time now. Kinda sad really.

martythemaniak 15y ago
I think one of the challenges with growing up is that you have to work increasingly hard at preserving that which made you special. As others have argued, "Don't be Evil" is Google trying to inoculate itself against growing up too much and always having a nagging reminder to strive to be the company they were in their youth. Perhaps the valley was never a gentleman's game, but it was (and still is) much more so than other industries.
- Volpe 15y ago
  Really? I remember reading about all the crap between Apple/Microsoft/Xerox (in the late 80s/90s) none of it could be described as even close a 'gentlemen's game". Are we that different to any other industry?
  - polyfractal 15y ago
    Or all the recent nonsense about non-compete hiring practices between top tech firms.

sgarg 15y ago

I completely agree. Would you trust Yelp for restaurant reviews if Yelp invested in the restaurants it provided reviews for? Of course not. Like you said, the only way to really punish behavior like this is to stop using their product.

droithomme 15y ago
Wow, interesting example of a company which the comment presumes is ethical.

philwelch 15y ago

Speaking of bubbles, the optimistic part of me thinks that this really is a bubble, and that the next time the Valley crashes, all the sharks and trolls will be reaped and only honest people will be left to rebuild. It's better to imagine it than the alternative.

beedogs 15y ago

In other words, stop visiting TechCrunch. I'm way ahead of you.

taf2 15y ago
or be bother with blogs that write about it... yeah, i want to turn a blind eye... yep - i'll do that until we hit 100K in revenue.
nnethercote 15y ago
I read TechCrunch for a while. I stopped when I realized that I always felt dirty afterwards, much like I do if I look at a celebrity gossip magazine.
seanp2k2 15y ago
The mere suggestion that this story is true makes me want to just quit IT, go back to college, and go into a more honest industry. Is this seriously what we're all working at? A complex power play to get yourself rich at the expense of any morals or integrity? How much is /your/ soul worth? We have real problems in the world, but instead we have a bunch of boys with computers trying to rule the world through their control of media. Is the world seriously this disgusting and I just haven't realized it yet?
- fossuser 15y ago
  Every industry has people within it that are unethical or try to game the system for their own benefit at the expense of others. If anything the technology industry is unique in how much good it has done, relative to the bad.
  - cbs 15y ago
    If anything the technology industry is unique in how much good it has done, relative to the bad. Every industry makes this rationalization.
    - 15y ago