6 ms·

Don't start a start-up or apply for seed funding. There are lots of great hackers out there, and only so many spots for top websites. The odds of putting toget

by GavinB 18y ago

Don't start a start-up or apply for seed funding. There are lots of great hackers out there, and only so many spots for top websites. The odds of putting together both a solid product, good marketing, and the right timing are incredibly slim. I talk to people all the time who are working on start-ups with no benefits, no salary, and only a small chance of hitting it big and becoming profitable. Even if you do get accepted to one of the top seed start-up firms, you're still not guaranteed to be successful. You have to realize that you're really just an exploitable resource for venture capitalists. On a more serious note, I'd say that anyone who's thinking of going to grad school should read this. Then, if they're still certain they want to go, they should go for it. Just because something's hard or might not work doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
ShardPhoenix 18y ago
The difference is that a startup has a much bigger potential upside.
- GavinB 18y ago
  If you measure success exclusively in money, then that's true. Grad school isn't for me, but it's the right choice for the right people.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    Academia is the right job environment for a certain set of people, but they deserve decent living conditions. They shouldn't be exploited just because society views them (correctly or otherwise; mostly otherwise, I believe) as naive pansies. Few are arguing that academics ought to be millionaires (although they're certainly more deserving of that than most of the assholes running Wall Street, the Fortune 500, and Hollywood) but they should be paid well enough to support a lifestyle comfortable enough to enable a "life of the mind" (which most professors, for what it's worth, don't get to have). The phrase, "we don't pay you to work here, we pay you so you can work here" seems to have been lost on academia.
    - gaius 18y ago
      because society views them (correctly or otherwise; mostly otherwise, I believe) as naive pansies. It doesn't matter what society views them as. If supply exceeds demand, prices will bottom out. And that's not even grad school, it's Econ 101.
- banned_man 18y ago
  Also, academia (in the humanities) has much more of a downside. If your startup fails, you spend a year or two of your life learning a lot of useful skills, but end up out of a job when the money runs out. It sucks, but you end the travail much better off than when you started, and probably better off than if you had toiled in a mediocre corporate job. In the humanities, if your academic career fails, you've spent a decade of your live to get a relatively useless degree, have weak job skills for someone your age, and probably damaged self-esteem. You're not better off than you were when you began; you're in your mid-30s with nothing to show but a publication no one cares about.
  - whacked_new 18y ago
    A counter argument: if they are getting the PhD as evidence of mastery in a topic they love, it doesn't matter what comes after it, unless circumstances will force them to give up what they love until they die. If one can see just this far, they will be able to plan accordingly. Suppose they do, then there is no reason to change course. The point is to know what you want and why you want it; having figured this out, screw what other people think, unless your plans require that as a parameter.
    - banned_man 18y ago
      A counter argument: if they are getting the PhD as evidence of mastery in a topic they love, it doesn't matter what comes after it, unless circumstances will force them to give up what they love until they die. The intrusion of bad "circumstances" is the norm in academia. Actually, it's the norm in life, but academia is set up in a way that makes it nearly impossible to recover. Also, the "love" people have for a subject or field is highly conditional (not that it should be any other way; that wouldn't make sense). This is mere attachment. Unconditional love for something so abstract probably cannot exist, and if it can, is not desirable in any case. It's legitimate to be intellectually fascinated by finite fields or 19th-century literature, but to say that one loves these things is a stretch. A person who's capable of developing a fascination with X is equally capable of finding a "love" for Y; that's a core trait irrespective of niche-bound particulars. So when someone is forced into an unappealing niche by academic politics, lives a crappy lifestyle on account of the university's stinginess, and has a fractured family life due to overwork and constant geographic uncertainty, all while having to cope with distracting administrative and bureaucratic chores, it makes sense that this "love" of subject matter would disappear entirely. Most people realize, upon growing up, that they love their families and decent lifestyles more than intellectual abstractions.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
Startup: WIN: fuck you money. FAIL: On track in your career as a software engineer, but with a couple of years of lost earnings. Humanities academic: WIN: tenure track position. Salary caps out at entry level software engineer, but great lifestyle. FAIL: adjunct professor or barista. You are 30-40 years old, and less employable than you were at age 22. (Some humanities PhD's do well for themselves, but getting the PhD was just a side errand. ) Note: STEM academic is vastly better than humanities, but be prepared to get out early. If you aren't at the top at any stage of the game, quit.
- banned_man 18y ago
  What is STEM? In the sciences, I disagree with "If you aren't at the top at any stage of the game, quit". It can be the right decision to get a PhD in an 11-20 program, so long as you have options aside from an R1 academic job.
  - lutorm 18y ago
    Science Technology Engineering Math
- lutorm 18y ago
  I'd say the "startup fail" scenario is even less negative, because I have the feeling that having the experience of even a failed startup makes you more attractive.
- alecco 18y ago
  In Technology and Math you are as good as dead when you go past 40. Well, almost. Edit: Losing 2-4 years out of 15 career years is quite meaningful.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    In academia, or overall? I agree that this is true within academia. The maximum accepted age for a first-year graduate student is about 27; first postdoc, 32; tenure-track, 36. If you don't have tenure at 40, you're flushed. This does not seem to be true outside of academia. If you're good, your career does not take a dive in your 40s. However, the mediocre or uninterested programmers need to move into management before this, because management is more ageist than technology.
pg 18y ago
only so many spots for top websites That's false, if you define top by revenue. There is no reason to believe there's any limit to the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb.
- DocSavage 18y ago
  There's probably a limit on profitable websites based on the number of people out there. No comparison, though, to the number of spots in academia.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  There's no limit to wealth that can be created, the ability of consumers to consume does have limits. But consumables are far from the only way to create value in an economy.
DocSavage 18y ago
Some reasons why this analogy doesn't hold: 1) You don't have to wait 3-7 years wading through work before you start a start-up. 2) Your entrepreneurial experience will most likely be viewed by businesses as valuable. (Failure is acceptable in Silicon Valley.) On the other hand, how do businesses view 30+ year olds with esoteric, non-business-related over-education? 3) The maximum number of profitable businesses or websites out there is some % of the number of people on Earth. There is a very limited demand for professors, capped by the number of schools out there. 4) If you get funding, you'll probably make a lot more than an assistant professor. (Sad but true. There's a big difference between humanities and engineering/professional academic positions.) 5) The upside for a start-up is at least two orders of magnitude higher than academia.

by GavinB 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

ShardPhoenix 18y ago

The difference is that a startup has a much bigger potential upside.

GavinB 18y ago
If you measure success exclusively in money, then that's true. Grad school isn't for me, but it's the right choice for the right people.
- banned_man 18y ago
  Academia is the right job environment for a certain set of people, but they deserve decent living conditions. They shouldn't be exploited just because society views them (correctly or otherwise; mostly otherwise, I believe) as naive pansies. Few are arguing that academics ought to be millionaires (although they're certainly more deserving of that than most of the assholes running Wall Street, the Fortune 500, and Hollywood) but they should be paid well enough to support a lifestyle comfortable enough to enable a "life of the mind" (which most professors, for what it's worth, don't get to have). The phrase, "we don't pay you to work here, we pay you so you can work here" seems to have been lost on academia.
  - gaius 18y ago
    because society views them (correctly or otherwise; mostly otherwise, I believe) as naive pansies. It doesn't matter what society views them as. If supply exceeds demand, prices will bottom out. And that's not even grad school, it's Econ 101.
banned_man 18y ago
Also, academia (in the humanities) has much more of a downside. If your startup fails, you spend a year or two of your life learning a lot of useful skills, but end up out of a job when the money runs out. It sucks, but you end the travail much better off than when you started, and probably better off than if you had toiled in a mediocre corporate job. In the humanities, if your academic career fails, you've spent a decade of your live to get a relatively useless degree, have weak job skills for someone your age, and probably damaged self-esteem. You're not better off than you were when you began; you're in your mid-30s with nothing to show but a publication no one cares about.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  A counter argument: if they are getting the PhD as evidence of mastery in a topic they love, it doesn't matter what comes after it, unless circumstances will force them to give up what they love until they die. If one can see just this far, they will be able to plan accordingly. Suppose they do, then there is no reason to change course. The point is to know what you want and why you want it; having figured this out, screw what other people think, unless your plans require that as a parameter.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    A counter argument: if they are getting the PhD as evidence of mastery in a topic they love, it doesn't matter what comes after it, unless circumstances will force them to give up what they love until they die. The intrusion of bad "circumstances" is the norm in academia. Actually, it's the norm in life, but academia is set up in a way that makes it nearly impossible to recover. Also, the "love" people have for a subject or field is highly conditional (not that it should be any other way; that wouldn't make sense). This is mere attachment. Unconditional love for something so abstract probably cannot exist, and if it can, is not desirable in any case. It's legitimate to be intellectually fascinated by finite fields or 19th-century literature, but to say that one loves these things is a stretch. A person who's capable of developing a fascination with X is equally capable of finding a "love" for Y; that's a core trait irrespective of niche-bound particulars. So when someone is forced into an unappealing niche by academic politics, lives a crappy lifestyle on account of the university's stinginess, and has a fractured family life due to overwork and constant geographic uncertainty, all while having to cope with distracting administrative and bureaucratic chores, it makes sense that this "love" of subject matter would disappear entirely. Most people realize, upon growing up, that they love their families and decent lifestyles more than intellectual abstractions.

yummyfajitas 18y ago

Startup: WIN: fuck you money. FAIL: On track in your career as a software engineer, but with a couple of years of lost earnings. Humanities academic: WIN: tenure track position. Salary caps out at entry level software engineer, but great lifestyle. FAIL: adjunct professor or barista. You are 30-40 years old, and less employable than you were at age 22. (Some humanities PhD's do well for themselves, but getting the PhD was just a side errand. ) Note: STEM academic is vastly better than humanities, but be prepared to get out early. If you aren't at the top at any stage of the game, quit.

banned_man 18y ago
What is STEM? In the sciences, I disagree with "If you aren't at the top at any stage of the game, quit". It can be the right decision to get a PhD in an 11-20 program, so long as you have options aside from an R1 academic job.
- lutorm 18y ago
  Science Technology Engineering Math
lutorm 18y ago
I'd say the "startup fail" scenario is even less negative, because I have the feeling that having the experience of even a failed startup makes you more attractive.
alecco 18y ago
In Technology and Math you are as good as dead when you go past 40. Well, almost. Edit: Losing 2-4 years out of 15 career years is quite meaningful.
- banned_man 18y ago
  In academia, or overall? I agree that this is true within academia. The maximum accepted age for a first-year graduate student is about 27; first postdoc, 32; tenure-track, 36. If you don't have tenure at 40, you're flushed. This does not seem to be true outside of academia. If you're good, your career does not take a dive in your 40s. However, the mediocre or uninterested programmers need to move into management before this, because management is more ageist than technology.

pg 18y ago

only so many spots for top websites That's false, if you define top by revenue. There is no reason to believe there's any limit to the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb.

DocSavage 18y ago
There's probably a limit on profitable websites based on the number of people out there. No comparison, though, to the number of spots in academia.
biohacker42 18y ago
There's no limit to wealth that can be created, the ability of consumers to consume does have limits. But consumables are far from the only way to create value in an economy.

DocSavage 18y ago

Some reasons why this analogy doesn't hold: 1) You don't have to wait 3-7 years wading through work before you start a start-up. 2) Your entrepreneurial experience will most likely be viewed by businesses as valuable. (Failure is acceptable in Silicon Valley.) On the other hand, how do businesses view 30+ year olds with esoteric, non-business-related over-education? 3) The maximum number of profitable businesses or websites out there is some % of the number of people on Earth. There is a very limited demand for professors, capped by the number of schools out there. 4) If you get funding, you'll probably make a lot more than an assistant professor. (Sad but true. There's a big difference between humanities and engineering/professional academic positions.) 5) The upside for a start-up is at least two orders of magnitude higher than academia.