5 ms·

Geek business myths

• miloshh 18y ago
  What a dumb asshole. Everything in the article is either banal, a straw-man, or very questionable, which contrasts a lot with his tone. This guy somehow luckily got into a position of power where he is allowed to invest other people's money. Nobody would ever listen to him if it wasn't for that twist of fate.
  • miloshh 18y ago
    Downvoters, please explain what is good in the article.
    • jibiki 18y ago
      Generally speaking, an "asshole" is someone who is excessively inconsiderate and self-centered. No evidence is provided to support this assertion. I didn't down vote you, but your comment is essentially an unjustified and unnecessary personal attack.
      • miloshh 18y ago
        I apologize for the personal attack. However, the author insulted, without much argument, so many groups at once (geeks, Microsoft, people that appreciate the value of ideas, Ph.D.s, etc.) that I would claim there is some ground for calling him an asshole. I still think a community should listen to people with insight more than to people with money (especially if it isn't his own money, as in the case of a VC).
        • zxcvb 18y ago
          He didn't insult phd's or geeks and depending on how you look at it he didn't insult MS.
          • miloshh 18y ago
            You say that based on what? Did you read it? "The only thing a Ph.D. means is that you're not a moron, and you're willing to put up with the bullshit it takes to slog your way through a Ph.D. program somewhere." If he instead said that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to have a Ph.D. for task X, I would actually agree. But that would be too banal to catch attention. "Microsoft has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history. Microsoft has achieved success largely by seeking out and destroying other people's brilliant ideas." Depending how you look at it, seriously? "The idea is very nearly irrelevant." If he instead said that he as an investor has no time/ability to tell good ideas from bad ones, it would have been reasonable, but this way it is insulting to people that work with ideas.
            • 10ren 18y ago
              As someone who works with ideas, I agree with him very much that ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the work on the idea that is valuable - and therefore the people who do that work. Unfortunately the term "idea" is flexible. At one extreme, it can mean a precisely worked out and implemented design or concept (like PageRank), or at the other extreme, it could mean a wish (like "wouldn't it be cool to fly like a bird!" - which would be awesome btw).
              • miloshh 18y ago
                Yes, I completely agree that there are many bad ideas (or even some whose quality cannot even be measured). But that is different from saying they are irrelevant. I have seen many bad ideas, but I have also seen very smart, hard-working people stuck on a problem for a few months, while they really needed a new idea to move forward. Also, if a good idea saves you a month of hard work, it is worth exactly as much as the month of hard work, isn't it? In academia, smart, hardworking people are a dime a dozen, and a huge success is usually at the end of a string of many good ideas. I don't know mch about building a company, but I doubt it is very different.
                • zxcvb 18y ago
    • WilliamLP 18y ago
      Various groups of people care more or less about how you say something versus what you say. This forum is further to the first than other programming forums out there.
• WilliamLP 18y ago
  > One of the ironies of the programming world is that using Lisp is vastly more productive than using pretty much any other programming language, but successful businesses based on Lisp are quite rare. Citation is needed. Paul Graham doesn't count.
  • 10ren 18y ago
    Their rarity is clearly true. As for the grandiose assertion of superiority, it's worth noting the context: Lisp programmers never develop the social skills needed to work effectively as a member of a team. Fred Brooks didn't see Lisp as a silver bullet, which a "vastly more productive" language would be. I'm sure he talks about functional languages specifically in his retrospective essay "Still no silver bullet" (or something like that).
  • deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
• baddox 18y ago
  He instantly destroyed any chance at credibility with his senseless bashing of Microsoft.
• madair 18y ago
  He lost me at "[Microsoft] has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history". Criticizing the company is one thing. Pointing out the flaws fine. Anger at bad behavior fine. Even laughing at dumb mistakes, that's not gonna rile me. But denying the brilliance of the company and people who built the powerhouse that is Microsoft? That, my friend is a far better candidate for number one in the list of top ten geek business myths.
  • brlewis 18y ago
    I don't get why so many people see Microsoft as antonymous to innovation. When it comes to innovative companies, nobody's bought more of them than Microsoft.
  • TJensen 18y ago
    My read of that was not that Microsoft wasn't a brilliant company, they just did not have any brilliant product ideas. Instead, they took ideas from others and did brilliant marketing. The point being that a really amazing idea is a very small percentage of what it takes to make a really successful business.
    • madair 18y ago
      All I did was quote what he said. The paragraph is about ideas. If he meant product ideas I would hope he would say so, but no, he includes "Page rank, text-only ads, massive parallel implementation on cheap hardware" in the brief bit of Google worship. Only one of those is a product in the simplistic sense. Hate on Microsoft all you want, but failing to recognize their ideas is gonna be a little limiting is what I gotta say.
      • 10ren 18y ago
        Here's a simple way to disprove him: name one brilliant idea that Microsoft has had.
        • DanHulton 18y ago
• zxcvb 18y ago
  He made mainly good points. It is true to say that Microsoft isn't innovative. They buy innnovation rather than spawn it. It is true to say PHD's aren't an automatic respect earner, in fact they aren't really useful unless you are doing something specific with them (of course you could always argue how the soft skills are important, you should already have them if you have undergrad anyway). Other than the MS thing (which I think is right) I don't see how this guy is far off the mark?
  • zxcvb 18y ago
    I don't understand why this would be downvoted. I wasn't rude or obnocious in any way, I just stated my opinions on the post. If you think I'm wrong then tell me why rather than trying to silence me. This isn't reddit.
• 10ren 18y ago
  ...patent filings. It's not hard to do once you learn how (get the Nolo Press book "Patent it Yourself"). You'll do a better job than most patent attorneys and save yourself a lot of money. I have that book. It's quite good (and very encouraging), but I find it not very helpful for software patents (eg. it wouldn't help much for patenting PageRank). I agree that "most patent attorneys" wouldn't do a good job on a software patent, but the idea is to go to one who specializes in them (another plus for the Valley) - like the one that Google used (it's on the patent).
• etherael 17y ago
  Was the first question that sprung to mind for anyone else on a few of these not whether it was accurate or not, but whether it actually opens an exploitable space? Myth #6 particularly, I have a lot of reason not to doubt this, and if true it reads to me like "People are so incompetent by and large that outside the structure of a very large bureaucracy nothing will ever get done". The author even goes so far as to actually cite a counter example of exactly what I'm talking about with lisp efficiency.