5 ms·

I can't wait for the social media IPO coke binge hangover to wear off and the Valley to rediscover its roots as a hotbed of real innovation, real intellectual d

by api 13y ago

I can't wait for the social media IPO coke binge hangover to wear off and the Valley to rediscover its roots as a hotbed of real innovation, real intellectual daring, and the courage to dream big and then do it. Bigger and better things than, you know, Facebook games and click through ads.

lukifer 13y ago
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher
- workbench 13y ago
  They knew what they were signing up for. Maybe their minds are not that great after all.
  - api 13y ago
    Even great minds need to eat. The problem is that truly daring, innovative work simply doesn't pay that well. It's an uphill battle at best, and a vow of poverty at worst. There is very little funding for hard, long term, daring projects. The other problem is more systemic and less confined to tech. Most of the people I know under 40 are shackled to student and other forms of debt and home ownership is utterly unthinkable to them. (So they have no way to ever escape paying rent to the rentier class.) They have no "fuck you money," or even enough slack to contemplate changing course. They have to go for whatever pays the best even if they hate it and even if it's stupid or they have no hope of ever escaping the indentured servitude of the debt-financed college degree. Combine that with real estate hyperinflation and you have a formula for an economy that encourages premature convergence on local maxima: http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/4291/1/P078.pdf http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/4291/1/P07...
- otisfunkmeyer 13y ago
  "best minds" needs many air-quotes attached.
- rjsw 13y ago
  At least we now know that they are also helping to protect the free world.
- antimagic 13y ago
  I prefer to think of this as the on-ramp. Learn your craft by selling eyeballs, or some other relatively trivial technology, make FU money, and then go and do something real. The archetype of this is of course Elon Musk. I know that what drives me is the hope that one day I will have amassed enough money that I can stop going to work for somebody else, and instead choose to work on what interests me.
  - llamataboot 13y ago
    But how much money is that? I mean the median income in the US is less than $30k. Live on what most people in the US live on, and with the outrageous hourly rates of most consultants you can do for-pay work about 10 hours a week and have the rest of the time to yourself to work on what you want? Why does it take millions of dollars to be able to do good work?
    - exit 13y ago
      is it hard to "stay in the game" unless you're giving it 110% of your energy?
    - andrewljohnson 13y ago
      It takes millions of dollars to make space ships.
      - rthomas6 13y ago
        Elon Musk fully funded SpaceX with his own money?
        pdog 13y ago
        He's put hundreds of millions of dollars of his own capital into his ventures, yes.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        Good work != space ships.
- njloof 13y ago
  Or writing high frequency trading battlebots.
  - api 13y ago
    I was on IRC back in the 1990s, back when EFNet was a battleground for bot wars over taking over channels. I chuckle when I think back to this and realize this is what world markets have become: a place for k-r4d 31337 d00d3z to totally pwn the market, l0l.
bandy 13y ago
It's not going to wear off until things are restructured. As it is, there's the story of the occasional person who makes it big on an IPO that goes out, which stimulates the rest of the start-up "community" to go off and flog the next great thing, trying to get a cadre of twenty to one hundred people to give up their lives for a few years so that perhaps four or five of them can cash out and have the vaunted bundle of "f you" money, if for a few months, until the IRS comes and audits them, taking most of it, if not all, away, and the cycle begins anew.
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  This is the first I've heard of the IRS retroactively taking most of the proceeds from selling stock. Is this a real threat? How should you protect yourself?
  - quantumpotato_ 13y ago
    I heard you should register your stocks when they're worth nothing, pay 100% of 0 on taxes. Not a lawyer.
- llamataboot 13y ago
  From what I can gather, startup culture is a weird toxic mix of aggression, advertising hucksterism, cheesy motivational-speak, masculinity, and a pseudo-belief in letting the free market determine value. I wonder what "restructuring" you have in mind though? It seems stronger wealth redistribution and higher taxes could be one form of structural change that might eliminate get--rich-quick schemes.
  - api 13y ago
    Yeah. One of the biggest things I've learned about startup culture is this: Even if you want to do a startup, avoid "startup culture" and the "startup scene" like the plague. Just build something, launch it, and market it, and ignore all that noise. Not calling your thing a startup at all can be a good start. Call it a project, or a business, or whatever.
gnosis 13y ago
Startup culture has mostly become a get-rich-quick scheme, and most of its participants will go where the money is. If the less risk-averse minority believes innovating will make them a quick buck, they might give it a go. The majority, however, will try to follow the rest of the lemmings to the pot at the end of the rainbow, which right now seems to be Facebook games, iphone apps, and web services.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Getting rich quickly leaves more time to do the really great things. It all depends on what the goal is. Money is just a tool.
Karunamon 13y ago
What's with this "social media bad" meme that seems to be so pervasive around here nowadays? Last I checked, looking for new and better ways to connect people was a Good Thing.
- api 13y ago
  Social media isn't bad per se, but there's definitely a lot of money going to a lot of ideas in that sector that are both unsustainable and boring as hell.
rdouble 13y ago
There have barely been any IPOs compared to the 1990s.
jes5199 13y ago
I think it's entirely possible that the next period of real innovation will be happening somewhere else - and it's possible it's already started somewhere, and that all of us in the Bay Area can't see it over the noise we're generating
- api 13y ago
  I have a suspicion this could be the case. The cost of living in the Bay Area seems to me as if it does not permit experimentation or DIY anything.
tankbot 13y ago
I don't disagree, but after reading the OP I feel like you might be feeding the wrong wolf! :D
andrewljohnson 13y ago
I could stand never to hear this comment again. I don't think you can zoom in so close on the graph of innovation and see anything. I also don't see how the narrative even fits in a world where we've seen Google, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Apple smartphone revolution emerge from the Valley recently. Facebook, social, and the boy-hacker culture is just one thread in the recent history of the Valley. I do find the systematization of "get-rich-quick" to be interesting in of itself, though.
brickmort 13y ago
I think the spirit of it still very much alive, growing just as it always has. It's only being veiled by the big IPO social media coke binge (etc etc...) projects. Just look at hot huge github has become in the past five years. not to mention open source linux distros, which have arguably taken over Microsoft in the 'best desktop OS' field lately (yet still behind, in my opinion, OS X). There's also new devices like Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and Beagleboards, which are bringing a new age in 'open source' learning. It's a rather amazing time we're living in, actually.

by api 13y ago

lukifer 13y ago

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher

workbench 13y ago
They knew what they were signing up for. Maybe their minds are not that great after all.
- api 13y ago
  Even great minds need to eat. The problem is that truly daring, innovative work simply doesn't pay that well. It's an uphill battle at best, and a vow of poverty at worst. There is very little funding for hard, long term, daring projects. The other problem is more systemic and less confined to tech. Most of the people I know under 40 are shackled to student and other forms of debt and home ownership is utterly unthinkable to them. (So they have no way to ever escape paying rent to the rentier class.) They have no "fuck you money," or even enough slack to contemplate changing course. They have to go for whatever pays the best even if they hate it and even if it's stupid or they have no hope of ever escaping the indentured servitude of the debt-financed college degree. Combine that with real estate hyperinflation and you have a formula for an economy that encourages premature convergence on local maxima: http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/4291/1/P078.pdf http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/4291/1/P07...
otisfunkmeyer 13y ago
"best minds" needs many air-quotes attached.
rjsw 13y ago
At least we now know that they are also helping to protect the free world.
antimagic 13y ago
I prefer to think of this as the on-ramp. Learn your craft by selling eyeballs, or some other relatively trivial technology, make FU money, and then go and do something real. The archetype of this is of course Elon Musk. I know that what drives me is the hope that one day I will have amassed enough money that I can stop going to work for somebody else, and instead choose to work on what interests me.
- llamataboot 13y ago
  But how much money is that? I mean the median income in the US is less than $30k. Live on what most people in the US live on, and with the outrageous hourly rates of most consultants you can do for-pay work about 10 hours a week and have the rest of the time to yourself to work on what you want? Why does it take millions of dollars to be able to do good work?
  - exit 13y ago
    is it hard to "stay in the game" unless you're giving it 110% of your energy?
  - andrewljohnson 13y ago
    It takes millions of dollars to make space ships.
    - rthomas6 13y ago
      Elon Musk fully funded SpaceX with his own money?
      - pdog 13y ago
        He's put hundreds of millions of dollars of his own capital into his ventures, yes.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      Good work != space ships.
njloof 13y ago
Or writing high frequency trading battlebots.
- api 13y ago
  I was on IRC back in the 1990s, back when EFNet was a battleground for bot wars over taking over channels. I chuckle when I think back to this and realize this is what world markets have become: a place for k-r4d 31337 d00d3z to totally pwn the market, l0l.

bandy 13y ago

It's not going to wear off until things are restructured. As it is, there's the story of the occasional person who makes it big on an IPO that goes out, which stimulates the rest of the start-up "community" to go off and flog the next great thing, trying to get a cadre of twenty to one hundred people to give up their lives for a few years so that perhaps four or five of them can cash out and have the vaunted bundle of "f you" money, if for a few months, until the IRS comes and audits them, taking most of it, if not all, away, and the cycle begins anew.

sillysaurus 13y ago
This is the first I've heard of the IRS retroactively taking most of the proceeds from selling stock. Is this a real threat? How should you protect yourself?
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  I heard you should register your stocks when they're worth nothing, pay 100% of 0 on taxes. Not a lawyer.
llamataboot 13y ago
From what I can gather, startup culture is a weird toxic mix of aggression, advertising hucksterism, cheesy motivational-speak, masculinity, and a pseudo-belief in letting the free market determine value. I wonder what "restructuring" you have in mind though? It seems stronger wealth redistribution and higher taxes could be one form of structural change that might eliminate get--rich-quick schemes.
- api 13y ago
  Yeah. One of the biggest things I've learned about startup culture is this: Even if you want to do a startup, avoid "startup culture" and the "startup scene" like the plague. Just build something, launch it, and market it, and ignore all that noise. Not calling your thing a startup at all can be a good start. Call it a project, or a business, or whatever.

gnosis 13y ago

Startup culture has mostly become a get-rich-quick scheme, and most of its participants will go where the money is. If the less risk-averse minority believes innovating will make them a quick buck, they might give it a go. The majority, however, will try to follow the rest of the lemmings to the pot at the end of the rainbow, which right now seems to be Facebook games, iphone apps, and web services.

rbanffy 13y ago
Getting rich quickly leaves more time to do the really great things. It all depends on what the goal is. Money is just a tool.

Karunamon 13y ago

What's with this "social media bad" meme that seems to be so pervasive around here nowadays? Last I checked, looking for new and better ways to connect people was a Good Thing.

api 13y ago
Social media isn't bad per se, but there's definitely a lot of money going to a lot of ideas in that sector that are both unsustainable and boring as hell.

rdouble 13y ago

There have barely been any IPOs compared to the 1990s.

jes5199 13y ago

I think it's entirely possible that the next period of real innovation will be happening somewhere else - and it's possible it's already started somewhere, and that all of us in the Bay Area can't see it over the noise we're generating

api 13y ago
I have a suspicion this could be the case. The cost of living in the Bay Area seems to me as if it does not permit experimentation or DIY anything.

tankbot 13y ago

I don't disagree, but after reading the OP I feel like you might be feeding the wrong wolf! :D

andrewljohnson 13y ago

I could stand never to hear this comment again. I don't think you can zoom in so close on the graph of innovation and see anything. I also don't see how the narrative even fits in a world where we've seen Google, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Apple smartphone revolution emerge from the Valley recently. Facebook, social, and the boy-hacker culture is just one thread in the recent history of the Valley. I do find the systematization of "get-rich-quick" to be interesting in of itself, though.

brickmort 13y ago

I think the spirit of it still very much alive, growing just as it always has. It's only being veiled by the big IPO social media coke binge (etc etc...) projects. Just look at hot huge github has become in the past five years. not to mention open source linux distros, which have arguably taken over Microsoft in the 'best desktop OS' field lately (yet still behind, in my opinion, OS X). There's also new devices like Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and Beagleboards, which are bringing a new age in 'open source' learning. It's a rather amazing time we're living in, actually.