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Disappointed. Thought it was about solving hard technical problems first, not cultural. Figuring out how to crawl 100 million pages a day is certainly, etc. Rat

Disappointed. Thought it was about solving hard technical problems first, not cultural. Figuring out how to crawl 100 million pages a day is certainly, etc. Rather than how to establish a good culture. Managing 20+ ppl is a GOOD problem to have b/c it means u most likely raised lots of funding, or got tons of revenue already.

michaelochurch 13y ago
You don't really need to solve the hard technical problems until you've raised money or have revenue, either. That's why programmers are second-class citizens in the VC-funded startup world. Business guys want you to think that technical talent is important (at least, until you ask for money or equity) but they get away with treating it as a commodity because they can always back-fill (or, at least, think they can) with more expensive and skilled people later on. The bottleneck is the connections to raise money. Connections don't guarantee funding (far from it) but ensure that, if you're rejected, the investors will (a) mentor you until you have something they will fund, and (b) use their network to find other opportunities for you, should the startup not work out. That makes the founders free of the personal financial panic under which it's actually extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to be technically creative.
- melindajb 13y ago
  Where is your data that programmers are second class citizens in the VC funded startup world? That may have been true a decade ago, but one would be hard pressed to argue that now, especially in light of the NVCA's own data. The irony of posting that baseless assertion on Hacker News is also not lost on me.
raverbashing 13y ago
To solve the hard technical problems later you have to solve the hard cultural problems now Because the initial culture is how the company will grow. If there isn't a strong culture, they will hire a bunch of "specialists" that think scaling means porting to Java and using lots of XML

michaelochurch 13y ago

You don't really need to solve the hard technical problems until you've raised money or have revenue, either. That's why programmers are second-class citizens in the VC-funded startup world. Business guys want you to think that technical talent is important (at least, until you ask for money or equity) but they get away with treating it as a commodity because they can always back-fill (or, at least, think they can) with more expensive and skilled people later on. The bottleneck is the connections to raise money. Connections don't guarantee funding (far from it) but ensure that, if you're rejected, the investors will (a) mentor you until you have something they will fund, and (b) use their network to find other opportunities for you, should the startup not work out. That makes the founders free of the personal financial panic under which it's actually extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to be technically creative.

melindajb 13y ago
Where is your data that programmers are second class citizens in the VC funded startup world? That may have been true a decade ago, but one would be hard pressed to argue that now, especially in light of the NVCA's own data. The irony of posting that baseless assertion on Hacker News is also not lost on me.

raverbashing 13y ago

To solve the hard technical problems later you have to solve the hard cultural problems now Because the initial culture is how the company will grow. If there isn't a strong culture, they will hire a bunch of "specialists" that think scaling means porting to Java and using lots of XML