There's so much that's wrong with this post it's hard to know where to begin. > The secret of Silicon Valley is that the benefits of working at a startup accru

There's so much that's wrong with this post it's hard to know where to begin. > The secret of Silicon Valley is that the benefits of working at a startup accrues almost entirely to the founders, and that’s why people repeat the advice to just go start a business. This is simply not true in today's environment. Most startups fail so at a typical startup, there is no upside for employees or founders. Funding, however, is plentiful and most of that funding is directed to employee salaries. So who is benefiting the most at the average startup? The engineers paid well into the six-figures to work on modest CRUD apps regardless of said app's ability to drive sufficient revenue to sustain a real business. In other parts of the post the author suggests that engineers (and other non-founders) aren't compensated appropriately, but his argument isn't convincing. Lots of early stage startups (perhaps the majority) don't generate enough cash to fund operations and many won't any time soon if ever. Just how much should folks be paid at a company that, without investment dollars, wouldn't be able to make payroll? > There is a reason it is hard to hire in Silicon Valley today, and it isn’t just that there are a lot of startups. It’s because engineers and other creators are realizing that the cards are stacked against them unless they are the ones in charge. There are a lot of reasons companies find it hard to hire in Silicon Valley today. They're too picky and/or focused on "culture." They can't pay market salary. Lots of companies are uninspiring and thus unattractive. Many startups fail at retention. Not everyone wants to work at a startup or live in an area with a high cost of living. And so on and so forth. Absent hard numbers to back up the claim, the author fails to present evidence is there that there isn't enough talent primarily because individuals are leaving the labor force to start their own companies. > Founders are not normal people in any of the ways that matter of course. For them, the benefits of building a business are many-fold. They can connect with journalists, advisors, mentors, new business partners, and most importantly, investors... Note how the author left out "customers." Interestingly, the word doesn't appear anywhere in this article, nor do the words "sales", "revenue", "cashflow" or "profit." For a post that does an awful lot of complaining about how the fruits of startup success are divvied up, I think it's telling that the author completely ignored the things that make a company successful.