alecbenzer

12 ms·

61.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I think startups are a bit of a crapshoot even in this regard. You'll learn a lot at a good one, but could potentially learn a lot of bad habits at a bad one.
62.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
> don't deserve to be "preferred" instead of "common" because the VCs put in actual money I agree with most of what you said, but a nit: one perspective I've heard on the motivation for preferred stock is th
63.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
0.02: I really didn't mind the change, I assumed it was meant to allow users to more easily identify "well-known" sites in the results: noticing a familiar icon is a lot easier than noticing a familiar URL. This seems potenti
64.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I've never heard an email sent via Gmail referred to as a "Gmail" before.
65.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Given the author admits: > Note that those outside the company, such as investors or regulators, seem like they should effectively count as a level under some circumstances, but not under others. I think there's obviously some room
66.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Sure, but what's early? I don't think it's unheard of to get to O(1 basis point) at 100s of employees. I've seen an offer at a ~50 person company for 1-2 basis points.
67.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Having 400 employees doesn't say much about how equity is distributed, though. E.g., (made up numbers, I know nothing about Plaid's comp specifically) if an employee gets 1 basis point over 4 years, that's 0.01% * $5.3 billio
68.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Yeah from what I've heard living outside of SF without a car is pretty hard. Does pretty much everyone drive? Is biking common?
69.
Ask HN: Thinking of moving to The Bay Area, what should I do during a visit?
3 points by alecbenzer 7y ago|4 comments
70.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Yeah I guess this is fine as long as you account for it. Starting with $800k, $40k expenses, 2% inflation and 5% return, retiring at 35 you end deplete your money at 67, but starting with $1M takes you to 83.
71.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RTa0rnMdk8VSPpK7qgkl...
72.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Taking out more than $40k/year erodes your principal though, I thought that was pertymcpert's point? Like, if you've got $800k and can reliably earn 5%, as long as you're withdrawing only $40k you're good. But if yo
73.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth , geometric growth is exponential growth.
74.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
TBH having worked with some ex-Bridgewater folks I'm pretty skeptical how much Bridgewater actually lives up to it.
75.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Obviously you need certain core pieces of infra that handle protos generically (like serializing and deserializing) but a) total SLOC for that logic is much, much less than SLOC for code that works with _specific_ protocol buffers b) "
76.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
> many of them around the type system, as this article points out, but also a lot around the language APIs. I think there's a lot not to love about gRPC/protobufs (used them at Google and again now at a startup) but I don'
77.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
This was like 2 or 3 sentences worth of good points sprinkled in between a bunch of stuff that I'm pretty sure isn't an actual problem for anyone. If anything, the things pointed out are issues for people trying to write code that
78.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Not sure I understand the point you're trying to make... Money is a factor but it's not the thing that should draw you to a startup -- expected money is better at Big Tech. A startup is the right choice only once you start to cons
79.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
> I feel a lot of the folks here are focusing on the wrong parts here. The $200M loss was a cheap way of getting user attention, but hey it worked! It "worked" in that that it got people's attention but distracted from the
80.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
> The real reason you should consider working at a startup or starting your own: It's not the money I think this is correct, but makes the post's title seem really click-baity. I think expected financial upside is exactly where
81.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I hope that eventually as more and more people realize how much more they could make at big tech (IME a lot of people just straight up don't know, esp. when a lot of the comp comes as equity grants), startups will have to start paying
82.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I share the intuition that price discrimination feels wrong, but I have trouble really articulating why. Why is "the seller would have given it to me for less" any better than "the buyer would have given me more for it"?
83.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
> the maintainer's having written another popular project. Potentially relevant: https://vorpus.org/blog/why-im-not-collaborating-with-kennet...
84.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Yeah from my limited view when I was there as an L4, Google felt very much run by a weird network of politics and some bureaucracy. Mid-high level VPs seemed like they controlled things a lot more than real higher-ups. I think this can be..
85.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I think a hard engineering problem in general is knowing when to adopt what level of flexibility. Erring too far in either direction gets bad.
86.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I think the EE vs. CS framing is somewhat inflammatory, but the general lesson of not over-complicating designs is a good one.
87.
How to Make Toast: Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science (2001)(cs.brandeis.edu)
76 points by alecbenzer 7y ago|48 comments
88.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Yeah, I don't have any informed opinions on Tim's role in DRM or related things, but the idolization surrounding him always left a bad taste in my mouth.
89.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
Like I said, I just think it's a poor name for that mindset. If what you mean is "Count on your equity being worth $0", say that, and not "Value your equity at $0". Maybe this has to do with the contexts I've h
90.
by alecbenzer 7y ago
I think you're making a fair but unrelated point. Time isn't liquid. If instead of giving a startup time, you gave them literal cash, then it would make sense that you get preferred (instead of common) stock, to protect against th

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