An Argument Across the Internet: Startups, VCs and Lifestyle
I love watching an argument unfold across the Internet. Here's a thread that bounced from evangelist-loudmouth-romanticizer to startup engineer to VC where everyone's right and everyone's a bit wrong too.
• "You might be sad that you work long hours and that sometimes your boss yells at you when tensions run high. But you also know that there is nowhere on earth like Silicon Valley…. There’s so much money in Silicon Valley now that a lot of non-like minded people have rolled in. Looking for easy stock options at a hot startup. They start whining when they realize that they have to give so much to make it all work." — Michael Arrington
• "He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis.
"I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.
"What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for you to give up your life in order for him to become richer." — Jamie Zawinski
• "I don’t know Jamie’s history with VCs, so I won’t speculate. But his post got me thinking about the contrast in perception vs. the reality of VC economics.
"The underlying assertion Jamie makes is that VCs stand to make far more money than certain employees when and if a company has a positive liquidity event (acquisition or IPO). So, let’s test that assertion with a simple sample case for today’s market." — Bryce Roberts
I are no understand.
@smithsj Michael Arrington is a douche.
@smithsj (even if the current system makes him king of right in the "this is wrong but it's happening way too much" way?)
@Connor He certainly didn't help his case by citing the reaction to Zynga's conniving and lack of business ethics as an example of the whining he's talking about.
@smithsj I feel like this article might be easier to follow if I knew what the hell a "VC" was.
@hypnosifl Viet Cong
@hypnosifl V.C. Andrews.
Best summed up as "Money is the root of all evil."
Besides, never argue with a hardcore programmer about working long hours. They will never listen. They think they know better, always. In some cases, these are people that cannot function in any other way in life, so they may very well be correct to dump 12+ hours a day into their craft. Monetary reward is a secondary concern.
Arrington is a dick, though, because he wants all young people to believe that the 12-hour workday (and, for that matter, the tech industry itself) is worth the payoff. He is a mad hatter, gone crazy from inhaling too much of his supplies. He has failed to comprehend the past 200 years of lessons from industrialized labor, and/or is putting high-skilled line production roles on too high a pedestal. No one wants to do non-creative work for 12 hours a day without getting paid big bucks for it. Arrington's ok with his (ridiculous) job because it feeds his ego. Tell me how anyone is finding similar satisfaction by working a high-pressure production job without cashing big checks…
@brianvan Are you saying programming is non-creative? I think you'll get an argument there.
@zidaane I'm a programmer, and I let me tell you: if you looked at anything I've done, you could never say "my kid could paint that". So, yeah, it's not "creative". It's real work.
@Niko Bellic Pretty sure everything that takes time is real work. Not really questioning that.
@brianvan Re: creativity, what I find interesting is how the same tech blogs that will denounce Jay Maisel for asking for attribution of his photo will then throw a fit when a big website doesn't linkback to an infographic about cellphones or fonts or something.
@zidaane Hey, I do like to unleash my creative genius when it's time to submit my billing hours!
@brianvan As a "creative professional" I take issue with the idea that I want to work 12+ hours a day. I'm really really sick of the idea that the payoff for my work is somehow different because I make shit instead of … whatever it is other people do for a living.
@Niko Bellic Being "creative" is inherently work-intensive; it's necessarily creating something. You're using an existing knowledge base to create something new, something that hasn't been seen before… that could be a painting, a new wall detail, or a block of code. I don't think a kid could go design an effective advertisement, nor could he or she go and engineer a jet engine.
thats my facebook pic!
I have this theory that the sanity of startup founders correlates exactly to the amount of equity, in percentage terms, that they are able to keep out of the clutches of VCs.
There’s so much money in Silicon Valley now that a lot of non-like minded people have rolled in. Looking for easy stock options at a hot startup.
Well, SOMEONE is going to be able to cash in. Since clearly Arrington invented time travel to go back to 1998 for that quote.
FYI, the comments below Bryce Roberts' post are pretty enjoyable. Here's a favorite:
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The inside baseball stuff is a good read, and helps paint a broader picture. Though I noticed you left out something in your analysis – how many times did that VC who came away with ~ $1.3M [i.e. the same as a low-level engineer at the start-up] sleep under his desk?
A significant point from JWZ's post was that VCs input (beyond money) is structured very differently from an engineer who may be pressured/expected/etc. to burn the candle at both ends for multiple years.
——–
So, yeah: treating a couple of Stanford postdocs to a strip club does not equal coding at your desk until you pass out at 4am.
My understanding is that until it's as hard for capital to flow around the planet as it is for labor, there shouldn't really be any room for debating who has the advantage in these VC agreements.
I'd really like to see a side-by-side comparison of annual work visa and legal immigration maximums to the annual volume of newly incorporated foreign subsidiaries. My guess would be that the numbers would be staggering, would elicit mortified "Kermit the frog" gulp faces, etc.
Thorstein Veblen FTW!
There is an equivalent for those on the humanities side and it's called being a junior associate.
@eatbigsea – been there, done that. I think I posted 3000 billable hours one year. I remember the last year I worked at a firm, they billed $1.4mm off my time (that's the collected number, not billed). Most definitely not worth it.
"There’s so much money in Silicon Valley" – cute
– all of Wall St.
So… like, we're… bullish on the Groupon IPO?
It's weird how the tech industry has upended the entire history of capitalism by deciding to pay the guys who have all the money the most and the people who do all of the work the least.
Oh wait, that's right.
People come to their senses here too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283214
Not particularly fond of VCs, but it has to be said: if you don't like the deal, you don't have to sign it.