Silicon Valley's Tech Employees Are Getting Nervous (vanityfair.com) 255
An anonymous reader quotes an article on Vanity Fair: Private tech companies are feeling a contraction in Silicon Valley. The funding that venture capitalists have thrown at start-ups is dwindling, in small seed rounds and mega-rounds alike. There's a new postmortem written weekly about a start-up that's run out of cash and shut its doors. Start-up executives are sobering up, realizing that their companies actually need a path to profitability. Now, not wanting to be stuck on a sinking ship, tech employees are thinking about the bubble, too, as they plan their career moves.
GOOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, maybe the snowflakes deserve some blame. i mean who wouldn't want to bathe in money in
exchange for working on something trivial like an instant messaging service that doesn't scale or an
ad distribution network.
its just that they were so smug and self important about it
but really, the blame lies in the investment community. they get to bathe in alot more money, and
ostensibly their job is to direct some fraction of the collective social resources towards efforts that
will further enrich themselves, and indirectly society as a whole. at least that's my guess as to
what this whole 'weath creation' narrative is.
except that they dont seem to be very trustworthy, seems like we get dutch tulips all the time. loans,
electricity, tech, loans, tech, tech.
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Funny)
its just that they were so smug and self important about it
I am sorry to disappoint you, but I live and work in the valley, and I have seen no signs of the contraction described in TFA. My smugness has not diminished.
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Interesting)
The majority are neither smug nor self-important. Yes, there some a-holes who write blog posts about how disgusting it is to have to occasionally see a homeless person or how ugly girls thing they're hot (4/9-ers.). But they are very much the minority. Most tech workers are fairly ordinary people, working to make a living, have a little fun, and hopefully own a home eventually... normal, everyday, "get on with your life and go about in peace" stuff. If everyone were as bad as those bloggers, you'd see stories about mid-Market Twitter and Uber employees making the homeless do demeaning tricks for food; which is obviously not happening.
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The media completely misunderstands Silicon Valley. Even the media within the Bay Area gets it all wrong. They think it's a society full of entrepreneurs when those people are a very small minority. Most jobs here are not at startups, and most people seem to prefer that. Salary is better than stock options. We don't hang out at parties and discuss business ventures as some media stories seem to to imply. Silicon Valley also isn't as high tech as it once was. I mean everyone treats Google as their dar
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Funny)
Let's face it, white collar, upper middle class and upper class people do not live an "ordinary" lifestyle by definition
We have to deal with a lot of problems that "ordinary" people do not. For instance, we can't just hop in the car and go on a trip, without first doing a web search for Tesla charging stations. For some destinations, there are no chargers enroute, and we have to take the spouse's BMW instead.
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The job of the investment community is to make money for their investors. They have one job, and they'd better do it. If this means frantic trading of tulip bulbs, that's what they'll do. If we want resources to go into more productive things, we need to figure out how to make that more profitable than teaching people how to flip real estate.
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is funny people automatically assume that it takes a "bubble" to cause this.
Venture Capital management strategy is to run each startup so that it has a less than 1 in 10 chance of surviving. They usually target 1/14th or so. They want to maximize the size of the ones that succeed, not the percentage that succeed.
People go to work for a startup but don't know that, they should learn about who they work for before taking a job IMO. They just figure they're special and the world should be fair to them, even if fairness would call on them to understand their own part in it.
There is no bubble, because there isn't extra money getting invested. Duh. And most startups are supposed to fail. It is the system. What a dumb story. Also true: if you work experience is just at failed startups, you get harder to hire because those companies are seen in the market as having different culture than the more traditional businesses that care about surviving. And most tech jobs are in other places, not just in one small part of California. For people with non-startup skills, there is even still usually a worker shortage.
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people don't know anything about economics. Even economists don't really know that much about economics--something I realized when I started looking at actual modern economic theory and found only naive observations and general rules with no understanding of mechanism.
Take a look at the job creation narrative. We've seen all kinds of talk about things like trickle-down economics (which actual economists know is bullshit--let's be fair: it's pundits and politicians who believe that crap), leading to this ideal where you give businesses income tax cuts and they create jobs. ... How? Even a cursory examination of market economics in a macroeconomic context says that's nonsense--enough nonsense that you can check for the fallacy of common sense and verify that, yes, the sensible conclusion *is* sensible and the one about trickle-down is ludicrous.
Businesses aren't charities and don't create jobs out of excess profits just so some bloke can get by. Common sense; but this is not sufficient because common sense is often wrong and stupid.
Businesses don't pay wages.
Every product has a cost, which ultimately comes down to wage-labor: in aggregate, the shelf price of a product is its wage-labor cost plus some profit margin. You pay your employees's wages, plus payroll tax, plus benefits; if you charge less than the fraction of these wage-labor costs involved in making a product, you run at a net loss, and go insolvent. That means the minimum sustainable price--the price the consumer must pay--is wages. When GM negotiates for 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 10 years to make cars, the steelmaker goes back to multiple coal and ore suppliers and does the same, and everyone starts competing by lowering big profit margins closer to *and* *never* *less* *than* their costs--which, down the whole supply chain, comes down to squeezing out the aggregate profit margins and bringing the price of steel closer to the cost to a vertical monopoly owning the mines, fuel supplies, and all production mills. It can't go any lower.
You can't supply a product consumers can't afford, which means the consumer base making up the product's market has to be able to pay all of the wages involved in making, moving, and selling the product. The manufacturing wages have to be paid; the transportation wages have to be paid; the logistics wages have to be paid; the retail wages have to be paid. All kinds of taxes are involved. After that, you slap on some mark-up that a sufficiently-sized consumer market will tolerate (and can afford) and you make a profit. If the consumer can't afford it, none of those jobs come into existence.
So we have senators talking out one side of their mouths about "Job Creation", and out the other side they're talking about levying sales taxes (a particularly destructive way to artificially raise the cost-basis of a product to the consumer). We have Social Security OASDI applied to the broad consumer base as a 12.4% income tax--6.2% levied on your paycheck and 6.2% levied on PAYROLL (holy shit that's daft)--rather than as a dedicated flat or progressive income tax. They find every way to destroy jobs while talking about the need to create new jobs.
These same people start talking about how they'll get us all free college so we have the ability to go find or *make* jobs for ourselves. They talk about small businesses and the American Dream, and draw up a narrative about how jobs come from hard work and dedication, and not from capturing the limited supply of consumer money.
It's not that they're all evil conspirators trying to distort and manipulate our economy; it's that they don't know, they don't understand. They think they have it right; they're just wrong.
When someone tells you small businesses are failing like crazy, think about where jobs come from.
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Small businesses always have a high failure rate, even in a boom. Often it is the same evaluation; they take loans that mean if they fall below some profit projection, they go out of business. But if they grow as well as they imagine, then they grow faster, quicker. If you don't "leverage" (read: borrow) then you're seen as some sort of bumpkin. And it is true, you'll only grow slowly without taking on debt. But you also aren't at inflated risk of going out of business. If you're in the black you can just s
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That's true, and it's basic entrepreneurship; I was more commenting on the more basic premise that you can't sell any sort of new product in a market where consumers can't pay the wages of everybody involved in getting that product made, shipped, and sold. If the consumer base can't pay for the new jobs, then you can't create new jobs, and thus *somebody* has to lose.
If all small businesses succeeded, established businesses would shrink and die constantly.
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We have unemployment because unemployment is unavoidable. You having a job means somewhere, someone else doesn't have that job; the tube holds 30 balls and, eventually, putting one in one side pops another out the other side.
The length of the tube is determined by the consumer market's ability to buy. Whether or not you get in the tube is determined by luck first, and then your own actions; you can wind up jobless despite your heroic effort.
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They also should be scared witless of Bernie. They have screwed over the working class enough and caused enough chaos that people are starting to listen to commies and not run away screaming into the night. This is a not unexpected result of a financial meltdown of epic proportions.
The 1% have primed the situation for their own downfall due to their greed and lack of foresight.
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Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
This, right the hell here.
As an aside, I've found that during the interview with a startup, you *always* begin discussing the business' long-term plans, discuss their financials, discuss their profit strategy, and learn enough to understand the answers... doubly so if you're not getting any stock (I go for cash/salary anyway - worthless stock is worthless if the company goes tits-up). If they get all nervous or their answers start getting all buzzwordy, end the interview there and go look somewhere else, unless circumstance says you have no other choice.
I've lost count of the times when I interviewed at some startup that tried to sound like The Next Big Thing(tm), and everyone runs for cover at the very mention of even the minor question of "How much revenue do you project over the next five years, and what is your strategy to improve it?"
( The funniest was when one "IT Director" replied to that very question with "Why should you care? You're just orchestrating the servers?" Why was it funny? Because the look on his face was priceless when I told him that "Well, I won't blindly slave away for some random VC chump, good luck finding someone stupid enough to work for you, and the interview is now over. Good day, gents.")
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If you go for stock options, determine to what extent they can be diluted through the issuance of additional stock, and who gets the money when that additional stock is sold. You may be surprised.
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The funniest was when one "IT Director" replied to that very question with "Why should you care? You're just orchestrating the servers?" Why was it funny? Because the look on his face was priceless when I told him that "Well, I won't blindly slave away for some random VC chump, good luck finding someone stupid enough to work for you, and the interview is now over. Good day, gents."
I had a interview with 3DFX in 1997. The interview with the QA manager went as expected, but fell apart when I got interviewed by the PR manager. If you ever read the Dilbert comics, a hardware company run by the marketing department was doomed to fail. I declined the job. A few years later, they decided to compete with their own customers by manufacturing their own video cards. Not surprisingly, they filed for bankruptcy in the dot com bust.
I also had an interview with Nvidia in 1997. That lasted four hour
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Ironic thing, when I did that for a recent job, the interviewer said, "This is about you hiring with us, not the other way round." Needless to say, I found employment elsewhere.
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I'm pretty sure the stat is that 90% of ALL new businesses... not just tech startups... fail within the first two years.
The fact that the same rule (or your 1/14) applies to tech is no reason to go running around like chicken little. Personally, I'd not be too surprised if there is a bit of a contraction... if for no other reason than the fact that, until San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area starts building significantly more housing, we're running out of room for workers to fit. But a big differenc
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Small business failure rate is 50% at 4 years. So, no.
Re:GOOD. (Score:4)
There is no such thing as a worker 'shortage'.
After the dot com bust, I saw a study that the IT industry will have a critical shortage of skilled workers from baby boomers retiring and Southeast Asian countries stop exporting their workers by 2035. I went back to school to learn computer programming and get my technical certifications. I got out of a dead end job in the video game industry and got into the IT industry. I'm looking forward to making more money over the next 20 years as the shortage becomes a reality.
Re:GOOD. (Score:4)
You are still not understanding the terms you are using.
I based my technical career around an expected shortage based on well-defined demographics in the long-term future. Not a perceived shortage to suppress wages by hiring managers in the short-term future.
Re:GOOD. (Score:4)
You are still not understanding the terms you are using.
I based my technical career around an expected shortage based on well-defined demographics in the long-term future. Not a perceived shortage to suppress wages by hiring managers in the short-term future.
Bingo. It is refreshing to see someone who gets it. Look for shortages and capitalize on them. That's the way to thrive in software/IT. This field is not for the inflexible.
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Look for shortages and capitalize on them. That's the way to thrive in software/IT.
I had several friends who abandoned computer programming in college because health care became the new money major for everyone to enroll in after the dot com bust. In fact, I was told repeatedly that I was crazy to pursue a technical career. My friends make more money in health care than I do in IT, but they hate their jobs because they don't like being around sick people. Ironically, some of my best paying IT assignments were from working at hospitals.
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I think what you mean is that you based your career on a study that there will exist a higher scarcity of IT labor than other labor (such as dish-washing) because a higher price would be paid due to the higher scarcity.
FTFY
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Unfortunately, tech types rarely understand economics because they do not understand, among many things, human activities.
Baby boomers are retiring and the workforce (tax base) is shrinking over the next 20 years. Social Security and Medicare will consume two-thirds of the federal budget. Taxes will go way up to pay for everything else. These are undeniable economic trends. You can plan for this or you can pretend it won't happen. I'm planning for it.
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All based on your beliefs and perceptions and not as a result of words in a document.
I suggest you get your head out of your ass and get a subscription to The Wall Street Journal.
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And, what does that mean?
| Sometimes what you need is just not available at any price.
Have you tried paying a million and all relocation costs?
Re:GOOD. (Score:4, Interesting)
Only downside is, most of these kids will come breezing into our communities (outside of Silly Valley) and compete for the same jobs.
While at my end it's no big deal? I can see a lot of developers in places like Seattle, Portland, Austin, et al getting nervous all the sudden as the recruiters stop soliciting the locals as much as they used to.
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What happens in California will just ripple over to Seattle, Portland, and Austin. VCs are VCs, and if people are worried about their jobs in SV, they better be worried in Austin, especially because if companies start laying off, they will be keeping their core offices in California, and axing the satellite offices elsewhere. Austin has a lot of companies, but not enough to stand alone if the economy tanked in California. You can't sell your new ads your new dot.com is making, if most potential buyers ar
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What happens in California will just ripple over to Seattle, Portland, and Austin. VCs are VCs, and if people are worried about their jobs in SV, they better be worried in Austin, especially because if companies start laying off, they will be keeping their core offices in California, and axing the satellite offices elsewhere. Austin has a lot of companies, but not enough to stand alone if the economy tanked in California. You can't sell your new ads your new dot.com is making, if most potential buyers are in survival mode or at the courthouse filing bankruptcy paperwork.
In some ways, Austin is just a relatively cheap suburb of SF, or Santa Cruz... except located about 1750 miles away.
That "cheap" part is why I expect Austin to wind up doing better than the valley in the long run.
Re:GOOD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Give those special little snowflakes a taste of what everybody else has been living with for the last eight years.
Apparently you don't have facebook. My Democrat friends post another fake graphic every day showing how the economy is doing just *great*, better than ever! and everybody has a job and Obama has saved us. Except for Bernie Sanders supporters, who say Obama did a great job in recovering the economy but the rich people are making life bad for everybody.
By the way, everybody now also has health insurance! Yes, because the IRS will fine you a couple thousand bucks if you don't - which somehow means everybody has it. Don't ask how to get from point A to B there.
Re:GOOD. (Score:5, Funny)
My Democrat friends post another fake graphic every day showing how the economy is doing just *great*, better than ever! and everybody has a job and Obama has saved us.
My Tea Party relatives in Idaho send me emails about how terrible the economy is with 92 million people out of work, how black women will cut off the heads of white men with guillotines and black men will rape white men at FEMA camps, and Donald Trump will save us from our sins. Another day in the right-wing echo chamber.
Re:GOOD. (Score:4, Funny)
the truth likely lays in the middle
The middle of the road has dead armadillos and yellow lines.
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Well, Obamacare was all about making sure everyone has health insurance. Obama even wiped his butt with the Constitution in the process. So if ANY one has a sob story now, it's all on Obama.
He's the white knight that was supposed to have solved this problem with a purely partisan effort.
Of course any Democrats will try to shout you down if you have one bad thing to say about the ACA or what's happened with insurance afterwards. They don't want to hear about any unintended consequences or gaps in Obama's sol
Re:GOOD. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe you're in the wrong profession / geography?
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especially since the oldsters are pre-spooked and ready to sell most assets to keep from losing everything as they did before.
Pain doesn't begin to describe the loss. Everything I have done since has been with the expectation that it's all going to come crashing down again.
oh, not the encryption ban? (Score:3)
Their own Senator plans to leave a smoking crater where the Valley was. Maybe they can plant orchards again.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]
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Which of the senile idiots are you referring to?
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Neither Feinstein nor Boxer represents the Silicon Valley tech folks at all. Boxer is Hollywood's senator, and Feinstein is the senator for the valley's military industrial complex. All the Republicans would have to do is run moderates who don't have a history of bankrupting major tech companies and who aren't running on an anti-gay platform, and both of our senators would be gone.
This reaction by Feinstein isn't even surprising. It is quite typical. This Feinstein quote says everything:
“It
Tried the startup culture, hated it (Score:5, Insightful)
Never again. I value my personal time with my wife and children too much to devote it to a mere job, no matter how "good" that job may be. I'm interested in working with interesting tech, primarily things relating to command line tools, regexp, pattern matching, you get the picture. I left the startup culture for good and went to non-profits. Why? Because I have more latitude with how I work and what I work with than I ever did following some young, inexperienced founder(s) hellbent on getting rich. I work 40 hours a week, 8-5, Monday-Friday. These are normal, healthy hours. Anything else is for monkeys and those foolish enough to believe working 70 hours makes a difference.
You have one life. The time you have is precious. There is no rewind button. Do what you love, but do it largely for yourself or your family if you are married and have children.
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Yeah, my favorite is the 24-hour hackathon (with free pizza) being a "benefit".
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I work 40 hours a week, 8-5, Monday-Friday./quote. that's not 40 hours, just an FYI. No wonder you find regular expressions interesting technology, they're more difficult than multiplication.
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The 40-hour week is a socialist conspiracy. Those who believe in it are Unamerican. Get your facts right.
I haven't worked overtime in the last 10+ years. My employment contracts with Fortune 500 companies and the government forbids me from working over 40 hours a week. No one wants to pay overtime.
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The stark contrast between typical American tech jobs and what the startup netslaves put themselves through is hilarious. And when their gamble doesn't turn them into a millionaire, they're ready to blame the whole country.
A new business that isn't a startup is the same as a traditional business; they don't want to pay overtime, and they don't want to get sued for back overtime later if they abuse an employee by not paying overtime just because they're on a salary. By law that salary is only for regular tim
Re:Tried the startup culture, hated it (Score:5, Interesting)
And when their gamble doesn't turn them into a millionaire, they're ready to blame the whole country.
I had a friend who got a receptionist job and became one of the early millionaires at Yahoo. She quit Yahoo, took her million dollars to buy a house in Silicon Valley and put herself through college to become a school teacher (her dream job). Friends from failed startups were extremely bitter at her for being one of the lucky ones. More so because she was in the right place at the right time and wasn't even a techie.
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A new business that isn't a startup is the same as a traditional business; they don't want to pay overtime, and they don't want to get sued for back overtime later if they abuse an employee by not paying overtime just because they're on a salary. By law that salary is only for regular time, and an office worker isn't like a doctor or lawyer where it just might take more hours to finish the work; the company could let them go how after 8 hours, they're fully in charge of the schedule.
That's nice, but Silicon Valley is still in California, and California has rather forward-thinking views [ca.gov] on which employees qualify as exempt from overtime.
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Yeah, but you're not a lawyer and also didn't look it up and read about it in depth so you didn't realize that there are a bunch of caveats and that being "exempt" doesn't mean you're not owed overtime if you work overtime. It means there is a different legal principle, and it requires different evidence than just a time card. Being exempt doesn't stop your salary from being based on full time, or the requirement to pay overtime; it does mean that if you work 80 hours one week, and take the following week o
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That's BS.
I do IT support contract work. No one wants to pay overtime. NO ONE.
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That's BS. My contracts with Fortune 500s and the government do not forbid me from working more than forty hours, in fact they practically encourage me to seek out new opportunities and strike when I can.
The contract may not explicitly forbid it, but it's essentially forbidden as the project manager won't approve the OT.
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You have one life and your time is indeed precious, from which point of view "My choice of employment mostly revolves around the hours I can do given my family commitments" is actually quite a sad statement to make if this really is what you love.
I find it more sad that you rate work, even doing something you love over time with family. Work to live, don't live to work.
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It doesn't have to be children. It can be ANY thing that is not work. Want to get out and actually DO something? Want to be something more than a slave to your boss?
You will need a corporate culture that acknowledges that employees do something besides work for the corporation.
Even game programmers like to get out of the office some time.
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Your post is like somebody saying they got into construction because they like playing with hammers, when what they really like is building stuff.
What is old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)
They're all too young to remember the dot-com bubble bursting 15 years ago. We're living in the same times.
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But but but all those VCs were telling us there was no bubble! And everyone knows that VCs are honest-to-a-fault people!
Re:What is old is new again (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a start up that was actually *close* to profitability. One Friday the board had a meeting to raise what was assumed to be the last round of funding before going public. The funds would be just to support operations until the IPO. Anyway, the company was already carved up so the board agreed to dillute the class A holders, the ones who started the whole thing. They forgot that one of those holders still had more interest in the company, he owned all the office furniture. So over the weekend he came in with movers and took all of the desks, chairs and filing cabinets. Of course they left all the contents, computers, books etc on the floor. It was a surreal Monday. I had 10 developers quit on me that day..
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Since he was diluted out of the company he actually had no pants..
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As somebody who was there, I have to say no to that. Everybody knew there was a bubble, and the VC argument wasn't that there was no bubble; it was that some people were going to keep getting very rich before it burst, and since nobody knew when it would burst and how many companies would survive, it didn't actually matter until it happened. And they were right on all those points.
Like the recruiter on the radio, back in `99 said: there is a big worker shortage because of the bubble, and that doesn't mean t
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I didn't say "no VC said."
When people make general statements, they're talking about generally. You're arguing against the absolute statement "no VC said," which isn't what I said at all.
I can also find people who say, "murder is OK if you kill the right person." And yet it is still true that there is general consensus that murder is bad.
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They're all too young to remember the dot-com bubble bursting 15 years ago. We're living in the same times.
Agreed. Good news is, at least this time you don't end up having to compete against paper tigers who throw the right buzzwords at clueless HR PHBs, right? Okay, but not as much this time. Umm, okay... we're screwed.
In all seriousness though, things have changed a bit since then.
Back then, I remember in California (Milpitas to be exact) in 2001, and driving by a building that had a huge banner saying "Now hiring at least 500 MCSEs!" Mind, I was only in town for a bit of vendor training, but that sign scared
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woot (Score:5, Funny)
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Bollocks to that. I would give anything to have my tap-to-text, 12-key keypad phone back again. I would much rather have a phone that does phone things - and only phone things - well, and a separate device that does all the other business.
So stuff the 'cooler' mobile phones. Give me something that doesn't have to guess what I'm trying to type because it isn't designed for anyone with fingers bigger than a six-year-old's.
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Bollocks to that. I would give anything to have my tap-to-text, 12-key keypad phone back again. I would much rather have a phone that does phone things - and only phone things - well, and a separate device that does all the other business.
Then go and buy one. If you get something like a Nokia 203 or 515 you can even use it as 3G modem and tether to it. Otherwise it has a stand by tiome of about 8 decades.
Give me something that doesn't have to guess what I'm trying to type because it isn't designed for anyo
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I miss the Internet of the late '90s, before every company started trying to track, analyze and monetize everything I do.
"Start-up executives are sobering up" (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why, once upon a time, executives were middle-aged men who'd had enough time to learn why profits are required for business to function.
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They still are. Most companies, including most newly formed corporations, are not venture-funded "startups."
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S curves and Economic Cycles Collide (Score:2)
It's funny that these start-ups don't understand that eventually the money dries up from VCs. You can only carve up a company so many times and dilute previous investors so much until you become worthless. It amazes me that the concept of a path to profitability completely misses some of these start-ups and usually the VCs are the ones pushing that from the beginning or are we talking Angel investors here?
Some advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are an executive, favor cash compensation, not equity. Make the decision for yourself how you want to invest your cash, if at all.
Work for a company that is making something legitimate today.
Work for a company that is making a profit, not wasting naive investors' money.
Factor in cost of living increases for the amount of time that you expect to work at the job. Let's say for example that you're moving to a city in the Silicon Valley region. If rents are going up 10% per year in that city then what they're paying you is going down 5-10% per year in real terms. (As rents increase, the cost of everything else increases, too. As rents climb even higher, the cost of living is completely dominated by what you spend on rent.)
F*ck Silicon Valley. It seems like no matter how high you get paid, you're screwed. Work somewhere where making $60,000 will allow you to live comfortably, in other words, virtually anywhere else in the United States.
If you can't save any money, you're not living comfortably. You're just getting by.
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Work for a company that is making a profit, not wasting naive investors' money.
Why? If you're taking cash not stock, then the worst that happens when it tanks is you have to find a new job.
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I'm guessing that the whole 'finding a new job', and networking like hell to make that easier, tends to be a bit of a timesuck.
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I'm guessing that the whole 'finding a new job', and networking like hell to make that easier, tends to be a bit of a timesuck.
Yesbut most jobs aren't for life, so plenty of non startup jobs will require moving on if you want to go up the career (or pay) ladder, and etc.
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Yesbut most jobs aren't for life, so plenty of non startup jobs will require moving on if you want to go up the career (or pay) ladder, and etc.
You're technically correct, but the issue lies within the frequency of job changes: do you want to jump to a new job every 3 months, every 6 months, every couple of years, every 5 years, or...? Startups tend towards the higher frequency, so...
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I don't even understand how equity compensation is legal. Insider trading is supposed to be illegal. And even if it were not, if I owned a company, I would sure as hell make sure that I did not bias any CEO I hired towards the operation of my company.
Spoonrocket not a great example... (Score:2)
I read about Spoonrocket. It is nothing but a restaurant that delivers food in San Francisco. In at least one review it was just not that good.
I doubt that it's tanking is an example of downturn. It may just be that the margins where way too small for it to ever expand past a small number of cities.
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I read about Spoonrocket. It is nothing but a restaurant that delivers food in San Francisco.
The owner of FarmGirl Flowers, a flower delivery service with an ecommerce website in San Francisco, declined to do a on The Profit TV series because she thought it was worth a lot more as a tech startup.
http://tycoonplaybook.com/2016/02/04/the-profit-marcus-and-farmgirl-flowers/ [tycoonplaybook.com]
Slowdown? Wha Slowdown?! (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who don't read The Wall Street Journal in the morning, companies are hiring in San Francisco.
More companies in San Francisco plan to add new jobs in the next six months than in the last half year, according to a new report, bucking concerns about a tech slowdown and its impact on the region's economy.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/what-slowdown-san-francisco-execs-plan-more-new-hiring/ [wsj.com]
Depends what you're working on (Score:2)
Silicon Valley's recent host of me-too social media apps promoted by startups that end in 'ly' are due for immolation, but if you're working on one of the large scale development efforts that have a good chance of transforming society in as basic a way as the smartphone has, you don't have to worry about your job. An example: autonomous cars.
What's old is new again (Score:2)
I'm not sure why all the surprise. This is exactly what happened in the last tech bubble, people suddenly realizing they had to produce something which earned them money. They couldn't keep leeching off someone else to get their paycheck.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" couldn't be any more clear.
Looks like those smug, hipster millennials are suddenly having to face reality and they don't like it. Too bad.
App appers (Score:2)
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dupe from 1999? (Score:2)
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No, the key was collecting underpants. Have you learned nothing?
What Me Worry? (Score:2)
Fickle venture capital dollars avoid human payroll and other operational costs at all times. Its about buying a golden goose, but only needing the golden eggs. If that makes you nervous then you're lucky to be working until they can lay some eggs. Once apon a time, people were valued assets, but now they've become a liability that increases with time.
The market is fickle and income is increasingly unreliable. A 30 year mortgage will out live most any job or marriage 5 times over. Its absurd to not be n
Wait... (Score:3)
...so you're telling me that Twitter isn't actually worth $15 billion dollars?
Phht.
Next, you're going to tell me Uber's not worth $62 billion.
OH NO! (Score:3)
Signed,
No one in Detroit.
Is FuckedCompany.com back? (Score:2)
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