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Paul Graham: Hiring is Obsolete
jazznjava writes "Paul Graham has a new essay covering what the influences of declining operating costs will have on startup companies, and the undervaluation of undergraduates."
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Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Outsourcing will definately bring down the average wages. The only way for local graduates to be hired will be to offer their services for lesser pay. This will also translate to lower standard of living. Think about it...
fuvoo: watch something
Besides recent grads, of course.
Hiring someone with no work experience is extremely risky. There's a very good chance you're going to get someone with no clue, or someone who finds out your job isn't really what he wants to do for the next 5 years or so.
Because of that risk, recent grads will not get paid top dollar. Period.
The basic costs to start a business in today's market is very small. Web storefronts have replaced real storefronts and the cost of 'renting' space is close to nothing now a days. Along with the fact that a bachelor's degree doesn't set you apart by any means the same margin it did a decade ago. More and more people are finding graduate school a necessity for job security.
We know from the study of basic economics that specialization creates synergies between global organizations and that by leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions. Therefore, there should be one big huge company that always employs everybody in the labor force, and those employees would be rented on an hourly basis to other companies for their use. This would have the following advantages: First, this big huge company would have its payroll system totally dialed in, so that it would happen with minimal overhead. Secondly, everybody would have benefits. Third, you could never get fired. Fourth, when a company decides not to "use" you anymore, the big huge company will automatically place you in a job by the next day. This would maximize the amount of employment throughout the country, reduce the amount corporations are spending on the hiring and firing process, reduce litigation, and give everyone a good, stable job.
I think that's what Graham means when he says that hiring is obsolete.
I find there is much a problem in underestimation of high school education and reluctance to hire students.
Karma: Good, or bust!
The article says nothing new. Some people who are younger are smarter than some people who are older. Big deal. We all knew that. Investors don't necessarily want smart people; they want people with experience because they're the ones who have the judgment to make good decisions. Being smart is certainly important, because that determines whether you can learn from your experiences. The younger a person is, the less likely they will have had the same breadth/depth of experience as an older person, and may be less capable of making good business decisions.
Back to work, slave!
And fetch me a fresh Nubian virgin on your way out.
When you're young and full of energy and ideas, it's good to take chances, fail often, and then find the winning idea and make it big...
But that requires knowing a lot of things, and recognizing that you aren't invincible and will need help from experienced people, too.
But it's heck of a lot better than going to school, toil away in classes just for the sake of being in the classes, and then working for a good salary...
Please stop pretending that you are anything more than a very good programmer and a good teacher (On Lisp was good).
You're beginning to sound like Eric Raymond with this non stop barrage of contentless gasbag articles.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
His points over many essays are nearly always the same, but looked at from different angles:
- do hard work (and work hard)
- hang around with smart people
- don't follow trends, blaze your own trail
- start with good ideas
- spend as little as possible
- the internet leverages your investment
- your biggest investment is time
- Tech matters (as do languages and platforms)
- He did it (started a successful company and sold out). All of his essays encourage you to as well.
I cannot understand why anyone on this site does not like what he has to say. He's saying the time has never been better to start a business, keep your costs low and make better technology your advantage, and he's entirely encouraging with his style of presentation.I, for one, thank Paul Graham for his insight into something I want to do.
Oh, and if you didn't know this nugget of wisdom: Find and listen to someone who has done what you want to do. Don't listen to the masses. Listen to someone's who's done it.
Cisco pursued this strategy of buying small companies with promising technology but in the dotcom days. Effectively, Cisco let others finance the R&D and initial market testing that all start-ups perform. If the start-up failed, it was no skin off Cisco's nose. If the start-up worked and had a product (and company vision) that matched Cisco, then they bought you.
Its a great way to get innovative and market-proven technologies, but it can be a little piece-meal. Not all the great start-up techs are going to fit into your architecture or segment the market in a clean way. Also, due diligence can't uncover every problem when you take the start-up's tech and try to scale it to big-company volumes and service expectations. Finally, buying start-ups is a very public affair compared to a tightly secured internal R&D function -- the minute you buy a startup (with a product on the market), all your competitors know where you are going.
Buying start-ups is a nice tool, but it can't totally replace (only augment) an internal, integrated approach to R&D, product development and architecture development.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Anyone can create a business - but to be successful, someone has to buy the product. History is littered with great products that failed to survive, because nobody plunked down money to keep the company alive. Buyers are increasingly less willing to acquire products from start-ups, because long term support is a real question. The start up may be bought - they may choose to do something else - they may just go away. If the product doesn't provide a return on the investment required within a very short time, its just not worth the risk. Building a better mouse trap doesn't guarantee that people will beat a path to your door.
It seems to me that while, as several users have pointed out, Paul doesn't really present anything new; what he does do is to point out things that most people don't see. While some people already know in detail what he is talking about, many do not, and he is opening the eyes of these people.
Having read about 2/3 of his articles, I have realized that most of what he talks about, I already, at some level, know. The article helps to see a topic in a new light though. Yes, some of his articles aren't all that great, and are stuff that is generally know, but very few writers are always successful.
It is the same reason that we have books on science or programming or how to use Windows, or any other number of topics. A subset of the population already intimately understands these ideas. However, to the rest of us, it lets us understand and explore the ideas in ways that never would have occurred to us/been possible.
If you really don't like Paul's articles, then don't read them. They only come up every few weeks. It's not like he posts a new one every other day.
Absolutely true (up to the no-firing part). Look at all the IT Consulting and Business Process Outsourcing firms. Accenture has 100,000 employees, EDS has 117,000, Cap Gemini has 49,000. They act like the "big firm" and shift employees from project to project.
Of course when they lose a big contract or don't book enough business, they still lay people off.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hiring is obsolete. This is why we need enough wars, famines, diseases, and poverty to reduce the population sizes. We simply don't need new labor or new consumers.
At least from the comments so far (and Captain Obvious also missed out that this has always been the case, in every industry, all the time. Newbie == less experience || less pay)
"In fact, if Bill [Gates] had finished college and gone to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for Apple. And while that would probably have been better for all of us, it wouldn't have been better for him."
2) Low barriers to entry also means there is going to be hundreds of other "undergrads" trying to sell the same idea. This means your chances of eventual payback are much smaller!
3) Why should bigger companies buy startups when they can just partner with them or outsource company services to them?
4) Yeah, starting a web based startup doesn't cost significantly more than just being a slacker. But if you haven't noticed, 99% of us can't afford to just set around and be a slacker either! SOMEBODY has got to be paying your food and rent. Apparently Mr. Graham thinks most students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and can afford to not have any income for several years. I've got about $130,000 in student loans that say otherwise...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want. They don't care if the person behind it is a high school kid...
BS. Users care if the company will be around tomorrow. Users care if there are some hidden security vulnerabilities in the software. Users care if the software has any stolen IP in the code. Users care if the software will integrate with their existing stuff.
A lot of this hinges on experience.
This is why the dotcom era saw thousands of startups come and go. And companies like IBM continues chugging along. True: the conventional wisdom left out folks who put their dotcom trust into old standby's like DEC or HP. But chances are, when you purchase the product of a high-schooler's startup, you may end up with something like Napster on your system. That won't do you any good 5 years down the road - so it only temporarily satisifes the requirements of the Home User market. Not something to build empires upon.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
who works as a systems administrator for a research project and is therefore on call 24/7, I get paid $0/hour. I get no benefits, I even had to pay the parking ticket when I had to work 30 hours over a 3 day weekend and the closest place I could park was an empty lot. An associate of mine calculated that it is much cheaper as a research institution to hire undergraduates than it is to hire graduates/post-doc. It's roughly a third for undergrads, if you even have to pay them at all. It's really quite a sad state of affairs. While I'm not in a particularly huge financial problem, there are a lot of talented people who flip burgers when they should be doing "great" things.
Somehow internal R&D was bad for the books- but seed money came from a different pile.
R&D is bad for the books because so much of the money is wasted on ideas that fail. Letting start-ups do the R&D, initial product roll-out and marketing lets you do R&D totally off the books because someone else foots the bill. Rather than fund 100 R&D projects and see one create a successful project, you can let 100 start-ups do it and buy the one start-up that has a good idea.
Cisco also had the advantage that buying startups cost that "nothing." Rather than buy the startup in cash, the used stock to purchase the company (it dilutes the stock a bit, but Cisco almost never bought large companies). You are right about the issue of R&D on the books, because internal R&D cost real dollars, acquired R&D (buying startups) only cost shares.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
We can all own our own businesses. Nothing stops you from taking advantage of outsourcing. No one is forcing you to work for the man when you can be the man. Now of course only some of us can be the man, this is why we need population control, we should support abortion, we should abolish social security, we should privatize healthcare and we need to make government much much smaller. If you want to survive in the brave new world you have to do it on your own.
here is a link to a mp3 of the talk if anyone cares.
oh and go CSUA!
From the article:
"if Bill had finished college and gone to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for Apple. And while that would probably have been better for all of us, it wouldn't have been better for him."
I doubt it would have been better for us either. If Gates had never created Microsoft, and never cloned the PC's underpinnings away from IBM, we would probably never have seen the day of ubiquitous, commodity PCs. Not to mention all the hardware and software innovation and job creation that has led to.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
This is just as likely as his previous essay stating that bayesian filtering would end all of our spam problems.
Everyone is not equal. Equality was the dumbest idea man invented next to capitalism! There can never be equality just like there can never be fair capitalism, It's simple, our population is totally out of control and needs to shrink. The world simply isnt sustainable without population control. This means we need to stop spending money to help people survive by getting rid of social programs and welfare programs like social security.
I noticed that nowhere in TFA did he mention anything about where the money comes from (other than that its cheaper now). I'd have loved to try starting a company after college. But in the real world, I had students lots of expensive loans to pay off, rent on an apartment, various bills. Where would he expect me to have paid that from? How does he expect me to eat? He sort of seems to be overlooking the chicken and the egg problem. Yes, a newly graduated student can live cheaply -- but not for free.
And where are we today? Microsoft is #1 in Internet browsers. IBM is #1 in open source applications. WalMart is #1 in retail. The number of programmers in the US is down 25% since 2000. Almost all the dot-coms are dead.
There are interesting things to be done in software, but the "make money fast by selling stuff on the Internet" ideas have been done.
The reason the world is so competitive is because we have too many people and not enough machines. The more robots, machines and productivity we have, the less people we need. This means the only way for us all to be rich is to have population control. The best way to improve the economy is to get rid of social security. By removing social security theres less burden on the economy, we can reduce taxes. We can also get rid of public schools which cost billions per year and privatize the school system. This would save billions more.
And the start-up-and-get-bought-out idea just doesn't work as well as Graham claims. I've seen it. Some few people get millions of dollars for their start-up companies, but most single person or very small operations that get bought out only take in a few hundred thousand. It works like this: smart and motivated guy has good idea and forms company, works hard for a few years making pennies and growing debts, gets bought out and ends with a plum job and a few hundred thousand in his pocket. It's only slightly ahead of plan B: smart and motivated guy gets entry level job and advances. It's behind plan C: smart and motivated guy gets entry level job, then gets poached by someone else and ends up with a plum job.
I've nothing against start-ups, and for smart and motivated undergrads who have a good idea that is actually marketable, a start-up may be a better option than a job or graduate studies. But my experience tells me that lots of companies will pay market value for smart and motivated people regardless of whether they come from a purchased start-up, or from the ranks of entry level people they hire. I'm sure there are lots of companies that won't do that, but good people can always choose to leave bad employers and take a different job.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Hence, it would seem logical to encourage the largest players to take risks, since they can not only manage the risk, but can best press the advantage. But we've got the current system where Microsoft is just sitting on piles of cash, and recent undergrads and grad students are risking their life savings to innovate. Frankly something is screwed up here.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is living in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann
At first I thought it was all rosy and unrealistic and then he balanced out with the fact that yes, you will probably fail. But taking that chance at that point in your life is an interesting proposition.
As a father of 3 I know I can't afford to do anything too risky. But what if I had done it 14 years ago when I was 22 and had no responsibilities to anyone else. As he points out, there is a lot to gain but not nearly as much to lose.
It seems to me a lot of the criticism in the thread revolves around small points of the article but don't take the entire essay into account. And we know why this is the case.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Do you want to pay for the people who don't have jobs? The majority of people wont have jobs.
So connect the dots, how much money would you gain if we had no taxes to pay?
Ever heard of Viaweb? It's the startup founded by Robert Tappan Morris and Paul Graham. It was sold to Yahoo! for (according to Wikipedia) $49,000,000. I don't know how much of that actually went Graham, but he got enough of it to form his own VC company (Y Combinator).
He's got the experience to back up what he says.
To put it simply, for every increase in widespead accessibility to something like starting a business, making music, or making art, one single person isn't the only one to capitalize on the benefits. A larger audience is brought into the arena with these advances, and effectively you're back to square one, because you're at the same proportion of talent/no talent given that the numbers of both increase.
In previous generations, it might have been things like better farming equipment, cheaper building supplies, or the printing press - in all cases though, while the population was lifted as a whole, there were individuals in each case which outshined their less talented counterparts.
Going back to the main point, in all of history, I can't think of anything that's repeatedly eclipsed education as the best means to your end - this time in history is no different, anyone who thinks so must not remember the Dot Com bust and the promised revolution therein.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
IBM was briefly considering the new MC68000 as a CPU, but Motorola couldn't promise the volume. In an alternate universe, they might have been able to do that, in which case the obvious choice for OS would have been Microware's OS9/68k.
That would have given as an IBM-PC with a clean CPU design, coupled with a clean and modular OS with true multiuser and multitasking from the word go.
I sometimes wonder what the world would have been like today if that had been the first IBM-PC...
According to the US Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 95% fail within five years. To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
Buying startups also solves another problem afflicting big companies: they can't do product development. ... The more general version of this problem is that there are too many new ideas for companies to explore them all. There might be 500 startups right now who think they're making something Microsoft might buy. Even Microsoft probably couldn't manage 500 development projects in-house... It's common for startup founders of all ages to build things no one wants. ...[go get to work so you can build something M$ can buy]
A few things have changed since Bill Gates, who is mentioned frequently, was 19 years old. One of them is Paladium and other market dominance from one obnoxious early entrant. The other is that people have wised up about working in the Microsoft world, hoping to be the ONE that gets bought.
Microsoft's publicly stated policy is to buy "loss leaders" in mature markets. It's no real change from the man who bought the Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) and sold it to IBM or dumpster dived Basic when he was 19 and then sold it to others. Why the hell would I want to be one of those loss leaders? Competition is hard enough in a free world. It's impossible in a world that's owned by one or two dominant players. They are going to come to you an offer you some pathetic sum which they will gladly take to your striving and starving competitors and break you later if you don't play.
M$ is 20 years ago, free software is where things are now. A few people made money on M$ but there are far more corpses than there are companies today. Since then, the real success like Yahoo, Google, Hotmail and others have taken free software and done the end run the author says but does not drive home: they pleased the end user. That's way better than being bought by some big dumb company so your ideas and talent can rot in it's even bigger belly.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
My hypothesis is that all you have to do is smack hackers on the side of the head and tell them: Wake up. Don't sit here making up a priori theories about what users need. Go find some users and see what they need.
One of the ways early 80's investing companies would check out the local malls, and see what trends where popular. And invest in the companies making the products.
The current trend is to make something in house, find it sucks, buy some startup, rebrand it, and go. 2-4 revisions later and you have a product that people can use (mostly). Microsoft knew this and bought out an small anti-virus company to create its "AntiSpyware Beta" program to just get the ball rolling. Exactly the point Paul was saying.
Even if your product isnt the best, but you give the users what they want, its the only choice, people are going to use it. I know a guy who still sells radius software he created back in ISP boom craze, makes money selling it still, because it works, rock solid, and can be used for wireless.
Very good article, only sad point, grad school isnt the only place to make counterparts, but it does seem to be the breeding ground for new companies.
Now it's, "Don't hire anyone older than 30."
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I have hired graduates (generally with first class honours) who have been less than brilliant and not worth their starting salary. I have hired undergrads who have been outstanding and have paid them twice or more that of a graduate starting package. Why? Undergrads who get up off their bums, seek employment, and still continue college are generally: a. really motivated (often due to personal financial reasons) b. really interested in the work, and want more than the generic college course/degree can offer c. grateful to get the work d. not lazy It's too big a generalisation I know, because plenty of grads I have hired have been good too, but just to exaggerate to make the point, grads are: a. coasting along on the coat tails of a well funded education b. 9-5'ers c. expect a lot more than they are worth based on the supposed merit of their graduation d. not particularly self motivated So those are the best and worst traits of the two types, albeit deliberately thrown into high contrast. But I would take an interested, keen, poor, grateful undergrad any day, and pay them fairly for their contribution.
Graham has a great point, but ultimately one that is not sustainably; buisnesses cannot afford to let startups be the only disruptive players.
Paul's article isn't anything more than an espousing of his opinion of what business should be doing. There is no new trend here and I don't see any reason to think business is going to start looking to 20 year olds for innovation. I was 20, had great ideas and services and I met nothing but brick walls. The point is that 99% of 20 year olds are going to face what I faced. I still persevered and was moderately successful (I'm now 27) but if you start with nothing it's damn near impossible to make exponential gains in such a short time.
If I had some advice it would be to suck it up and go work for a company at a high wage for 4 years. Save every penny and then get to work on your own project when you're 25. It increases the odds of success to be both experienced, wealthy and over 25.
I'm sure you've been modded -1 for your post, but I share your sentiment to some degree or other. What I wish is that Slashdot spent more time promoting what non-geeks had to say about technology and less promoting what some select group of "ubergeeks" had to say about non-technology subjects.
It's not that Paul Graham or Linus or ESR or whoever don't necessarily have something interesting to say, and in an interesting way, about subject matter outside their area of expertise (in this case the squishy areas of management and economics), but it's the sycophancy and lack of criticism with which it's presented.
Mostly Lucky, mine fell apart mostly due to 911.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Err...he is rich due to launching a selling a successful startup. He wrote what later became Yahoo Stores. Or were you joking?
So, I hear you're starting your own business?
Welcome, welcome.
Welcome to 16 hour days, and your employees earning more than you. Welcome to heartache and racking your brains for something to give you an edge, calling on experience you don't have yet. Welcome to doing boring and tedious tasks that if you fail, can land you in prison, like accounting and keeping receipts. Welcome to trying to protect your ideas from much larger and more powerful companies who will take and exploit them in a heartbeat.
Welcome to getting your first solicitor. Welcome to earning far less than minimum wage for months on end, and lets not forget that you may never get anything back. Welcome to friends and family slowly becoming more distant as you have no time to devote to them, welcome to becoming a fanatical zealot, welcome, oh yes, welcome to compromising most of your ideals just to stay afloat.
Welcome to management - you're the boss now! Welcome to having to see both sides of the story, welcome to slow or non paying customers, welcome to learning how to manipulate your fellow man to achieve your ends, welcome to grey hair and addiction to mild stimulants.
Welcome, welcome, one and all. Do stay a while.
And that light at the end of the tunnel you are striving for? Well I'm not sure what it is, exactly, are you?
America has spoken. The American people do not want social programs, they support privitizing social security, this is what they elected their president and congress to do.
Let your shitty employees go.
Not so hard really. 2/mo salary, fine, cut your losses, and cut your dead weight.
Risks can be mitigated. Basic basic risk investment; you can try 6 employees for two months throughout a years, one of which should prove to be at least 6 times more productive than all the others. In two months at 6x productivity, that employee will already have produced a man-years worth the next guy's work.
I suggest companies take grads who think they're the shit, offer them two months trial at reduced pay and hope pray you can be disruptive and dynamic enough to keep them interested.
Thats the real killer. But I see you see that; "or someone who finds out your job isn't really what he wants to do for the next 5 years." Most people who start startups do it because they'd rather commit sepuko than deal with being forced to continue doing such useless unproductive work on your ass ugly product. Finding smart kids is not hard, keeping us busy is a lot harder to do. Most companies cannot deal with disruptive players.
Myren
The hardest part is coming up with an idea. I don't think this is as easy as he seems to believe it is, his suggestion in some essay or other to read the Wall Street Journal for a week notwithstanding. It seems like it takes a certain type of thinker to come up with viable startup ideas.
I work for a startup now, and the niche we plan to fill seems blindingly obvious in hindsight. But I would never have thought of it. And the other day, some guy was trying to hire me away with another startup idea that was also pretty good, but again, I wouldn't have thought of it, despite knowing the technology inside out.
It does seem like people are starting businesses like crazy, though. There are so many development jobs here in Vancouver, it's unreal. We just cannot find people with the skills we need.
It might cost only $10,000 to make an Internet-based or software-based startup. But most of the businesses in this world aren't purely Internet- or software-based. I might be an incredibly smart and creative and productive 25-year-old, but if my talents have something to do with physical engineering/manufacturing/design or [gasp] people/business management, it's not just a matter of raising a few thousand dollars and going to work.
That's what's going on, and that's why Bill Gates and others are screaming that "kids are deciding computer science and math and technology are too hard."
Tech Public Policy stuff
Tell that to thousands of people who work regular jobs at Microsoft who are not founders.
As for youth...
Failure doesn't cost much.
Considering this, the return in terms of the percentage who take the risk is much smaller for youth than for older experienced doods. It's only natural, they haven't had the experience.
Paul misses the boat big time though. The boat load of older experienced doods who can't afford to take the risk carries a hell of a lot more talent and ability. It was hined by the attempts when failure didn't mean no college money for the kids, no insurance for the family, and no money to pay the taxes on the house.
The company that frets over missing the brilliant youth and focuses on catching the next one is not so much different than the compulsive gambler who always makes the high stakes bet.
What companies should focus on is removing the risk associated with failure for those employees who want to try something new and different. It's go to be hell to sell the boss on a good idea and then get your ass fired when it doesn't pan out.
Admitedly I may be somewhat biased against this guy because of his stupid claims about nerds and web service applications. It is obviously outright false that nerds are not popular in secondary school because they have better things to do than spend time trying to be popular. In both my personal and observed experience nerds often try despartly hard to be popular (in fact they often have a problem of trying too hard and too transparently). Moreover, it just isn't true that other groups with large time comitments and interests outside of school are automatically as unpopular (music people etc..). While I am uncertain about the future of web service applications I expect a better analysis than the same crap which has been used to predict network computers for years.
As for this actual point I agree there is a small grain of truth in it. The advent of computer programming and other large profitable fields of intellectual endeavor makes intelligence hugely more valuable for a company. The productivity difference between someone who is just average and someone who is really fucking brilliant can be very large. So it really does make sense for companies to pay new recruiters big bucks just for being smart and train them on the job. Oracle is already doing this recruiting people from caltech with no programming experience for 80k starting salaries. However, people with those sort of smarts are extremely rare and so this trend does not hold out hope for the vast majority of CS students much less undergrads in general. As a TA at Berkeley it is clear that even here most of the CS students are not of the caliber necessery to launch compelling new products.
Moreover, I think the fundamental flaw in this analysis is the authors assumption that people, even young just out of college types, are interested in maximizing their expected revenue. Sure these people would like to earn more but alot of them just don't find it worthwhile to live for years eating Raman and living in a hovel for the promise of later riches. Happiness and utility are sub-linear in wealth and so great riches later in life don't necessarily compensate for prior poverty. In short many people really would prefer to be comfortably well off for most of their life and have the time and resources to start a family or pursue other interests out of college rather than being poor and working 100 hour weeks for several horrible years for later money. Heck I sure as hell wouldn't want to waste my youth as a workaholic just to end up as one of those rich bachelors at 35.
Also while the author touches on risk he radiclly misunderstands most people's attitudes towards risk. Sure studies have shown that there is some percent of society who are naturally thrill seekers and thrive on risk but many of the rest of us find risk itself (and not just the bad consequences if things go bad) unpleasent. Most people don't like risking alot for the hope of a big reward but would prefer a comfortable sure thing.
Big companies with stable employment and paychecks which don't depend entierly on project success exist for a reason. Most people prefer that sort of comfortable stable life. It isn't all about accumulating the biggest bank account but also about knowing you can provide for a family, have free time and safely plan for the future. It isn't just the economic situation that needs to change to make start-ups as prevalent as the author imagines but human nature itself
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
However, finding paying customers is time-consuming and expensive. I've worked for a startup, and they went under because they had a product, but no customers. Marketing ought to be 80% of your starting budget
My last job was at a ".com" company. They spent mucho money on marketing and got high demand for their product. They had been around for a year when I was hired in. Little did I know, I was being hired to make this product they've already sold.
I was their only programmer. 9 months after I started, I got laid off, since it was cheaper to contract my position out. They were in business a few more months after that.
My first warning should have been when I found out the CEO of this company was also the president of pets.com. (Big "HELLO" to David Ford, if you're reading this!)
The moral: MAKE YOUR PRODUCT FIRST! Then market it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Employers filter by degrees. For example, if the applicant does not have at least a four year degree, their resume is thrown in the trash.
People who graduate from college learn the theories, but lack the real world experience unless they know how to apply the theories to real situations, and adapt to change and learn new ideas and technologies.
Many people have the real world experience, but lack the degrees, so HR screens them out.
Citing a lack of qualified canidates, businesses lobby the government to raise work visa quotas or eliminate them.
When they cannot get enough qualified people into the country, they turn to Offshoring.
Offshoring has problems, due to barriers of language, culture, religion, society, and location. They are ISO 9000 Certified, but are not producing quality results. They are being managed like they are in the USA, but that management style does not work in their native country.
After offshoring fails, some companies turn to consulting. Hiring workers from another company to work via contracts, and letting that company hire and fire employees and provide benefits to the employees.
Global Economics states that the nation that provides the products or services the most efficent, will have an advantage. India is able to offer Engineering and IT products and services, but as the Indian economy grows, so does the money paid to the workers. This makes India lose its advantage as the gap between the rich and poor narrows, proving that capitalism works. Meanwhile Brazil, Thailand, The Phillipines, China, etc are all offering IT and Engineering services at rates that are cheaper than India's. Slowly, India starts to lose its advantage.
Meanwhile after not being able to hire qualified and skilled local labor, many companies turn to headhunters (recruiters) to screen applicants for them.
Due to the qualified, but undereducated people being discriminated against, companies find that their quality is getting worse. As a result, the economy suffers. More money is going overseas due to the work visas and offshoring, which also hurts the domestic economy. The government is told to do something about it, so they raise tariffs, which raises the price of that commodity in the market. This leads to higher costs of many companies, which are forced to lay off more employees. Yet these high tariffs are exactly what people wanted, they just don't know the economic effect it has on their economy. Many of these problems are caused by other nations and corporations, but people blame the President anyway, after all, he was the one who did what they told him to do, and raise tariffs to save jobs, which led to losing more jobs.
In short, we are so doomed in the United States. We are going to become a third world country if this keeps up, and have a double digit unemployment rate. By the time the Baby Boomers retire, it will wreck the stock market, and cause even more economic problems. Kiss your pensions and Social Security goodbye, or at least consider a 25% cut if they manage to save them somehow by a government bailout due to taking on more debt to fund them. As corps like United, cut out their pension programs, the feds have to take over, but often cut 25% of out the money owed to pensioners.
My advice to survive is to live minimulist living and save as much money as you can. Try not to spend too much, if you own stocks, sell them before 2015 happens and the Baby Boomers start cashing in stocks and crash the market. If it survives, the stock market is going to have some really cheap stocks after 2017.
China and India formed an economic partnership, that is 1/3rd the world's population right there. Don't ignore the EU either. These two will be big competitors to the United States of America.
If you can start a business, learn to do what other people do not want to do. For example, someone started a business to sell stuff on eBay for others too lazy to do it themselves. It sort of is like a garage sale, only online. They market mostly to people who do not have Internet access, but want to sell their stuff for whatever cash they can get from eBay. The key is to keep customer statisfaction high, so that they keep having repeat sales.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I recommend Guy Kawasaki's book about startups.
Advertising is expensive. Salespeople are expensive. Finding customers doesn't have to be expensive. If it is expensive maybe you have the wrong product.
The cheap way to get customers is to have one or more lined up before you start and turn those customers into salespeople after you ship.
You can't do that with an average product. If you want to ship an average product you should do it from a big company. A startup had better have a "gosh-wow!" product that customers want to tell their peers about.
What's a Nubian?
p g
This is a Nubian:
http://www.pinefallsnubians.com/eowyn3daysold05.j
My wife's going to kill me for linking her site on slashdot.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
What? But he gives so much interesting information and facts about areas that he has no expertise, experience or relation to. How can you not be interested in pearls of wisdom from the holy creator of the Yahoo store, one of the crowning achievements of programming in the past century???? Clearly you are not a "hacker", like the great almighty Paul Graham.
Essentially developing cool technology that is useful when integrated into another product is a great way to get bought up if you are in Silicon Valley. That essentially, you need to bank two years of living money.
If hiring recent graduates is obsolete, then how can I earn that two years of living money, especially with the inflated cost of living in Silicon Valley?
Communism is when the government employs everybody. When it's a company that does it, it's called "fascism."
Now please define government so as to answer the question: What is the difference between a government and a company?
I believe that one of the great things about the web will be it's ability to measure value, where it is created. part of the problem is that most people aren't really worth what they're payed, but averages work for an employer. the article is facinating from the perspective of a parent of a kid in college--who is interested in mathematics. As an entreprenuer, I have been pushing him to start a business at 18, just to see how it goes. One can only hope that he is better than average, because average is gonna suck real soon!
Since when does being slashdotted imply a lack of criticism?
But I see lots of people here that like communism, or at least seem to advocate things that would demand it as the only practical form of economics. I mean it's actually kind of the OSS ideal: information should be free. Well unfortunately free as in speech also implies free as in beer, if people want it that way. You can sell it, but someone else is welcome to give it away for free, you gave them that right.
/. posters seem to be pretty left leaning, with many far left, so it's not really a supprise to find people that find socalism or even communism attractive economic systems. I mean on paper communism sounds great: Everyone is employed doing something they are good at, everyone gets what they need. Thus far no one has been able to very successfully implement that, but you can see why the idea appeals to people.
Well if you truly want a system where all development is done like this, totally open, no real ownership, then you come to system that needs some sort of communal pay. Under a capatalism it can't work. While there are cases where it can, it can't be applied everywhere due to lack of profit motive. Remember: capatalism relys on greed to function.
In general
Sure, if you never read comments
-------
Incite and flee.
If this is really the case, why do we still have any IT jobs in the States? Don't tell me that there aren't any, quite a few of my friends who are very good coders have gotten jobs in the last year (by good coding I don't mean "oh, I know VB/C# and how to write a php script", btw). Sure, the companies that hired them made them jump through hoops when interviewing them, but still ...
Being in the states has a major advantage. The money is still made here (after all, the gross national income per capita is still about 100 times larger in the States than in India), so outsourcing is going to be less than ideal in quite a few cases.
The Raven
To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
Boy, I think you missed something pretty basic...
Why do you think that sitting at a desk saying "yessir" is going to prepare you for the leadership, stamina, and adrenaline of running your own (startup) business?
I'm 32 years old. My last job was at the age of 17. Depending on where you draw lines, I've run over a dozen business and enterprises over the years. The majority came out profitable, a few were catastrophic duds.
And, with each attenpt, it gets better and bigger. Stakes get higher and higher, and it gets more and more fun!
Who'd care about gambling, with a skillset of "dump munny into da machine" when you can play with all your skills, talents, and witts in an engaging game that has real potential to improve the lives of hundreds or thousands of people, while profiting you handsomely?
Sorry. You can play your "yessir" job, if you think it'll help. But, I have stuff to GET DONE!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Even assuming that we actually put into production renewable energy systems that mean that we aren't competing with them on the oil market anymore, they aren't going to be and they really aren't supposed to be.
Tech Public Policy stuff
That's one reason why the EU and other world currencies are appreciating against the dollar.
If you'd like to tell the Indians and the Chinese and the Middle East oil producers that they're wrong, go ahead.
If your responses include "tinfoil hat", don't assume this is a translation error.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Someone who doesn't understand the difference can hardly be assumed to know what he is talking about.
Next pundit.
Does anyone else see the irony in a long essay about undervalued 22 year-olds posted on Slashdot?
I was impressed with his observation that when you're young "you occasionally say and do stupid things even when you're smart". Apparently we've had it backwards all along. Slashdot should immediately adopt a negative moderation system:
-1 lacks penetrating insight
-1 not so funny as always
-1 rare knowledge gap exposed
i'll tell you who, the 'capitalists' did!
after all, like 1984, we HAVE to have an enemy, ahhhnnd, when you think about it, there is VERY little difference between the two (commies and capitalists).. because both systems tend to congrigate the power and wealth around a VERY few chosen people, with everyone else chasing their tales their whole lifes.
Capitalist just seem better at 'holding the carrot out' to the average poor slob, making him think he will get someware if he 'trys' harder. Of course if i was in a commie country, i'd probably think communism was better at holding the carrot out to us.
the key seems to be the same one for most other problems us earthinks face.. and that is, unless we start 'thinking and doing alike', on a mass scale, for the good of the world and civilization, then it will be very hard to change things whether you are an 'undergraduate' or a President...
This 'one-world-system' that has been 'forced' upon us the last 20 years or so will need to be 'dealt with' as well.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Why couldn't you have posted this when I had mod points.... BRILLIANT!
Jay | http://oldos.org
And this is maybe one of the points that people who whine that Paul G. did not write about "outsourcing" miss -- in the US you DO have an advantage compared to the rest of the world, namely to start your own business while you are still young and survive through the first stages (or at least get VERY valuable experience).
See, your parents can probably help you a bit, you can get a credit card or two, a bank loan, if you make a good case -- even some VC money... You do not have to go work at the factory in your teens for 14-hour shifts, this kind of stuff...
Said as someone who did not grow up in the States, is gainfully employed (no, they will not outsource my current job, and if I take the next one it will be me who'd participate in making the decisions if/what we should outsource), and can not understand why this basic idea of working for yourself is so alien to the people in the country which one can say was founded on the same idea.
Paul B.
According to the US Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 95% fail within five years. To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
Please read the article. It is linked in the story for your convenience.
According to the US Small Business Administration, 50% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 95% fail within five years.
You state that very confidently. Can you cite the original source for that?
I've heard from reliable sources that those numbers are a myth...
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
The article is Business Week's attempt to explain why Bush and the GOP's polling numbers drop into the toilet even further every time they try to push piratizing Social Security.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The government can coerce you with force, like by throwing you in jail if you don't do what it wants. If a company gets the ability to do this it is a problem, but nowadays they mostly do it by influencing the government.
A single company that controls all private property can coerce you with deadly force by denying you money to buy food. The only influence a company would need to implement that is to make theft a crime, and even libertarians would agree with that much influence.
or at least something that is not emphasized enough (lately). i'v previousely mentioned above something most people don't know, realize or want to admit in slashdot comment: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149177&cid= 12506398.
Paul Graham's concept-- although obviously not 'completely new', is an 'improved' view on what can be done for-- not only 'undergrads', but actually 'ANYONE' in the work force.
And thaaaaat is, take the 'entrepreneur' spirit-- 'TO THE MAX', by whatever means necessary in order to 'slay the beasts' (captitalism & commie-ism), which has left the world on the brink of kaos!!!
In other words, lets do away with corporations (and dare I say governments?), since these two concepts have only favored a 'chosen' few, at the expense (and literal death) of billions of people.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
You have to justify value, and you have to control costs, but that isn't rocket science.
Now as an example. Microsoft charges $35/incident for basic consumer support. Average minutes per incident in the industry is 30. Yet it costs them over $70 to provide that incident of support. Believe it or not, outsourcing doesn't dent this as much as one would think....
Yet, I have calculated that I could start a call center (if I had some basic funding) and make a reasonable profit at $35/call even if I allowed for a doubling of the minutes per incident. And I could do that in the US.
What makes this possible? Open Source's Super cost cutting power, shallow management hierarchies, and inexpensive office space.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What? But he gives so much interesting information and facts about areas that he has no expertise, experience or relation to.
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but if this kind of thing offends you, then Slashdot will probably make your head explode. Get out while you can.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
..Companies don't need to hire undergrads because it's a roll of the dice. The ones that succeed in startups have proven themselves to be exactly the ones that big companies want. Basically, the smart ones benefit, while the stupid people can't hide behind their degree or grades.
Paul Graham's numbers were even worse than the SBA's: 9 out of 10 chances for failure. The point is, so what? A failing startup is not a disaster.
Well, it seems to me that if we make the following assumptions:
1) Production can easily be off-shored where the wages are lower
2) People will pay for better service
3) People feel they get better service from people they can connect with (i.e. where they have few language or cultural barriers)
4) People in the US require more money.
It seems that offshoring will turn the economy on its head, valuing services (like customer service) and devaluing engineering and programming. Therefore the one advantage we have in in *service.* And we can do it better locally than internationally.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
As I was reading this, as a business owner, I wasn't able to follow the loads of bullshit venture-capital speak. This, in turn, made me realize that this article isn't about average jobs or even average statups. This guy is living in the ridiculous little Silicon Valley bubble. A disclaimer would've been nice.
Large companies like Microsoft are moving technical support capabilities to India while moving *more* of it inhouse.
However, I agree with your main point for different reasons.
The large companies are obsessed about cutting costs in their cost centers *without regard for strategic investment.* For example, Microsoft doesn't care if support in Bangalore alienates their customers. Or rather those who do care are overwhelmed by those who care more about financial statements and the cost savings that the lower call volumes will provide.
Companies like Microsoft offshore the wrong jobs. While they should (from their income statment pov) be offshoring programming and production jobs, they are offshoring basic customer-facing service jobs (tech support, sometimes even sales). This leads to alienation and creates a wonderful void in the market for the SMB's.
The small to midsize businesses are often not international in the same way, though, and often times they can fill the void left by the offshoring of these customer-facing services. So I predict that services firms will do quite well.
The other issue is that off-shoring is not really helping with the main issues which drive the costs up for large companies. These include: expensive IT infrastructure, expensive telecommunications costs (which go up rather than down when you offshore) and deep management hierarchies. Expensive office space plays a role too, but that is at least partly addressed by offshoring. And now, the jobs that they are offshoring are not necessarily high paying jobs either.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I've never understood why the US view on higher education is that the moment you get into university, your main goal in life becomes the consumption of fermented vegetables and goldfish.
Seriously, this is not the view in Canada, or other countries. There is no inferiority complex for going to a tech school vs. a principles school (IE: University). If you go to a tech school, they teach you how. If you got to a University, they teach you why (you're expected to be able to learn how on your own).
Perhaps if the US legal drinking age were lowered, University wouldn't be seen as such a booze zone (although, frankly, I'm guessing as much underage drinking occurs in the US as in Canada, despite the large legal drinking age gap). Perhaps if the US gov't made public education a priority, we'd also see generally accesible schools for people whose marks qualify them for it. I'd like to see what you could've done in University, instead of resenting people who went.
Of course, you could still go to Canada and pay 1/4th to 1/8th what you'd pay in the US (even after the usual 2-3x doubling of fees that citizens pay!). And you wouldn't have to deal with beer swilling!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
that will help with your concern with population control. Better yet, 'kill yourself' and save us (the taxpayers) money of 'bringing you to justice'.
and yes indeed 'america' has spoken, and she wants people 'like you' (anti-Christs), who sit in the front pews at church on sunday, to start paying more & more, & more, & more of your savings and income, so the people you helped make poor-- can get stronger in order to bring 'justice' to anti-Christs like you!!
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Free trade is called anarchy, no matter what conservative wonks like to say. Trade throughout history has been regulated, ceasing regulation of industry only serves to create a chaos in which the mightiest prey on the weak. Historically even this sort of prey/victim relationship has some controls which we see reflected in class and caste systems.
If you want things to improve worldwide, you set standards for your trading partners. If we all want the US standard of living, the US must only trade with nations where they enjoy a similar standard of living, otherwise it's just a race to the bottom. The current political environment makes this impossible, no one on any part of the political spectrum is pounding this drum in the US. But, if we don't want to see the American economy dissolve into banana republicanism, we must expect and enforce higher standards of living for the workers of our trading partners. That is the only time US workers will look like a better deal.
Europe is doing a good job of this for us to a certain extent by regulating work environment conditions (particularly toxins) in products sold in the EU.
Thanks for posting it.
No doubt fixing tha link, http://www.effortlessis.com/contact.html is one of the things you have to get done. ;-)
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
I did try it when I was about 22, and found it wasn't quite what I wanted to do.
Not much to lose? I don't think so.
I lost a lot of time doing not quite what I had gone to college for, for a start. I had to spend countless hours in meetings with potential customers answering stuff like "yes, you can have a button", "yes, if it's a button you can click on it" and "yes, it is very much possible to have it on a toolbar". I got basically bullied around by the customers, because they _knew_ I didn't have much choice.
I had long periods with no paying contracts, doing just the above. I also had to deal with accounting, legal stuff, etc, which meant paying someone to do it, because I don't even understand legalese or accounting. And btw, when I've said above that I got bullied around, it also means they paid peanuts and wanted it ready the day before yesterday.
Very early I also faced a choice between money and self-respect. I chose _not_ to be an asshole and a liar, but that that doesn't help with the money problem, you know.
Compared to the money I could have made on a normal salary at half the effort, it was a loss all right.
Even getting rid of the company in the end was a pain in the rear, because it turned out the accountant had been a tad sloppy. Luckily nothing warranting more than a fine, but still, that was a bit of extra stress to go through, and a bit more of a loss.
I guess at this point someone will jump in and say "bah, you were a lousy manager then". Which is, in fact, the truth of the matter. It's in fact the whole point.
It's not even just that I wasn't trained or skilled to be a manager or marketer, it's that I had never really wanted to be one in the first place. If I had wanted to, I'd have went to a business college instead. I _loved_ computers, so that's really what I wanted to do with my life. I think that pretty much describes virtually anyone who's actually any good at CS.
Now on the other hand, if one happens to be one of those who went into CS or EE college just because they thought it pays better, got through it purely by social engineering, and would very much rather talk than program and manipulate people than design, true, those might find it more entertaining to run a company.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What is Outsourcing?
Simpy
The timing of this is quite interesting. In one paragraph Paul Graham says:
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
And what did Google do today? It bought a 2 people company.
Simpy
It's funny. If you look at two well-known computer companies, Apple Computer and Dell Computer you see a very scary trend. You see the innovator, Apple, with around 5% of today's market. And Dell holds about 45%? ++, I'm not sure. Their innovation is in reducing manufacturing costs.
This tells us something. It's more important to make your product cheaply, than better. Okay, so once you've taken all other expenses out (we're in an advanced stage of competition here) you get only one thing left. Employees. You can either reduce the work force, or the pay each unit receives (either pay cuts or outsourcing).
Now, eventually, you come to a point where the only pay necessary to give to an employee is the amount necessary to keep that worker alive. And so the standard of living decreases. What you're left with is a very poor class making goods for the upper class, and virtually no middle group.
This is the imperialistic situation that the early communists saw as triggering a revolution. And what's the nature of that revolution? A bunch of disgruntled workers, sick of unfair compensation and an essentially slave economy, take over the company by forming unions. Huge ones. And they make all the profits as they see fit.
Of course, that's speculation. But if the only way to stay competitive is to pay your employees less, what else is there?
I'm 26 and am seriously considering starting my own company. Can you recommend any good reading material? I'm working my way through a lot of books and would love some pointers on ones to look for...
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Don't they know this is a big finals week?
Why should I buy books, when I can get peoples (most waluable) experience from the first hand here on ./
This post is one of the most interesting busines post lately. I mean, if anyone wants to start new busines, this post should be FIRST thing to read!
What (NOT) TO-DO, and HOW.
Mod up this story, please... thx
Yes, its called "How to get people to answer your questions seriously" by the man. Seriously though, I have heard people reference this source they call "the internet".
And lo! I've been reading a lot online as well as in dead-tree edition. Why, exactly, would that obviate recommendations on specific materials from someone witb a couple of tries under their belt?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Yes "Paul Graham: Hiring is Now Only Done By Walmart" would be better.
Personally I would recommend people skills type material such as Influenc, by CIaldini Art of Seduction, by Greene Win Friends and Influence People, by Carnegie Art of War, by Tsu maybe something on negotiating You don't always have to go at something in the direct logical way and get the best results.
When you're young, you occasionally say and do stupid things even when you're smart. So if the algorithm is to filter out people who say stupid things, as many investors and employers unconsciously do, you're going to get a lot of false positives.
I would say that rejecting someone worthy because they said something stoopid would be a false negative
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
"The best books are the ones that tell you what you already know."
Pop Culture Theme Quizzes posted onto my blog. Have fun.
Heck I sure as hell wouldn't want to waste my youth as a workaholic just to end up as one of those rich bachelors at 35.
Only on slashdot, part 17: someone thinks being a rich bachelor at 35 is a bad thing.
Come on, this is not even funny anymore.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Too much really bright kids are forced to be 9-5'ers. You know, it's much more important whether you will have food and shelter for the next three months instead of a chance that you will have 2-3 millions within 6-12 months.
Unfourtonately short term reality economics work really harsh on them.
As a recent grad (4 years ago) this article totally panders to my own self worth. But I think there is a lot of truth in there.
The fact is that employers are given very few clues as to a graduates ability except their university degree and that translates very poorly to real world worth as the same grade from one university is simply not equivalent to the same grade from the same university for the previous year never mind across different univeristies (degrees are awarded on a bell curve for the class for that year not attainment). Consitancy for a particular institution is dependant on its ability to attract quality students. This problem is confounded by the UK governments target to get 50% of schooleavers in to universities (it's a bit like trying to get 60% people to have a reading age that is above the mean national average). But this is rarely known by HR clerks who are paid to sift CVs so that the people who make the hiring decisions only see the good CVs.
I graduated from Nottingham University with a 2:2, but was only able to get a 'graduate' job after I had setup my own company and proved my skills at my own expense. My company wasn't purchased as such, I was just made an offer I couldn't refuse. I still believe I wouldn't have gotten my current job if I hadn't have been a graduate, but I also think that it wasn't half as important to them as demonstrating a genuine work ethic and a large degree of business acumen (none of which can be tested on paper). If you are in a UK university at the moment I would heavily recommend that you start you own company NOW. Its much easier to make 'pocket money' than working in a bar and you have the added advantage of getting something that will really make your CV shine, the ability to put your education at the bottom of your CV.
Having said that - if you can't figure out a way to make money and you are predicting a 2:2 you might as well practice flipping burgers and pulling pints :-) Macky Ds are always hiring!
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
If you look at the job openings out there there are jobs asking for people with 10+ years of experience on jobs that a person with 2 can easily do. The jobs asking for 5+ years experience are jobs that Grads can easily do. Some places who do hire grads want them from the top 10 colleges. I am approaching 5 years of professional experience myself and I am just starting to do stuff that my college degree trained me for. (IE the Fun stuff), Also the thing with IT and years of experience it is not always a good indicator. If you are a consultant, contractor, who is always working with different technologies then experience really does count because over time you get more and more conformable working on new and different platforms. But if you are an Administrator of a Prime Mainframe for 20+ years with 15 of those years becoming part of the hum-drum routine. Your experience isn't that important because you know a dead mainframe technology just well enough to keep it running. It is like knowing Latin well enough to have some basic conversations with the Pope.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I love economic theory, especially at the basic level where it is so wrong. You have just failed to take reality into consideration.
....
If a *China* can make TVs, Computers, etc... cheaper than in the US due to low wages - then in theory wages should rise in a *China* to the point where it becomes less profitable to make *widgets" there. In reality, things like TVs, Computers, etc... are often made in countries like China because there are no worker protections, environmental laws that will be enforced,
With the ability of programmers to charge true (as opposed to artificial) market rates, programmers overseas is probably one of the best real world examples of market competition. The only problem then becomes a (sometime) lack of IP protection. I know of at least one project where the foreign programmers took the code at 90% completed, and made their own project from it. (The big one was propitary and classified, as I recall.)
So the theory is great. It's just that in the real world - it does not hold up for making computers(TVs or other widgets) due to lack of labor rights or environmental rights.
Bayesian filtering isn't a massive leap of intellect. Before it came out, I started dinking around with the idea of measuring word frequency in spam messages vs. non-spam messages. I didn't have the math background to do the statistical comparison in a meaningful way (or the programming chops to make it viable), but the idea of looking at spam and non-spam and doing some lexical analysis based on word usage isn't exactly novel.
>In short, we are so doomed in the United States. We
...
;)
>are going to become a third world country if this keeps
>up, and have a double digit unemployment rate.
>double digit unemployment rate
>Don't ignore the EU either. These two will be big competitors
>to the United States of America.
>the EU
The whole internet at your fingertips, yet such neglect of basic
irony-proofing research
I began my PC consulting in 1980, after two years of "moonlighting' on it while teaching fulltime. That was during the Carter Inflation period when the prime interest rate peaked at over 20% and companies were laying off people in the 100,000's. These folks couldn't find other jobs because of the massive layoffs, so they took their savings and/or retirement money and started their own businesses.
While their activity was good for my business (recommending hardware, installing it and writing the software), I watched dozens of these 'startups' last until their money ran out and then fold. I do not know of a single startup that survived, so the rate of failure was much worse than 9 out of 10. Overall I'd say it was closer to 999 out of 1,000, or even worse.
I did noticed some things that were common with the failures. They did NOT understand the demographics of their business, nor the concept of location, and they all used the word "things" in their company name. "Phones and Things" stands out in my mind as one classic example.
I see a similar situation occuring today. Although the Prime rate is low other economic conditions are giving rise to massive layoffs and job losses. The recent court opinion in the United Airlines concerning retirement funds will only make matters worse. While taking my wife to dinner the other day we drove by a new startup. The name on the building included the word "things". I give it six months.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Can someone explain to me how dodgeball, or friendster, would actually bring in money? I don't think people are inclined to pay for these services, and I'm not sure that they're such an obvious advertising market.
from the article
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. And more to the point, nobody knows you're 22. All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want. They don't care if the person behind it is a high school kid.
22 year old highschool students? WTF? Is he preaching to the retarded choir now?
click me
As much as I love Paul Graham's essays, and as much as I enjoyed his book, this is his one flaw in my opinion. He was one of the lucky, talented few that kicked some tail in a startup company, made a fortune, and in general took the fast lane to success through a startup.
He emphasizes again and again how much he believes in startups, but I really think his perspective is heavily skewed by what worked for him. The reality is, as you say, almost all startups will fail. Everyone - not even every smart/talented person - can go into a startup.
Let's not forget: PG made his money because his startup was purchased by a big corporation (Yahoo) and without the "old model" of business, the startup model doesn't work either. That's not to say he doesn't have good, insightful points, or that his writing isn't well worth reading...I think maybe it just needs to be tempered with a little more of the reality of the startup process.
-Jay
because it brings up some interesting ideas to think about I still think that he's a demagogue. He never writes an essay without saying something nice about someone. Why can't he be grumpy once in a while?
You missed an important point the article makes. If you do happen to start a company, and it does fail, Yahoo/MS/whatever will actually be more willing to hire you because you've been gaining experiance that is much more valuable then sitting in a cubicle for a couple years.
Moreover, on the off chance you succeed, you succeed! If Graham is right, running a start-up is really a win-win situation.
Garbage.
It took years for bloggers to latch onto the same teat at which most "artists" have been suckling for millenia: You just have to have balls.
Put together some collage/sculpture thingie that your three-year-old could have regurgitated, stick it in your front yard, and your neighbors will call you a twit and call the homeowners association to get that eyesore removed. Put together some collage/sculpture thingie that your three-year-old could have regurgitated and HAVE THE BALLS TO CALL IT ART and put it in a gallery with a ridiculous price tag and wankers who have no taste and no heart but fat wallets will try to buy an image of intelligence and sophistication by flinging dollars at you. You may be forgiven for laughing all the way to the bank.
When it comes to blogs, most people, some years back, had a reasonable enough sense of shame to realize that their idiotic ramblings were of no interest to anyone but themselves and, maybe, in return for enough monetary compensation, their therapist. Fast forward nearly a decade and several things have happened. Familiarity has bred contempt. Some scam artists have made some money. And way the hell too many people have gotten the idea that it's actually a legitimate use of their time to immortalize their verbal diarhhea via the intarweb.
And I'm posting this on one big-ass blog. Damn. I should shoot myself now.
I was on their website and look what I found in their F.A.Q.
He certainly practice what he preaches.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
The reality is, as you say, almost all startups will fail. Everyone - not even every smart/talented person - can go into a startup.
Not everybody can go into a startup and come out super rich, but just about anybody can go work for a startup. Sure, that company may fail (where 'fail' is typically defined as being bought by a larger company for less than the value of the initial investment), but you still pull a decent salary while you're there, and have good experience to put on your resume. My first job out of college was working for a startup that failed. I turned down job offers at big companies including EMC and IBM to work there, and even though we went out of business, it was the best career decision I could have made, because I had newer technology and more 'senior' responsibilities on my resume than I could possibly have had working an entry level job at a big company.
The value of startups to recent graduates isn't that they can score big and make you rich, it's that they're dynamic work environments where you'll get experience you don't have the opportunity to have at a larger company where you have to work your way up the political food chain before you get to do any interesting work.
"... if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?"
.com startup in his life. Hiring costs are less than 1/10th expense of a start-up. There's cost of software licenses, hardware, work surfaces, communications, bandwidth and little things like business licenses and attorney fees. Even Yahoo's protect IP.
Obviously, this from someone who hasn't bootstrapped a
The rest of the article is littered with false premises and bullshit... move on.
Not just talented, hardworking, and lucky. You need to be organized. Most small businesses that get past the initial stage of getting up and running will fail during a transition period, usually when you realize that you can't meet the demand, so you try to expand. And most small businesses that were organized enough to run a small team are not organized enough to run a larger team. I'm talking about documenting and optimizing your processes and that kind of stuff. Most people just don't do it.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
Wow. I laughed my ass off at that one. It was a horribly joke, and morally wrong to make. You're going to hell, and so am I.
But damn...that's what makes that post so funny.
--LordPixie
"We do not believe in medicority and therefore we do not hire ordinary people."
I guess you mean you don't believe in hiring mediocre people. I would think that the "best" people would be a bit less sloppy using language, but what do I know.
It's impossible to keep the advantage. If the US trades fairly, then goods produced in India can be made more cheaply and so Americans will buy them. Money will flow to India and equilibrium will eventually be established.
If the US trades unfairly, it will end up wasting money on enforcement, so not only will the American-made goods cost more, but you'll also be wasting money.
In the end, more equilibrium is inevitable. So, what's the smart thing to do?
The answer is simple. Raise their standard of living. If everybody has to have the same standard of living, why not see to it that everybody's standard of living is higher.
If it's pollution that you're worried about, then make it cheaper to make a pollution-free car than a polluting one. If it's child labour that bothers you, make sure that it's easier to use robots than children. If it's disease, then try to make sure that there are no diseases for anybody, not just expensive treatments for those who can afford it.
Accept the fact that the the US standard of living will eventually approach that of the rest of the world, then decide to improve the world's standard of living. That's really the only solution.
If you ever get the chance to speak to Mark Cuban personally, he'd be the first person to tell you how lucky he was to get bought out by Yahoo. I know this because he's said/written it before!
And that's why Paul Graham basically states this in his article that about 90% of startups fail, because of various reasons. He's just merely stating that, for most recent grads, it's not as riskly/potentially damaging now than later in life.
As Seen On TV's? Come back!!!
The reality is, as you say, almost all startups will fail. Everyone - not even every smart/talented person - can go into a startup.
Not ever smart/talented person should ever go into a start-up. Key points:
a) It's unstructured. If you like your work predictable, this isn't it because the routines just aren't there yet.
b) In R&D, expect to do development of market-ready products. Only bigger companies can really afford to let you run off doing research work. (Read: Everything you aren't sure if there'll be a profitable product in the other end)
c) Your paycheck and work security might not be as good as it otherwise could have. Mind you, if all goes well you can be rich too, but it's a risk.
d) Even if you're talented/skilled, you may be too narrowly so for a start-up. Expect that you must be a bit of a multi-talent to cover all bases.
e) Make sure you have someone with at least some business sense. I've seen to many start-up attempts done *exclusively* by technical people. It is never pretty.
All that being said, doing a start-up is an incredibly learning experience. Don't expect it to be all roses though.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As expected, we don't make any fucking TVs in the US.
So what's the problem?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I won't hire you because I believe that you are irritating, "real" degree or not.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
. . . it costs quite a bit to outsource overseas. Big companies can do it successfully because they can move the volume needed to realize the possible efficiencies. Small companies have a much, much harder time with it.
It costs no more than whatever the per unit cost is times the number of units you order. If a unit costs $110 than you need invest no more than $110 to start outsourcing. You have missed my point that outsourcing doesn't mean setting up a factory in a foreign country. The factories are already there pumping out product like crazy. They have invested the captial to set up manufacturing and you simply place an order for the product, which they offer for sale to the open market.
A small company has a "harder time of it" in that the big company can "realize the possible efficiencies" by placing a larger order and only paying $$100 per unit instead of my $110.
But it still only costs you, the small startup, $110 for your first product.
I guess anyone can buy a white box and slap their logo on it...is that a viable start-up or long-term business?
My Creative DVD decoder card isn't made by Creative. It isn't "made for them" in some foreign factory that they have contracted to make their design. It is a Hollywood decoder card that Creative simply buys and puts a Creative decal on.
Dell is a whitebox seller. Nothing more. Nothing less. They make absolutely nothing. They outsource everything. These days usually including the assembly. They purchase their computers ready made from China through outlets now available to anyone.
Are Dell and Creative viable long term businesses?
For small volumes the quickest and simplest way to outsource is to simply go to the store and buy some stuff off the shelf, although your per unit cost may go up that way (although in some instances it may well go down quite dramatically because of the economies of scale available to the retailer. It is cheaper for me, for instance, to buy rough flute bodies at retail from a brick and mortar than it is to order them directly from the manufacturer.)
I did not choose the odd $110 figure at random. That is my per unit cost for outsourcing violin making to a factory in China. I purchase violins "in the white" from them through their already existing American agent, and finish the manufacturing by hand here, then put my label on them.
I started doing this in, yes, my mom's basement. Rent free. You can do it on the kitchen table of your apartment. There is nothing in the world more commditized than the student violin. You differentiate your product through branding and marketing.
Marketing is always the highest cost of doing any business, even a software business looking to be acquired before "selling a product" because the business is the product and you need to market it to the potential acquirers.
Violin making is a somewhat expensive business to get into, even outsourcing the rough manufaturing to a factory in China. My capital outlay was a couple thousand.
Simple flute making my total captial expenditures came to less than $50 by the time I had made my first profit.
If I wish to expand my market my costs will skyrocket. Because of the marketing expenditures. Marketing costs swamp manufaturing costs.
But that's the thing about hardware. You can start selling it right away. It has certain up front costs, but generates money quickly, so the total upfront costs to get started are no more, and may be considerably less, than a software startup. The hareware business fires itself on its own shavings, like a steam planer.
If you want to know what it takes to get into the software business, sure, talk to Mr. Graham, but if you want to know what it takes to get into the hardware business go talk to Mr. Dell, who grossed $6 million in his first year, starting from making white boxes on a card table.
And it was harder and more expensive to do it back then because
they will however undoubtedly create quite a bit of caos and killings if/when they get the chance to sling at least a few nukes before God steps in.
after all, we are stewards only, it is HIS earth however.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Obviously, I used 5 years metaphorically not because it necessarily relates to pension or stock option vesting periods. Most of my retirement is in 401k and other investments so I don't consider it.
In my experience, you'll usually get enough sign on cash to comfortably walk away from your current position. Pensions are less and less common, and most stock options tend to vest at 20%/yr. 5 year old options at the moment tend to be especially unvaluable at the moment (with a few exceptions).
Try this one on for size: My Alma Mater currently costs $5866.24 per year for tuition (GO BADGERS!). Live at home or get a cheap-ass apartment with a few roommates for $100/mo. Eat Ramen. Your college costs are about $10,000/year when you get done with books and stuff.
Now here's where it gets tricky. Work June through August, and winter break as a temp making $12/hr. That's $8,000. Now work in the campus library 10 hrs/wk at $9/hr which is $3000/school yr. Your total income for the year is $11,000, and you should pay no tax with all the education tax credits.
In my case, I worked as a waiter for $20/hr, so I didn't have to eat Ramen... I just stole food from the restaurant. Show a little creativity!
Anyhow, that is the correct way to pay for college if your parents can't/won't pay for you. Taking out $130,000 in student loans is NOT the correct way to pay for college. I have no sympathy for people who do that.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
What I love about the whole blog thing is the way it legitimizes what is essentially vanity publishing which has been around forever. Perhaps they should call them wanity's and wanitors instead of blogs and bloggers.
Actually, I do think that having been a follower is a good basis to effective leadership. It can help you set realistic expectations for your eventual employees.
I'm 32 years old. My last job was at the age of 17. Depending on where you draw lines, I've run over a dozen business and enterprises over the years.
If my math is correct, then each of those ventures lasted an average of a year or so. What happened to them?
The majority came out profitable
So you generally achieve profitability, and either decide to close them (why?), or sell them to somebody willing, within a year? I don't doubt this to be true, but surely you understand this makes you exceptional?
You can play your "yessir" job, if you think it'll help. But, I have stuff to GET DONE!
Being condescending doesn't change the statistics I cited. You exhibit such disdain for "regular jobs" I really must wonder how you treat employees. Doesn't anybody get stuff done for you?
The article you cited points out that:
A 2002 Small Business Administration study shows that 66 percent of new businesses survive for two years or more, 50 percent for 4 years or more, and 40 percent for six years or more. Earlier studies had very similar numbers.
Even the 50 percent that didn't survive for four years were not all failures. One-third of those closed successfully. They were sold, the owners retired or took other jobs, or the business was closed for other reasons besides failure.
Which reads to me like 44% doesn't survive two years, and 60% don't surivive six. Still a sobering number. Taking the second paragraph into consideration, we see that 33% of businesses die in failure within four years.
Also important is that fact that not all small businesses are created equal. That is, success or failure is not determined entirely by random chance. Somebody who has never taken a job is likely to fit in the "no-employee, $50,000 capital, no-previous-business" pattern of failure cited in your article.
It is actually possible that the people involved in running the call center couldn't do accounting to save their lives. At one point, they wanted to start charging sales tax on support accounts. Such tax is not necessary at least in Washington State (and since these are all B2B, probably not anywhere), but the idea was billed as revenue generation. Someone forgot to mention that the revenue was balanced with a liability in that the state(s) would be owed the tax.
So it is possible that nobody could keep track of the money enough to know *where* it was going.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
To start and run a business without ever having held a job is a sure path to disaster for all but the most talented, hardworking, and lucky.
. . . and well-connected.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
... they told us we had to upgrade our skills to be manufacturers, so we did that. And when the manufacturing jobs went, they told us to upgrade our skills to be knowledge workers. Those who had the talent, did that. Now the knowledge worker jobs are going. What are we supposed to do? Mouthing platitudes about "innovation, not regulation" to the hordes of newly laid off people isn't cutting it. Sean
Thank you for giving the numbers in their decimal form, as opposed to their 'common' names which we usually encounter in newspapers. When is the last time someone in a newspaper or on a tv showed $9,000,000,000.00 instead of 9 billion. For example right now I have $40.00 in my pocket and when I compare that amount to $9,000,000,000.00 I come up short.
You always point your finger at the bad guy, but what if the bad guy points his finger at you?
My use of "piratize" was the most deliberate word choice I've made since I joined slashdot.
Either way, it's a joke I'm going to steal.
Feel free. I stole "piratize", too.
I also was not joking.
The Brits tried what the Bushmen are pushing under Thatcher, and are now trying to bail out their failed old-age pension system. The UK is now discussing replace their private system with a US-style Social Security.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I'm not sure what university you're talking about, but drunken binges were a regular feature of the first two years of school I attended (Waterloo), ESPECIALLY for engineering and CS students dealing with the pressures of class. And I'm fairly certain that UBC, U of Alberta, Western, UofT, York, Guelph, Carlton, etc. are all similar in that regard.
:)
By third year people tended to sober up (somewhat
As for inferiority complex with regards to tech schools vs. universities, I tend to agree, though it really depends on the tech school. A Ryerson, Georgian, or even Seneca are considered fine, and a lot of those grads get on to get jobs, or at least a solid shot at university entrance. On the other hand, DeVry and the other "cheesy name brand" schools of technology tend to be reviled as useless (often rightfully, IMHO).
-Stu
If someone gains a large part of their fulfillment through their work (and there are many that do), they certainly will be working until infirm, and afterwards are very upset that they can't work.
-Stu
So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?
There's a big difference between "can" and "should". It's sort of like saying a person "can" win an Olympic medal.
How many students formed companies in the late 1990's boom? How many succeeded vs. failed?
Certainly chronological age doesn't always correlate with maturity and ability to build a business. But it often takes time to learn. New companies with green founders need a lot of luck and leeway for failure to have success in the end, which is arguably why Dell and Microsoft could succeed -- they came at the front-end of a huge wave. Perhaps Yahoo! and Google are the same. Are "web services" the next wave? Hard to say. But I guess they only way to know is to start that company and have a go at it...
-Stu
In the country I live, it is against labour laws to sack workers without compensation (esp the lower salaried ones). http://www.labourcentre.org/r_law_01.htm.
There are also regulations on how many hours a worker may be made to work - go see for yourself.
And in _practice_ the Gov and courts do not look kindly on companies that terminate employees if the company is not _losing_ money. Not sure about the actual laws involved but the courts appear to favour workers (my father was a GM of a company, and he'd recommend companies never going to labour court if possible - you'd usually lose, my other bosses in Malaysian companies were of similar opinion too).
In the US, it appears common that on the whim of some highly paid C?O, 10-20% of staff can get laid off, not because the company is losing money or the workers and middle management did anything really wrong, but because the shareholders demand an X% increase in profitability per quarter, or some C?O wanted to get a big bonus.
Sure the wages here are much lower than the US (factory workers can get about USD180/month in big companies), but so are the living costs. I doubt working conditions are much worse - it just depends on which company you work for and which area. For factory workers for electronic widget manufacturers conditions are typically quite good - housing and transport is provided, even subsidized food at cafetarias - USD0.25 for curry chicken and rice.
Typically even in the city, USD1 to USD1.2 buys you an "all you can eat" vegetarian meal (indian food), or a plate of rice, vegetables and chicken/fish.
Sure maybe if you are a plantation worker in some remote plantation life could be harsh. Even so, I doubt that's true for plantations run by most listed companies.
For the white collar workers: unlike in the USA, it is not as common for companies to require that they own all your ideas past+present+future when you join them. That's what I call real slavery - the company wants to own your _thoughts_ and _ideas_.
Also I doubt it'd be easy to convince our British style courts that a worker cannot work in the same industry he is skilled and trained in just for "non-compete" reasons.
Baker not being able to work for another bakery? Programmer not being able to work for another software company? Try requiring a lawyer who leaves a law firm to not practise law at another law firm...
Face it. Most countries just are much cheaper, and many don't have much worse working conditions (some might even be better in some ways).
I'm really not convinced it does. I don't know of any university that doesn't normalise its exam results, its a fact of life. I sat a security class once where the difference between 60% and 80% final score was less than 2% on the paper (because every body scored in the high 90s). Essay subjects are even worse. Essays are graded by 'sorting' essays into piles. Jane's is better than Joe's and must therefore got in pile A not pile B. They arn't compared against previous years, they arn't compared against a 'standard' they are by definition objective. Even if the TAs agree that the whole class was rubbish, the grades are still normalised up. At the end of the year there is a review where profs duke it out to say how many 1sts, 2:1, 2:2 and 3rds are handed out. This is the closest your degree ever comes to being standarised and it is as more about politics and perception of the dept. than it is about standardisation. Then the pass grade boundaries are decided and your degree is awarded accordingly (based on your normalised module scores). YMMV, I'd be interested to how you think degrees are awarded. Please bear in mind that my experience is based soley on the UK system.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
If 44% are gone after 4 years, and 60% after 6 years, then around 50% are still around after 5 years.
Which means that, on a five year timeframe, the numbers I cite have a survival rate that is 5 times the rate you cite. Those numbers are vastly different.
(btw, Phillips and Kirchoff, 1989, Small Business Economics, vol. 1, pp. 65-74 is where my numbers are from. Can you site the "90% death in 5 years" study directly?)
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
Hey, what happens if we peg our currency back to theirs? Would there be a weird feedback loop? An explosion?