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Silicon Valley's Big Lie
HughPickens.com writes: Danny Crichton writes at TechCrunch that startups in Silicon Valley run on an alchemy of ignorance and amnesia and that lying is a requisite and daily part of being a founder, the grease that keeps the startup flywheel running. Most startups fail. The vast, vast majority of startup employees will never exercise their options, let alone become millionaires while doing it. But founders have little choice as they sell their company to everyone, whether investors, employees, potential employees, or clients. "Founders have to tell the lie – that everything is fine, that a feature is going to launch even though the engineer for that feature hasn't been hired yet, that payroll will run even though the VC dollars are still nowhere on the horizon," writes Crichton. "For one of the most hyper-rational populations in the world, Silicon Valley runs off a myth about startup success, of the lowly founder conquering the world."
"For one of the most hyper-rational populations in the world"
That's part of the Big Lie, isn't it? Those greedy men who have least to offer will do their best to paint themselves as having the most to offer, and what better weapon has there been since the Renaissance than sophistry disguised as science, pulling those in just clever enough to know what they should be looking for, but too stupid to know whether they're witnessing it? It's the way of every salesman.
The rational man learns hard, finds an honest job, works hard, saves up, buys a home, keeps his skills up to date, remaining ambitious but staying true to himself (don't pretend you do what you can't, and don't get involved with anything that you know is too good to be true). This is harder than it once was, thanks to the overarching influence of Big Liars who enjoy the revolving door, but it's still the safest way to get along, assuming you're not due to inherit a fortune.
Value needs to be extracted somewhere and if you're not the extractor then chances are you're the chump. The responsibility of not being exploited is mine, and if I drank the koolaid I know who the chump who did the drinking was. Maybe next time I'll learn that my l33t risk analysis skills needs a bit of tweaking, or even better, give up on the self-gaslighting.
It's really the same sort of proselytizing that churches do to get followers. Without any tangible "earthly" benefits, the only option is to offer everlasting life beyond the pearly gates of the IPO and draw in the young wide-eyed dreamers. As they get old and embittered, they get tossed for the next wide-eyed dreamer. Lather, rinse, repeat until A) profit! or B) buyout or C) federal indictment occurs.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Elon Musk says shhhhhh.
You use extremes. You can learn a lot on the way through failures. If you're looking for founder-stock success on the way to your life of penthouses in Vegas, then yeah, you're stupid. If you're looking for a decent living evolving stuff, you might have success.
If you add up Apple, HP, Oracle, and other organizations that were born somewhere near Silicon Valley, and look at their market cap, it's larger than you can imagine. There is money seeking other fortune. It's how Capitalism works. Yeah, there are other tawdry forms of capitalism and elements that make you want to hurl. It's a pressure cooker of an existence for coders in an über high priced area.
Darwin wasn't wrong, just cruel.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
...and while it has significantly better odds than the actual lottery, it's much the same thing. Part of what drives the Valley -- and the IT startup industry in general -- is that it's very easy to track down large numbers of people who have, in fact, become millionaires (or better) through stock options and buy outs. It is a siren song that occasionally pays off.
The problem since the late 1990s is that vast amounts of capital have distorted the natural harsh realities of running a business, not to mention Economics 101. Too many tech startup business plans are, in effect, "Get funding. Create buzz. Get more funding. Sell out to a firm that actually makes money or go public." It occasionally works -- and all you have to do is read the industry press to see the multi-billion-dollar IPOs/acquisitions that never panned out.
Now, excuse me while I go back to work on my indie game and my graphic novel. :-) ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)