Look ma, that's me! Free of a soul crushing corporate job, back to doing a "startup", I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in!
I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects.
And quite a long personal runway before I have to "get a job" again.
If I can get to personal ramen profitability, that would be great.
And if my cofounders and I get a real startup off the ground that can pay us salaries.... well, then I can start showing up in statistics as employed again.
But either way, it's not as big a deal to me as it would be to men of my age 20 years ago.
And that's a huge shift-- in opportunity towards the individual.
I have never had 'a job' and had startups (and later mature companies) since I was 15 (I am 40 now). I am not sure what age you are, but you need to know this thing for sure if you are past, I think, around 30 as running a life like this can be very painful. There simply is a tiny chance of 'big success' while most just live in almost poverty the first 20-30 years of doing this. That's also why I think you are probably young and haven't seen that yet ; most give up and tell stories to their kids later about it.
Not to squash your enthusiasm; just saying that 'control of my destiny' is mostly not true at all; you are being lived by actual constraints of life. If you get a mortgage, kids, spouse, investors etc these constraints can easily 'live' you instead of you controlling anything. I was lucky, but just saying to be careful in thinking this and keep tabs on the 'do I actually still like this' factor. A regular job, for most of my friends who started out with me, was a blessing.
I'm older than you. Have done this before, spent 6 years "unemployed" traveling the world before I "got a job" that turned out to be a terrible decision.
Of course you don't have control over your destiny to the point of just wishing you had a million bucks... but I also now don't have a psychotic boss whose only experience has been in the military micromanaging software development and doing everything he can to "control" things without any understanding of software development.
Indeed that's a reason I do it as well and I applaud all for going that route ; I'm just saying that if you do it for that reason you might turn out in a smaller prison than actually having a boss. But if you are not greedy, don't care about materialistic things too much, know how to save money for a rainy day and have a family that supports that way of living, I wouldn't want it any other way.
It is great that you are able to do this, but not that your situation is not the one described in the article. The article discusses men who only qualify for low/no skill jobs paying $10-15/hr. That is markedly different from a tech startup cofounder who could get a software engineering job paying $100k+ with benefits.
yeah, a big problem with the whole "Don't need BigCo's job cuz I'm running a SV startup!" narrative is that it's really only accessible for people who already belonged to pretty privileged classes (exceptions exist, obviously.)
A portion of the population does not get opportunities to develop these skills and were once allowed low-skilled jobs that paid "decently" but have now found themselves squeezed due to inflation and companies hoarding cash instead of spending it.
I've heard this sentiment many times but I've wondered if there's an economic fallacy there. Would the economy be better off if lots of companies stopped hoarding cash and hired lots of new employees? Or would there be side-effects like inflation, or some effect of pulling out cash from whatever it was invested in, etc.?
First of all, you have to understand that "state where everybody is better off" is not something that's given. Everybody can be rational and still be worse off - prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example.
Economic fallacy there is, but it's in standard economic theory. Standard economics claims that only sensible things to do are investment and consumption, and considers savings to be a waste. But the savings are not waste for individual economic entities; savings are a way of gaining power in economics.
Let me give a couple examples, consider two companies, company A which saves (has large quantities of liquid capital), the other B which doesn't (and invests everything into machinery, better production, etc.).
First example: A stealthy startup appears with a completely new ("disruptive") technology. Company B cannot buy it, so the company A is at advantage.
Second example: Workers decide to strike for higher wages. Company A can survive the long strike by taking hit on it's monetary reserves, perhaps pay strikebreakers, etc. Company B cannot do anything and have to give in to the strikers demands.
In other words, savings are a way to break out of the market system, and so people do it and race who does it better, because they want power (which comes from ability to react). Economy as a whole suffers; but why should the winning actor care?
This is the typical principle agent problem, it depends of the ownership of the company. If it is privately hold, then savings make sense and you have to optimize for sustainability, i.e. otherwise your private savings are nilified. But if the company is widely spread by shareholders, then you have the maximize value by concentrating on one product, and leverage by keeping down the risk factor while still maintaining a high enough earnings on capital rate. The risk is adverted by the shareholders themselves that have their own portfolio of companies.
I think to say the economy as a whole suffers is too broad, and falls into the trap of people who really are advocating a consumption oriented society.
For instance, you could spend your money constantly hiring more employees to do more work and to grow.
Or you could save your money, until you have enough to build a new modern factory that produces the product much more efficiently. That efficiency lets you pay your fewer employees more, but overall lets the business grow more reliably.
In your example, Company A is better for the economy because it will last a lot longer than Company B.
Companies failing does more economic damage than a company saving its profits for several years.
> I've heard this sentiment many times but I've wondered if there's an economic fallacy there.
There is, it's a confusion between money and capacity. That money is an option, the possibility of getting people to do things for you. Unused money is paper.
> Would the economy be better off if lots of companies stopped hoarding cash and hired lots of new employees?
The economy is an abstraction. It can't be better off. But if the companies that have the money had productive ways to spend it they would be doing so. The fact that there aren't that many productive ways to use the money is why the interest rate is so low. The interest rate is the cost of renting money.
If your future economic prospects require ever increasing consumption then surely there's a problem; resources are finite.
If we need more people consuming more and more stuff (that mostly gets put in landfill within a couple of years) then we're completely screwed. We need to start restructuring our way of life to accommodate the need to conserve resources, for one, and the need to support a basic standard of living for all people (across the world) for another.
Instead of encouraging increased consumption we need to be levying massive taxes against disposable items, requiring all goods to be largely recyclable, requiring the ability to repair before production can be licensed.
> If your future economic prospects require ever increasing consumption then surely there's a problem; resources are finite.
Yeah, that's the inherent contradiction of capitalism. But unless someone comes along with a different system we're probably stuck with that for a while.
Depends on what that 'consumption' consists of. We could have an economy of eternal growth in art, scholarship, mathematics, music, and software. The main input there is human thought.
>an economy of eternal growth in art, scholarship, mathematics, music, and software //
They're all production with minimal consumption agree; they hardly summarise current human activity though. They don't require [many] raw materials beyond energy and humans but nevertheless they do tend to still use some non-renewable resources.
This is also wrong. You just have to switch what to produce and to whom. There are many starving people in the world, and quite a lot new medicals to invent and so on.
Very little down side. People with more income spend more which grows the economy. In a two person economy, your expenditure is my income and my expenditure is your income. If one of us hoards then both of us lose eventually.
Also moderate inflation is a good thing. It disincentivises hoarding of cash.
Also moderate inflation is a good thing. It disincentivises hoarding of cash.
Another way to look at that is that it incentivises short-term investment in anything that brings returns above inflation, instead of allowing for capital to be saved up for more important projects.
I don't know. There always seem to be many alternate compositions of rules that can be used to define the environment while enforcing or altering the rule composition rules.
Rules can define themselves, rules used to regulate the flow of information become information.
That spending stimulates the economy is a fallacy.
Standard economics defends that idea; but it is only true in a fairy-tale world where you have a magic money printing machine - like the world we are currently living in.
In the real world you actually have to have savings first and foremost in order to produce the products that others will buy.
Hoarding is a good thing since it frees the person to work on what they like, which is likely to benefit others. Also, money hoarded is usually invested in some instrument that might be benefiting other businesses.
> In a two person economy, your expenditure is my income and my expenditure is your income.
This is wrong. Imagine two people in an island. We elect that fish is money since it's the thing we all want and have a use for and can easily trade with each other. Now I fish 5 fish and put that in my savings account (a bucket of salt). As I spend this money, it does not become your income.
You might be confusing the way governments characterize the economy with how a real world economy actually works in practice.
> Also moderate inflation is a good thing. It disincentivises hoarding of cash.
And moderate tax-evasion is a good think because it disincentivizes hoarding of cash by the government. This is wrong as well. Not to say morally wrong, as it's trying to steer people's financial decisions in a definite uniform direction (ie. spending).
That sort of thinking is what had the US government almost shut down yesterday and have to inflate the money supply with $1.1 trillion more. It used to take us decades as a country to spend that much, but now it's only expected to last until September 2015.
But we still have people saying moderate inflation is a good thing.
The whole foundation of capitalism is growth so if we're embracing zero-growth we have to radically change things. (in short, yes, companies hiring and spending is an unalloyed good on the macroeconomic level)
"A portion of the population does not get opportunities to develop these skills and were once allowed low-skilled jobs that paid "decently" but have now found themselves squeezed"
Slate Star Codex had a great post a while back that touched on this:
Key pull quote: "Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have."
The people who have had more good things happen to them (money, smarts, education, favorable societal position, supportive family) than most other people. It is easier for these people to not get a regular job and try to build something on their own.
Personal availability of risk capital. I mean, if I make a mistake with my cashflow stream, I don't eat. It has happened three times in my life, and not in twelve years.
This means that I make decisions differently to somebody who has a buffer of parental emergency capital injection. For example, I would love passionately to quit my job right now. I would love to set up a consultancy specialising in data analysis for capital management for insurance companies, and have more than the required skill set, but if I take too much risk my family could be hungry. That would be decidedly uncool.
Start up businesses are a gamble. Most fail. If you're middle class. that's ok. You can crash at mom and dads, and fall back on that college degree you earned. But the poor can't afford to fail. Gotta make rent somehow. At least McDonalds is a sure bet.
For one thing, you need savings. If you absolutely need a paycheck this month to make it through to next month, you simply cannot afford the risks involved in doing the whole startup thing.
Another thing, you need skills. But it's very difficult to get a decent education (formal or otherwise) if your family isn't able to support you during your formative learning years. It's not easy to learn programming if your family can't afford a computer. It's not easy learning financial management when the largest amount of money you ever had is $500.
Basically, if you want to do a startup, you had better not be poor or uneducated.
> Basically, if you want to do a startup, you had better not be poor or uneducated.
Robert Herjavec would disagree with you, as would Sam Walton, Andrew Carnegie, Li Ka-shing, and dozens more who overcame poverty and a lack of education via hard work and common sense (and yes, a bit of luck in some cases) to become successful businessmen.
The single best advice I ever received is "Think probabilities, not possibilities."
I'm not denying that it is possible that an illiterate girl from a low-income family in Mali could overcome every obstacle and build a successful start-up. But how much would you bet on that happening? Do you also think that her success will negate the hardships that other folks in her position face?
I don't disagree with you, my issue was that yen223 was speaking in absolutes when there is no such thing, in the business world or life in general. Maybe I'm just being pedantic about yen223's wording, but it sounded to me like he was trying to say "You're poor? Don't bother breathing, prole". It was dismissive and classist. But then, I grew up poor, so I'm sure there's bias at work on my part.
I wouldn't go so far as the post you're replying too (I think you can do a startup without all the advantages named, but your risk looks different).
However, I think you are falling into the trap of identifying outliers and then trying to reason about the general case from it - it's pretty hard to use that to say anything more that "it's possible for X to happen, because it happened here, and here."
That's all I was saying, that it is possible to bootstrap yourself from poor conditions. I'm not saying everyone who is poor can do that; it takes hard work and, as I conceded initially, a bit of luck, but I'm simply saying it can be done. If I'm being downvoted for stating the obvious, so be it, but I have a feeling it's that I've hurt some privileged feelings here. If so, then good; everyone needs a dose of reality once in a while.
When did I say I was betting on anything? I was simply refuting the position that a poor person has never bootstrapped themselves into a successful entrepreneur, using a few well-known examples. Who knows what the statistics are on unknown success stories? As a poker player, you should know that even a bad hand can win a game if it's dealt to the right player.
He means those that belong to "privileged classes" usually don't have liabilities such as student loans to pay off and therefore have the freedom to pursue endeavors such as startups which don't pay the bills upfront. Furthermore, their support network is also a significant factor.
All it takes is a computer, hard work and dedication. The 'poor' manage to find the time to surf the net, why not spend the time learning how to build the net?
It's a simplistic idea, but it is definitely possible. I lived out of my car for months until I was able to turn it around by using my computer for something besides surfing MySpace.
I think the sad fact is that so many people are now in front of vast, utterly vast learning resources, and it just doesn't matter.
Rich or poor, there are numerous people sitting in front of extreme learning resources, and they'll never do anything with it unless there's this enormous infrastructure designed to remedy issues of motivation and planning. And that's where I think the difference is between rich and poor; yes, there are networking differences, yes, there are differences in local crime rate and other environmental stressors and so on, but the biggest factor is motivation.
I've seen a peer ditch school to go to the library to use public terminals, back at the time when computers still weren't that popular, and there was no Google or Wikipedia. But even then I could see that some people have a different heart -- starting from an early age, they had a yearning to learn that surpassed the praises of parents or the soothing structure of school.
The issue isn't access. The access is already intense for rich and poor alike. Most people don't possess the psychological traits to pursue their own intellectual growth. Almost everyone I've met, rich or poor, stop learning when society stops pressuring them. They may have high or low IQ, be rich or poor, but they are not interested in self-directed learning, at least not without strong external reasons like parents or social shame.
Access clearly isn't an issue for you, and that's good. Perhaps your peer didn't have access issues either and that's good too, but if you believe that access isn't an issue for some people, then you are inexperienced in dealing with some forms of poverty.
Perhaps in some places the library is the solution, but in Chicago, public access is limited to two hours a day. I don't know how much access you required when learning to program, but I needed more than two hours a day.
That is assuming that you can get a library card. For one, you need a verifiable address, which is easy to produce if you live in a home, but very difficult if you do not. Also, if you have violated your card in the past, perhaps due to a youthful indiscretion, you are shut out of the system unless you can monetarily recompense, which is also difficult to do when you are poor.
Not to mention that street gangs can make it challenging to leave your block to get the library in some cases.
So while access has improved, to deny that it is an issue for some people because public libraries exist is glossing over the problem.
As both a lazy and a poor person I think there's definitely a significant proportion who could work but can't be bothered to, who could get a better education but can't be bothered to.
I'm doing an online python course, but works busy at the moment and I missed my last deadline; I just can't be bothered, motivation is really hard to me (perhaps it is for everyone though).
That's not to say that there can't be many people, perhaps a majority, who are poor and disadvantaged by their poverty to an extent that locks them out of opportunities. I just think you have to be careful you're not saying "well sure he's lazy but looks he's poor so he can't help himself".
I can't afford that book could you say why you recommend it; our libraries here will order any book requested for a small charge.
I pointed out that both rich and poor people alike suffer grievously from issues of planning and motivation. The difference is that rich people get better access to the motivation and planning infrastructure.
I also imply that most people, when placed in front of vast access to knowledge, will do nothing with it.
It's also why great online education resources have failed to achieve revolution. Giving kids access to Khan Academy isn't enough; because too many people would rather visit another website.
don't think he said that... lack of motivation affects the non-poor too... A motivated person found ways to improve even when access was not as easy as it is today.
I don't know the proportions at all, didn't mean to imply the majority were.
However, it is a trend that there are a lot more people becoming independant and making their money online via various ways (not all of which are startups, most of which are probably what would be called "lifestyle businesses" here, though I hate that term) and thus not counted on the "employment rolls".
Maybe, but most of those people aren't voluntarily doing that, are underpaid, and don't have any chance of making it big with what they're doing. Basically, all of the hardship of being independent without the rewards. (think of freelance journalists working for peanuts, or often putting stuff out for free for "exposure," for instance)
> it's not as big a deal to me as it would be to men of my age 20 years ago.
Less than 6% of workers are working computer or math jobs - of any kind - which suggests that the overwhelming majority of people still have a difficult time when they're listed as "unemployed."
One common trend I have seen in my social circle is the lack of any employable skills. They may or may not have college degrees, but in general their degrees did not give them concrete job skills or they don't have a degree and no skilled trade.
What would ideally happen is people learn a skilled trade if they are stuck on the job market. This training should also happen in high school.
Agreed. Figuring out how to evaluate the trades and schools seems really important. I would be worried about ending up with more debt and still no job, in cases where the school was bad or the job market wasn't really there in the end.
Except the education system is bad at picking winners. What's in demand when you're in highschool is not what's in demand by the time you're entering the workforce.
It's not about picking winners. It is about giving students at least one practical skill early on, then letting them choose what they want to do.
I am a programmer, but I can also weld and fix cars. This is because in high school I took some auto shop classes. Let's say for some odd reason programming doesn't work out anymore as a career(this is happening to lawyers and pharmacists), I have something to fall back on.
>>I am a programmer, but I can also weld and fix cars. This is because in high school I took some auto shop classes.
That's a pretty flippant dismissal of the knowledge required to either "fix cars" or "weld" for a living. My brother was an excellent welder and it's a very hard life.
Both. Also in steadily working. My brother was one of three people with certain certifications in our state of several million people and had to put up with the sort of nonsense that would have us quitting immediately.
How do they pick? Maybe they need help picking better. Seems like there's a lot of people around here interested in trends and intelligence that could help with that.
> I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in!
How are people who don't have a meaningful source of income and who are dependent on their parents for shelter any more in control of their destinies than corporate worker bees?
It is not only that - even when you run your own company you can and often are effectively dependent on your clients/market ( especially that big client making 80% of your revenue ), or the need of your dependents ( you still need to pay your mortgage ) . That's a common complain here on HN of founder "selling out", "losing the original spirit", ...
There is a cultural bias for entrepreneur, especially in the US (that's not a bad thing BTW), so struggling directly against the market is seen as more glamorous then through a corporate structure/middleman.
In the end, you are as in control of your destiny as much as your wealth permit, no matter how you made that wealth in the first place.
Here's the difference: When the market says something, I can react to it and improve immediately. For me the market is large and variety, it's not like a few people make up %80 of the income.
Working for a corporation, in the most recent case, meant dealing with people who were so incompetent that they did everything I can think of to interfere with us reacting to the market.
You know the saying about how people with nothing to do create work for others? Well, when you're a software team and the boss has zero software skills, or understanding, or care, you end up in a lot of pointless meetings.
Seriously, I would get interrupted 200 times in a day. (I counted once).
So, more risk, less secure money, but avoiding harassment, verbal abuse, manipulation, gas lighting, and 200 interruptions a day is a huge positive trade off.
For me at least.
Plus I get to see my parents for a few months while I pick out the next place I'm going to live.
You are just comparing a shit job to a good job, and well the shit job is shittier than the good one.
Let's run with your example - what would have been your boss opinion ? Or if your business is growing and you need more people, how will you treat them and how should they feel ?
You have a good job in a hot sector, enjoy it, don't try to generalise to everybody or other sectors. Actually, the article is all about people that don't share our luck.
Not all corporate jobs are soulless, mind crushing Orwellian nightmares, and nothing prevents you from looking for a fulfilling job if you are unhappy with your present one, especially in our field.
True, and I did spend some time looking. It's kinda sad, though, how our field seems to have devolved in the past 15 years. Startups today are much more corporate, more likely to be run by biz guys without appreciation for software, etc.
Here's a good litmus test: If they have an open floor plan they clearly don't care about developers.
If they BRAG about having an open floor plan-- and so many of them do-- they are terrible. Run away.
I've lived with a parent (it's a big house they'd alone otherwise here) for I guess too many years then I've should. Also I'm old and my g/f who is similar age of five years also lives with a parent. Though she is getting antsy and wants kids and she only has a few years left. I want a family too but have been holding off for that big moment when my team and I start generating money and or sell our work. Ugh will that happen I don't know but I need to get back into the workforce and do our startup on the side. This what I was doing for the last year and half until I lost yet another developer job because of my incessant need to startup. I've lost two jobs in the two and half years because my bosses found out about my startup or we become friendly and I talk about it a lot.
Ugh I'm sorta feeling stuck professionally and tomorrow I start my 3rd incubator yet im unemployed.
You might want to reconsider startup pursuits after your early to mid 30s.
I might be naive, but I don't see having to choose self-employment or salaried work as a all-or-nothing, no-going-back decision.
You could easily secure a well paid job for a few years, and save enough to support working on a start-up or starting a consulting business.
If things do not go as planned, I can see no problems in going back to being employed, since your skills won´t have
withered in the meantime, and possibily learned new ones.
It seems to me that the startup culture is seen sometimes as a "get rich quick" scheme, where the goal is to retire at 25.
A normal career in most professions lasts 30/40 years...
I don't think there are "quite a lot of people out there" like you, but I guess it depends on what "a lot" is. It's great what you're doing, but you are likely in the minority. Most people do not have the luxury or skills to do that.
Well, 30 years ago there was no global internet full of knowledge and allowing collaboration-- I had to go to the college library.
There was also no global internet allowing for an instant global market to be serviced from the middle of nowhere. If you started a business in podunk, your market was the podunk area. (For the most part, there was mail order and stuff, but that still had a higher barrier to entry than the internet does now.)
So I think things have gotten easier and a lot more people are doing it.
I'm interested in hearing why you think the opposite-- I bet you're observing a different trend than I am focusing on. (eg both trends can be true)
I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects.
And quite a long personal runway before I have to "get a job" again.
If I can get to personal ramen profitability, that would be great.
And if my cofounders and I get a real startup off the ground that can pay us salaries.... well, then I can start showing up in statistics as employed again.
But either way, it's not as big a deal to me as it would be to men of my age 20 years ago.
And that's a huge shift-- in opportunity towards the individual.