I am a 27 year old programmer and have worked for two small companies ( < 20 employees ) and for one company of 200+ employees. The only thing I can say about working for the large company is that it felt like breathing through a straw. Go work for a small company or as Paul Graham suggests, go start up your own. Leave the big companies for the burnt-out folk with kids and debt.
As another 27 year old programmer, I 100% agree. The only real benefit I think I derived from working at a company (both large and small) is getting a good idea of what works and what doesn't work for large scale projects (which I wasn't exposed to in school). And even that lesson was learned pretty quickly, within 3-6 months. All returns were diminishing exponentially from that point on.
That same lesson could be learned in the same time frame in a start up - you'd just end up with some throw away code after a pretty short period of time, which isn't a big deal at all when it comes down to it.
I am also a 27 year old programmer working for a very large company well over 10K employees. Unfortunately, doing well career wise is more about politics than programming.
I have never worked for a small company so I cannot comment on that, but I hope for sure that there is something better than what I have experienced so far! Just have to pull my finger out and get out of there, or start some sort of startup ...
if you're serious about getting out check out some of the jobs we have up at http://snaptalent.com/ads.html There are some YC companies on there, but also some other really cool startups.
I can't see any ad's at that URL ... maybe something is broken?
One thing thats kept me in my big company job is that I am in a part of the UK where there isn't a massive choice of places to work - there are other big companies, but few if any startups :(
I am in Belfast - Don't really want to move, I have a lot of friends here that would suck to leave behind!
Lots of American investment is hitting Belfast these days, so there are a reasonable number of IT jobs, but they tend to be big companies or bigish companies outsourcing to here, so the work isn't the best.
Don't get me wrong, the company I work for is good despite its size, but like many here I wanna start my own thing - I will keep mulling/hacking on my ideas until I get something that seems good enough to release ...
We don't have any UK jobs at the moment so for now we've made our ads magically disappear when hit from any non-US IP addresses, we'll be out there soon though :)
I was actually wondering if there was a page where I could just view the list of jobs being advertised on SnapTalent... seeing as it's a self-selecting group of advertisers, that has very high value to me.
Feature Request: Show me the company, job title, and city, please?
I'm 26 and just passed my fifth year at a very large company (18000+), with four years in IT and the past year in Software Engineering. I've been looking for an oppurtunity at a smaller company, since my current one is stifling my ability to learn and be productive.
The issue I'm finding is that small companies are typically looking for someone with more experience than I could currently offer. Has anyone else come across this issue? It seems to me (and others where I work) that we have to somehow pay our dues and get experience at a large company before we gather enough experience to become valuable assets to smaller companies.
Its also possible I haven't been looking in the right places either. From what I've noticed, its hard to pinpoint jobs at small companies since they don't seem to advertise as much as the larger ones.
However, Jamie from snaptalent was nice enough to email me and pointed me to their job ads page. Unfortunately there's only one company on the east coast listed so far, but I'm hoping once they get rolling with more job ads that my chances for finding a small startup or company to work for will increase.
I keep my eye on the job boards for most of the major tech blogs and sites, but even there it tends to be larger organizations.
The other issue would be the mass amounts of jobs posted for work in CA. I would really like to stay here in the east (Boston) as oppose to moving halfway across the country for a job that very well may exist where I'm located already.
I think CA would be a great place to live, however it just doesn't fit into my current situation at the moment.
Are there any other resources out there for startup type jobs other than the major players (TechCruch, GigaOm, 37Signals, etc)?
We (over here at snaptalent) just put up joinstartups.com We'll keep this up to date with all the startup jobs (and only the startup jobs) from our network
Something that (stupidly) never occurred to me before I kicked of a startup - if you want to get a job with one, go along to networking meetups (e.g. opencoffee) and you'll soon find some opportunities.
Personally I'd much rather work with someone that is smart and never programmed before than someone that is a terrible coder with 5 years of experience in buzzword-of-the-month.
Last time I looked for a job I actually crossed out any place that wanted more than one year experience with anything. I guess I'll never be a Senior Java Engineer or a Senior .NET Architect or a Senior Oracle DBA, but is that really a loss? Asking for five years experience in some technology is like actively seeking out people that are content to actually do the same thing for five years. Any small company that wants that is going to get trounced by a competitor that learns new tricks.
There are small companies like one of the startups our host sponsors, or like those Joel Spolsky runs, and then there are those which languish under the them of a boss who is living a good life while 1 to 5 or so programmers slave over ancient technology and insane customers.
So qualify your employer carefully before you go to a small company. In particular, if they are using old technology, run away, nothing they do or say can be trusted.
> boss who is living a good life while 1 to 5 or so programmers slave over ancient technology and insane customers
I find this is most often the case with small companies that aren't run by programmers or ex-programmers, although that isn't always a hard and fast rule.
yet another 27 year old programmer hear. i've worked for google for the past 3 years. after saving up a bunch of money and working with a lot of very smart people on two very different projects, I'd have to say I'm happy I chose to work for a company :) That said, there is no substitute for being able to do exactly what you want. I get my kicks in that regard programming on my own (reading SICP, toying with scala, etc). But guess what, at a good company, so does everyone else. My smart co-workers all have interests in and out of work, and just being around them and talking to them day in and day out (while eating really good free food) is a great way to learn a lot and get pointers to places to start learning more on your own. We're not all brain dead code monkeys, believe it or not.
Ultimately though, the money I've saved will afford me the opportunity to strike out on my own. I certainly don't knock small companies, or starting your own. I just think large companies (OK, at least google) can be a great way to start your career before moving on to other stuff.
I'm having a very similar experience working for a large corporation and I've made plans to extricate myself and go back to grad school. I'd be careful about associating "kids" with people who are burnt-out or who just want to crawl into their little corner as a faceless cubicle dweller. I'm 26 and have a wife and an 11 month-old son, both by choice. There is joy and fulfillment to be had in a family that commercial success cannot replace. It's interesting to see how many people assume that it's not possible to have a family as well as a stimulating and challenging career. Do not make these assumptions. I will prove them wrong.
If I had to structure an organization of 1,000 people, here's how I'd do it: rather than tiers of management on the order of 1, 10, 100, and 1000, I'd just have two levels. At the top would be a small committee that controls allocation of money and from time to time publishes non-specific guidelines about where they'd like the company to go. One person on the committee is in charge of hiring salesmen, who once hired are basically unsupervised and work for commission. The rest of the company is a bunch of small engineering teams of up to 10. All functions other than sales and engineering are outsourced. The most senior member of each team has hiring/firing authority for that team. He gets to decide the size but 10 is the max. These generate their own ideas and speak to the controlling committee only for budget requests. Salary is not part of the budget request: everybody in the company gets the same salary. Bonuses are awarded to teams that implement profitable ideas. More money goes to bonuses than to salary. If a team shows a pattern of underperformance, the committee fires the entire team. If this happens, they get 30 days notice that they're going to be fired, and they can use that time to find jobs on other teams within the company.
If I then had to scale this to 10,000, I still wouldn't add another layer of management. Instead I'd just add more teams, and expand the controlling committee to a confederation of committees, which all draw money from the same pool but have specialized expertise. When teams request budget, they approach the committee with the best understanding of their proposal.
The 1,000 person model looks a lot like a bunch of founding teams and one VC firm. The 10,000 person model bears some resemblance to the federal government, which is perhaps why an organization the size of the government manages to function at all, however poorly.
Just based on the summary, it sounds like he has a lot of good ideas and one bad mistake: profit-sharing is socialized. So if the company does well then the employees do well, but individual contributors would have trouble getting rewarded.
It may not be as bad a mistake as you think. There's some experimental (if unintuitive) evidence that rewarding individual contributions in organizations is harmful, even to that individual's motivation. The extrinsic motivation extinguishes the individual's intrinsic motivation.
Many high achievers have an attitude of "achievement for the sake of achievement." Individual rewards crush that spirit.
B) Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory). The idea is that a very low salary can lead to dissatisfaction, but increasing the salary beyond the required minimum isn't one of the things that increases happiness. Link: http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/herzberg/
There's a huge difference between the sense of ownership that comes automatically from small organizations and the 'incentives' that a paternalistic committee chooses to bestow on a few in its largesse, while bleeding motivation in all the other ways large organizations do that PG talks about. I don't interpret any of those studies (including Herzberg's in the sibling post) to mean 'socialism isn't so bad'. Yes it is so bad. But that doesn't mean you can't implement capitalism poorly.
Capitalism isn't about profits, it's about motivation.
This is why I love the HN community - not one but two people recommend the same book - that's a huge vote of confidence that forced me to take a better look at it.
I was thinking your 10k person model sounds like how research funding works... which seems to be a moderately functional model.
With your 1000 person model, I'd do away with the boss (in the sense of hiring and firing). With that few people, you can all just work together fairly easily, with natural leaders emerging for different projects (and hiring/firing decisions can be made by the team as a whole). There is a factory in NC that makes aircraft engines that works this way, and it is quite successful. The teams are self organizing internally, and send representatives to deal with other teams and plant management.
In practice that's how I'd expect/hope it would work. But while ideally the groups should act by consensus, there has to be some means of making a decision if no consensus can be reached. For groups that small, a benevolent dictatorship tends to work better than a democracy.
All in all, not a bad framework, though I expect much tinkering would be needed to optimize it. It’s worth noting that almost every large company strives to be “entrepreneurial”, although some are better at implementing this than others. The world’s largest private company (Koch Industries, I believe) prides itself on “market based management”, though I’m not sure what this means in practice. Koch is also a big funder of libertarian causes, which gives some hint at his mindset.
One very serious problem with that idea. Team X isn't insulated from lawsuits that Team Y gets hit with (or contracts that have the potential for massive costs, for that matter).
Suppose Team X isn't doing well. Probability of getting fired is 50%. They decide (independently) to do Z, with a 90% chance of increasing their team's profits (and not getting fired) as well as a 10% chance of major lawsuit that will crush the company.
This nearly doubles Team X's survival probability, while exposing the company to a massive risk. This is a classical example of agency costs. And this is why big companies are usually pyramid shaped.
You also just described the major problem with the government artificially allowing such a thing as a limited liability (I'm talking about legal, not debt) corporation.
This has little to do with limited liability. In fact, the problem here is that groups within the company do NOT have limited liability (from each other), thus necessitating some oversight.
The only role limited liability plays here is that investors in this company to lose only their investments (but not their house and car) should the company die.
Could you structure the company (legally) such that each team was an independent company that the parent company holds a majority stake in? This way if an individual team got sued, the parent company's liability would be limited to it's investment in that team, and sibling teams would be isolated completely.
Of course, I have no idea if that is how liability works, and even if it was, the accounting situation for the overall company would be a nightmare.
I know of one huge company that does exactly this. Except instead of outsourcing "all functions other than sales and engineering", they outsource nothing but sales and engineering. :)
"Mediocre hires hurt you twice: they get less done, but they also make you big, because you need more of them to solve a given problem."
I would say Mediocre hires hurt you THRICE. Twice for the reasons you mention, and the third one is all the good folks leaving since they can't stand mediocre people.
One big company that seems to do well, at least from the outside is Semco in Brazil. Watch Ricardo Semler's "Leading by Omission": http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308/ and read his book "Maverick": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446670553. This is of course an anomaly since most companies don't work this way.
And note, this company (originally) had nothing to do with hacking or technology. If it works for a manufacturer of heavy equipment, in a unionized shop, how much better can it work in software?
I agree with the sentiment of the article, although the title is a bit misleading. It's not like you were meant to be a boss either, which is running a company is about once you get past the startup stage. I'd say the message is that if you can't be a boss yourself, try to make sure that your boss doesn't have a boss (i.e. join an early-stage startup).
Large companies have many other drawbacks besides the hierarchical structure. I've worked for companies of all sizes, and these are the things I particularly disliked about large ones:
- Information travels slowly up and back down. Decisions take time. For this reason many projects, especially those having to do with rapidly changing technologies, just cannot be done at large companies.
- Sometimes your work gets lost in the noise. Your entire project may be canceled and most of the company won't notice it. One of the perks of working for a startup is the feeling of being in charge of things and knowing that your work is immediately visible.
- Human relationships do not respect the hierarchy, so there may be conflicts between random pairs or groups of people. The larger the group, the higher the complexity of politics. This non-linearity is perhaps the worst obstacle when it comes to getting things done.
"So Bill Gore threw out the rules. He created a place with hardly any hierarchy and few ranks and titles. He insisted on direct, one-on-one communication; anyone in the company could speak to anyone else. In essence, he organized the company as though it were a bunch of small task forces. To promote this idea, he limited the size of teams -- keeping even the manufacturing facilities to 150 to 200 people at most. That's small enough so that people can get to know one another and what everyone is working on, and who has the skills and knowledge they might tap to get something accomplished -- whether it's creating an innovative product or handling the everyday challenges of running a business."
Anyone who works for Gore care to comment on the actual practice?
I worked in the Gore HK office in the late 80's and even met the man himself. He was adamant about keeping groups small; small enough that everyone knew everyone else personally. New locations would start with about 10, and whenever an office/factory grew larger than about 50 they would split into two groups of 25. Another credo was that there were no "assistants" or staff positions. Everyone either produced product or sold product. Two roles. There were however senior and junior personnel, and decisions were made by rough consensus among senior personnel. However, all remuneration was openly discussed and agreed upon by the entire group in the context of production or sales targets.
I liked being there, although my role as a freelance systems analyst/programmer was not an authorised one.
The size of a monkeysphere is estimated to be 150 people, which is quite a bit larger than the 10-person group Paul advocates, but I guess you need to know at least a few people outside of work. :)
I wonder if the problem with large corporations is that you don't care about the other people in them or that you feel the other people don't care about you? Certainly the people in the highest positions can't care about everyone under them -- assuming they can only care about 150 people -- so perhaps that is the limiting factor of effective size.
So one might say that an optimal size of a business is 150 - family members - external to business friends - significant acquaintances. With various employees being more or less numerically involved in a company.
Everything written in the article rings true. One effect he didn't mention is that the poisonous confidence-destruction and the lack of learning are self-reinforcing. It creates a cycle which discourages quitting.
I think, though, that the effect only hits ambitious, independent people. Those with less ambition or less independence seem to enjoy themselves, and do well. (There are also a few ambitious, independent folks, who aspire for the top of the corporate ladder and have a good chance of making it. They do well when their skills are matched to the needs of a large organization.)
I used to think that when big company employees "settled", it was a gradual process that snuck up on them. Not always. I've actually had a conversation with someone in which they told me about their conscious decision to settle -- that it was better to accept the circumstances and make the best of evenings and weekends. She became upset when I tried to remind her of the higher aspirations she had just the summer before.
[I work in a big company. I'm getting out in June when I'll have the funds to not use credit cards.]
Woo, you sound just like me. I recall a conversation in the canteen with a colleague recently where I said something along the lines of "... this place is so mediocre ... there has to be something better ..." and she replied with "well its just a job, you have to work somewhere, there are plenty of places worse".
She has clearly decided to settle!
I also agree with the less ambitious people doing well - I liken it to Seth Godin's book The Dip - those people are willing to lean into the organisation and just settle for its way. The more ambitious can sometimes see just how wrong things are and lean against it, hence doing badly in the company. If you are going to do well in a big corporation, you have to learn to play by its rules and settle unfortunately ... I haven't done that yet, but its a daily struggle!
Most people I know of from college don't even care to look elsewhere for a job. All they wish is to get into some big company and switch jobs every 2 years to another big company.
Also for those people, getting into anything small is not good enough to be told among friends.
I tend to agree with you, but there's another class of people that doesn't fit your high ambition/low ambition paradigm.
I don't know how to label these people, and they confuse me greatly, because I'm not one of them and don't understand their motivations. These are people for whom ambitions and motivations are unrelated to "career choice"
I've met a great many people who work fairly-routine/moderate-pay/low-stress jobs, who have no desire to do work any more mentally taxing, and who profess to "live outside of work."
Now, some of these people are just not ambitious or independent. But some really seem to be extremely passionate, ambitious people. Some of these people are the "cause people" -- people that are heavily involved in political campaigns, in "causes," do large amounts of volunteering. They seem to derive their fulfillment from this work, and the paid job is a means to the freedom to pursue these causes.
Yet a different class of these people are the "family-focussed." They work, they may volunteer, but they appear to derive their fulfillment from... well, to be blunt, from raising kids and helping/coaxing/celebrating/watching their kids grow and succeed.
I'm not suggesting at all that these two other alternatives are in any way "lesser" (or "greater" for that matter) -- nor am I suggesting that other people aren't interested in, or don't do these things.
But, to generalize from just one example, (everyone does it -- or at least, I do...) though I don't do much in the way of volunteering or raising of a family just now, even if I do either of these at a future date, I don't think I would ever define myself by these things. I would identify and define myself more by the contributions I make in, for lack of a better name, the financial marketplace. Since this is a forum of "the startup crowd," I imagine that most of you define yourselves similarly?
Anyway, I went on so long, I forgot to make my point, which was that some of these people are perfectly happy in a job where they are not expected to be ambitious, so that they can save their energy and ambition for the part of their life that matters to them. I do not understand this, but I have recently come to notice its existence. I thought I'd point it out, since we're talking about ambition and lack thereof.
I think that this analysis only focuses on one half of the forces that direct survival. Humans may work more efficiently as small groups, but we have also formed into large hierarchical structures for as long as we have had history. Egypt and Summaria were both hierarchically governed. Organizations survive by becoming more efficient, but they also survive by have more labor available. Napoleon would not have won a single battle if his soldiers had fought in groups of 8 to 10.
I think that it depends more on the specifics of the situation and what you are trying to accomplish. Large organizations have advantages that no small organization can match. You gain your freedom at the price of security.
You're already offtopic -- though I think not as offtopic as you might seem to be.
You are correct, which is one reason why the US has had such a prolific history. On the other hand, as the US government (and army) grow, we are now going in the opposite direction of lacking security from said army.
So what? Egypt and Sumeria were organized like North Korea today, worship of the head of state. And Napoleon was a tyrant trying to impose his will on an entire continent. If freedom is incompatible with Napoleonic dreams, that is not a bug.
Freedom fighters have often chosen the guerilla way.
A better example for your point would be the Americans in WWII. But even then, soldiers are not robots and the best commanders give their underlings the freedom to get the job done.
You're thoroughly missing my point. PG's argument is that man was designed, via evolution, to live relatively autonomously. My point is that even a casual glance at history disproves that. The German and Swiss states, for all their autonomy, couldn't stand up to Napoleon's hierarchical tyranny. In fact, it took a far more tyrannical society, Russia, to put Napoleon in his place. Hierarchy is sometimes necessary for survival, and is thus favored by evolution.
When we seek freedom, it is not because it is the evolutionarily superior state. It is because their is a conflict between individual advantage and collective advantage. When evaluating life decisions, you have to account for both.
Because German and Swiss states couldn't stand up to a larger force organized hierarchically is not proof that humans have _not_ evolved to work in small groups, it is only very poor empirical evidence that a larger force with better weapons can defeat a smaller, disorganized force.
As for why people seek freedom, I doubt most consciously think about it in those terms. You seem to think that individuals ponder about the pros and cons of going it alone or being part of a collective, but it just doesn't happen that way. When you're brought up in a culture that is already one way or the other, and that is all you know, you rarely choose because it's not even a question that enters your mind.
I'd suggest reading Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn.
The essential flaw in your logic is this: "evolved to" Evolution has neither purpose nor end. That which is more 'fit' (a very vague term to be sure) is what evolution favors. If a larger force with better weapons can defeat a smaller, disorganized force, then evolution clearly favors the former.
Napoleon is a case example. There are many, many more I could call upon, but I think a lesson in world history is beyond the scope of this debate.
Hierarchy is probably necessary for any society. Tree structures are efficient.
But tyranny is inefficient. It's all about ruining the bonds of trust that hold society and the economy together, just to benefit a small number of people.
All your examples are tyrannies. There is a word for people who invoke naive Darwinism to justify tyranny, but it escapes me at the moment.
I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers and hackers alike got whopping bonuses for beating out other groups and they got to decide which contracts they wanted to bag. Entire groups were fired if they didn't bring in revenue. Fist fights, rancor and IP theft between teams were commonplace. But with all that they created some truly mind expanding tech for their time. They owned every angle of a highly lucrative market and showed no signs of slowing down... Until they got bought. The good news is, the fist fights, duplicate (and sometimes triplicate) efforts were stopped and everyone is one big happy family that hasn't done anything new in 7 years. Their market share is in free fall but they say it's fine b/c they are moving away from products in to large scale integration which is too boring to even type about. All the cowboys have gone to other places and I went to a startup. It was fun while it lasted.
I've heard some Amazon employees say something similar (but maybe not as enthusiastically) about Amazon. One person described their structure to me as "like terrorist cells": it's understood (and encouraged) that 3 different teams are all trying to implement the same thing, in completely different languages and with completely different interfaces. They might not even know the others exist, until they ship. Hopefully at least one will survive.
In some cases, more than one does. Amazon has at least 3 different data stores you can use, last I saw.
Theres a view in economics that you 'can not play market' within the boundaries of the firm. That is to say if there is an overseeing committee that can end a project prematurely then you are not really having market forces operate 'within' the firm and are doomed to failure. There have been a couple of companies that have tried to do this. It is documented in the following book by Nicolai Foss:
The company(s) mentioned in the book still exist, but they no longer try to 'play market'. The more incentive you give people/subgroups to compete with one another, the more incentive they have to not share information(best practices) with one another. Managers see this and reallocate resources. Groups feel alienated that their resources are taken away from their idea to fund someone else's idea and then they go back to keeping their real ideas to themselves and/or starting a separate business outside of the parent firm. Innovation in the mentioned companies increased dramatically when the 'play market' strategy was initially adopted though.
There's a certain 4 trillion dollar financial services firm I know. They operate like this at a country level: each country is graded against the others on an elaborate score card. The idea is that when a country finds an innovative way to "win" one year, althe others can use the idea the next year.
Only, the winning countries try (nicely) to sabotage the sharing process. For example, Country "U" outsourced part of their self-service web applications to a nice fellow I know living in Country "C." Although it is not in writing, the understanding is that if he so much as has a coffee with anyone from that company in Country "C," his home town, he is out of work.
Furthermore, the Country "C" guys don't really want to hire him, they're afraid he'll report what they're doing back to Country "U," so when they ask him out for coffee, all they really want to do is dangle contracts in front of him while pumping him for information under the guise of establishing his experience.
It sounds like a cheap spy novel, but it's business as usual when some bright person at the top decides that a little competition is healthy :-)
Entirely possible that my previous company would have never lasted had they not been bought. Perhaps those opposing internal forces would be too much to bear. But it did work for a while.
Being from the defense sector, I'd love to know what companies you're talking about. Although I bet you don't want to get into that. Anyway, in a week I'll be leaving my 1000+ people company for a 5 people startup! Interesting times ahead...
Yeah, for whatever reason it doesn't feel right. If you're headed to / live in the bay area, drop me a line and we can have a beer. As far as your transition goes, congrats! You'll miss the epic nature of your previous projects but you won't miss the bureaucracy.
in the notes of this essay there is a strong statement about not funding startups with credit card debt. Just wondering if there is an acceptable limit of cc debt to use to get from concept to prototype? Or if its all the same and just a bad idea. beyong YC and friends & fam, there are limited options for the small pop of cash that gives you the time required to work in your startup. So far at my company we have been very tightly spending on a cc, not incurred a lot of debt but still don't have the small cash cushion to ditch the day job and jump in full time. sorry for the tangent.
It's very different if you have a day job, income, etc. I think he's saying "Don't work full time on a startup by living off of credit cards." I have credit cards with limits more than a YC investment, but if I lived off that and the startup failed, instead of starting fresh, I'd have a lot of money+interest to pay back.
One way to think about CC debt: if you fund your startup with credit cards, you need to guarantee that you'll grow earnings by at least 20%/year, just to keep up with interest charges. If you can't do that, you're personally on the hook for any shortfall, and have to make it up yourself out of future job income (after compounding, no less).
There're very few startups where revenues are certain enough to take this risk. Most likely, your startup will never make anything, and then credit card debt for a startup is no different than credit card debt for a spending spree. That's why startup founders are wary of debt financing. If you can guarantee that level of earnings growth (perhaps you have customers already lined up, and just need to deliver on a well-understood technical problem), then it can make sense.
Another appeal of big companies that wasn't touched on in the essay is that 'everybody's doing it'. I would argue that in addition to the economies of scale of mass production a large reason why you see people in corporations, eating crappy foods, and even wearing the same clothes is because 'everybody's doing it'.
There is some sound evolutionary reasoning in doing what lots of other people are doing. With the ease of living today and the massive amount of information available, the thinking is anachronistic. Too bad there are so many things that we're hard wired to do.
If nothing else, should offer a big confidence and morale booster to envision yourself as a lion prowling in the wild as you furiously hack away at your startup.
I have been on African Safari as well and that point instantly resonated with me. The 100s of 1000s of miles were theirs to freely roam around and do what they wanted - and the humans who came to see them are the ones in the cages (except that the cages moved around - in the form of a jeep with a guide).
I also used to wonder what is going on in the Lion's mind - some 10 jeeps surrounding it while it is resting in the shade and some oohs-and-aahs (and even though it is 1 pm, some idiot always has the flash-on by mistake).
When i was on the safari, our vehicle got stuck in the mud. There was a pride of lions within 50 meters of our jeep.
We had to get outside and push. One member of our party was the look-out, and at one point yelled "the lion is coming" at which point we all moved as fast as we had ever in our lives.
All the lioness did was get up and start pacing.
While I was at the zoo, there was a 3-year-old boy taunting the Lion in his 15 by 45 foot cage.
pg says that the modern firm is the product of modern technology, but this summary of Drucker's article points out that technology is also obviating the need for much of the "middle management" layers that pg criticizes as anathema to humankind's natural state.
I'm pretty sure somewhere Drucker also says that the only reason to keep activities within a single firm is because the transaction costs are lower than having activities performed by an outside firm. I think he also argued that as transaction costs between firms fall due to technology, it makes sense to "outsource" more and more, which of course we are seeing in today's economy. Which suggests that we should see more small firms over time.
Too bad Drucker is no longer with us. I'm sure he would have a lot more interesting things to say relevant to startups.
I wouldn't say the modern firm is directly a product of modern technology. The Roman army had the same tree structure. It's more that modern technology makes it possible to produce things on a very large scale, and that means it pays to have companies with thousands of employees, even though they are individually only a fraction as productive as they might be.
One of the things that drove me to leave Deutsche Bank was that I had much less choice in who I got to work with. This is actually a big deal. By and large, in a startup you choose who you work with (either by hiring them, or being picky about which startup to join). In a big company, you have no real say.
And it can be a real bummer not to work with dynamic, ambitious people.
"Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing and is strongly encouraged, in fact demanded. There should be no (or as little as possible) hierarchy. Certainly there are organizational "superior-subordinate" relationships; however, every "subordinate" is encouraged to argue with his or her "superior" if he or she thinks they know the better way, and every "superior" is required to encourage this."
I've got a friend that works for Bridgewater, and it's amazing the extent they go to foster this independent culture. My friend can be kinda abrasive at times - not really arrogant, but more an "I'm right, damnit, and I'm going to be pedantic about it" personality. His first assignment was copy-editing some client reports. He came back with a long list of grammatical mistakes in the report, along with a lesson on proper grammar, for the fund manager. The fund manager said, "This is excellent - keep up the good work," and made sure my friend got his hands on all the reports going out...
That's excellent! How long has your friend been there (one issue with Bridgewater is that I have met many people who worked there, and very few who worked there for more than a year -- I think it's pretty jarring for most people).
He graduated in 06 and started there soon after, so about a year and a half so far. I think he really likes it...started out in reporting and I believe he's now on the investment associate track, so obviously he's hoping to settle in there. (He's also a foreigner though, and Bridgewater is sponsoring his visa, so I don't think he could jump ship if he wanted to...)
"That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don't know any technology companies that have done it."
The reason starchy and hydrogenated foods dominate is agricultural subsidies, not so much natural economies. If you killed corn and soy subsidies a whole lot of junk food would disappear. Fritos are only cheaper than sauerkraut because you paid part of the frito bill when you filed taxes. Healthy fresh vegetables are most definitely mass produced.
Running with the metaphor any way, government has a major role in perpetuating huge corporations and preventing the emergence of smaller ones. SarbOx is an obvious example. OSHA makes it very hard for a small group of guys to set up a manufacturing shop, even if they know how to make it safe. Read this guy on how it's basically illegal for him to run a small, traditional farm:
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp...
It's true that farmers of commodities like corn and wheat have the government wrapped around their fingers. But the reason they're big enough to do that is that their market scales. No one has invented a fresh carrot that can sit on a shelf for six months the way a candy bar can.
The subsidies follow the disproportionate voting power and political influence of the relevant mid-west states, not the inherent marketability of corn.
Veggies and nuts are mostly grown at massive industrial operations in California with desert sunshine and irrigation systems. It's definitely a scalable operation not much different from corn and soy.
Not to nit-pick, but carrots keep really well even at room temperature. That was the whole point of root cellars. Veggies store fine. Lots of "fresh" stuff at the store routinely comes out of 9 months in cold storage, and that's without the complex chemical processing and packaging applied to the junk food. Then there's freezing and pickling.
The prevalence of crap in the US diet comes from a deliberate government plan to pump out more cheap calories. It might have made some sense in a Marshall plan world, but we're still stuck with it. That's the story as I understand it.
>The prevalence of crap in the US diet comes from a deliberate government plan to pump out more cheap calories.
It was deliberately done by the government? I probably shouldn't be surprised... I always assumed it was the corn farmers pushing for subsidies that did it. Do you have any more information on this?
> Butz revolutionized federal agricultural policy and reengineered many New Deal era farm support programs. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out," and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow."
I read the implication to be more along the lines of Butz being in the pockets of the agriculture corporations, not as a government method of feeding occupied countries.
I didn't like that one very much, it seemed rather one-sided.
For example, I thought it was bullshit to claim that Brazilian farmers are starving because other countries are buying all the soy beans. Clearly it is a political problem, otherwise Brazil would use the money it gets for the soy beans to buy other food for the farmers.
I heard a radio show (I think it was NPR) about this recently. "Speciality Crops" don't get much in the way of government subsidy.
What's a "specialty crop"? The general rule appears to bet that if it is a recognizable vegetable that would appear in it's natural form on your dinner table, it's a specialty crop. Interestingly, many of the nation's (and world's) specialty crops are either locally grown, or are shipped in from California.
If it gets processed into something no longer recognizable as food, it's not a specialty crop, and is most likely getting subsidized.
Ironically, the government recommended food pyramid is the inverse of government subsidies.
Only 1/3 of US ag is subsidized, but its a disgrace. The programs damage the environment, cheat consumers, and pay the wealthy. Off the top of my head, the major program crops are corn, wheat, soy beans, cotton (!), milk, peanuts, and sugar.
"in 2005, farms with average household incomes of $200,000 per year accounted for 9 percent of all farms but received 54 percent of government payments."
When I started reading this I thought it was going to suck. I thought he'd rant on big companies employees and make startup founders seem cool because of his background. When I was about half way through it started to change; what Paul said really made a lot of sense.
I want to be a researcher, but I also want to make somewhat of a living before getting a masters degree and stuff; so I can be completely independent. I thought joining a big company would be a good start because it would pay me good, I would be able to learn stuff and they could even help me out with my masters degree.
What hadn't hit me up until now is that, by doing that, I wasn't getting closer to my goal to be independent. I would just switch from the parent tree to the company tree; different pressures, but the same dependence. I start to think now that in order to be independent, to have the freedom of doing what pleases you most, you have to start your own company. You have to be your own means of survival. That's getting into the wild and finally living in a democracy.
I'm disgressing a little now, but it's because of this thing someone told me once. He made me realise that we actually live in a dictatorship most of the time. Your parents tell you what to do, then your boss tells you what to do; and you have very little say. In order to feel more like your opinions matter and that you can actually do something about the world, I guess you have to have the freedom to be able to say what you want, to code what you want, etc.
So, in the end, I was surprised. Very good article, as Paul usually writes.
In the context of "The people who come to us from big companies often seem kind of conservative." --- how do founders coming out of academia fair? Specifically, founders with, at least, a few years towards a phd.
"I can imagine for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way components of a market economy do. (...) But I don't know any technology companies that have done it."
I was thinking about this part and I realize Y Combinator doesn't look too different from that.
What specifically did the programmers in the cafe say or do to lead you to believe that there was "something odd about them"? Perhaps you remember one or two details that actually got you thinking about this.
I don't disagree with the sentiment there's a small thing that I think is slightly incorrect.
Baboons, particularly Hamadryas Baboons, can be found in troops ranging from 5 to 250 animals (although a troop of 400 has been reported). These troops have a very strict hierarchy with about 4 "levels": a harem - containing one male "follower" and up to ten females, two to three harems unite repeatedly to form a clan, and two to four clans form a band.
Very large hierarchies do and can work in the wild, although they are rare or last a limited period of time.
"Work for another company if you want to, but only for a small one..."
My first job out of school was at IBM. This was invaluable not because I learned a lot but because I witnessed firsthand the bureaucratic inertia described in the article.
When I left to launch a startup, I never looked back or second-guessed myself because I knew I wasn't missing anything.
I think that's crucial. I also worked for a huge software company for a couple of years before striking out on my own and the experience was worth it just to satisfy my curiosity about it, alone. The knowledge of what it is like and resulting lack of second guessing is valuable.
Lastly, I think this sort of testing, if you will, is worth doing in general. There were a couple of things I was really curious about trying as a freelancer. Each time, even when it didn't pan out was invaluable in terms of getting to know my own motivations more and refining what I liked, was good at and what I didn't. Sometimes you think you love something but you really don't know until you do it. You might like only parts of it but its worth doing it to learn that.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadThat same lesson could be learned in the same time frame in a start up - you'd just end up with some throw away code after a pretty short period of time, which isn't a big deal at all when it comes down to it.
I have never worked for a small company so I cannot comment on that, but I hope for sure that there is something better than what I have experienced so far! Just have to pull my finger out and get out of there, or start some sort of startup ...
One thing thats kept me in my big company job is that I am in a part of the UK where there isn't a massive choice of places to work - there are other big companies, but few if any startups :(
Lots of American investment is hitting Belfast these days, so there are a reasonable number of IT jobs, but they tend to be big companies or bigish companies outsourcing to here, so the work isn't the best.
Don't get me wrong, the company I work for is good despite its size, but like many here I wanna start my own thing - I will keep mulling/hacking on my ideas until I get something that seems good enough to release ...
(What a curious thing! I'm trying to get more ads in my browsing experience! Who'da thunkit.)
Feature Request: Show me the company, job title, and city, please?
The issue I'm finding is that small companies are typically looking for someone with more experience than I could currently offer. Has anyone else come across this issue? It seems to me (and others where I work) that we have to somehow pay our dues and get experience at a large company before we gather enough experience to become valuable assets to smaller companies.
Another would be just to look for a good startup. All a good startup cares about is how good you are, not how many years it took you to get that way.
However, Jamie from snaptalent was nice enough to email me and pointed me to their job ads page. Unfortunately there's only one company on the east coast listed so far, but I'm hoping once they get rolling with more job ads that my chances for finding a small startup or company to work for will increase.
http://jobs.37signals.com/ (usually webapp jobs)
http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/ (not always small companies)
The other issue would be the mass amounts of jobs posted for work in CA. I would really like to stay here in the east (Boston) as oppose to moving halfway across the country for a job that very well may exist where I'm located already.
I think CA would be a great place to live, however it just doesn't fit into my current situation at the moment.
Are there any other resources out there for startup type jobs other than the major players (TechCruch, GigaOm, 37Signals, etc)?
Who else on the east coast would love this? Some great startups there that we can help get for you
Email me: sumon [at] snaptalent [dot] com
Last time I looked for a job I actually crossed out any place that wanted more than one year experience with anything. I guess I'll never be a Senior Java Engineer or a Senior .NET Architect or a Senior Oracle DBA, but is that really a loss? Asking for five years experience in some technology is like actively seeking out people that are content to actually do the same thing for five years. Any small company that wants that is going to get trounced by a competitor that learns new tricks.
So qualify your employer carefully before you go to a small company. In particular, if they are using old technology, run away, nothing they do or say can be trusted.
I find this is most often the case with small companies that aren't run by programmers or ex-programmers, although that isn't always a hard and fast rule.
Ultimately though, the money I've saved will afford me the opportunity to strike out on my own. I certainly don't knock small companies, or starting your own. I just think large companies (OK, at least google) can be a great way to start your career before moving on to other stuff.
If I then had to scale this to 10,000, I still wouldn't add another layer of management. Instead I'd just add more teams, and expand the controlling committee to a confederation of committees, which all draw money from the same pool but have specialized expertise. When teams request budget, they approach the committee with the best understanding of their proposal.
The 1,000 person model looks a lot like a bunch of founding teams and one VC firm. The 10,000 person model bears some resemblance to the federal government, which is perhaps why an organization the size of the government manages to function at all, however poorly.
You might also want to read this: http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Ricardo-Semler/dp/0712678867
Many high achievers have an attitude of "achievement for the sake of achievement." Individual rewards crush that spirit.
Joel Spolsky wrote about it on more than one occasion. Here's one link: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/09.html
A) Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)
B) Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory). The idea is that a very low salary can lead to dissatisfaction, but increasing the salary beyond the required minimum isn't one of the things that increases happiness. Link: http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/herzberg/
Capitalism isn't about profits, it's about motivation.
If you think you are awesome, you can give yourself a hefty raise. If your co-workers don't agree though, in a few months you'll be out on the street.
I think it makes sense to share profits equally, since the whole point is that the result was achieved collectively. Salaries can be all over the map.
With your 1000 person model, I'd do away with the boss (in the sense of hiring and firing). With that few people, you can all just work together fairly easily, with natural leaders emerging for different projects (and hiring/firing decisions can be made by the team as a whole). There is a factory in NC that makes aircraft engines that works this way, and it is quite successful. The teams are self organizing internally, and send representatives to deal with other teams and plant management.
Who decides if it's needed?
Suppose Team X isn't doing well. Probability of getting fired is 50%. They decide (independently) to do Z, with a 90% chance of increasing their team's profits (and not getting fired) as well as a 10% chance of major lawsuit that will crush the company.
This nearly doubles Team X's survival probability, while exposing the company to a massive risk. This is a classical example of agency costs. And this is why big companies are usually pyramid shaped.
The only role limited liability plays here is that investors in this company to lose only their investments (but not their house and car) should the company die.
Of course, I have no idea if that is how liability works, and even if it was, the accounting situation for the overall company would be a nightmare.
I would say Mediocre hires hurt you THRICE. Twice for the reasons you mention, and the third one is all the good folks leaving since they can't stand mediocre people.
One big company that seems to do well, at least from the outside is Semco in Brazil. Watch Ricardo Semler's "Leading by Omission": http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/308/ and read his book "Maverick": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446670553. This is of course an anomaly since most companies don't work this way.
And note, this company (originally) had nothing to do with hacking or technology. If it works for a manufacturer of heavy equipment, in a unionized shop, how much better can it work in software?
Large companies have many other drawbacks besides the hierarchical structure. I've worked for companies of all sizes, and these are the things I particularly disliked about large ones:
- Information travels slowly up and back down. Decisions take time. For this reason many projects, especially those having to do with rapidly changing technologies, just cannot be done at large companies.
- Sometimes your work gets lost in the noise. Your entire project may be canceled and most of the company won't notice it. One of the perks of working for a startup is the feeling of being in charge of things and knowing that your work is immediately visible.
- Human relationships do not respect the hierarchy, so there may be conflicts between random pairs or groups of people. The larger the group, the higher the complexity of politics. This non-linearity is perhaps the worst obstacle when it comes to getting things done.
"So Bill Gore threw out the rules. He created a place with hardly any hierarchy and few ranks and titles. He insisted on direct, one-on-one communication; anyone in the company could speak to anyone else. In essence, he organized the company as though it were a bunch of small task forces. To promote this idea, he limited the size of teams -- keeping even the manufacturing facilities to 150 to 200 people at most. That's small enough so that people can get to know one another and what everyone is working on, and who has the skills and knowledge they might tap to get something accomplished -- whether it's creating an innovative product or handling the everyday challenges of running a business."
Anyone who works for Gore care to comment on the actual practice?
I liked being there, although my role as a freelance systems analyst/programmer was not an authorised one.
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html
The size of a monkeysphere is estimated to be 150 people, which is quite a bit larger than the 10-person group Paul advocates, but I guess you need to know at least a few people outside of work. :)
I wonder if the problem with large corporations is that you don't care about the other people in them or that you feel the other people don't care about you? Certainly the people in the highest positions can't care about everyone under them -- assuming they can only care about 150 people -- so perhaps that is the limiting factor of effective size.
I think, though, that the effect only hits ambitious, independent people. Those with less ambition or less independence seem to enjoy themselves, and do well. (There are also a few ambitious, independent folks, who aspire for the top of the corporate ladder and have a good chance of making it. They do well when their skills are matched to the needs of a large organization.)
I used to think that when big company employees "settled", it was a gradual process that snuck up on them. Not always. I've actually had a conversation with someone in which they told me about their conscious decision to settle -- that it was better to accept the circumstances and make the best of evenings and weekends. She became upset when I tried to remind her of the higher aspirations she had just the summer before.
[I work in a big company. I'm getting out in June when I'll have the funds to not use credit cards.]
She has clearly decided to settle!
I also agree with the less ambitious people doing well - I liken it to Seth Godin's book The Dip - those people are willing to lean into the organisation and just settle for its way. The more ambitious can sometimes see just how wrong things are and lean against it, hence doing badly in the company. If you are going to do well in a big corporation, you have to learn to play by its rules and settle unfortunately ... I haven't done that yet, but its a daily struggle!
I tend to agree with you, but there's another class of people that doesn't fit your high ambition/low ambition paradigm.
I don't know how to label these people, and they confuse me greatly, because I'm not one of them and don't understand their motivations. These are people for whom ambitions and motivations are unrelated to "career choice"
I've met a great many people who work fairly-routine/moderate-pay/low-stress jobs, who have no desire to do work any more mentally taxing, and who profess to "live outside of work."
Now, some of these people are just not ambitious or independent. But some really seem to be extremely passionate, ambitious people. Some of these people are the "cause people" -- people that are heavily involved in political campaigns, in "causes," do large amounts of volunteering. They seem to derive their fulfillment from this work, and the paid job is a means to the freedom to pursue these causes.
Yet a different class of these people are the "family-focussed." They work, they may volunteer, but they appear to derive their fulfillment from... well, to be blunt, from raising kids and helping/coaxing/celebrating/watching their kids grow and succeed.
I'm not suggesting at all that these two other alternatives are in any way "lesser" (or "greater" for that matter) -- nor am I suggesting that other people aren't interested in, or don't do these things.
But, to generalize from just one example, (everyone does it -- or at least, I do...) though I don't do much in the way of volunteering or raising of a family just now, even if I do either of these at a future date, I don't think I would ever define myself by these things. I would identify and define myself more by the contributions I make in, for lack of a better name, the financial marketplace. Since this is a forum of "the startup crowd," I imagine that most of you define yourselves similarly?
Anyway, I went on so long, I forgot to make my point, which was that some of these people are perfectly happy in a job where they are not expected to be ambitious, so that they can save their energy and ambition for the part of their life that matters to them. I do not understand this, but I have recently come to notice its existence. I thought I'd point it out, since we're talking about ambition and lack thereof.
I think that it depends more on the specifics of the situation and what you are trying to accomplish. Large organizations have advantages that no small organization can match. You gain your freedom at the price of security.
You are correct, which is one reason why the US has had such a prolific history. On the other hand, as the US government (and army) grow, we are now going in the opposite direction of lacking security from said army.
Freedom fighters have often chosen the guerilla way.
A better example for your point would be the Americans in WWII. But even then, soldiers are not robots and the best commanders give their underlings the freedom to get the job done.
When we seek freedom, it is not because it is the evolutionarily superior state. It is because their is a conflict between individual advantage and collective advantage. When evaluating life decisions, you have to account for both.
As for why people seek freedom, I doubt most consciously think about it in those terms. You seem to think that individuals ponder about the pros and cons of going it alone or being part of a collective, but it just doesn't happen that way. When you're brought up in a culture that is already one way or the other, and that is all you know, you rarely choose because it's not even a question that enters your mind.
I'd suggest reading Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn.
Napoleon is a case example. There are many, many more I could call upon, but I think a lesson in world history is beyond the scope of this debate.
But tyranny is inefficient. It's all about ruining the bonds of trust that hold society and the economy together, just to benefit a small number of people.
All your examples are tyrannies. There is a word for people who invoke naive Darwinism to justify tyranny, but it escapes me at the moment.
In some cases, more than one does. Amazon has at least 3 different data stores you can use, last I saw.
http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Economic-Organization-Knowled...
Only, the winning countries try (nicely) to sabotage the sharing process. For example, Country "U" outsourced part of their self-service web applications to a nice fellow I know living in Country "C." Although it is not in writing, the understanding is that if he so much as has a coffee with anyone from that company in Country "C," his home town, he is out of work.
Furthermore, the Country "C" guys don't really want to hire him, they're afraid he'll report what they're doing back to Country "U," so when they ask him out for coffee, all they really want to do is dangle contracts in front of him while pumping him for information under the guise of establishing his experience.
It sounds like a cheap spy novel, but it's business as usual when some bright person at the top decides that a little competition is healthy :-)
There're very few startups where revenues are certain enough to take this risk. Most likely, your startup will never make anything, and then credit card debt for a startup is no different than credit card debt for a spending spree. That's why startup founders are wary of debt financing. If you can guarantee that level of earnings growth (perhaps you have customers already lined up, and just need to deliver on a well-understood technical problem), then it can make sense.
If you have, that metaphor of a caged Lion vs. a wild Lion is (almost) all you need to extract out of this essay.
I also used to wonder what is going on in the Lion's mind - some 10 jeeps surrounding it while it is resting in the shade and some oohs-and-aahs (and even though it is 1 pm, some idiot always has the flash-on by mistake).
When i was on the safari, our vehicle got stuck in the mud. There was a pride of lions within 50 meters of our jeep. We had to get outside and push. One member of our party was the look-out, and at one point yelled "the lion is coming" at which point we all moved as fast as we had ever in our lives.
All the lioness did was get up and start pacing.
While I was at the zoo, there was a 3-year-old boy taunting the Lion in his 15 by 45 foot cage.
See the difference?
http://knowledgeworks.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/article-the-c...
pg says that the modern firm is the product of modern technology, but this summary of Drucker's article points out that technology is also obviating the need for much of the "middle management" layers that pg criticizes as anathema to humankind's natural state.
I'm pretty sure somewhere Drucker also says that the only reason to keep activities within a single firm is because the transaction costs are lower than having activities performed by an outside firm. I think he also argued that as transaction costs between firms fall due to technology, it makes sense to "outsource" more and more, which of course we are seeing in today's economy. Which suggests that we should see more small firms over time.
Too bad Drucker is no longer with us. I'm sure he would have a lot more interesting things to say relevant to startups.
And it can be a real bummer not to work with dynamic, ambitious people.
http://www.bwater.com/home/philosophy.aspx
"Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing and is strongly encouraged, in fact demanded. There should be no (or as little as possible) hierarchy. Certainly there are organizational "superior-subordinate" relationships; however, every "subordinate" is encouraged to argue with his or her "superior" if he or she thinks they know the better way, and every "superior" is required to encourage this."
I believe Gore-Tex may work this way
The reason starchy and hydrogenated foods dominate is agricultural subsidies, not so much natural economies. If you killed corn and soy subsidies a whole lot of junk food would disappear. Fritos are only cheaper than sauerkraut because you paid part of the frito bill when you filed taxes. Healthy fresh vegetables are most definitely mass produced.
Running with the metaphor any way, government has a major role in perpetuating huge corporations and preventing the emergence of smaller ones. SarbOx is an obvious example. OSHA makes it very hard for a small group of guys to set up a manufacturing shop, even if they know how to make it safe. Read this guy on how it's basically illegal for him to run a small, traditional farm: http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp...
Veggies and nuts are mostly grown at massive industrial operations in California with desert sunshine and irrigation systems. It's definitely a scalable operation not much different from corn and soy.
Not to nit-pick, but carrots keep really well even at room temperature. That was the whole point of root cellars. Veggies store fine. Lots of "fresh" stuff at the store routinely comes out of 9 months in cold storage, and that's without the complex chemical processing and packaging applied to the junk food. Then there's freezing and pickling.
The prevalence of crap in the US diet comes from a deliberate government plan to pump out more cheap calories. It might have made some sense in a Marshall plan world, but we're still stuck with it. That's the story as I understand it.
It was deliberately done by the government? I probably shouldn't be surprised... I always assumed it was the corn farmers pushing for subsidies that did it. Do you have any more information on this?
> Butz revolutionized federal agricultural policy and reengineered many New Deal era farm support programs. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out," and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow."
For example, I thought it was bullshit to claim that Brazilian farmers are starving because other countries are buying all the soy beans. Clearly it is a political problem, otherwise Brazil would use the money it gets for the soy beans to buy other food for the farmers.
What's a "specialty crop"? The general rule appears to bet that if it is a recognizable vegetable that would appear in it's natural form on your dinner table, it's a specialty crop. Interestingly, many of the nation's (and world's) specialty crops are either locally grown, or are shipped in from California.
If it gets processed into something no longer recognizable as food, it's not a specialty crop, and is most likely getting subsidized.
Ironically, the government recommended food pyramid is the inverse of government subsidies.
More here: http://www.freetrade.org/node/609
"in 2005, farms with average household incomes of $200,000 per year accounted for 9 percent of all farms but received 54 percent of government payments."
I want to be a researcher, but I also want to make somewhat of a living before getting a masters degree and stuff; so I can be completely independent. I thought joining a big company would be a good start because it would pay me good, I would be able to learn stuff and they could even help me out with my masters degree.
What hadn't hit me up until now is that, by doing that, I wasn't getting closer to my goal to be independent. I would just switch from the parent tree to the company tree; different pressures, but the same dependence. I start to think now that in order to be independent, to have the freedom of doing what pleases you most, you have to start your own company. You have to be your own means of survival. That's getting into the wild and finally living in a democracy.
I'm disgressing a little now, but it's because of this thing someone told me once. He made me realise that we actually live in a dictatorship most of the time. Your parents tell you what to do, then your boss tells you what to do; and you have very little say. In order to feel more like your opinions matter and that you can actually do something about the world, I guess you have to have the freedom to be able to say what you want, to code what you want, etc.
So, in the end, I was surprised. Very good article, as Paul usually writes.
I was thinking about this part and I realize Y Combinator doesn't look too different from that.
I imagine a sort of confused purposelessness with a touch of embarassment, all concealed with forced cheer.
Baboons, particularly Hamadryas Baboons, can be found in troops ranging from 5 to 250 animals (although a troop of 400 has been reported). These troops have a very strict hierarchy with about 4 "levels": a harem - containing one male "follower" and up to ten females, two to three harems unite repeatedly to form a clan, and two to four clans form a band.
Very large hierarchies do and can work in the wild, although they are rare or last a limited period of time.
My first job out of school was at IBM. This was invaluable not because I learned a lot but because I witnessed firsthand the bureaucratic inertia described in the article.
When I left to launch a startup, I never looked back or second-guessed myself because I knew I wasn't missing anything.
IBMers and SBCers compete over whose company was the basis for Office Space & TPS Reports. (i.e. the TPS Report zero that started it all)
Lastly, I think this sort of testing, if you will, is worth doing in general. There were a couple of things I was really curious about trying as a freelancer. Each time, even when it didn't pan out was invaluable in terms of getting to know my own motivations more and refining what I liked, was good at and what I didn't. Sometimes you think you love something but you really don't know until you do it. You might like only parts of it but its worth doing it to learn that.