Yeah, but you don’t need HN to tell you to look (I assume you check what you pay for). There’s a whole lot of these paywalled things and they’re all just noise unless there’s a free alternative.
Posting something that most of the audience can’t see without hacking isn’t all that interesting to me and it feels like an ad. If you as a poster have something to say, it should be readable without bending the rules. And honestly, stuff from “the usual business mags” isn’t interesting or pertinent. Those folks are orthogonal to where I’ve lived. I’m fungible to them, they’re suits to me.
This is Hacker News, not Yahoo Finance or some such alternative.
Imagine reading this vacuous nothing-burger and thinking to yourself "Yep, that's what I'm paying $40 a month for."
The only interesting part of the entire article is Peter Thiel railing against the fact that startup founders are getting older, mostly because Thiel seems to be an opportunist who wants fresh meat to exploit. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times might be thrilled by the idea of Thiel investing in them, but they're going to be more cautious because they've already got the bumps, bruises, and callouses of being in the industry.
The reason that so many founders were so young a couple decades ago is precisely because they were at an age where they could imagine online services at a time when even the act of purchasing a domain was seen to be a weird new thing. So they got rich off of building the infrastructure and services of the modern web. It was easier from a market standpoint, even if it was harder technically because they had to help invent or fund a lot of the things that ultimately became the web we know today.
It's like complaining that nobody since Newton or Einstein has come up with new universal laws and ignoring the fact that it's harder to just observe new things and report on them than it used to be. It's not enough to witness an apple falling from a tree anymore, now you have to build an LHC and smash exotic particles together.
Coincidentally, it's what the "young guns" who are web 3.0 proponents are missing: they didn't experience the web BEFORE there was a web 2.0, and they assume that it is the way it is today because of some nefarious plot. They sit there on their pile of shitcoins howling in the wind of a better tomorrow without recognizing that web centralization was a feature, not a bug. Nobody wants Usenet anymore. For the unwashed masses, it's a dystopia. Worse, they put the cart before the horse when they create tokens and then try to come up with ways for these things to actually be useful. They want to get rich from being the idea guy.
The fact that anyone wants to do business with Thiel these days baffles me. He spends his time and money finding and funding the craziest far-right conspiracy theorists in the country to run for elected office. He's a loon.
He's pretty typical, honestly. There is a very large contingent of people who think exactly like he does. 10 years ago, he might be fairly cast as an outlier. Not anymore.
The only thing particularly interesting about the super young founder myth, is just how drastically off the mark it is. The very few outliers are just that.
[0] a big list of founder ages for prominent tech companies
You’re not just voicing disagreement, you’re being extremely hostile. I may or may not agree with you, but the way you framed your argument made me completely disinterested in reading what you had to say.
To be blunt, your way of communicating is not effective.
We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously breaking the site guidelines. You can't post like this, regardless of how wrong or ignorant other people are or you feel they are.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.
With respect to founders, there were a lot of well-known founders (read: founders that found success) that were quite young - as the article points out. In my experience, most founders are in their 40's. I've always written this off because it takes a lot of connections and knowledge to build a successful company. Even navigating the disruptor field takes some life experience, patience, and awareness. I think young founders tend to succeed in the disruption space and the list of things to be disrupted easily shrinks with every giving year. At the end of the day, I don't think it's too worrisome.
With respect to engineers the opposite is true. I've heard at, many but not all, companies I've worked for obvious biases for age. There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". Let's be real, Senior is the first tenured level at many companies. Nobody has too much experience for Senior, especially thrown on top of the fact that levels mean nothing across companies. It's a better signal for what pay and benefits a prospective employee may desire or be comfortable with.
> There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior".
I don't think this type of remark shows age bias. I think it relates to what you remark on later on in your post: pay and benefits. Basically, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior" is a euphemism for "this candidate's past experience indicates that they will want more pay and benefits than we are willing to give them".
57 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] thread* Ukraine says Kherson counter-offensive against Russia has begun
* Inside Liz Truss's not so special relationship with the US
* Ukraine war updates: White House says Russia has "pulled resources" in response to Ukraine offensive
* EU to unveil emergency measures to curb soaring energy prices
* Nasa cancels launch of moon mission after engine trouble
* US justice department says it has reviewed Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents
--ad break--
* Crypto and climate change: can web3 help get us to net zero?
* Is $110mn man Jake Freeman lucky gambler or conviction investor?
Then it goes into their "Explore" functionality, billed as, "Take a break from the news with our recommended stories for you":
* ECB chief economist sees benefits of raising rates in "smaller increments"
* Honda and LG to build $4.4bn US battery plant
* Olaf Scholz outlines new EU vision with call for European air defense scheme
* Investors increase bets against euro as energy crisis intensifies
...and so on.
So no, this being here is not "useless".
Seriously how do people see comments like yours and think HN is any kind of special?
This is Hacker News, not Yahoo Finance or some such alternative.
The only interesting part of the entire article is Peter Thiel railing against the fact that startup founders are getting older, mostly because Thiel seems to be an opportunist who wants fresh meat to exploit. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times might be thrilled by the idea of Thiel investing in them, but they're going to be more cautious because they've already got the bumps, bruises, and callouses of being in the industry.
The reason that so many founders were so young a couple decades ago is precisely because they were at an age where they could imagine online services at a time when even the act of purchasing a domain was seen to be a weird new thing. So they got rich off of building the infrastructure and services of the modern web. It was easier from a market standpoint, even if it was harder technically because they had to help invent or fund a lot of the things that ultimately became the web we know today.
It's like complaining that nobody since Newton or Einstein has come up with new universal laws and ignoring the fact that it's harder to just observe new things and report on them than it used to be. It's not enough to witness an apple falling from a tree anymore, now you have to build an LHC and smash exotic particles together.
Coincidentally, it's what the "young guns" who are web 3.0 proponents are missing: they didn't experience the web BEFORE there was a web 2.0, and they assume that it is the way it is today because of some nefarious plot. They sit there on their pile of shitcoins howling in the wind of a better tomorrow without recognizing that web centralization was a feature, not a bug. Nobody wants Usenet anymore. For the unwashed masses, it's a dystopia. Worse, they put the cart before the horse when they create tokens and then try to come up with ways for these things to actually be useful. They want to get rich from being the idea guy.
This is a nice pithy way of putting it.
He's pretty typical, honestly. There is a very large contingent of people who think exactly like he does. 10 years ago, he might be fairly cast as an outlier. Not anymore.
Makes me wonder if news agency workers just pull stuff out of their behinds.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18213942
The only thing particularly interesting about the super young founder myth, is just how drastically off the mark it is. The very few outliers are just that.
[0] a big list of founder ages for prominent tech companies
Unless, of course, you wouldn't want people to know that! (:
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180208022213/https://www.inc.c...
My general assumption is the age would be similar to what it was 4 years ago.
The article does not claim that there has been a radical change in the last 4 years or post-covid, so I am not sure where you are getting that from.
Not going to keep responding, your comment was unnecessarily adversarial.
To be blunt, your way of communicating is not effective.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Are paywalls ok?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...
With respect to engineers the opposite is true. I've heard at, many but not all, companies I've worked for obvious biases for age. There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". Let's be real, Senior is the first tenured level at many companies. Nobody has too much experience for Senior, especially thrown on top of the fact that levels mean nothing across companies. It's a better signal for what pay and benefits a prospective employee may desire or be comfortable with.
I don't think this type of remark shows age bias. I think it relates to what you remark on later on in your post: pay and benefits. Basically, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior" is a euphemism for "this candidate's past experience indicates that they will want more pay and benefits than we are willing to give them".
Remove it. Oh and be sure to flag anyone pointing out this fact again, because you're not getting enough attention on Reddit.