Wow. Ranting like that begs to be labelled, but I'll resist. I'll just say this: also ignore rants from cowards who have never been in the trenches, who have never known glory nor freedom.
I would label it as "essentially correct". The odds are very slim that you will
a) Find gold in California
b) Become a rock star
c) Win a lottery
d) Strike it rich and famous as an 'entrepreneur'
e) Achieve above average, long-term gains by trading tulips
Yet, the selection bias that promotes these dreams doesn't deter anyone who is going to go that route.
I am the guy who is quoted in her blog post, and I don't really recognize myself in what she writes.
I want to be my own boss, do interesting/meaningful work, and at least have a shot at recognition and wealth. To me, starting my own company is the surest way there. Staying in TPS-land is a sure way to never get there.
I think it might help to understand the arguments if you know the motives behind the argument. The more information you have, the more accurate analysis can be made.
Er. Well. Ok. So who's going to build Intel? Lockheed? IBM? Apple? Google? These all started as startups. There is real value to society to having people trying to do this. "Value to society while doing something risky" is actually not a bad heuristic for "glory".
There's no clear alternative to "startups" for solving these problems. You simply can't be a happy-go-lucky bootstrapped search engine unless you're piggybacking on someone else (I love DDG, but there are probably 3-4 orders of magnitude more complexity in Google than there are in DDG). The situation is even worse if your goals are those of Tesla or SpaceX. No one is going to do that in a casual way.
I'm all for recognizing the inherent incentive mis-alignment between the startup cheerleader economy (VC, TechCrunch, Wannabe entrepreneurs etc.) and the people on the front lines doing the work. But you can't just dismiss the startup concept outright as a con unless you're prepared to explain how you're going to give up or replace your CPUs, web search engines, and commercial aerospace. There is no evidence that small bootstrapped "non-glory" entities have much meaningful impact on this aspect of the world (with all due respect to all parties involved, consider the net impact of 37 signals vs Salesforce on modern business apps as used by actual large businesses).
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 27.3 ms ] threada) Find gold in California b) Become a rock star c) Win a lottery d) Strike it rich and famous as an 'entrepreneur' e) Achieve above average, long-term gains by trading tulips
Yet, the selection bias that promotes these dreams doesn't deter anyone who is going to go that route.
And you cannot simply choose to stay out of the 'fight'. You have to work somewhere - may as well be for yourself.
So the metaphors are weak and chosen to stir passions. She's pissing on entrepreneurship for whatever reason, and has little meaningful to say.
I am the guy who is quoted in her blog post, and I don't really recognize myself in what she writes.
I want to be my own boss, do interesting/meaningful work, and at least have a shot at recognition and wealth. To me, starting my own company is the surest way there. Staying in TPS-land is a sure way to never get there.
Historically, social costs are externalized to men in exchange for "glory" or "power". This isn't some explicit tactic though.
No. If someone is wrong, you should point out how he is wrong, not question his motives for presenting the statement.
His motives might be corrupt. Who cares? The only important thing is whether what he says is true or not.
There's no clear alternative to "startups" for solving these problems. You simply can't be a happy-go-lucky bootstrapped search engine unless you're piggybacking on someone else (I love DDG, but there are probably 3-4 orders of magnitude more complexity in Google than there are in DDG). The situation is even worse if your goals are those of Tesla or SpaceX. No one is going to do that in a casual way.
I'm all for recognizing the inherent incentive mis-alignment between the startup cheerleader economy (VC, TechCrunch, Wannabe entrepreneurs etc.) and the people on the front lines doing the work. But you can't just dismiss the startup concept outright as a con unless you're prepared to explain how you're going to give up or replace your CPUs, web search engines, and commercial aerospace. There is no evidence that small bootstrapped "non-glory" entities have much meaningful impact on this aspect of the world (with all due respect to all parties involved, consider the net impact of 37 signals vs Salesforce on modern business apps as used by actual large businesses).
See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283401
Ask me anything :)