Or, a future founder just began the process of gaining experience and perspective.
Also when you're busy at work time can just fly by. It's easy to look up from working and find a few years have gone past.
Yes, it can be. The truth is, some of those brilliant kids going into BigCorp are lost startups, some are future startups, and most won't be startups regardless, because most people aren't founders.
"Also when you're busy at work time can just fly by. It's easy to look up from working and find a few years have gone past."
Roger that.
Exactly. I will be starting at Google in June, but I am not a "startup lost". I have thought about it, and eventually came to the conclusion that I am not startup material for a number of reasons. This may change in the future after I have worked for Google, and if so, I can always join a startup then.
You do not need a BMW, buy a corolla. You do not need the loft, live in the cheapest decent unit you can find. Don't get into the showy lifestyle trap.
It helps to have the car paid for and not have a mortgage or apartment lease though.
Honestly, I haven't hut to cut on many things to get here, so I'm pretty happy about it. One key thing has enabled this:
No car. None, no desire for one. I pay extra to live centrally in the city near good public transit, but the extra I've paid (compared to living in a burb) is a tiny fraction of the cost of car ownership.
By my estimates that alone gets me an extra 10% savings rate at the very least. I have all the spare cash in the world to travel, buy cool toys without ever digging into the rainy day/startup fund.
Being childless certainly helps, too.
*Estimating here. Looking at Hertz.com, you can rent for ~$250/week, which for me equals about 4 months in minimal car insurance.
I own my car, I bought it in cash. Where I live I need it (I already tried the whole Vespa thing, I lasted one winter and was exhausted).
I don't have a mortgage. I sold my house.
I rent. I don't want the baggage a house brings (time, maintenance, stuck in one place). My rent is ~ half of my old mortgage which was not that much and in a much more enjoyable community (behind campus and about 2 min walk from the video store, coffee shops, and grocery store).
I only buy what I truly believe I will hang on to and be happy or content with.
Why do I do this? I don't know, maybe to retire early. Maybe do the whole start up thing someday.
However, I think it's mostly because it's comfortable for me. I don't feel comfortable in one place and like the ability to just throw everything in my car and go. I don't like things that hold me back or slow me down.
Edit: this is after taxes and whatever else they take off. I'm going by what my paycheck says.
I've managed it since I was 25. Here's what I found.
* If you're making below or well below the median salary for your state, good luck getting past 10% of your net pay. 30% of net is much easier when you're at or just above the median. 33% of gross requires you to have made those "long-term purchases" already, such as furniture and a vehicle.
* On cars, try to buy the first "long term" one in cash. Yes, this takes time to accomplish, but the reality is once you can do it the first time, you'll be able to easily continue doing it for the rest of your life. Buy what you truly want, otherwise you'll find excuses to replace it earlier. 18-35 year olds in America would be much happier if they had bought a Miata or a Mustang or what they had actually wanted instead of their Corolla or Taurus they felt was a "more responsible" choice.
* Learn to cook. Last night I had a steak, homemade biscuit, asparagus, couscous, drink and a homemade cookie for just under $3. Packaged foods and mixes are never cheap, and the cost of prepared foods is staggering.
* If you don't love it and see yourself using it 10 years from now, why are you buying it? The pricier the item, the longer you better see yourself using it A huge sink in consumer culture is buying "disposable items", particularly furniture, gadgets, and even cars in some cases. Buy once, take good care of it, and avoid having to buy it again for some time, if at all. Furniture especially - go used to save money if the piece is still in production (typical for modern classics), because odds are even if it's already 40 years old it'll still handily outlast you.
* Live as close to work as possible. Mass transit is cheaper than anything (I can go all over Boston, as much as I want, for $59/mo). The higher cost of living is more than offset by the extra time to cook, relax, and decompress.
* Reassess your budget, in full, every year. Prune possessions and figure out why it was a waste. Repeat until your friends refer to you as that really cheap person that somehow has really nice things.
You will be absolutely amazed what it does to your finances if you don't have a car payment. Too many people treat them like they're laws of nature. Google for [Drive Free, Retire Rich], which aside from poor math due to overly optimistic assumptions of investment returns is an amazing video.
(Still - the overall point is very valid)
These factors aren't linked if you're willing to put in the effort.
When growing up we lived in one of the worst parts of the state regarding school districts. Parents began to teach us how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic before we ever were sent to public schools. I think I entered first grade reading and writing at an 8th grade level and knowing long division. Took until about 8 years old for me to grasp basic algebra. They held back after that point, otherwise we would've had a mind-numbing experience until at least high school. However the school board was made aware that these first graders could be head of the 6th grade class, so we were allowed to freedom to learn other things (and sit in a few other classes once a week - mostly English, math and history).
Oh, right. College. That was our responsibility. They would help with loan payments a bit, but they certainly couldn't afford to even put us through a state school. We were expected to get scholarships. If we didn't, well, it was that much more we'd have to borrow.
Honestly, I can't blame them. We were certainly a lower-class family. They couldn't afford to move near a nice school district, private schools, or help with private colleges, so they decided to get us WAY ahead of the curve (even though I have memories of crying because at 3 years old I was having obvious difficulties with multiplication. ultimately we were incentivized with spare change). Even then, the nice school districts aren't all that great. What my folks did will still allow any child to get far ahead of any child in the best private schools in your area.
In the end we ended up with extremely large scholarships (that I didn't bother with because I'd still have to take out the equivalent of a home mortgage) and teenage years with an enormous amount of free time. Cost to my parents who only had a high school degree (mom) and a GED (dad)? Some of their free time every night.
As a parent though, you have to remember that even basic play has a very high value to children. My little 2.75 yr old has dinosaurs in the bath and can count one, two, three, four, lots. He knows the lifecycle of the butterfly.
But I'd much rather that he did what some might consider "useless play" and mastered his social skills and self confidence than any curriculum ideas such as maths or reading. Those can wait until he is ready, though he is a very engaged and switched on little boy.
I think that forcing your children to do certain things that you expect from a 10yr old now is just ruining their childhood and can reduce their delight in learning new things.
So be careful whose advice you take, even mine.
I have few memories of before I was 4 years old.
* Rolling around some cookie monster thing. * Being sick of flash cards. * Spraying my grandfather with the hose, and thinking it was hilarious. * The dog knocking me over to take the entire bag of snausages. * Playing random games we made up in the backyard with the kids next door.
How much do you vividly remember from when before you were 5 years old? I'm guessing not a whole lot.
I never found school particularly difficult, and I didn't learn how to read or do maths until school. There is a good chance you wouldn't have found it difficult either - even without the flash cards. Perhaps you are just smart.
It sounds like your childhood was still fairly moderate, it is not like flash cards is the only thing that you did. My main motivation for commenting at all is that I don't want any other parents to get weird, extreme ideas.
Anyway, I think I better gracefully bow out of this discussion before I step on any nerves.
Most startups seem to embrace 60-80 hour weeks, you keep reading about them and begin to believe that this is normal. After 12 hour marathon coding sessions ‘typical entrepreneurs’ walk 10 metres from desk to bed and collapse in their shared accommodations. Living in such lean conditions makes those crucial first months of business far cheaper. This work ethic and minimial living costs maximises the runway before the seed money runs out.
Paul Graham is one of my favourite bloggers, and his essay entitled The Other Road Ahead he paints a clear picture of how lean a start-up can be, stating "You can literally launch your product as three guys sitting in the living room of an apartment, and a server collocated at an ISP. We did."
No matter how much I’d love to take the lean ramen noodle approach it’s simply not practical for me. I’m a father of two, a husband of one, and an employee. I’ve got a beautiful family with young children, a modest house with a mortgage, and a full-time job to pay the bills. In short, I have a standard existence that I imagine many of my readers share. Living off noodles in a cheap apartment with my co-founders is not the only way that start-ups are built. I’ve taken an alternative route that involves just as much hard graft (harder maybe?) and allows me to remain employed full-time. The food sure is better!
Read more here: http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2010/02/part-time-entrepreneur.htm...
I wish to start up a company. Or devote more time to the companies that I already started. But mostly because I don't feel I fit any more in the corporate bureaucracy and politics that drains my energy every day. Yet it is hard to trade the security of a good paying job for the risk of starting up a company.
I can't leave my cushy job yet either.
One of the reasons I feel like I can safely Entrepreneur myself down to a few grand in the bank before looking for a contract to top up the finances is that I know I'm pretty much a single Twitter post away from a good job offer.
Had I not first established a bit of a reputation before taking off on the startup track, I wouldn't have that safety net, and might be a bit more quick to grab any contract job that came along.
Though in some ways it is great to "burn the boats", because having your back to the wall and being forced to make it work (even if that involves a week of cold calling) can be the difference between success and giving up.
There's a lot to learn from Google (especially in terms of code review, writing good, clean, well documented code).
Let's rephrase that: "Every time I see a brilliant kid going to a chaotic startup that encourage shortcuts and brilliant hacks, I see our industry dying slowly."
PS: I understand that not all startups are like that, but what are the odds/ratios?
People look at great products and say that sentiment isn't true, but you always have to release. Take the first iPhone. When it came to feature checklists, it was embarrassed by every competitor out there. It nailed the interface though, and that was Apple's definition of "good enough". The shipped, took the industry by storm, and have since added most of those checklist features that everybody thought they needed in the first place.
There comes a point where removing a feature is itself a feature.
There may be beautiful hacks in UNIX but the building principals (UNIX Philosophies) lives on and I don't think kids these days that go straight into startup even know these things.
Most modern start-ups avoid, at all costs, any systems programming (or doing anything at all beyond using a scripting language to read text from a database and display it on a screen).
Note, however, I said most. There are startups solving serious scientific and engineering challenges. It's just "start-up" does not equate "lasting technological/scientific contribution".
Particularly given the ridiculous number of ex-Bell-Labs employees at Google. One of the SVPs of Engineering at Google was formerly the VP in charge of the organization that birthed C, C++, UNIX, etc.
We use Python, Twisted, Django, Matplotlib, JQuery, Movable Type, Postgresql all for this reason. Even our firmware is built as much as possible on a 3rd party neworking library and high level hardware building blocks.
Generally, top scientists/engineers are not motivated by money, which means given an offer from a typical ("glue a product together") start-up and Google they'd choose Google, unless they're looking for the "start-up experience".
If you want top technical talent (who will always be able to find fulfilling and challenging work at the whatever the current Google-like company is, e.g. SGI in early 90s, Netscape in mid 90s, etc), you have to give them top technical challenges (which is how these companies have themselves been able to compete for talent when they were start-ups).
In the next 6 to 18 months, I am going to have to start swapping out the big building blocks with parts meant to scale. At that point there should be plenty of room for the systems engineers to join me.
Be careful, however, with treating scale as equivalent of performance. You have to design for scalability, not optimize for it: given the same algorithm, sorting a list of items in python might take 50 times as long as doing it in C; yet using an n^2 vs. n log(n) algorithm a 1 000 000 item list would take 50000 times as long to sort.
I'm a ACM ICPC (programming contest) finalist, and have competed in the Google Codejam, so I know about big-oh.
Anyway, who implements a sorting algorithm in pure Python? I use the builtin sort() function, which is implemented in C (making callbacks into python for comparisons for some types). It uses TimSort - an approach designed to minimise the number of comparisons. http://svn.python.org/projects/python/trunk/Objects/listsort...
I thought you were going to point out that I should ensure that my system is modular (stateless, partitioned, etc) and I can spread the load across several machines - I can.
You are right that I could make a screaming fast bubble sort and still end up with major issues. Fortunately I already have had that epiphany while solving ACM practice problems.
I appreciate your advice, there are far too many who haven't yet understood it.
The sort example was merely a metaphor for design for scalability vs. optimization for performance. Perhaps better examples would have been dividing the server side portion of your application into asynchronously invoked services is design for scalability. Rewriting some of these services in C or OCaml, switching from JSON to Protocol Buffers, switching from an HTTP server and a layer 7 load balancer to a custom non-blocking server and ZooKeeper (for cluster membership) are optimizations for performance/stability/cost.
That being said, I have incredible respect for Google for being a few engineering/science driven Internet companies out there, which respects great hackers and beautiful, quality code. Most Internet companies (including many startups, with few great exceptions) are solving social, rather than scientific or technical problems and treat developers the same way Google treats servers (as a commodity, where the ability to replace them quickly -- and make do if they're unavailable -- is more important than their quality).
I have a lot respect to companies that acknowledge these kind of issues and try to fix them.
I know there are many companies that just tell the engineers to quit whining/complaining about the current system and keep patching issues (fire and extinguish).
2. Work at Google for a few years, start a 20% project
3. Leave Google, become a founder
4. Get funding, hire more employees
5. Launch a successful product, build a big userbase, get favorable media coverage
6. Get acquired by Google
The point of the 20% products for Google is to give the company startup-style flexibility. It works the other way, too - if you take a product from whiteboard doodling all the way to an official Google product, well, a startup is like that, except 100% of the time, on your own bank account, and with no admins/middle managers to take care of the business side for you.
There is a place in our society for all shapes and sizes of companies.
The goal at Google, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey is to recruit top talent, and give them enough money and benefits that they are completely content and never have a reason to leave. Some still will, but most are probably destined for a career as a middle manager.
I've been told that McKinsey has an "up or out" culture (get promoted or leave).
People don't go there to learn how to innovate. they go there to work a full-time job for the rest of their lives.