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Comment by stonogo | Hacker News Reader

Sam Altman seems to spend about half his communications effort these days complaining about people being mean on the internet. I hope he's okay.

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Sam has a job I would not want - the don't f-up YC job. The stress that has to go with this must be enormous.

Actually it's surprisingly not stressful--one interesting thing I've learned is that, at least for myself, job stress and burnout comes from something not going that well (e.g. my old startup), not from being super busy.

And to the parent comment--I'm fine, thanks for the concern :)

Well I am glad to hear you feel well - you do still have a job I would not want :)

That sounds right. When things weren't going well at the startups I worked at I felt crazy stressed out.

I also felt some stress when busy, but that was less because there was a lot to do and more because I had someone who was expecting it to be done in an unreasonable amount of time.

I have had two periods of great work stress times in my life - the first was when my startup was under enormous financial strain and I was doing everything I could to hustle up the money to keep the team together (2002 to 2003). This was a time of lying awake night after night wondering what to do.

The second time was different. I was working two more than full time jobs (academic and running startup that was taking off). I literally did nothing for a couple of years (2010 - 2012) but work, eat and sleep. At the time I didn't feel stressed (I was comparing how I felt with the early stress times), but I was under a lot of stress. I only realised when I quit my academic job.

Only a small portion of the world actually cares about YC. Besides as is Silicon Valley culture failure in a high profile way gets you to a better place because you have fame within the industry. I expect Marissa Mayer to easily land a plumb job at a VC firm with full partnership. (If she doesn't start one that is).

I am pretty sure Sam cares about YC. Sam would mostly likely land on his feet if YC did go down in flames, but he would not be happy if he felt he was responsible.

He wouldn't be responsible. PG choose him, so the buck would stop with the person who made the decision to entrust the family jewels to someone else. And of course Sam would not be happy to be at the helm but the other thing is that over time the market changes so we wouldn't know for sure if it wouldn't have gone down even if PG were still around. [1]

[1] Noting General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, Jack Welsh and the collapse of the financial system that led to getting rid of finance as a profit center.

I think he's keeping the troop's morale up? If I was in his shoes, I would do the same. It's seems like there's a part of success that not hard work, or a great idea. "Just finish it, march ahead, and we will see what happens?"

Sometimes luck, throw of the the dice, et., seems to be an important part of the equation.

As to critism, I want it. It's free. It might be true? My only complaint is when it's in a walled off garden, or it's a obvious attempt at destroying someone/something, usually by a competitor?

The poor, and middle class have grown up with critism. They arn't used to it, but it's just there. I sometimes wonder if the next big tech boom will be ruled by this class. Probally--no, because money seems to stay with money. When you don't have access to this money, see it being thrown around, seemingly wasted, it's hard to hold back? But then again, I'm so wrong so many times, I have honestly considered being a contrarian. For instance, a stock/company looks rediculious--buy it.

I don't think he's complaining at all, just stating facts (there always has been and will be haters) and advising founders not to be discouraged by them.

"It sucks to have haters, but every founder who now runs a huge company faced this for a long time. Please don't let it get you down"

Interesting, I read this as encouragement for founders rather than complaining.

The point is that there will always be haters, so being discouraged by them or complaining isn't fruitful.

And it marks Sam Altman as living in the past. In terms of "why are comments mean?" we had that debate more than 10 years ago:

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/171-why-do-blog-comments-seem...

This seems to fit into the pattern where those who lead the transformation of people's social lives also seem to completely misunderstand that transformation. I'm thinking in particular of Mena Trott:

--------------------

"Trott has an interesting golden rule that she would like to see bloggers adopt. “If you aren’t going to say something directly to someone’s face, than don’t use online as an opportunity to say it,” she says. “It is this sense of bravery that people get when they are anonymous that gives the blogosphere a bad reputation.” "

>And it marks Sam Altman as living in the past. In terms of "why are comments mean?" we had that debate more than 10 years ago

You seem to conflate "I read some internet discussion about a subject 10 years ago on some random blog all 100 people read" (most DHH fans) with "we've collectively settled that issue, and everybody who keeps wondering about it lives in the past".

Which is surprising, because those are 2 entirely different things. Might as well say: "Socrates had already discussed ethics in the 4th century BC. Everybody who has been discussing them afterwards lives in the past".

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