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Comment by vinhboy | Hacker News Reader

What kind of person flies across the country to meet complete strangers, then ask those strangers to move with them to another state to start a business in a completely new frontier.

What's like the percentage of people who takes on that kind of wild Hail Mary pass and win it all?

Also I am curious, as single-track minded Software Engineers, how do we protect ourselves from the super smart and super driven Bezos of the world? And I don't mean that in a negative way. I am genuinely curious how we can stay competitive when we're working with that type of personality.

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I’ll take on faith you don’t mean it negatively, but then what does it even mean to protect ourselves from the Bezos of the world?

He offers you a role and terms: you take it, you don’t, or you counter. That process converges on you working there or not.

I don’t worship at the altar of Bezos (though I have overall respect for him and his accomplishments), but I don’t see anything beyond my ability to say no that’s needed to protect myself.

Somebody who just finished working for Goldman Sachs...

you can't

software engineers are not very socially adept and can't read people who are predatory

it's even worse with 'save the world' type software engineers

* the only thing you can do is make sure you get some stock

even then most predatory business side founders will make adjustments (the way Zuckerberg did) to take most of the stock for themselves

also percentage of people who win taking that kind of Wild Hail MAry pass

every startup is a wild Hail Mary pass

So you will get some really crazy 'starting scenarios'

Talk to anyone who started a successful company. There were always moments where chances of success went to 0.0001%

and apart from the founder/founders/ a few employees who drank the Kool Aid, no one else thought there was any chance left

> software engineers are not very socially adept and can't read people who are predatory

There's no need to project this onto all software engineers, it works for a joke in big bang theory but even there they needed canned laughter.

Zuckerberg was a developer which kind of breaks this argument...

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