There is no place like Silicon Valley where taking a career risk to quit a job and start a company is normalized, understood, and encouraged.
> A few states, such as California, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, totally ban non-compete agreements for employees, or prohibit all non-compete agreements except in limited circumstances. [1]
There is also a massive augmented wave coming that is heavily underestimated and will change everything. The future is heavily content creation in new phases of technology which are huge. Overall, it is better to have a virtual economy that uses less resources than a physical one.
The new markets are definitely remote and that is how you communicate with most people now even in the same building, so being physically in California isn't as needed. Though the policies of not recognizing non-competes needs to go nationwide. Non-competes are anti-innovation, anti-worker, anti-business, anti-competition and only help the bigs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#United_Stat...
I'm certainly not a fan of non-competes but note that, even in California, a company can drag you into an expensive court battle over non-solicitation clauses, NDAs, etc. It's also a matter of non-competes not being enforceable in general. A small company may still choose not to hire you if they think there's a possibility they may need to go to court.
It's also easier to hire employees since they're all in SV.
Do investors not also want (competent) exceptions that stand out?
Others are having a midlife crisis and want to be your new rich dad, or they want a cult leader who makes them feel smart and throws cool insider parties. In this case it helps to be a white guy or at least Elizabeth Holmes.
One would hope YC is the first since we’re on their website, but having read pg’s essays and noticed his advice for startups is half post hoc fallacies (“use Lisp because I did”) and half is unethical (“don’t hire women or people with accents to get culture fit”) I dunno.
There's your salary. If the company works out or not later, well, you're a founder and has the experience, it's easier to get a job anywhere.
It takes a rich person to take such a risk, but yay, meritocracy!
Because in my experience, the “everyone who works at a FAANG is a multi-millionaire” meme is 100% bullshit. Especially when I read things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26336029
My other comment you linked I still stand by. But you don't need to be IC6/L6/E6, refreshers and equity appreciation are very powerful if you are lucky enough to get both.
That said, I’d definitely be interested to see actual statistics about own vs. rent for people in tech in the Bay.
That's without any kind of growth, investment, stock options growing in value, raises, etc.
Nobody is arguing that it’s possible.