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Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

  "The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers
  and product designers who are now starting their own companies
  could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook, and they in
  turn will have a hard time attracting the best talent because
  those people can get funded to start their own projects as well."

Obviously I just read TC's article and didn't see what Parker said, but what's notably missing from that statement is any discussion about what is best, or highest expected value, for the engineer or designer. It's obviously better for Facebook/Google/Yahoo/et al if great engineers and designers have to work for them because they can't get funding. It's not obvious this leads to better outcomes for the people in question. It kind of feels like Parker is talking his book.

edit: formatting

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There's a rich tradition of self-interested complaint in this industry. This reminds me of Fred Wilson's complaining about startup lawyer fees[1], Aaron Greenspan's complaining about the Money Transmission Act[2], and pg's Patent Pledge[3].

Not that people shouldn't speak for the causes of their choosing, but you do lose some rhetorical impact if you only do so once you have a horse in the race.

[1] http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/a-challenge-to-startup-lawye...

[2] http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days-Payments-...

[3] http://www.paulgraham.com/patentpledge.html

Don't forget the classic Open Letter to Hobbyists [4].

[4] http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html

At least in my case (I'm Aaron) I don't think that a fair comparison at all.

Sean Parker is concerned that not enough talented people work at a company he has a stake in. That's fair, but only that company can benefit if his concern is alleviated (at the cost of others).

I'm concerned that an entire industry of companies has been quashed by anti-competitive laws, not just in California, but nationwide, raising prices for merchants and consumers across the country due to monopolistic business tactics that have been well-documented. It's affected my company, as well as about ten I've gotten e-mails from and probably a hundred that never started up in the first place or don't want to admit that they're caught up in it, too. Therefore it seems a bit broader than my own self-interest. And you can call me selfish, but I don't see any other self-interested parties stepping up to the plate on this one.

The counterpoint to the horse-in-the-race argument is that there is absolutely no way I would have known anything about money transmission laws unless I had a horse in the race. Some of these topics are pretty esoteric and I think that it's good when specialists speak up about them.

As many have mentioned this is just whining from a guy who has a vested interested in a big company spending lots on payroll and acq-hires.

The flip-side this creates a better market for younger or less-experienced engineers who are looking to learn and grow. This group of people will never be able to get a job with Facebook, but can certainly join a company who is willing to grow with them.

Exactly. I'm not in a position to comment on the amount of funding in the early-stage startup world, but this particular comment by Parker reads like another executive whining that engineers are too independent.

Not just the independence aspect, but the hubris with which he complains about the most brilliant minds choosing to not work on, well, a social network site.

It's 2011; we are traversing inflection points of development in solar energy, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and seeing the early, dramatic fruits of stem cell research, and Parker is bitching that the best of the best aren't keen on improving software that shares drunk photos and your latest opinion of Kim Kardashian's divorce?

Wow. Just, wow.

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I don't get comparing inventions to a company. Facebook is NOT all of social networking; the world would get on fine without Facebook. There's nothing important you can't do on Facebook that you (fundamentally) couldn't already do through email. That said, Facebook was the first social site to manage relationships well and scale well. But, as they say, "let's not start sucking each others dicks quite yet."

To be fair, many regard that same social networking site to have been a critical factor in at least two of the Arab Spring revolutions.

One would almost dare to think that helping people communicate is useful or something crazy like that!

Many have regarded Earth to be center of the universe. Many still do.

What do people's beliefs and perceptions have to do with reality?

What if the engineer's goal is to have the biggest possible impact on the world?

That's a fair goal, and I believe the answer breaks down like this:

You can work for a big company that serves billions of people, claiming that you are making an impact on the world, while in reality doing nothing.

On the other hand you can start your own company, perhaps only directly impacting a few hundred people, and still accomplish the goal of maximizing your change on the world (as that was your ceiling).

Parker is arguing that in many cases, the engineer can actually have a bigger impact at the bigger company (e.g. because it leverages economies of scale and having lots of startups fragmentizes the talent pool).

It's a self-serving argument. A bigger overall impact is more likely when there are tons and tons of smaller companies out there trying ideas (i.e. the chance of one of them hitting the next big thing). If all these engineers just go work at Facebook instead, Parker will feel the biggest impact in his stock value. Individual engineers might do better at FB than they would have failing at their own company, but on the whole the economy lost whatever some of them would have made.

I'm not saying that I believe Parker's argument. I brought it up because the GP was considering the consequences of what would happen if Parker's argument were true. The GP, assuming Parker's argument were true, seemed to think that the conclusion was in the engineers' best interests.

What I'm saying is that, if you believe Parker's argument, it isn't necessarily against an engineer's best interests.

Or you could serve billions of people, have a huge impact, and still not have enough technical colleagues to do an ops versus features baseball game.

http://bit.ly/WikimediaJobs

If you write software for a big company then that piece of software could impact the lives of millions of people.

Yes this is true, and that is what the HFT developers say to themselves as well. Just a point of data.

But this is also what developers at hospitals say to themselves.

That's a stupid goal. Meta-Godwin.

EDIT> Limiting the discussion to tech, if you want to have the biggest possible impact, you should be working on AI or IA.

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