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Comment by fdgsdfogijq | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be largely what is going on. I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future", and VCs are basically just choosing which horse they will bet on for that idea. So they pick through different founders chasing that market, and invest. Then all the other VCs pile in on those chosen horses, regardless of the due diligence.

As a naive and younger outsider I always thought these people were all very competent. Clearly there is something very different going on here.

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> I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future"

This. I’m getting annoyed with my jQuery/Spring app with ~million of revenue that I can’t get sexy for employees nor for funding; sometimes I want to throw away ethics and say we’re building “a blockchain of solar-powered AI european-central-bank ledgers”. It would be so much easier. Nah, we’re just storied field data in 7 tables, and customers love it.

But the tide is turning. I have a friend who mentioned the blockchain on his funding papers and he can’t even get an office in my city (France). I’m happy the tide finally turns for the blockchain, to value it for what it’s worth: A good idea for 1% of the present usecases, and bad idea for everything else. Even though not being able to sign an office lease for insurance reasons is quite comical.

You're almost there. Make it a "blockchain powered 3D PRINTED solar AI bank ledger" and you'll be funded in no time.

You forgot to add "to the moon!" at the end /s

Did you even read the article? Make it "blockchain-free 3D PRINTED solar AI bank ledger".

99% of the time when someone can’t hire the problem isn’t the tech or the product-space, it’s that they aren’t paying enough. If you pay me a million per year I will build boring crud apps and web integrations for you all day.

This is exactly the answer. I've worked on one very old codebase in my career. I was paid well for doing so.

The graph of investment in software starts high with greenfield projects, drops over time to an all-time low as optimizations take hold, and as the software continues existing will rise to the greenfield (or more) levels of cost. The interesting thing to me is what substantiates the rises; for instance, in greenfield experimentation and iteration is what costs the most. In old software it's usually the employees.

I'd love to actually document this sometime.

You won’t get a million per year from my revenue since I’ve built it and I’ll still be there come hell or fire; but you can get 10% at the beginning and I don’t hesitate to increase employees as they maintain the existing one or contribute to increasing the revenue. In fact I generally give them more than they contribute, and I’ve increased my employees 30% this year in average, unprompted.

But there is always this HN comment with, no matter how much you pay, they put exclamation marks about how little the compensations are in France and how 35hrs is too long or having to be in office a few days a week is the bane of their existence. I’m always wondering whether we’re unionized here, it looks like a systematic complaint, no matter the conditions.

Well, I don’t know, create your own company I guess.

You missed the point. You can't recruit because you aren't paying enough to be competitive.

So what is your salary range?

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