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Comment by kubb | Hacker News Reader

Effectively, industry roles are a tiered system which determines access to the cashflow. Going the YC founder route is a much faster and more efficient way to secure a high tier than climbing the SWE ladder. The whole thing resembles a kind of mini class system, with high tiers granting access to generational wealth, and low tiers being better off than the average non-industry Joe. Once you're in the high tier, there's no way to fall anymore, you just move wherever the cash is being pumped in, collecting it.

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I’ve seen many people climb the SWE ladder or build a YC company (having done both myself), and trust me the founder route is not the most efficient. You only believe this because you didn’t see the 2 failed startups and 10 year journey grinding 80h weeks almost running out of cash a few times.

Jensen Huang himself says nobody in their right mind should start a company https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/11/jensen-huang-i-didnt-kno...

Nobody in their right mind should start a company up to some equilibrium. As a society we should fund the appetite of experimental founders to put more pressure on quality than what natural conditions might allow.

survivorship bias

This. I saw way more people build a few millions of retirement nest egg reliably in 10-20 years, by working on a boring good swe job and manage their investment a bit better. It's a much safer route.

> Jensen Huang himself says

Not that I disagree, but it doesn't refute the original argument. It could even support it, class protecting their own from more people figuring out there's no clothes on the emperor.

What part of "start a company" requires "grinding 80h weeks"?

Sounds to me as inability to delegate. Or implicit in the [acquire VC, aim for high growth] mindset as if that were the only path to success.

Companies can grow organically. With a positive cash-flow early on & reasonable work/life balance for founders & employees alike. Heck, there's even non-profits.

> Companies can grow organically.

Yes they can, but unless you strike luck, they take many years, often decades of work to grow to a level where you can retire and enjoy the money.

With FIRE and similar concepts being pushed around everywhere, and the plight of the masses to keep their jobs and homes, I see where that desire for "make money fast" comes from. And from a game theory mindset - it's not wrong. (That is also a bit related to the explosion of gambling and gambling-alike stuff such as "prediction markets"...)

> Heck, there's even non-profits.

Non-profits often enough run on conditions bordering on (self-)exploitation.

Except that he did start a company so his comment is really saying you have to be crazy enough to start a company

"Lottery winner says you should not gamble"

Which is totally valid! You shouldn’t gamble to get rich, and that’s true whether you’ve won in the past or not.

I would say closer to a skilled black jack player. You can’t really change the odds in lottery but a good player can improve their chances in gambling.

> Going the YC founder route is a much faster and more efficient way to secure a high tier than climbing the SWE ladder.

YC has funded over 5,000 companies. If you assume 2-3 co-founders per company, that's more than 10,000 to 15,000 people. The vast majority of these founders aren't producing "generational wealth" outcomes. There's no glamorization of the companies that shut down, the ones that are scraping by, and the ones that get their founders a normal job, but those are the far more likely outcomes, especially in the more recent spray-and-pray batches.

This is a very hot take. Being a founder might confer you some career advantage [1] if you're one of the few to make it to series A and you grow a large team, but if you're like the vast majority of founders and never make it past seed (or realistically, to seed), your network is the alpha and omega of any subsequent job search. It's a bit like saying that being an NBA starter is a good way to get a job as a basketball coach.

Point being: don't start a startup if your goal is to get a job. Just get a job.

[1] Note that I'm not arguing about experience -- you can gain a lot of experience as a startup founder, but that experience is rarely directly marketable. Also, most startup founders are completely clueless when they start, so "a lot of experience" is a relative term.

This is not even close to true. I work at a big tech company and we reject applications from YC founders every week. Most of them are broke with failing companies and would love a cushy mid-level engineering or management job at a faang. People are biased by the success of the top few founders but 99% of them have worse outcomes than the average corporate engineer.

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