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Comment by ianstallings | Hacker News Reader

I bet all the execs got well paid for their terrible efforts though and they will slide into new positions of power regardless of their merit. We need to take our industry back from the leeches. The near-sighted execs with nothing but paper accolades and networks of cronies.

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There isn't anything to "take back" - other than Government sponsored monopolies or price ceilings/floors, the market is OPEN to you! There are many competent people building amazing companies, incompetent people getting paid well, competent people getting paid badly, competent people making lots of money and being fair with their employees. This (corporate) world is less black and white than you're making it out to be.

Realizing someone is performing or behaving poorly isn't a bad thing at all (it's how we learn!) but sitting on HN declaring that the nebulous "we" needs to "take back" our industry from leeches is absolutely ridiculous. Like the other commenter said, go build your own company! If you truly are more competent, fair, and mindful as a leader THOSE TYPES will flock to you.

It's what I'm doing. It's what many entrepreneurs I know are doing.

It's worth pointing out that programmers are in demand and highly paid and there is nothing forcing anyone to work with "leeches". In addition to having people "flock to you" there's also the option of joining the flock. Most people would kill to have our market power.

One could argue that the system is currently set up to benefit executives (who often end up winning, regardless of whether the company loses) at the expense of shareholders and/or the general public. One could argue that this is a problem that market forces can't fix, and therefore that a regulatory solution is called for. One might refer to this sort of regulation as "taking back" the unfair advantages the executives currently.enjoy.

Suggesting that we all are free to become executives and take part in the problem may be true, but it doesn't fix the problem or eve address whether one exists.

Shame on the shareholders, then, for letting that happen. In the case of Zynga, why did they buy stock? Was it because Zynga was an amazing company with brilliant technology, a solid executive team focusing on long term fundamentals and sustainable business practices? Or did most of them invest because the stock price was going up and the business had buzzwords like "social", and so they jumped in like sheep to try to ride the gravy train?

There's truth in what you say about the system rewarding the lazy. But that's fundamentally because of the stupidity and laziness of the shareholders. There's still opportunity in this turbulent system though to pick winners, and be a shareholder that rewards competence and punishes incompetence.

But that's fundamentally because of the stupidity and laziness of the shareholders.

It's kinda cute that you believe that, and are prepared to go to any length to blame immoral behavior on anyone you can find other than the people engaging in the behavior.

Also, beyond the initial purchase of the stock -- which may be well before any signs of trouble -- shareholders can easily be made to have zero power; even the power to replace directors through shareholder elections can be taken away:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/business/sham-shareholder-...

"My shares count more than yours", requiring an ousted director's approval of his own ousting, plurality voting which allows directors to remain even when they can't muster a majority... the list of tricks goes on and on.

I am not normally the type to say this, but: in the case of corporate governance, the system is now actually rigged against shareholders. Much larger changes than just "don't buy stock in a company that will later go bad" are needed.

If you couldn't see Zynga was poison long ago, even when it was on its meteoric rise, then you seriously were not paying attention.

But that's fundamentally because of the stupidity and laziness of the shareholders

Absolutely, I agree 100%. Our Democracy as a whole suffers from the same problem. That doesn't imply, however, that the problem can't or shouldn't be fixed by someone other than the shareholders. Our society may decide that it would be a better one with some checks and balances in place to keep shareholders from shooting themselves in the foot.

Note that I'm not arguing, one way or the other, that there's a problem or that it should be fixed. I'm simply pointing out that You can start a company too! and even It's the shareholders' fault may be true statements but they don't address whether the problem should be fixed.

Now why should it be any different? There are a few companies experimenting with different hierarchies, hierarchy-less, and different role/position value assignments (tied somewhat with hierarchy), but in general I think pitch-forking the "1%" is just the "herd entitlement".

If you're on the bottom and don't like it, then get on top; this day and age that is actually possible. In history prior, you had to be born into the right name or granted a monopoly by the empire or king in order be "financially independent" (or thieve). In the USA you just had to have a great idea and the persistence to get people to buy into your idea.

NOW all you need is an internet connection, some free software, time, and some free fucking education to build financial independence.

Income mobility is actually lower in the USA than in Europe, fwiw, and most startups are founded by people from middle-class or better families. Part of the reason is that the free education is, especially in poorer areas, not great: high-school computer curricula are in a sad state. Another part of the reason is that people with a family safety net find it easier to start companies. A third is that family connections help, whether it's for "friends & family" rounds of funding, or for product introductions (see: Bill Gates).

Oh I'm sure there are difficulties in our day and age, I don't mean to trivialize it - but the idea that "people being paid $20M a year while I write code and get paid $140K a year is unfair" strikes me as ridiculous. The resource available to people in the modern time is far richer and available than any other time in history.

Sure there are a lot of hurdles, but if you want to be that executive being paid millions, you can do it - whether you're a programmer, a writer, whatever.

Following your reasoning, there is no reason to criticise any entitlments. "MEPs have huge salaries?" "Mayors are giving social housing to their families?" "Government Railway employees get gold-plated pensions?": "Stop complaining! Just become one of them!"

Well, yeah. I basically am saying "stop complaining" but I'm not directly saying "become one of them" I'm saying "become what you WANT".

I'm curious. Do you only say "stop complaining" when it's an issue you don't personally have a problem with? Or do you legitimately believe that no one should ever complain about anything?

If you don't think an injustice exists, wonderful, you should argue that point. Something like "Stop complaining, because..." Or don't argue that point and don't participate in the conversation. But the endless "stop complaining because I personally don't have a problem with this" is highly annoying.

I guess I'm not getting what you're not understanding, Ixiaus.

If you accept the premise that an injustice exists, of what use is it to argue repetitively that one should "get on top", if one has a problem with it? You seem to assume that the OP is saying "It's not fair, why can't I be on top??" when he's not arguing anything of the sort. Not everything is about winning.

Is it possible that you're presenting a clever, sardonic caricature of an entrepreneur, and the joke went completely over my head? If so, you got me! Good one!

Oh I understand clearly, there are lots of people on here complaining about injustices and that someone needs to fix them. I'm telling them that they are being ridiculous and should just go do what they want to do and that no one (including the "leeches") is stopping them.

I don't accept the premise that an injustice exists. Someone being "on the bottom" isn't an injustice, it's a social role. It's a social role that if someone doesn't like being there, they can decide and act to elevate themselves into a different social role (one with more power? one with more freedom? one with more money? one with no attachements? there's a lot of different social roles in our society - none of them are being done an injustice but by the people that stay within their role and complain about it).

I never said anything is about winning. Everything is about how happy you are, clearly the OP is unhappy about something and all of the words written so far saying "stop complaining, go build something yourself and exemplify the morality you think is right" are totally spot on.

Yeah, you're right: the problem of executives getting paid too much? Investor problem. The problem of stupid programmers getting paid too much? Investor problem. Can regulation solve it? I doubt it. When we get down to it, it's not like there isn't an abundance of regulation on companies going public and releasing projections anyway.

But as a programmer, it's easy to avoid: Avoid buying into risky IPOs. Whee.

Are you a good programmer contesting that the system as-is reduces your pay or your options for meaningful employment with fair pay? I doubt it. If anything it makes it harder for "good" places, which would like to employ you meaningfully at a fair value, to hire anyone-else, increasing your odds.

Now, if you're a good place who wants to hire good programmers and these stupid places compete with you raising your costs, that's another matter, and it really must stink for you... but it still sounds pretty implausible to regulate this problem away. If investors are going to be stupid about throwing around their money at the wrong companies, I expect government bureaucrats to be exactly as stupid about trying to hammer down the wrong companies, and now you've just made the whole process of being a company more risky and capricious for everyone.

One might also argue that a "regulatory solution" will inevitably make things even worse than the market forces it tries to correct.

Another might argue that markets quite often fail, rather than produce the efficiencies they should in the ideal world, let alone the socially optimal results.

That's what we're talking about when we say that market forces may lead to inefficiencies. Few people deny the existence of market failure, but too many people advocate for government regulation to fix market failure while denying that precisely the same phenomenon occurs with government. It's appropriately called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure.

Start your own company then and set an example instead of criticizing others.

Edit: Thanks for all the upvotes/support. To those who see this as legitimate criticism, really? The OP elaborated on nothing - no constructive criticisms were made. Instead, it just sounds like pure anger and naïveté on my end, alluding to all entrepreneurs trying to make it/who have made it as "leeches" and "near-sighted execs" that have "networks of cronies." Stay classy.

Is it not legitimate to call out piss-poor management and cronyism without also "setting an example?" Does this mean that only people at the helm of $1b+ companies are able to criticize Zynga's pathetic ineptitude?

Not sure what your aggressive reply accomplishes; at least OP has sparked discussion to point out a major flaw and source of Zynga's downfall.

Talk is cheap. It's very, very easy to criticize from afar when you have no skin in the game.

So, that type of criticism holds very little weight.

Bullshit. This kind of passive-ad-hominem is worse than worthless. If you disregard criticism of actions by people who aren't taking those actions, you're left listening only to people who are actually doing those things... and guess what? They're probably not exactly railing against their own paradigms.

Talk is only cheap if you're lapping it up in bulk from poor sources. If talk were always cheap, advisory boards and mentors would never, ever provide any value. So by all means, throw it away; disregard people based on who they are and not what they say. It's your own loss.

Just have the decency not to mislead people who are looking for guidance with your own cheap talk.

"when you have no skin in the game"

Your parent is referring to perhaps (similar to) talking heads in a way that they get on TV not knowing all the facts or reasoning and state after the fact what should be.

But even if they state "before the fact" there is not a complete record of their thoughts on everything as being vetted as correct (success has a million fathers etc.)

So you can go back and say "see I said this was a bad idea" but what about the other 20 things someone says that you don't have the same outcome? You can just cherry pick. There is a common stock ruse that works this way. You call people up and say "I'm giving you a tip don't buy now". Then next month you call back all the people that you gave "tip a" to but not failed "tip b".

That said there is much to learn from criticism no matter where it comes from or what their axe is to grind etc.

that is not true. some failures are predictable, egregious, and symptomatic of cultural rot. what was easy was knowing ahead of time that Zynga was a terrible company. "skin in the game" is a meaningless cliche.

do I need skin in the game to create a histogram? to do multiple regression? to get a hunch that something is foul? judgement and critical thinking have nothing to do with skin in the game. business is not lacrosse.

Presumably none of us are able to criticise politicians, then? Or our bosses?

You're right talk is cheap. Here's my latest startup I just built with 5 others:

http://www.brabble.com/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brabble/id570281083?mt=8

Edited: 5 others. Forgot the Angel.

On the brabble.com site the menu that pops in from the left pushes the text off the right of my browser window.

http://i.imgur.com/AcmcN53.png

While the site is responsive and making the window small so the left menu goes away fixes it, resizing to any amount larger than that results in some of the text being hidden off the right hand side.

Chrome Version 27.0.1453.94 m

Thanks! I'll send this to Randy who is in charge of the website now. I'm pretty sure we're in agreement, him and I, that the left menu is possibly a bad idea and we've struggled with it.

>It's very, very easy to criticize from afar when you have no skin in the game.

neither do the execs, if they get paid anyway. (which was the point)

Criticism can be legitimate, constructive analytical criticism can be enlightening (studying what went wrong). Claiming that all of the execs made a terrible effort and implying that it is "unfair" they are being paid well (maybe they aren't being paid well!?!) is silly, unless of course he's an insider. Even if he was an insider, it would still be silly because of its emotional content which is what the commenter above you replied about: if it bothers you, go build your own company and exemplify all of the character and ideology you uphold as "ethical" or "moral".

His comment wasn't aggressive either. It was firm. Zynga's major flaw isn't "cronyism" or "leeches" as far as I can tell; its major flaw happens to be a confluence of bad choices and poor insight; I however, do not know enough to actually constructively criticize the company and its leadership.

I know this isn't exactly a constructive post, but... https://www.google.com/search?q=why%20zynga%20sucks&hl=e... isn't exactly short on results. The company and how it is run are fairly widely considered examples of everything that can be wrong with social/mobile game development.

If failure of such magnitude cannot be criticized, then what should be?

Not even trying.

Edit: no, that's too mean. But I like people who take risks, and I get defensive when people snicker at failure from their armchairs of hindsight. We should learn from failures, but not rush to say, "he failed, what an idiot!"

I'm curious how you know so much about me. How do you know what I've done? I've already started my own companies bud and sold them, twice. I'm working on my third now after just building a startup with some others called Brabble. Here it is: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brabble/id570281083?mt=8

To the post below: BKRGB which was an signage platform and ShaiSoft, which sold networking library software. The rest of the details are none of your business sir. I like how you belittle me because my numbers aren't big enough on the Brabble app. I've heard all this type of BS before. Don't listen to me then. Just keep attacking other developers for trying.

BTW, we have a NASCAR running this on June 7th in the Party in the Poconos 400 with our logo on it. Keep an eye out for it. We're just starting.

I'm curious how you know so much about what's happening at Zynga. You haven't supplied any evidence at all to support your speculation that undeserving people are benefitting. I'm not particularly up on the situation either, but it looks to me like the OMGPOP people had a one-hit wonder and timed the sale of it perfectly. Do you have any basis for your accusation that cronyism played a role?

Hey, that's great. I hope Brabble succeeds, and the next one and the one after that. Perhaps, someday, one of your ventures will fail. You can minimize the psychic pain by learning not to equate business failure with bad intentions.

Since you brought it up, which companies are those? Otherwise It just seems like you are making it up to make yourself look better.

By the way, I've also made iOs apps that barely get any ratings.

BKRGB which was a signage platform I built last year with a partner and sold and ShaiSoft, which sold networking library software that I sold in 2002. I'm not rich because of it but I have tried and succeeded.

It's interesting how you belittle me because my numbers aren't big enough on the Brabble app. If I had bigger numbers could I criticize then?

>>It's interesting how you belittle me because my numbers aren't big enough on the Brabble app.

Sorry about that. It was uncalled for. Honestly I thought you were just making stuff up. You've certainly done more than most.

I dont think anyone here is saying "he failed, what an idiot".

Criticizing it is totally okay. What the OP said though was much more than "constructive analytical criticism" - there was a lot of emotion and ambiguous assumptions built into his statement that make very little sense.

Deleted comment

Not saying you have to be a robot (I've been emotional about all of my comments in this thread), but there is a point at which emotional logic in an argument clouds the true purpose of the argument.

In this case, the purpose was to criticize the company and its leadership - there's nothing wrong with that, but mapping a projected idea of "unfairness" into the criticism (unless unfairness actually HAPPENED to you within the context of the subject being criticized) then you're clouding the soundness of the criticism.

I agree. I should have posted a fair criticism and a plan to change it.

I think what I believe is unfair is how executives are unfairly rewarded regardless of company performance in a lot of cases because the company has signed a contract that basically indemnifies them of all responsibility. Now don't get me wrong, these contracts are necessary to protect all involved, but I feel that there should be no reward for failure. Yes, let the executive walk with something, because they stepped up and took a chance. But do not give them so much it's practically a reward for failure.

I'll have to think over how to fix the rest and try to provide some insights in the future. My goal would be to make the situation more fair to all involved and acknowledge that even though employees haven't put millions up they have in fact put their livelihood on the line.

Critical people, clearly.

There is nothing I dislike more about Silicon Valley than this attitude. Yesterday I saw someone tweet "funny how people who criticize startups usually aren't the ones starting them, might be something to that..."

Or maybe we could realize that this creates a ridiculous logical fallacy on the level of "only god can judge me". Who decided that the only people who can criticize obvious mistakes, shady behavior and being a downright bad person is literally immune to all criticism from 99% of people? How on earth does even a single person think this is passable logic? I get that being a founder is hard, but saying that people literally cannot criticize founders unless they themselves have started a company is absolutely absurd. I cannot believe you and others would lack the self awareness to realize this...

"alluding to all entrepreneurs trying to make it/who have made it as "leeches" and "near-sighted execs" that have "networks of cronies." Stay classy."

Just saw this edit. I really don't know how you managed to read it like that. But yeah, there you go, just create a strawman, tell others to stay classy and smugly believe you're right and you'll never have to actually deal with the idea that you might be wrong.

"We need to take our industry back from the leeches." Hence, my recommendation to create his/her own company as an effort to "take back the industry."

I never mentioned or implied that one would need to be an entrepreneur in order to criticize others in this field. And if you are going to criticize others, do it constructively, which the original OP obviously didn't do. Thanks.

Criticism is extremely important for any cos. and its executives. Criticism can potentially save any Zynga from sliding away to nothingness ...

Given its products and business model, Zynga fading away into nothingness is probably the best thing for everyone.

It very charitable to call the GP's rant "criticism".

That's correct. Which makes me wonder if rant = criticism + emotion? If yes, then he/she who rants does make good for an entrepreneur but only if that quality gets toned and put into action.

I believe there would exist some analysis/research around this already. For there does seem some evidence of great companies been built by people who were hurt, emotional or egoistic about their shit.

So you need to start your own restaurant before complaining about food?

The price, maybe. Food - not.

Ex-Zynga here, and that's exactly what I've done. We're prioritizing profit sharing over equity, so as the company does really well (as Zynga did in the years prior to their IPO), all employees who contribute will be making a lot of money, not just the founders.

It's legit because IMHO there is a pervading feeling across the industry that we are being taken advantage of. Ask around, I can't be the only one that feels as if there are a bunch of hanger-ons who learn the bare minimum about tech and want to share in the riches. Look around you.

Well, the core problem is that the freemium model is not sustainable for most businesses. There are very very few companies that can remain cash flow positive (let alone making large profits).

The execs get paid well because the owners of those companies assume (rightly or wrongly) that the execs performance determines the outcome of the business. The average engineer working in that company is assumed to not have such power (which is true for a lot of companies).

BTW If any company started holding up salaries of their employees dependent on profit, nobody would join that company !

> BTW If any company started holding up salaries of their employees dependent on profit, nobody would join that company !

That's a pretty bold statement. Any particular reason you think that's true? I don't think profit sharing is that arcane of a concept. Unless you're talking about the extreme of no salary, only profit-sharing, in which case, yeah. But that's not what execs get, either.

Good point.

I disagree on your last statement. I think that if a reasonable base salary were provided and profit sharing was done well and was truly equitable (i.e. not more than an order of magnitude different from 1/n of profit for n employees) then it could be quite attractive. It's all about trust and track-record.

Yes, there is room for disagreement. I accept your point.

I think you're wrong on a couple counts.

Freemium does work in the medium term if you can generate enough value in your networks and data as an asset to grow your valuation. You obviously do eventually need to stop recapitalizing and monetize at some point. I would argue that a lot of companies should do this a much earlier point in time, rather than growing without reasonable bounds.

A counterexample to you last point is being a startup founder. For these folks, until you prove your concept to investors and/or go cashflow positive, your salary is completely dependent on profit.

Freemium model is setup so that it drives unsucessful companies to abuse their users for more data or in the case of microtransactions it leads to them employing psychological tricks to get the "whales" to spend more and more while the long tail continues to enjoy the service for free..

A startup founder is the owner (part or full) and is not a regular salaried employee. Hardly a counterexample...

I agree with the first problem with the freemium model, but not really the second. You don't necessarily need to rely on psychological tricks if you can provide premium services of actual value.

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