The First-Ever White House Demo Day | Hacker News Reader

The First-Ever White House Demo Day

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46 pointsdandrewsen10 comments

I know I harp on the same topics over and over again, but they're relevant because the VCs are in bed with the Democrats. Just look at the Ellen Pao case - who was she not invited to dinner with? Al Gore. Who did the CEO of my last company advise on his presidential campaign? John Kerry. DeBlasio, a Democrat, just spent $10 million of New Yorker taxpayer money to train workers for tech companies, and Obama just spent $100 million of federal money to do the same. Meanwhile, the VCs start at $500k a year and get promoted to $3 million a year, now that Pao has aired out their dirty laundry in a high profile court case.

I can't help but feel that this may all be a new corporate structure where the financiers are still in charge, but instead of expectations for corporations to offer real benefits, career progression, R&D budgets, and training of entry level people, we have the perfect excuse to avoid all of that - "we're a startup, and we just can't afford it." I'm not sure it's as healthy as it sounds when you just romanticize entrepeneurship for it's own sake, especially when they make no qualms that taking investor money is part of the goal.

we have the perfect excuse to avoid all of that - "we're a startup, and we just can't afford it."

And if you're a qualified tech worker, you can say "no thank you" and go to a company that does provide all those things. Startups are not the only employer.

Yes! Which is what I've done. But can I stop my taxpayer money being used to subsidize flooding the labor market with my supply skills because "startups can't afford to train people" and those poor VCs need highly skilled (but financially naive) employees to fool into building their empires?

But can I stop my taxpayer money being used to subsidize flooding the labor market with my supply skills because "startups can't afford to train people"

I'm not sure how many people receiving these tech training scholarships will go into startups. A great many will go into other, established tech companies.

Billionaire tech execs should also invest in training themselves instead of preaching about the low cost of false negatives right before they say they can't find people. But at least they make fair offers and invest in peoples' career (class action non poaching lawsuit may have helped.) I will note that some of them do have some programs for this already as well, Zuckerberg gave a lot to Newark and others have some programs.

Venkatesh Rao has an article series that compares startup entrepreneurs with historical economic shifts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

"Entrepreneurs are the new labor. Or to put it in a more useful way, the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs that marks the early, frontier days of a major technology wave (Moore’s Law and the Internet in this case) has fallen apart. "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

"a labor class emerges when privileged knowledge is commoditized and institutionalized in ways that make it basically useless as negotiation leverage with the investor class, leaving supply aggregation as the only path left for the extracted and intellectually bankrupted class. The extracted knowledge is placed under the stewardship of a new mercenary class that eventually turns into a domesticated new middle class (this pattern is not just restricted to the 19th century; variants have played out at least a few times before in world history)."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/04/entrepre...

"The new financial order will comprise members representing the largest new economy companies, as well as members of the investor class who survive the ongoing collapse of credibility of their home institutions. Political participation in the new order will come not from nation-states or provincial governments, but city/urban political systems. "

Do you have a good source for reading the emails that were included in the discovery process for that case? I've been googling but can't find the raw data.

Ugg, this is hard to read. Politics and startups don't mix. I know I can't really make any logical argument about it's negative qualities without being downvoted. I'll just say hopefully some people get a trip to DC to meet the prez.

This is a good use of influence, hopefully it's not only for a bulletin point.

An all points bulletin point?

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