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Comment by paul | Hacker News Reader

I remember that an engineer we tried to hire at Google in 2000 turned down the offer for the same reason -- he thought that all of the interesting problems were probably already solved :)

The reality is typically the opposite. Most startups are technically straightforward to start with and only get really advanced with scale.

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Exactly. Currently working a project that started out as a simple django application with Mongo db (don't ask me, wasn't my decision). It used Parse, heroku, and some other platforms. I'm in the process of building what will replace parse (file storage) using Go, Redis, postgre, and nginx. Then when in done with that, the main api will get turned over to the same basic architecture, though with other parts to balance load, etc. This is more complex because now we have to do a lot more maintenance. Which means that more code will get written to automate things. More programs talking to each other and more different parts moving at different speeds. I love it, but it's complex. And then you realize you are in charge of doing it all. :)

That does sound like exciting greenfield though; sounds like a refactoring/scale out project.

It is exciting! I'm in charge of scaling a business to support an explosion of users. I say business because I'm also building / extending the sale & marketing systems, the internal communications, and some other stuff I have planned out. It's a lot of work but we need it and good tools help me move quickly. I love scaling businesses as a whole.

Most startups are not Google.

True, but most startups don't get as far as AirBNB have, either.

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