Snail_Commando

>"He became an investment banker."

I'm not sure you actually understand what an investment banker is.

>"He became a capitalist."

Implying that somehow, after he sold his company and co-founded YC with his friends, he suddenly realized: "Holy shit. I think capitalism might be on to something!"

>"He is in the trade of making percentages off of real work."

Are you implying that YC provides zero value and merely siphons a percentage of founders' rightful gains?

>"He is a creature of greed."

Surely, he is a creature-- and a greedy one! You know, not a person with a family, friends, and interests outside of your one dimensional perception of him.

Take a break.

The author of Land of Lisp (an excellent and fun primer on writing games in Common Lisp) is both an MD and a hacker. Perhaps you could try to get in contact with him for advice.

For those that don't know, Jason is the editor in chief of MIT Technology Review.

It was renamed and became the basis of Yahoo! Store.

Here, this map summary might help with your search a little. It should help if you are looking to live near SOMA but it also describes some SV neighborhoods as well. (I didn't make it, credit goes to Garry Tan)

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=11...

Drew Houston posts here. In fact, he posted a few days ago.

Hey! I played more and I found a bug. It's similar to a "no-clipping" cheat in a game like Doom.

On at least two of the arena walls if you move backwards (via s-key) you can exit the 'game-verse' and shoot at players within the 'game-verse.' This allows players to exit the arena and shoot at players who remain in the arena.

I had fun messing around with your game! I'm not sure if I was playing against a person or bot (I'd like to think it was a person because I won.)

I really liked the terrain you generated; I think it would be really cool if you could implement randomly generated tunnels through the hills. That way, you could use the hills as 'natural' walls instead of the large blocks in the center of the arena.

Would it be possible to see the source?

Cool work!

At least as early as 2011 [1], the 500 shareholder rule [2], when applied in the case of Facebook, meant that Facebook had to start reporting financials to the SEC.

Although they were not necessarily obligated to go public, they were effectively forced to anyway.

It's a small but significant distinction. Essentially, once forced to report like a public company, you might as well become one; even if you had no prior incentive to.

[1] At least as early as January 2011, when Goldman Sachs made $450 million investment in Facebook on behalf of itself and other private investors. [2] This rule has since been revised under one portion of the JOBS act which raises the bar to 2000 shareholders (or 500 non-accredited investors.)

I was guessing you didn't mean that, that part of the response was in the context of the parent comment. I wasn't entirely clear, I'm sorry.

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As far as "A-Levels" banding together to get hired, I'm not totally sure where I stand after I think about it. Some questions:

-What exactly, is the advantage of hiring unproven pre-conceived teams for a project over assembling teams through individual hires? Don't acquihires already meet this need (proven team)?

-Why would a company pay a few million signing bonus to an unproven team?

-If the developers were already grouped together, why wouldn't they work for themselves?

-Wouldn't an "A-level" developer be concerned about companies that need and/or want to buy flocks of talent?

(perhaps there is a certain size/type of company that this service would be ideal for, I'm not sure which company that is.)

-Wouldn't a multi-MM signing bonus to an unproven team skew incentives for both parties?

-If an "A Level" was looking for a stable job over a risky payout, would he want to be grouped into a unit?

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I think a lot of these multi-MM signing bonuses reflect more than the skill (+ deva devb devc).

I also wonder about what types of developers/companies this type of service would select for.

If you'd like to share any thoughts, I'd look forward to hearing them.

My guess is that a good group of people not already at a company would more likely want to work together, for themselves.

Also, it would probably send a bad signal if the head of a startup started posting groups of his employees up for sale.

I would also imagine the transaction cost involved with selling individual groups of developers is more prohibitive than selling a company wholesale.

That was a really interesting post, thanks.

Anecdotally, how would you characterize the distribution of risk aversion of the younger folks? (ie, engineers vs hard sciences vs social sciences vs business, humanities etc.)

Or rather, is it evenly distributed across the culture?

Apparently, about 80% of Dell revenue comes from product(PCs, peripherals, servers, and some consumer electronics.) The remaining 20% or so comes from services (including software.)

What I was trying to say is that I don't really see what incentive Dell Inc. would have to go private.

I don't see why Micheal Dell would assume so much risk, and I don't really see the immediate benefit for any party (Micheal, the board, shareholders, PE firms) to privatize at the moment.

They should focus on their transition instead of burning up so much cash on hand and assuming a lot of risk.

I think the best bet would be to stay public and try to scale their enterprise segment through venture investment.

A 20 Billion market cap is quite large, even with so much cash on hand, it would still likely take several PE firms to team up and take it private. It would amount to one of the largest PE deals in history.

I don't think taking the company private would directly solve any of Dell's problems, but it might help them shore up some internal inefficiencies.

Historically, Dell has been successful through its efficient supply chain and ability to reap high margins from low cost/high volume PC manufacturing.

In the long run, I don't think staying this path will be sustainable for Dell. Asian manufacturers are rapidly taking stage as the go to hub for cheap PCs and manufacturing.

Instead of trying to leverage rapidly diminishing returns on optimizing efficiencies in PC manufacturing and supply chain, Dell should focus on the (painful,expensive) transition towards shifting its focus towards enterprise tech and enterprise consulting.

Opening a venture arm is a step in the right direction towards gaining a foothold on some new tech verticals.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is excellent. I don't think the synopsis really did it justice.

Diamond supported his thesis very well, while it could have benefited from some environmental feedback information, on the time scales he was examining I think he appropriately examined the economic impacts of the individual environments societies developed in, the "flak" he received is in some cases undeserved.

He meshed his expertise and argument very well, resulting in a great contribution to the understanding of the development of human societies.