earlyresort

The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job.

When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.

C'mon - when I was a teenager I would've had sex with the crack of dawn if I knew it was interested. I doubt anyone capable of getting pregnant is truly 'off the market' for every teenaged boy in their vicinity.

It's more likely that popular representations of teen pregnancy in the media gradually taught enough kids that having a baby in their teens will seriously screw up their life. You only need to see one episode of Teen Mom to know that's nowhere you want to be.

The author's intentions are not remotely obvious. It just as easily could be an anti-Semitic double entendre referring to both the kik situation and Jews, and I'm still not at all certain HN isn't being deliberately trolled with this submission.

Determining how I respond to ethnic slurs against me or my people really isn't up to you, either.

Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have to live with 4chan and Twitter tolerating and increasingly normalizing anonymous bigots calling your ethnic group, which has been the target of genocide before, the equivalent of a nigger.

Do you have any idea how telling me to 'smile a little' about this comes across?

Perhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me.

In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule.

I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double entendre, but either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News.

Well, you should start by stopping reading Hacker News, because it's clearly not good for you in your current mental state. I promise, you won't miss anything important.

Next, take some of your time and go volunteer somewhere - go tutor a child or teach someone to read or feed the homeless or whatever else you like, just go help someone out. You're now accomplishing something way more important than interning with some 'top company' somewhere. Congratulations, your existence is now justified.

Finally, now that you're doing something worthwhile for humanity and you're not tormenting yourself by wallowing in everyone's self-promotional bloviating, you can happily focus on learning new things, gradually improving your own skills, and figuring out how to make a big dent in the universe on your own personal schedule, which is different from everybody else's.

Hey, I spent my entire twenties fucking up left and right - whatever you end up doing, I guarantee you're way ahead of me.

For me, it doesn't seem like a massive logical leap to suggest that shutting down a particularly convenient and unique part of the supply chain will have an effect on consumption and therefore the negative effects of consumption. Shutting down The Silk Road isn't quite the same thing as arresting the corner dealer.

Aside from that - let's posit that Ross Ulbricht's arrest and punishment and the shutdown of The Silk Road doesn't impact consumption and the consequent negative effects at all. I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others. Yes, there are many people in this world who do equivalent harm that we don't punish, and that's unfortunate, but that doesn't change the rightness of Ross's punishment one bit.

Hard drugs are one of those things that have different consequences for different types of people.

An intelligent, wealthy, employable person can dabble with them, have a good time, and usually get away with it. Should they get addicted and screw up their lives, they can usually get help and bounce back without permanent consequences.

People who're a little less well-off intellectually and economically aren't so resilient. Should they get addicted to hard drugs and screw up their lives, they usually don't bounce back from it - their lives are ruined forever.

Since HN is full of intelligent, wealthy, employable people, the comments on this thread don't surprise me a bit. And yes, I agree that drug policy in the United States could stand to be reformed a little. But when evaluating the harm a person's actions can cause to society, I wish people would think a little more about not just themselves, but that vast chunk of society that's not lucky enough to not be as privileged as we are.

It's actually surprisingly easy to get a 'good' reference to give honest feedback about your shortcomings as well as your strengths. This has worked about 90% of the time for me:

Me: So, how would you rate this candidate on a scale of 1-10?

Reference: Oh, around a 9.

Me: A 9? That's great! Tell me, why not a 10?

Reference: [... here's what you actually listen to here ...]

Sometimes it goes this way:

Me: So, how would you rate this candidate on a scale of 1-10?

Reference: Absolutely a 10, no doubt about it.

Me: Outstanding! But seriously, there's got to be something he's not perfect at...

Reference: [... again, the truth generally emerges here ...]

Once people have given you what they feel is a good reference, like a high score out of 10, they're generally fine with talking frankly.

In addition, if the role's really important, you don't stop with just the references they gave you - you note them and then you continue digging, especially if there's people they really should have given as a reference but didn't.

Roger Dawson's Secrets of Power Negotiating. Cheesy title, great book.

Living in another country is way, way different from going on a vacation in another country. You're removed from the tourist infrastructure that caters to foreigners and you've got to deal with all of the country's bureaucratic procedures and regulations (even simple things like renting an apartment vary ridiculously from country to country). The same places that are fascinating and fun for foreigners to visit are often stressful and annoying for foreigners to live in. Not speaking the native language makes this all the more stressful and bringing people with you that speak your language makes it a lot less likely you'll learn the native language well.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but there's a reason packing off to a completely different country and successfully 'going native' is usually done by single people right out of college who haven't yet experienced a lot of success in their own country. Yes, plenty of older, more-established people do migrate for economic or political reasons, but they usually end up living in ethnic and linguistic enclaves.

My advice? Pick another country that uses English as their primary language, so you don't have that stress going for you, and pick one that's economically developed, so you don't have that stress going for you. You'll still have to adapt to the local bureaucracy, but at least you'll have a fighting chance to understand it. Many English-speaking countries use a points-based system for immigration that favors skilled workers, so you'll also have a much better chance of getting permanent residency.

If the author thinks 'the assumed essential decency of the state and its agents' is the reason people are against conspiracies, he's got no understanding of the issue at all.

Some of us object to conspiracy-mongering because we know people are only human, and have a limited capacity for outrage and action - there's only so much we can do beyond taking care of our families. At the same time, we know that plenty of objectionable things that deserve our attention are happening every day - things that are known and acknowledged to be happening, things that may be perfectly legal and constitutional but are nonetheless repugnant.

When the public's attention is drawn to an entertaining and sexy conspiracy theory, something that might have happened but very very probably didn't, the public's attention is no longer focused on the absolutely-100%-objectionable things taking place every day. That's why conspiracy-mongering is a net loss for society, and why I'll happily crack tinfoil hat jokes at the author's expense - it's not because I think the government's a big group of lovable folks, it's because all that time we're collectively spending writing the script for a future episode of Ancient Aliens could be so much better spent.

About a decade ago, I left a humanities Ph.D. program at Stanford after finishing the coursework, but before starting the dissertation. In my experience, my classmates thought very hard about what they wanted to do with their lives, and were very aware of the career risk involved - if not when they entered the Ph.D. program, certainly by a couple years in. (Hanging out in the graduate lounge with the eighth-year Ph.D. students will do that to you.)

However, most of my classmates were so intensely interested in researching their specialities that they decided the risk was worth taking. After all, it's not like they're particularly suffering during grad school. Grad school in the humanities gives you blissful amounts of time to really geek out in the speciality of your choice, and at top-flight universities, the first few years are free (except for the opportunity cost.) If you get in, your basic expenses and tuition are covered.

Note how we lionize entrepreneurs who intensely pursue a low-probability dream, whether they succeed or fail, while grad students pursuing their own low-probability dream get nothing but scorn. Odd, no? What needs to be changed isn't necessarily grad school, but academic culture - particularly its attitudes towards and adaption to failure. If their community was as understanding of their own failures as ours is of our own, perhaps there wouldn't be such drama about their low rate of success.

The United States has a federal government for a reason. The government is constructed in such a way that the majority doesn't get whatever it wants, if that majority isn't broadly representative of America as a whole.

In particular, the Electoral College ensures presidential candidates must appeal to a wide variety of people, from across multiple regions of America - instead of just focusing on running up the totals in large cities, which is what would happen if the Electoral College didn't exist. In the last election both political parties had to pay attention to the entirety of the electorate, from every county, in states as diverse as Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada.

You could do America a favor by calling your state representatives and telling them what a goofy idea this is.

While I understand the point you're making, as long as there is a way to deliver criticism while being an asshole and a way to deliver criticism without being an asshole, people who choose the former route are assholes.

I also agree that assholes certainly don't have to apologize, as long as you agree that we're free to carry on considering them assholes.

The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda. This Twitter account isn't going to move the needle there.

No, this account is aimed at Americans. It shares short, simple, true messages: Hamas is a terrorist organization, Hamas launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, Israel is defending itself, and Israel is rather good at defending itself. The messages are designed to be shared with friends, in order to combat anti-Israeli attitudes. If you look at the IDF's blog (http://www.idfblog.com/), they've even added some game mechanics to the mix with their 'IDF Ranks'.

Personally, I think it's brilliant.

Objectively, perhaps slightly. It's not hard to find quotes describing this administration as the worst yet at responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. For example:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73606.html

Subjectively, it feels much worse - because the administration ran on a platform of transparency and openness, which they failed to deliver on:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...

I've got a question for DHH - or really, anyone with a widely-distributed team: how do you deal with the administrative overhead of hiring employees in a lot of different jurisdictions?

I've used Ambrose in the past, and they could handle the administrivia associated with employees in most American states, but they were no use internationally. And 'professional employer organizations' like Ambrose often only work with organizations that are already doing well (or well-funded).

I'll agree that the current federal government is a bit of an aberration compared to past Liberal and Conservative governments, but playing up differences from the Americans to justify political policies (good or bad - I suppose that depends on your personal politics) has been a big part of Canadian political life since Trudeau's first term in the late '60s.

Whether Canada is actually all that different from America or whether 'different from America' is just used as a cynical political tool is another question.

Yep, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

A few decent regulations around underwriting mortgages, and most Canadians will conflate that into 'the banking industry shouldn't be touched' -- even though there's only six banks and they charge more in fees than American banks. (Which is saying a lot.)

And god forbid anyone say anything against the CMHC, which is a secretive time-bomb more leveraged than Fannie Mae ever was. Canada might have better underwriting rules for mortgages, but the mortgages themselves are 100% guaranteed by the Canadian taxpayer - for all we know, our housing crisis might still be ahead of us.

But hey, at least it's not America!

On a team of lions, the donkey is lunch.

There's nothing wrong with quitting a Ph.D. program. To me, it looks like you're bright and intellectually curious, but you've got enough sense to ignore sunk costs, which is a valuable skill to have in a startup.

Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. Never happened to me. If it did, I'd just laugh. My grade in Old Church Slavonic simply isn't relevant.

I quit a Ph.D. in History and got my consolation MA when I left. In my experience, most people don't think 'oh, he dropped out of a Ph.D. program' (although I've never hid that), they think 'wow, he got a MA from Stanford!' Not taking the MA would've been silly - now, with some work experience, it doesn't matter, but when starting out it was really valuable.

People are always too afraid to air dirty laundry in public, because it might get them blackballed -- "you'll never raise money in this town again!", "you'll never get a job at a VC-backed firm", "we'll never do a deal with you again!", etc.

I can only think of one case off the top of my head where all the nasty details were revealed and all the names were named - the mid-2000s lawsuit by the epinions founders against Benchmark and August Capital, for similar 'let's wipe out the common' hijinks.

When the lawsuit became public, there was a ton of talk about how the lawsuit would ruin their careers, and they would never raise money again. But Naval Ravikant, one of the plaintiffs, seems to have done just fine. Mike Speiser, another one of the plaintiffs, also did pretty well for himself. Don't know what happened to the rest, but I'd be willing to bet they're still quite comfortably in startup land.

The consequences of naming names aren't as dire as you think they are. For the love of pete, if someone really shouldn't be funding entrepreneurs, tell us who it is.

Holy good lord, that's a lot of equity for employees.

I can see this causing all kinds of problems. You're not going to allocate an option pool for employee layers one through five all at once, prior to your seed round, because that'd be massively dilutive to you in the event of an early sale. (The unused options go away, but the premoney the VC invested at takes the unused options into account.) But creating such hefty option pools down the road is going to cause issues with your existing investors, who at that point would be diluted.

The conflicting interests of founders and earlier investors (who don't want to be diluted by a large new option pool) and later, new investors (who want to make sure the company has a lot of options to incent new employees) will get you to an 'industry-standard pool' pretty naturally. Unless the market's changed dramatically recently, that standard pool is a hell of a lot smaller than what Joel's suggesting.

'The Narrow Road', the Felix Dennis book that's quoted from, is a condensation of his earlier 'How To Get Rich' (not 'How To Make Money', that's identical to 'The Narrow Road'.) I found the longer version equally valuable and vastly more entertaining.

While Felix is worth reading - a 'get rich' book from some who actually built a business and got rich! - he comes from the publishing world and his advice is very different from the practice of most technology startups.

For example, he advises never giving away any equity in your company, ever, and includes the story of how, early on in his publishing career, he fired all of his senior staff because they asked him for a small cut of the equity pie.

The VC controls (and always controlled) the outcome for your company. I can't say I understand his behavior - blocking an acquisition but also refusing to participate in a future round makes both liquidity and fundraising impossible. Perhaps he plans to drive the company to the brink and then do a down round.

The only leverage you have over him is the damage his behavior, if public, could do to his reputation - since VCs live and die by their dealflow. If the deal was still on the table, I would've politely discussed his future exposure - 'if this behavior keeps up and the deal doesn't happen, you are not going to look good in the post-mortem I'll be posting to Hacker News'. Quality VCs know that their reputation depends on keeping entrepreneurs happy.

Now that the deal's dead, you might as well leave - but you'd be doing a disservice to the rest of us to not reveal who this guy is. If you can't do it in public (perhaps you're worried about raising money again from someone else - which, sadly, is probably valid), at a minimum you should be describing the whole story over at The Funded.

No, the premoney in each stage is too low to be credible.

Generally a venture round will be for between 33% and 20% of the company, trending lower as the company gets further along. 25% is a pretty typical number.

If you assume each of Heroku's two rounds were for 25% of the company, then 94% -> 70.5% after the A -> 52.9% after the B. (It seems counterintuitive to sell 25% of the company twice but end up with more than 50% of it, but this is because the Series B dilutes the Series A as well as the common.) The premoney valuations implied for the A & the B would be $9MM and $30MM respectively.

The reality would be lower, because this doesn't take into consideration things like option plans. If we assume they created a 10% option pool before the A and then used it all, the dilution looks more like this:

94% -> 84.6% (options) -> 63.4% (A) -> 47.5% (B)

Of course these things can still vary pretty widely. But no one's doing $10MM on $5MM premoney unless something has gone pretty wrong. In that case I'd expect the management team to get topped up with additional options to keep them motivated.

As an aside, the calculation of who made what also assumes that the investors have no pro-rata rights, which is wrong. When a company raises $10MM in a Series B, not all $10MM comes from the Series B investor.

I can swear by this - I've lost almost forty pounds since New Year's by cutting out the danishes, making my own lunches, and going to the gym regularly for weight lifting and cardio.

The only thing I'd add - working out is time-consuming, and getting started at a gym is both hard and intimidating. Gyms themselves are counting on you to stop going - that's how they make their money. If you're having trouble getting started, consider saving up your money and getting a personal trainer for a few months. The personal trainer will teach you how to use the equipment properly, get you more comfortable around the gym, and, most importantly, will be so godawful expensive you won't shrug it off and not bother to go to the sessions - the pain of wasting all that money will be too much.

Yes, I know this is silly - but I was getting chunkier and chunkier over the past couple of years and for me that was the only thing that worked. Personal willpower just wasn't getting it done.

No, he's still in jail. Looks like his earliest release date is November 19th, 2010.

http://nysdocslookup.docs.state.ny.us/GCA00P00/WIQ3/WINQ130

I wish I had read this a year and a half ago. Before my current startup launched but after it'd gotten angel funding, someone learned about our business from an indiscreet angel investor. That someone then started a very similar business.

Idea theft? Maybe. Did it make me angry? Definitely. Not only did I have the usual competitor irritation (these people are out to take food out of my hypothetical future children's mouths, etc.), the potential thievery made me livid, to the point where it was impacting my overall happiness.

Over a year later, the two respective companies have iterated in different directions, to the point where I can't really consider them a competitor - their business isn't our business, and vice versa. All that fussing ended up being a pointless waste of energy.