69 karma · joined April 24, 2015
What’s most interesting to me is that even an immortal software founder such as PC can find themselves in situations where their company has deeply rationalized actions that, to both the general and technically sophisticated public, appear to very plainly egregiously violate basic user privacy rights.
Venture Capital is a helluva drug.
In my view it's plainly an attempt to scratch an itch to validate our disappointment with the lack of empathy we see in GOP politics; but instead of expressing that, the author stokes hate and "other-ness" and encourages people to interpret words people say as evidence for their visions of extreme separatist versions of the future... which further breads more lack of empathy in others, and the spiral continues.
Fear mongering and visions of separatism exist on both sides of the party lines.
sounds like you might be distracting yourself from the anxiety you might be feeling.
maybe try meditation?
- drinking starbucks coffee - wearing new clothes that’s not patagonia - owning a car. renting ok. - eating animal products that aren’t wrapped in expensive paper and rope packaging - discussing any views that aren’t first endorsed by a jezebel staff writer or hollywood star.
I think this is partly because people understand the power and influence their organizations have in the world.
When many migrant restaurant workers are working 80 hour weeks or don’t keep their tips, it makes it easier to see the radical privilege of tech workers, and their unawareness.
1) a fairly ordinary Louisiana dad, former K9 sheriff, who has made a living training government dogs after he was fired.
2) people who do business with the federal government.
The more this saga continues the more the democrat gang seems like a troop of out of touch hippie professors recruiting freshman to do their “technology” work.
“And once again, any US organization allowed to use a .gov domain loses yet ANOTHER notch of credibility, and confidence in their competence.“
Our “Governments“ are becoming obsolete... meanwhile we’ll continue to delegate more and more of the responsibilities to provide the utilities we need to technology companies.
Remember “TV rots your brain”? wasn’t that supposed to stay a myth?
My theory is the below are critical needs:
-dependable community who loves you unconditionally -self acceptance and compassion -acceptance of others and compassion
Meanwhile we live in an era where increasingly addictive mobile consumption takes us further away from meeting these needs by making us feel inadequate, disconnected and angry.
Intriguing? On what planet of pretend do I need to live on, in order for a statement like this to not sound like a dystopian sci-fi story where autistic serial killers who go to church, for the networking benefits, are the ones writing newspaper articles?
.... it gets worse
“I know Randy was deeply ashamed of his conduct,” his widow said soon after his passing.
Yeah. No kidding. Also sounds like your marriage to him was just splendid.
“Despite Constant’s faults, former business partner Glen Borgerding remains sympathetic and remembers him fondly.
“The reaction you get from people after hearing of his suicide is that he deserved what he got,” he said. “But I don’t feel that way. There was a lot of good in Randy and the real tragedy is that he went down this path.””
Most people think he deserved suicide... what world do we live in ?
Was his business partner the only human being with a functioning soul in the entire town?
Why do we need to have startup founders and car companies try their hand at building a new experimental electric helicopter to validate whether or not the market wants to use helicopters for ride hailing?
“Brazilian officials brandish corruption by signaling to Facebook their citizens are up for sale”
All the key folks are based in Berlin.
Seems very naive to think you can launch a mobile app based logistics business, dependent on UX fussy millennials, while managing a fleet of high maintenance automobiles, consistent and scaleable cloud infrastructure, that needs to grow geographically in cities across NA, AND fight and broker deals with municipalities along the way....
From San Francisco? Maybe. From Berlin? Hardly. With a European corporation supervising... Better off lighting the cash on fire.
In my view I see it as a primary motivator, and I think people are unaware of this.
Take a look around you next time someone starts ranting on “Save the oceans” or Climate change — and as much as you know those individuals think about what is intrinsically motivating them.
It’s very easy to prance around on a high horse and cast out moral judgements when you’ve never had to open offices internationally.
It sounds like no doubt some pockets were unapologetically made fat. It also sounds like they didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. I wonder if that’s because their then line of thinking was “paying to pay” is simply normalized in business.
As I think about where the boundary is drawn for bribery, it’s interesting to see “offering cars and computers to governments” is framed as bribery, while somehow what local municipalities are demanding from giant tech co’s (ie Mt View / Google) is not.
You nailed it when you alluded to there being people who your product can truly help, and therefore appreciate your reaching out. By focusing on whatever innate desire you truly have to help your customers, you can silence the self-doubt.
I have a lot of opinions on this as I work professionally with developers to help them “figure out sales” and sell their product into companies. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk.
nick@validsignal.com
Finding quiet space to make phone calls is a hassle.
This inexperience is a helpful pre-rec for ideating concepts and building innovative products that create massive value for the markets, but it's a crap shoot with low odds for being an effective manager: These are not people who rose through the ranks in management by demonstrating finesse in motivating groups of people into effectiveness. These types of people don't come into the company until Series B, C if ever.
Furthermore, founders are typically in hiring mode after they have secured financing - which means you only get to know them while they are not under as much pressure. Dealing with founders while they are under the additional pressure of fundraising is when the more vivid colors of personality (and harsher interactions) come out.
One experienced CEO I worked with was great at delegating AND empowering key people. He knew (and often told us) this was key to his ability to grow the company into a true enterprise. I was promoted twice in the 2 years I was there. I was employee #30 when I joined, since I'm still in touch with the CEO, I learned they just hit 350 employees. (This is a privately owned, non-VC-backed company).
One inexperienced CEO I worked with was all about delegating tasks (I suspect largely because he didn't want to do any of this work, and/or felt his employees would be better at it than him) but often struggled with empowering his people to make decisions to get done what they need. He tried though, and I suspect will be better at this. This was also partly because he was simultaneously running experiments on how to build a company with a novel style of management - and we were working together during the very early stages of this.
Another inexperienced CEO I worked for had very little ability to entrust anyone at the company to do anything, let alone make any decisions. This was all delegation, zero empowerment, and zero trust. It was a complete hindrance to being successful, and will be impossible for that company to grow very much in that style.
The successful instances were actually very early in my career; the unsuccessful much later.
The problem with many startup founders is they really have limited experience to work off of, and not yet a lot of confidence in what they are doing. It takes a lot of confidence in yourself, the person, and your business, (or faith!) to hand someone the reigns on something important and not look over their shoulder every 2 seconds.
So first, your expectations for what you want to take over need to be realistic. The founder(s) need to be on board with giving up this responsibility and it needs to fit into the role they envision you fulfilling. Also, this should go unsaid, but you need to actually believe you can do it. If you still have doubts, that's ok, we all do; but before you try convincing anyone to give you this responsibility, you should have some voice somewhere inside of you telling you that you could probably do this, and you truly want to.
I hope this is helpful
If this is true, and not taken out of context, Musk has some serious soul searching to do.