What is interesting to me is that the ethics I encountered in finance (n.b. I was in statistical arbitrage, and I'm pretty sure I'd have a different perspective if I'd worked on mortgage-backed securities) were a lot better than what I've seen in these VC-funded (or VC-hungry) startups. We tend to have this reflexive attitude in technology that people in finance are scummy, when the reality is that they're just more honest about their greed than VC-istan types.
The engineers in these companies are great. Really ambitious, really talented, and often fully believing in whatever marketing-copy "vision" the VC darling comes up with so people will be glad to work for 0.01%, vested over four years, of a company that will probably be flipped for 100-500M. I've never disliked the engineers anywhere. At least 85% of the VPs and above are fucking slime, though.
I think the "little startups" point you make has sense, but I think the ideal is a small, stable startup that also has a chance of becoming larger. I think the objective should be to build a stable and small business doing work of very high quality, and later growing-- a "get rich slowly" strategy of solving interesting and hard problems on the small scale first and eventually developing the tools and expertise to solve major ones. Maybe I'm naive, but this is what I'd like to see in my next company. A "change the world in 20 years" approach, rather than an all-out effort to bank it in 48 months that (a) leaves everyone burned out from working too hard, and (b) almost always involves ethical compromise.
What's behind the VC/build-to-flip mentality is competitive paranoia and the attempt to exploit social trends to get a first-entrant effect. Many of these social networks are winner-take-all, sure. But there are a lot of creative and technological ventures that don't have to be like that. If you're a game studio, for example, of course there is competition... but if you make a great game and another studio does so in the same year, the result is that you both win and it's a great year for games. I wish people focused more on that, and less on "destroying" other companies. Every time I interact with a company that says their business model is to "destroy <tech company X>" I always find them to be really unethical.
What is interesting to me is that the ethics I encountered in finance (n.b. I was in statistical arbitrage, and I'm pretty sure I'd have a different perspective if I'd worked on mortgage-backed securities) were a lot better than what I've seen in these VC-funded (or VC-hungry) startups. We tend to have this reflexive attitude in technology that people in finance are scummy, when the reality is that they're just more honest about their greed than VC-istan types.
The engineers in these companies are great. Really ambitious, really talented, and often fully believing in whatever marketing-copy "vision" the VC darling comes up with so people will be glad to work for 0.01%, vested over four years, of a company that will probably be flipped for 100-500M. I've never disliked the engineers anywhere. At least 85% of the VPs and above are fucking slime, though.
I think the "little startups" point you make has sense, but I think the ideal is a small, stable startup that also has a chance of becoming larger. I think the objective should be to build a stable and small business doing work of very high quality, and later growing-- a "get rich slowly" strategy of solving interesting and hard problems on the small scale first and eventually developing the tools and expertise to solve major ones. Maybe I'm naive, but this is what I'd like to see in my next company. A "change the world in 20 years" approach, rather than an all-out effort to bank it in 48 months that (a) leaves everyone burned out from working too hard, and (b) almost always involves ethical compromise.
What's behind the VC/build-to-flip mentality is competitive paranoia and the attempt to exploit social trends to get a first-entrant effect. Many of these social networks are winner-take-all, sure. But there are a lot of creative and technological ventures that don't have to be like that. If you're a game studio, for example, of course there is competition... but if you make a great game and another studio does so in the same year, the result is that you both win and it's a great year for games. I wish people focused more on that, and less on "destroying" other companies. Every time I interact with a company that says their business model is to "destroy <tech company X>" I always find them to be really unethical.