Google is making a huge shift from dominating search to dominating the browser and the mobile OS, which have basically become the platforms on which most modern technology is going to be built.
That's an incorrect overgeneralization. Not all startups are alike, as I'm sure you know.
If the employees get screwed over, then it doesn't sound like they are valued. I see many startups where the employees are super valued assets, get a decent salary AND they do what they love.
I work at an early stage startup, and I absolutely love what I do, who I work for/with, and I make a lot of money. I have stock options, but it's just icing on the cake.
Evidence that "most" good founders were employees at hot startups, and that most important companies that generate the most wealth occur in 'networks of success':
Interesting. Atlanta security startups have significant pedigrees. It's the same in chip companies, where founders are older and many trace their roots back to Fairchild. Among consumer internet companies, most good founders have not been part of a successful company before.
Obviously, that's true of some startups, but very wrong in others.
Working at Weebly, you have similar hours to BigCo (although you'll be 10x more productive), paid market rate (or slightly above), and receive your fair share of the outcome.
You also get to work with a fun group of people who are obsessed with being productive, and not much else. Maybe we're the exception, but we don't care if you're a 9-5 type of person, if you're very productive during those hours.
Working at a startup doesn't have to be shit, just because some startups are.
Agreed - if someone enjoys their startup life, more power to them in that there is nothing that pays better than enjoying your situation. For someone who is looking at it as a financial play but sitting in a startup that is grinding them down to nothing, they are most likely making an extremely bad investment.
That's fine, I'm just surprised you'd make such a sweeping generalization. Not all BigCos are the same--why would all startups be the same?
I'm not a startup cheerleader -- "come change the world!" is the most overused pitch line ever -- but there are tons of examples (37signals, some YC teams, some of the larger NY startups) countering this generalization.
You really think this would be true across a spectrum of companies with different funding situations, different revenue streams, and different user bases?
I don't get this sentiment--it completely ignores the differences between mature and fledgling startups.
It's clearly not all unicorns and cupcakes, but there's a difference between "work for us at 2/3rds market plus 1%" and "we're VC-backed, work for us at market and get health plus other nice perks." Startups are not uniform.
Max is right. As an employee, Startups do beat the shit out of you and if the startup shuts down after a year, you gotta begin all over again from where you started a year back.
You take almost as much risk and work just as many hours as when you work for yourself. Except you own very little in equity (as a developer, usually less than 10%) and you have no control over what happens with the company (usually when VC takes over, they will be trying to make an ROI asap at the expense of any long-term plans).
I really don't see what this has to do with HIV. There is only a passing mention of HIV on the page. And I think this constant association of Africa with HIV is insulting - there is a higher HIV prevalence amongst gays than among Africans, yet there is no instant association always.
For african technology to progress, these negative associations have to be removed from peoples minds - starting from you, reading this comment.
Not that it couldn't move faster, and I'm all for more Python web frameworks, but Django has certainly made significant progress.
I suspect most people (that is, developers who use the framework but don't necessarily contribute to it) probably couldn't tell that a BDFL has basically been MIA - it doesn't feel like development's stopped altogether (although again, yes, it can obviously be sped up, everyone's got their own pet features, etc.)
Having attended the last couple of US iterations of Djangocon, being a close follower of the django-dev list, etc. that's not at all my interpretation. Also, spend a bit of time here: https://code.djangoproject.com/ and I don't see how you could come away with the impression that Django development is moribund.
And while I like Bottle and Flask, their aim is widely different from Django's.
I would argue that's not quite the case. So if they solve different problems you could hypothetically use them in the same projects? Possible, but hardly the case in real world scenarios.
You could certainly use Django or Flask to implement the same functionality, but I was trying to use the word "problem" in a wider sense than that.
In my real word scenarios I'm often faced with requirements of vastly different scale and highly variable deadlines. I also have to consider the likelihood of the code being added to in the future - potentially by someone else on my team who is less experienced by me. All these things taken together - and more - constitute what I am calling a "problem".
My Django apps all run to thousands of lines of code and are well documented and thoroughly tested. It's fairly routine for the lifecycle of these apps to stretch over years, with an ongoing requirement for maintenance and new features. If I need to create a social network for my company which ties into their existing information sources, then Django is where I start.
On the other hand, my Flask apps tend to run to the small hundreds of lines of code. They're usually hacked together quickly for a very specific use case and there's very little in the way of documentation. They might not even work correctly except in fairly limited circumstances (e.g. no time to write form validation code) and might get thrown away after being used a small number of times. If I need to create a tool to allow users to purge parts of our Varnish cache then Flask is where I start.
Perhaps not everybody uses the two frameworks in quite the same way, but I find that they complement each other well.
That's interesting. Now that you mention it, I've noticed my Flask apps run a much tighter LOC count. I always assumed that was because I was achieving the same solution but in a simpler way. In any case, I migrated to Flask because I'm much happier coding in it. My admin apps are blueprint css + some really simple views that take as much effort to write as I would be spending tweaking the Admin classes in Django. Maybe it's time to have a look at Django again, now that Holovaty is making a comeback eah? hehe.
Why should it move fast? Many excellent software don't move fast and are a please, think Vim or Putty. Moreover moving often means adding the last stuff en vogue, and it adds bloat and dependencies.
It's too bad that you're being downvoted by people who only know Django and not Pyramid, Flask, Twisted Web, Nevow, or any other serious Python web framework.
For the record, I didn't vote (and generally don't vote on HN). But maxklein's comment wasn't really constructive and didn't offer any specific criticism. I've said before in replies to his comments that I'd love to hear specific constructive criticism:
I have run endless tests comparing Android revenue to iOS revenue. It's pretty difficult to make money from Android with the same apps. Either with Ads or Paid - the Android version of the exact same app gets less downloaded (even if free), the revenue from Ads dies out quicker and if it's paid, it will get bought much, much less.
I believe the core problem is that there is no clear discovery mechanism. With iOS people use iTunes to sync. They open the app store and can try to discover new and unknown apps that happen to be in the charts. The same does not exist in Android. New apps don't get discovered.
Almost all apps in Android making money are externally marketed or viral. Making an app for android is like making a website - nobody will come unless you do something else. iOS however, does the marketing for you.
- Anecdotally, some (most?) of the "normal users" (non techies) I have seen use their android, don't have their Google account set up on the device. I would find it very interesting to know what percentage of people actually end up doing that, because on Android it's optional.
- If you don't have your Google account set up on your phone, you can't access the marketplace and some people don't understand how that works and what the marketplace has got to do with their Google account. Normal users associate their phone with their cell provider and don't even realize that Android is made by Google, etc.
I simply think that not that many people are installing and setting up apps on their phones.
This will probably change in the future. Ironically, this is very similar to the Mac vs PC wars in the 90s, but my belief is that Android will be the dominant player in a few years and even though, the market is small (so far), that that will change a lot.
Besides.. having a smaller piece of a bigger pie seems like worthwhile in the long run.
I was under the impression that Ice Cream Sandwich will require user to enter the credit card and associate it with their gmail account to activate the device? Is that true? I remember reading something about this.
That … seems stupid? And I don’t really think that can be true.
I don’t even have a credit card (like many Europeans I only have a bank card) and I’m also not enthusiastic about giving my payment information for just using something or even just looking around.
Won't this change as the need for iTunes and external synchronization goes away? Apple has made a big deal about future iOS devices not requiring a PC for sync. Does the app store on iOS devices provide similar discovery mechanisms or will iOS apps soon find themselves in a similar position as Android?
I wouldn't think so. The only thing that's changing is the requirement to plug an iOS device into an iTunes-running PC to do OS updates and backups.
And there's a very large contingent of users who rarely (if ever) did those things after the initial setup anyway. So if cutting that cord was going to negatively effect sales, I'd expect that's long since been reflected in the numbers.
All that said, I have no idea what discovery mechanisms people think are so key in iTunes vs Android market. The only apps I "discovered" via iTunes were in the top lists and dev picks; features I'm pretty sure every app store has in stand-alone marketplace apps, on-device apps and web stores.
The big difference to me, between iTunes and Android marketplace is that when I search for an app in iTunes I don't really even think about getting the 'right' one. Sure, there are some "Angry Bird Cheats!" sorts of apps out there, but precious few apps are of the shameful knockoff/deliberately misleading variety.
With Android marketplace, last I waded through it, there remained significant confusion over knockoffs and misleading apps and non-trivial effort required to try to ensure that I'd found the 'right' app and then all sorts of doubt raised by those UAC prompts. (why would a social game want access to my call log? was this really the right app? what the hell did i just install?)
If Google really wanted to sell more apps, I think they'd clean that up. But (as I've said before) I get this feeling that Google really doesn't care for apps. And would much prefer it if people just used the browser.
Is it a statement that will always be true, and that has always been true? If it may not be continuously true temporarily, can it still be described as a fact?
I really fail to see how anyone can see racism in this. The current people trying to make it big in silicon valley now did not start the process now, they started 10 or 15 years ago when they started fiddling around with computers or learning to code or reading business books. And it's at that stage that the current audience was created, and not right now. The people applying and the selection is just a result of that process.
And clearly, many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now. The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them.
And in any case, there is this theory: if you pick any group of people at all, there are going to be a few people who are simply more able to do many things. Let's say these people are more talented and more intelligent. These people tend to work on what is currently 'intellectually trendy'. For example, a while back they would have been painters, another while back, they would have been writers, another while they would have been physicists, now they are technologists. These people search out a trendy intellectual effort and then spend their time developing their abilities there. This 'trend' is different for different groups, depending on the media that they are exposed to, and what the people around them are talking about.
Groups in America are pretty segregated, and there is a form of intellectual segregation betwen men and women. It leads to gender specific roles. It also leads to the effect observed above: Smart black guys did not start fiddling with computers 15 years ago, so they are not currently active in the tech industry.
And clearly, many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now. The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them.
You use words like "clearly" and "probably" but provide neither explanation nor evidence to back up your suppositions. Clearly, you expect your audience thinks exactly the way you do and will probably confirm your bias.
The "clearly" comes out of logic. If you assume that my "result" statement is correct, then the reason would also have to be correct.
Do you think African American students, 15 years ago, were spending time studying how to use computers? I think it's rather likely because:
- I've never heard of this
- Such playing-with-computers is something that was confined to the somewhat richer and educated people in American society, which the african-americans were not, 15 years ago.
I doubt that my audience thinks the exact way I do, and I doubt I have any bias that needs to be confirmed.
I'm not talking of an individual, I'm speaking of a general trend. And by the way, "graduating from MIT" means nothing to me. I went to a university, you did too, the university you went to does not mean much (to me).
And by the way, "graduating from MIT" means nothing to me. I went to a university, you did too, the university you went to does not mean much (to me).
Good for you.
When you say you've "never heard of" black people learning how to use computers, it behooves me to refute you with the fact that not only are there are plenty of black people who know how to use computers, but there are plenty of black people graduating from the best computer science programs in the world.
Graduating from MIT don't mean you would be beneficial to starting a tech company
OK, now you're grasping at straws.
First it was that there are no black hackers because black people didn't put in the work to learn how to use computers. Now you're claiming that black hackers from good schools may just not be the kind of hackers beneficial to starting a tech company.
When you're reduced to spouting really bad versions of No True Scotsman, you should probably move on. It's just embarrassing now.
>Such playing-with-computers is something that was confined to the somewhat richer and educated people in American society, which the african-americans were not, 15 years ago.
That explains the "many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now" part of your sentence. It does not explain the "the most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them" part of your sentence. Hence the request from raganwald and myself for a source to back this up.
You don't need statistics to tell you that the programming community 10-15 years ago was overwhelming male and white/Asian. Some things are obvious by inspection. Do you seriously doubt this? Would it really change your mind about anything if the OP wasted 15 minutes trying to find a study proving it?
"You use words like 'clearly' and 'probably' but provide neither explanation nor evidence to back up your suppositions."
Maybe because it would take all of 12 seconds of Googling to confirm that this is probably (at least partially) correct? We all know what the statistics say and what they don't say, so asking other people to do your homework for you in place of actually contributing something is lame. I meant granted, the original comment was a bit simplistic, but the lack of statistics isn't the issue.
I read an artcile suggesting that people believe certain things about race and bias but that the evidence is not there to support their beliefs. I read an artcile that suggests that people construct explanations to fit their world view. I'm merely pointing out that off-hand comments like this exactly fit the behaviour described in the article: Constructing explanations to fit a pre-existing set of beliefs.
I have a great deal of personal intest in the subject of race and bias, and I assure you that in twelve seconds of Googling, I will find enough conflicting evidence and explanations to suggest that the causes for bias are complex.
If I looked at a mountain of conflicting evidence with a predetermined belief, I'm sure I could find validation for whatever I already believed. So, I don't doubt for a moment that if you already agree with these statements, twelve seconds with Google will confirm our suspicions, just as I am sure that someone who vehemently disagrees with these statements will also find confirmation of their disagreement with twelve seconds of Googling.
UPDATE: To be clear, I'm not saying that Max is wrong: I don't live in the US, much less in SV. How should I know what American women and minorities are thinking? But what I am saying is that statements like this in a forum like this suggest not only that the speaker has preconceived beliefs about this, but that he also expects evryone else to share those beliefs.
His explanation sounds believable and unless you supply a believable one or maybe one backed by data and other empirical evidence, we'll going to use his.
That's how arguing works in real life when the object is vast and non-deterministic (like, population).
>The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them.
Is your stated reason ("it just did not occur to them") more likely than "they didn't have the opportunity to take those steps because of (economics/insert reason)"? A quick Google search give this link: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1998/spring_education_darl... which indicated that in the 1990's, minority students generally had access to fewer or lower-quality resources than white students.
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