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SPINDOWN

                                             August    18, 2010
                                             September 25, 2013

 From Chapter 6, note 2 of the book
 "Hackers and Painters" (paraphrase):

  "Want to get people to work like
  they're at a startup?  You need to
  pay them like they're at a startup."

     Poorly with a vauge promise
     of equity in the enterprise          It used to be pretty common for
     but only after you've made           startups to lowball employees,
     the boss rich?                       though supposedly, of late kids
                                          out of school have been getting
                                          120k to work the deranged
  But in any case, I would                startups infesting San Francisco.
  think adequate pay is the
  absolute *minimum* you                      Most likely there's some
  need to do.                                 variation, and it could
                                              easily be Graham knows
  One of the things you get                   better than I about the
  at a startup is the sense                   averages.
  that you're a master of                                
  your own destiny.                                   (There are lots of    
                                                      cute games they can
  Give me a big chunk of the                          play though...        
  equity, let me make the                             like lay-offs         
  decisions, plus pay me a                            *right before* the    
  full salary (or close to                            IPO, to reduce the    
  it) plus benefits... sure                           number of ways they    
  I'll take that deal.                                have to split.)    
                                                                     
  Actually: the people putting
  up the money often like to
  pretend that they're experts
  in everything, and demand
  near complete control.

  So venture capital kind-of
  sucks, unless of course, you're
  a take-the-money and run con
  artist.  It could be that's a
  problem for the VC industry.

                                          
    In another footnote, he talks about        
    how a woman interested in the outdoors     
    opened an outdoors portal to work on       
    what she was interested in, and he         
    sneers at this: you can't trust your       
    judgement if you care about what           
    you're doing.                              
                                               
       That's a real problem, all right,      
       but it also contradicts advice you         Why would you want to
       hear from all quarters.                    spend ten years of
                                                  your life on a project
          "was anyone ever a success              you don't believe in?
           doing something they
           didn't love?"  -- ?

      Jamie Zawinski argues that Netscape
      lost it's way when it stopped
      designing software for humans and
      switched to doing corporate tools.          Paul Graham emphasises the
                                                  importance of letting hackers
                                                  use the tools they like (but
                                                  what if their judgment is
                                                  clouded by desire?).

                                                      HACKING_GREATNESS






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