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This was written back when YC was a few companies per batch and all of the biggest successes were yet to materialize. Today? Stripe: 2,500+, AirBnB: 6,300+,

This was written back when YC was a few companies per batch and all of the biggest successes were yet to materialize. Today? Stripe: 2,500+, AirBnB: 6,300+, Dropbox: 2,300+ I wonder if this stance changed a dozen years later now that there are several multi-thousand person organizations in the YC network. Does PG think differently today after seeing several examples of large companies run by people he knows personally, or would he tell a talented hacker not to work at Stripe because it is too big?

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s the same with the article “Great Hackers” and Graham’s previous impassioned advocacy of private offices for every knowledge worker, even in dense urban centers. It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this. Instead he and other “thought leaders” around VC want to be viewed as progressive, forward-thinking people with an advocacy to avoid commodity thinking towards workers & their lives and workspaces. But it’s all lip service - bluster so Graham can sound like he’s the good guy but actually just function as the same exploitative commodity thinking old boys club kind of investor privately. All the PR credit without actually putting his money where his mouth is.
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  pg has never actually run a large workforce, so I take all of his advice on this subject with a (huge) grain of salt.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    It’s interesting to see it in contrast to Joel Spolsky, who actually did put his money where his mouth is and give employees private offices, even in Manhattan, and has continued doubling down on private offices as the right strategy year after year.
- ptero 6y ago
  > It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this. That is a strange sentiment, sorry. PG is not some omnipotent being that can "ensure" anything for the companies he originally helped launch. His "enforcement" options are probably minimal, based on his (by now many times diluted) ownership. The best he can do is advocate, leveraging a lot of respect he still commands in the startup community. And this is what he is doing there. My 2c.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    Nah sorry, the leaders of organizations set the values and expectations, and if they make it a cultural priority, others will follow. He is just profiting from pushing worse working conditions onto the end employee - conditions he has himself criticized but nonetheless does not actually put his money where his mouth is to engage in much more direct advocacy or culture building within YC & its companies - most likely because his views actually are hypocritical. When it was himself and a few people dealing with a small family of startups, then he cared. He did not want those people treated in a commodity way. When his stake is in a nameless batch of companies each trying to grow huge staffs while offering very poor total comp (even accounting for equity) on false promises that YC startup workplaces would let you avoid the bureaucratic blockers of established companies that pay better, his view has shifted to see those workers as commodities, not to be invested in to do good work, but to be given the most threadbare open office working environments with the least investment and high built in expectations of turnover due to employees gradually realizing how poor the total comp is (even accounting for equity). YC is a sort of nicely branded start-up mill. Not an incubator, but a mill. This is obviously much lower status than what Graham wants to be known for, so he talks a big game like it’s a very productivity-centric incubator environment, while tacitly endorsing practices that make it more like a mill, with poor commodity treatment of workers in terms of total comp and workplace conditions. “Diluted ownership” is a poor attempt at an excuse for that.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Sales. Mature companies need sales departments.
- geofft 6y ago
  patio11's recent article addresses this and is probably more informative on the subject: https://kalzumeus.com/2020/10/09/four-years-at-stripe/ https://kalzumeus.com/2020/10/09/four-years-at-stripe/ > In a way, every scaling startup is an experiment in empirical microeconomics research on “What parts of the typical corporate form are necessary and which are pageantry which we only keep around due to anchoring, the sunk cost fallacy, and tradition?” Every time a startup bites the bullet and hires a VP of Sales, a lifecycle email copywriter, a retirements benefits administrator, or a cook, count that as a published result saying “Yep, we found this to be necessary.”
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  They also need large departments for everything else: Accounting, engineering, HR, legal, facilities management, marketing, IT, customer service, etc. You simply can't run a huge business without a large number of employees, and you need a deep management hierarchy for that to remotely work.
  - GeorgeTirebiter 6y ago
    Management guru Tom Peters has claimed all you need to do is outsource; and the minimal corporation is a CEO with a computer & phone. This was in the 90s, tho.
    - andi999 6y ago
      True. But services you need all the time are or at least should be much cheaper in house. I mean your inhouse lawyer probably costs 100/h, outsourced 400/h.
      - internet_user 6y ago
        Where do you find such cheap in-house counsel? just 100/hr? Never seen them this cheap, maybe out of school, but experienced counsel for 100/hr?

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It’s the same with the article “Great Hackers” and Graham’s previous impassioned advocacy of private offices for every knowledge worker, even in dense urban centers. It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this. Instead he and other “thought leaders” around VC want to be viewed as progressive, forward-thinking people with an advocacy to avoid commodity thinking towards workers & their lives and workspaces. But it’s all lip service - bluster so Graham can sound like he’s the good guy but actually just function as the same exploitative commodity thinking old boys club kind of investor privately. All the PR credit without actually putting his money where his mouth is.

tomnipotent 6y ago
pg has never actually run a large workforce, so I take all of his advice on this subject with a (huge) grain of salt.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  It’s interesting to see it in contrast to Joel Spolsky, who actually did put his money where his mouth is and give employees private offices, even in Manhattan, and has continued doubling down on private offices as the right strategy year after year.
ptero 6y ago
> It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this. That is a strange sentiment, sorry. PG is not some omnipotent being that can "ensure" anything for the companies he originally helped launch. His "enforcement" options are probably minimal, based on his (by now many times diluted) ownership. The best he can do is advocate, leveraging a lot of respect he still commands in the startup community. And this is what he is doing there. My 2c.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Nah sorry, the leaders of organizations set the values and expectations, and if they make it a cultural priority, others will follow. He is just profiting from pushing worse working conditions onto the end employee - conditions he has himself criticized but nonetheless does not actually put his money where his mouth is to engage in much more direct advocacy or culture building within YC & its companies - most likely because his views actually are hypocritical. When it was himself and a few people dealing with a small family of startups, then he cared. He did not want those people treated in a commodity way. When his stake is in a nameless batch of companies each trying to grow huge staffs while offering very poor total comp (even accounting for equity) on false promises that YC startup workplaces would let you avoid the bureaucratic blockers of established companies that pay better, his view has shifted to see those workers as commodities, not to be invested in to do good work, but to be given the most threadbare open office working environments with the least investment and high built in expectations of turnover due to employees gradually realizing how poor the total comp is (even accounting for equity). YC is a sort of nicely branded start-up mill. Not an incubator, but a mill. This is obviously much lower status than what Graham wants to be known for, so he talks a big game like it’s a very productivity-centric incubator environment, while tacitly endorsing practices that make it more like a mill, with poor commodity treatment of workers in terms of total comp and workplace conditions. “Diluted ownership” is a poor attempt at an excuse for that.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

Sales. Mature companies need sales departments.

geofft 6y ago
patio11's recent article addresses this and is probably more informative on the subject: https://kalzumeus.com/2020/10/09/four-years-at-stripe/ https://kalzumeus.com/2020/10/09/four-years-at-stripe/ > In a way, every scaling startup is an experiment in empirical microeconomics research on “What parts of the typical corporate form are necessary and which are pageantry which we only keep around due to anchoring, the sunk cost fallacy, and tradition?” Every time a startup bites the bullet and hires a VP of Sales, a lifecycle email copywriter, a retirements benefits administrator, or a cook, count that as a published result saying “Yep, we found this to be necessary.”
CydeWeys 6y ago
They also need large departments for everything else: Accounting, engineering, HR, legal, facilities management, marketing, IT, customer service, etc. You simply can't run a huge business without a large number of employees, and you need a deep management hierarchy for that to remotely work.
- GeorgeTirebiter 6y ago
  Management guru Tom Peters has claimed all you need to do is outsource; and the minimal corporation is a CEO with a computer & phone. This was in the 90s, tho.
  - andi999 6y ago
    True. But services you need all the time are or at least should be much cheaper in house. I mean your inhouse lawyer probably costs 100/h, outsourced 400/h.
    - internet_user 6y ago
      Where do you find such cheap in-house counsel? just 100/hr? Never seen them this cheap, maybe out of school, but experienced counsel for 100/hr?