8 ms·

Silicon Valley: no country for young men

24 points by vdalal 4y ago

humanwhosits 4y ago
Please just post an link to a non-paywall mirror, a link to the paywall article is useless to most people.
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html : Are paywalls ok? It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Massive paywall
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Look out, Redditards gonna flag you for complaining.
NonNefarious 4y ago
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Not much missed. It’s literally a waste of electrons pushed across wires and time i will never gain back.
- desperadovisa 4y ago
  Not pointless for those of us who have an FT subscription…
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    Actually even worse than pointless for FT subscribers...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jleyank 4y ago
    Yeah, but you don’t need HN to tell you to look (I assume you check what you pay for). There’s a whole lot of these paywalled things and they’re all just noise unless there’s a free alternative.
    - desperadovisa 4y ago
      My stories on the FT app: * Ukraine says Kherson counter-offensive against Russia has begun * Inside Liz Truss's not so special relationship with the US * Ukraine war updates: White House says Russia has "pulled resources" in response to Ukraine offensive * EU to unveil emergency measures to curb soaring energy prices * Nasa cancels launch of moon mission after engine trouble * US justice department says it has reviewed Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents --ad break-- * Crypto and climate change: can web3 help get us to net zero? * Is $110mn man Jake Freeman lucky gambler or conviction investor? Then it goes into their "Explore" functionality, billed as, "Take a break from the news with our recommended stories for you": * ECB chief economist sees benefits of raising rates in "smaller increments" * Honda and LG to build $4.4bn US battery plant * Olaf Scholz outlines new EU vision with call for European air defense scheme * Investors increase bets against euro as energy crisis intensifies ...and so on. So no, this being here is not "useless".
      - jleyank 4y ago
        Ah, so posting to HN is an ad, then?
- standardUser 4y ago
  Usually someone posts a link to bypass the paywall (see other comments).
blue_box 4y ago
https://archive.ph/LfYaU https://archive.ph/LfYaU
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  Imagine reading this vacuous nothing-burger and thinking to yourself "Yep, that's what I'm paying $40 a month for." The only interesting part of the entire article is Peter Thiel railing against the fact that startup founders are getting older, mostly because Thiel seems to be an opportunist who wants fresh meat to exploit. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times might be thrilled by the idea of Thiel investing in them, but they're going to be more cautious because they've already got the bumps, bruises, and callouses of being in the industry. The reason that so many founders were so young a couple decades ago is precisely because they were at an age where they could imagine online services at a time when even the act of purchasing a domain was seen to be a weird new thing. So they got rich off of building the infrastructure and services of the modern web. It was easier from a market standpoint, even if it was harder technically because they had to help invent or fund a lot of the things that ultimately became the web we know today. It's like complaining that nobody since Newton or Einstein has come up with new universal laws and ignoring the fact that it's harder to just observe new things and report on them than it used to be. It's not enough to witness an apple falling from a tree anymore, now you have to build an LHC and smash exotic particles together. Coincidentally, it's what the "young guns" who are web 3.0 proponents are missing: they didn't experience the web BEFORE there was a web 2.0, and they assume that it is the way it is today because of some nefarious plot. They sit there on their pile of shitcoins howling in the wind of a better tomorrow without recognizing that web centralization was a feature, not a bug. Nobody wants Usenet anymore. For the unwashed masses, it's a dystopia. Worse, they put the cart before the horse when they create tokens and then try to come up with ways for these things to actually be useful. They want to get rich from being the idea guy.
  - swivelmaster 4y ago
    Wow, great comment.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
yrgulation 4y ago
Appears to firmly contradict this: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-average-age-of-successful-silicon-valley-founders.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-avera... Makes me wonder if news agency workers just pull stuff out of their behinds.
- adventured 4y ago
  I usually drop this list [0] into threads about stories pushing the super young founder myth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18213942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18213942 The only thing particularly interesting about the super young founder myth, is just how drastically off the mark it is. The very few outliers are just that. [0] a big list of founder ages for prominent tech companies
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Thanks for that - bookmarked! Shows there is still a chance ;)
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Evergreen. How VICE choses stories https://youtu.be/Ia7fUQXskvA https://youtu.be/Ia7fUQXskvA
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    I can only begin to imagine the harm incompetent media does to societies. I am not for censorship but there should be some standards.
- desperadovisa 4y ago
  Should probably tell people that's from 2018, and the FT article is from today. [0] Unless, of course, you wouldn't want people to know that! (: [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180208022213/https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-average-age-of-successful-silicon-valley-founders.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180208022213/https://www.inc.c...
labrador 4y ago
Young founders are into crypto and it seems to me Silicon Valley is not the center of gravity in that area
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Probably because more people in silicon valley are technical than other places, and they know it's mostly bullshit.
  - jarjoura 4y ago
    It's honestly surreal to me the amount of hype crypto is getting right now. No one can even articulate why they love it, other than the hype itself.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      Easy money is probably the most exciting thing on planet earth. And probably always has been.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
radiojasper 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32632286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32632286
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kodah 4y ago
With respect to founders, there were a lot of well-known founders (read: founders that found success) that were quite young - as the article points out. In my experience, most founders are in their 40's. I've always written this off because it takes a lot of connections and knowledge to build a successful company. Even navigating the disruptor field takes some life experience, patience, and awareness. I think young founders tend to succeed in the disruption space and the list of things to be disrupted easily shrinks with every giving year. At the end of the day, I don't think it's too worrisome. With respect to engineers the opposite is true. I've heard at, many but not all, companies I've worked for obvious biases for age. There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". Let's be real, Senior is the first tenured level at many companies. Nobody has too much experience for Senior, especially thrown on top of the fact that levels mean nothing across companies. It's a better signal for what pay and benefits a prospective employee may desire or be comfortable with.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". I don't think this type of remark shows age bias. I think it relates to what you remark on later on in your post: pay and benefits. Basically, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior" is a euphemism for "this candidate's past experience indicates that they will want more pay and benefits than we are willing to give them".
  - kodah 4y ago
    The people who I've heard say that definitely had space to say exactly that if they had wanted, so I don't think that's true.
NonNefarious 4y ago
Useless post to an inaccessible article. Remove it. Oh and be sure to flag anyone pointing out this fact again, because you're not getting enough attention on Reddit.

24 points by vdalal 4y ago

humanwhosits 4y ago

Please just post an link to a non-paywall mirror, a link to the paywall article is useless to most people.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html : Are paywalls ok? It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Massive paywall

NonNefarious 4y ago
Look out, Redditards gonna flag you for complaining.

NonNefarious 4y ago

yrgulation 4y ago
Not much missed. It’s literally a waste of electrons pushed across wires and time i will never gain back.
desperadovisa 4y ago
Not pointless for those of us who have an FT subscription…
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Actually even worse than pointless for FT subscribers...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jleyank 4y ago
  Yeah, but you don’t need HN to tell you to look (I assume you check what you pay for). There’s a whole lot of these paywalled things and they’re all just noise unless there’s a free alternative.
  - desperadovisa 4y ago
    My stories on the FT app: * Ukraine says Kherson counter-offensive against Russia has begun * Inside Liz Truss's not so special relationship with the US * Ukraine war updates: White House says Russia has "pulled resources" in response to Ukraine offensive * EU to unveil emergency measures to curb soaring energy prices * Nasa cancels launch of moon mission after engine trouble * US justice department says it has reviewed Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents --ad break-- * Crypto and climate change: can web3 help get us to net zero? * Is $110mn man Jake Freeman lucky gambler or conviction investor? Then it goes into their "Explore" functionality, billed as, "Take a break from the news with our recommended stories for you": * ECB chief economist sees benefits of raising rates in "smaller increments" * Honda and LG to build $4.4bn US battery plant * Olaf Scholz outlines new EU vision with call for European air defense scheme * Investors increase bets against euro as energy crisis intensifies ...and so on. So no, this being here is not "useless".
    - jleyank 4y ago
      Ah, so posting to HN is an ad, then?
standardUser 4y ago
Usually someone posts a link to bypass the paywall (see other comments).

blue_box 4y ago

https://archive.ph/LfYaU https://archive.ph/LfYaU

MisterBastahrd 4y ago
Imagine reading this vacuous nothing-burger and thinking to yourself "Yep, that's what I'm paying $40 a month for." The only interesting part of the entire article is Peter Thiel railing against the fact that startup founders are getting older, mostly because Thiel seems to be an opportunist who wants fresh meat to exploit. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times might be thrilled by the idea of Thiel investing in them, but they're going to be more cautious because they've already got the bumps, bruises, and callouses of being in the industry. The reason that so many founders were so young a couple decades ago is precisely because they were at an age where they could imagine online services at a time when even the act of purchasing a domain was seen to be a weird new thing. So they got rich off of building the infrastructure and services of the modern web. It was easier from a market standpoint, even if it was harder technically because they had to help invent or fund a lot of the things that ultimately became the web we know today. It's like complaining that nobody since Newton or Einstein has come up with new universal laws and ignoring the fact that it's harder to just observe new things and report on them than it used to be. It's not enough to witness an apple falling from a tree anymore, now you have to build an LHC and smash exotic particles together. Coincidentally, it's what the "young guns" who are web 3.0 proponents are missing: they didn't experience the web BEFORE there was a web 2.0, and they assume that it is the way it is today because of some nefarious plot. They sit there on their pile of shitcoins howling in the wind of a better tomorrow without recognizing that web centralization was a feature, not a bug. Nobody wants Usenet anymore. For the unwashed masses, it's a dystopia. Worse, they put the cart before the horse when they create tokens and then try to come up with ways for these things to actually be useful. They want to get rich from being the idea guy.
- swivelmaster 4y ago
  Wow, great comment.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago

yrgulation 4y ago

Appears to firmly contradict this: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-average-age-of-successful-silicon-valley-founders.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-avera... Makes me wonder if news agency workers just pull stuff out of their behinds.

adventured 4y ago
I usually drop this list [0] into threads about stories pushing the super young founder myth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18213942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18213942 The only thing particularly interesting about the super young founder myth, is just how drastically off the mark it is. The very few outliers are just that. [0] a big list of founder ages for prominent tech companies
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Thanks for that - bookmarked! Shows there is still a chance ;)
dmitriid 4y ago
Evergreen. How VICE choses stories https://youtu.be/Ia7fUQXskvA https://youtu.be/Ia7fUQXskvA
- yrgulation 4y ago
  I can only begin to imagine the harm incompetent media does to societies. I am not for censorship but there should be some standards.
desperadovisa 4y ago
Should probably tell people that's from 2018, and the FT article is from today. [0] Unless, of course, you wouldn't want people to know that! (: [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180208022213/https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/youll-never-guess-average-age-of-successful-silicon-valley-founders.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180208022213/https://www.inc.c...

labrador 4y ago

Young founders are into crypto and it seems to me Silicon Valley is not the center of gravity in that area

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Probably because more people in silicon valley are technical than other places, and they know it's mostly bullshit.
- jarjoura 4y ago
  It's honestly surreal to me the amount of hype crypto is getting right now. No one can even articulate why they love it, other than the hype itself.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    Easy money is probably the most exciting thing on planet earth. And probably always has been.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

radiojasper 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32632286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32632286

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kodah 4y ago

With respect to founders, there were a lot of well-known founders (read: founders that found success) that were quite young - as the article points out. In my experience, most founders are in their 40's. I've always written this off because it takes a lot of connections and knowledge to build a successful company. Even navigating the disruptor field takes some life experience, patience, and awareness. I think young founders tend to succeed in the disruption space and the list of things to be disrupted easily shrinks with every giving year. At the end of the day, I don't think it's too worrisome. With respect to engineers the opposite is true. I've heard at, many but not all, companies I've worked for obvious biases for age. There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". Let's be real, Senior is the first tenured level at many companies. Nobody has too much experience for Senior, especially thrown on top of the fact that levels mean nothing across companies. It's a better signal for what pay and benefits a prospective employee may desire or be comfortable with.

pdonis 4y ago
> There's a borderline obsession with youthfulness, at times, in engineering that is disturbing. Usually the form these conversations take is, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior". I don't think this type of remark shows age bias. I think it relates to what you remark on later on in your post: pay and benefits. Basically, "this candidate has too much experience for Senior" is a euphemism for "this candidate's past experience indicates that they will want more pay and benefits than we are willing to give them".
- kodah 4y ago
  The people who I've heard say that definitely had space to say exactly that if they had wanted, so I don't think that's true.

NonNefarious 4y ago

Useless post to an inaccessible article. Remove it. Oh and be sure to flag anyone pointing out this fact again, because you're not getting enough attention on Reddit.