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Based on his argument: Fewer people are doing a lot more thanks to being good at automation. It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, no

Based on his argument: Fewer people are doing a lot more thanks to being good at automation. It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation. The past three years, the YC crowd has really tried hard to justify wealth disparities, gentrification and generally treating employees like garbage, as part of their Objectivist agenda. Paul, employees do the automation, not the founders.

wittycardio 4y ago
Pretty clear that these are people who want to fuck you over. Silicon Valley elites have accumulated enough power to come mask off. Entitled dirtbags who profited off government funded science and technology who've never created an ounce of value in their lives.
- yetanotherforg 4y ago
  Thank you. Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Kind of how the libertarian musk fans ignore how much aid his companies have gotten from the t taxpayers. In the heads of somebody who believed The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged were bibles, there are 1 or 2 people doing 99% of all work in the companies.
  - wittycardio 4y ago
    Most progress has come from universities, defense and government funding. These losers build an app and proclaim themselves gurus on the future. It's insane that people fall for it.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Progress doesn't come from funding, and funding doesn't come from the government. People make progress. People pay taxes.
      - wittycardio 4y ago
        Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps.
        TurboHaskal 4y ago
        But what about the yet another distributed key store we built?
        yetanotherforg 4y ago
        I feel like you're making fun of Riak :)
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        > Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps. Progress comes from all sorts of places. Scientific progress come from scientists. That doesn't result in things better in my life without a huge number of other people doing things well and efficiently. Both of which includes anything people will pay for, including b2b saas apps. Try having a pandemic lockdown without Amazon-level fulfillment in place. Thankfully we didn't have to.
        wittycardio 4y ago
        No not all work is equal. Progress is a rare thing. Do not equate all forms of work to progress. People will pay good money for women to fart on their faces. That's not valuable work. Neither is building shitty apps.
        yetanotherforg 4y ago
        > Do not equate all forms of work to progress. People will pay good money for women to fart on their faces. Depends entirely upon the quality of the fart.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      Progress comes from individuals. MIT did not endow Claude Shannon with divine knowledge of Boolean algebra and information theory. He discovered it himself.
      - wittycardio 4y ago
        Claude Shannon was able to do what he was able to do because of the ample research funding and the academic environment. I have great respect for people like Claude Shannon but they require an ecosystem to be able to do their work.
        Dracophoenix 4y ago
        There were plenty of electrical engineers at MIT working on differential analyzers when Shannon worked on his paper. Why Shannon and not them? Funding and ecosystems don't make technological revolutions anymore than they make cures for diseases. After all, the four papers that revolutionized physics in the early 20th century were composed by a 24-year old patent clerk. Someone has to do the job of thinking and putting those ideas to paper. This is a requirement of any great idea irrespective of funding or people. Thinking is an individual pursuit for an individual reward.
        wittycardio 4y ago
        There is both an individual contribution and a societal contribution. No one is denying the individual contribution. But none of YC types had anything to do with inventing the internet but feel like they are the only ones who deserve it's rewards. They haven't created anything like information theory. It's mostly been about fleecing retail investors. More SBF and less Shannon
  - bmitc 4y ago
    > Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Not that anyone listens to him, but Noam Chomsky has been saying this for his whole career. https://youtu.be/a4ZIhW5ZpaE https://youtu.be/a4ZIhW5ZpaE
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  It does seem a bit tone-deaf for pg to be making this argument at the precise moment tens of thousands of people are being laid off in the tech industry. Definitely a "mask off" moment. Either that, or he has a large equity stake in a manufacturer of pitchforks.
CalRobert 4y ago
I don't follow? Lots of technical founders create their own automations.
- yetanotherforg 4y ago
  His whole point is: There is a lot of great free open source software being exploited by small technical teams to run faster. This means the people doing the integration deserve less $$ because they can do the same amount with less. Founders deserve all the money, everybody else should be happy to be employed. 1920s robber baron bs. Ignore the ethics that every single startup would be impossible without standing on the heads of those who have dedicated many hours of their lives building this free software.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Where does he mention open source? And using open source software is not standing on anyone's head.
    - yetanotherforg 4y ago
      Where do you think all of that automation comes from? I promise you, every single start-up you know of is violating somebody's copyrights on their open source. I've seen this in every company I've worked with for the past 30 years. There is always code inside of private applications which was copied and pasted from GPL'd code.
      - Msw242 4y ago
        Not every single startup. It's not hard to read the licenses, and I have a fiduciary duty not to open up my company to unnecessary liability
        yetanotherforg 4y ago
        Have you ever copied and pasted anything from StackOverflow? Did you ask them if they copied it, if they had permission to copy it, or where it was copied from so you could attribute properly? If so, my hat is off to you Sir. I did have a discussion recently with some friends as to their ethical reasons against GPT and co-pilot generated code.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation. That's like saying anyone who thinks hammers are a good idea is really saying a hammer makes a builder successful, not the builder. It's just a tool, and he's saying tools mean one person can do more. You don't need to straw man a philosophy on to it to then have something to argue against. > employees do the automation, not the founders Founders normally are employees. For the phase or type of company pg is talking about, they may be the only employees.
- yetanotherforg 4y ago
  Can you explain how Founders are employees in this context? I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth. It seemed to be a justification for the founders receiving 100s if not 1,000s of times the level of compensation as the workers. I would be curious to hear more justifications from him for this. Founders really take far less risk than employees. I say this as someone who missed out on about $75 million from a YC start-up when an unnamed higher-up told them to fire me two weeks before my first vesting, because I had the most amount of non-founder stock in the company (a compensation for which I took a 66% salary cut). (edit, typos and turned 100s into 1,00s)
  - clevergadget 4y ago
    Yeah no one has anything to say about this, probably they read it and run to check their agreements sweating buckets. That's messed up, sorry to hear it.
    - yetanotherforg 4y ago
      Many of my friends and colleagues became wealthy thanks to winning the YC lottery, some as founders some as employees. The way they changed afterwards drove me away from the pursuit of money entirely. I'm sure the me in this timeline would not like the me in an alternate timeline where I lasted there two more weeks and achieved wealth status.
the_optimist 4y ago
Stop stealing the internet bits from Claude Shannon. He did the work and deserves his cut.
fleddr 4y ago
The idea that the fruits of automation should be awarded to the single guy on top is ridiculous, and that's not communist thinking. The idea of automation is that we should advance as society. The very point of it is that we need to work less, but it never turns out that way because the benefits of automation are seized by the few. Hence, we forcefully invent new labor regardless of purpose. Half of our economy is keeping each other busy with bullshit to keep this going. And if that wasn't perverted enough, now the message is: actually, we don't need you. At all.
dang 4y ago
I've been around YC for 80% of its existence and have never observed anything that could remotely be described as an "Objectivist agenda". I'd remember it too, if I had. As for "treating employees like garbage", that's just a baseless smear.

wittycardio 4y ago

Pretty clear that these are people who want to fuck you over. Silicon Valley elites have accumulated enough power to come mask off. Entitled dirtbags who profited off government funded science and technology who've never created an ounce of value in their lives.

yetanotherforg 4y ago
Thank you. Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Kind of how the libertarian musk fans ignore how much aid his companies have gotten from the t taxpayers. In the heads of somebody who believed The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged were bibles, there are 1 or 2 people doing 99% of all work in the companies.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  Most progress has come from universities, defense and government funding. These losers build an app and proclaim themselves gurus on the future. It's insane that people fall for it.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Progress doesn't come from funding, and funding doesn't come from the government. People make progress. People pay taxes.
    - wittycardio 4y ago
      Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps.
      - TurboHaskal 4y ago
        But what about the yet another distributed key store we built?
        yetanotherforg 4y ago
        I feel like you're making fun of Riak :)
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        > Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps. Progress comes from all sorts of places. Scientific progress come from scientists. That doesn't result in things better in my life without a huge number of other people doing things well and efficiently. Both of which includes anything people will pay for, including b2b saas apps. Try having a pandemic lockdown without Amazon-level fulfillment in place. Thankfully we didn't have to.
        wittycardio 4y ago
        No not all work is equal. Progress is a rare thing. Do not equate all forms of work to progress. People will pay good money for women to fart on their faces. That's not valuable work. Neither is building shitty apps.
        yetanotherforg 4y ago
        > Do not equate all forms of work to progress. People will pay good money for women to fart on their faces. Depends entirely upon the quality of the fart.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    Progress comes from individuals. MIT did not endow Claude Shannon with divine knowledge of Boolean algebra and information theory. He discovered it himself.
    - wittycardio 4y ago
      Claude Shannon was able to do what he was able to do because of the ample research funding and the academic environment. I have great respect for people like Claude Shannon but they require an ecosystem to be able to do their work.
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        There were plenty of electrical engineers at MIT working on differential analyzers when Shannon worked on his paper. Why Shannon and not them? Funding and ecosystems don't make technological revolutions anymore than they make cures for diseases. After all, the four papers that revolutionized physics in the early 20th century were composed by a 24-year old patent clerk. Someone has to do the job of thinking and putting those ideas to paper. This is a requirement of any great idea irrespective of funding or people. Thinking is an individual pursuit for an individual reward.
        wittycardio 4y ago
        There is both an individual contribution and a societal contribution. No one is denying the individual contribution. But none of YC types had anything to do with inventing the internet but feel like they are the only ones who deserve it's rewards. They haven't created anything like information theory. It's mostly been about fleecing retail investors. More SBF and less Shannon
- bmitc 4y ago
  > Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Not that anyone listens to him, but Noam Chomsky has been saying this for his whole career. https://youtu.be/a4ZIhW5ZpaE https://youtu.be/a4ZIhW5ZpaE
timmytokyo 4y ago
It does seem a bit tone-deaf for pg to be making this argument at the precise moment tens of thousands of people are being laid off in the tech industry. Definitely a "mask off" moment. Either that, or he has a large equity stake in a manufacturer of pitchforks.

CalRobert 4y ago

I don't follow? Lots of technical founders create their own automations.

yetanotherforg 4y ago
His whole point is: There is a lot of great free open source software being exploited by small technical teams to run faster. This means the people doing the integration deserve less $$ because they can do the same amount with less. Founders deserve all the money, everybody else should be happy to be employed. 1920s robber baron bs. Ignore the ethics that every single startup would be impossible without standing on the heads of those who have dedicated many hours of their lives building this free software.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Where does he mention open source? And using open source software is not standing on anyone's head.
  - yetanotherforg 4y ago
    Where do you think all of that automation comes from? I promise you, every single start-up you know of is violating somebody's copyrights on their open source. I've seen this in every company I've worked with for the past 30 years. There is always code inside of private applications which was copied and pasted from GPL'd code.
    - Msw242 4y ago
      Not every single startup. It's not hard to read the licenses, and I have a fiduciary duty not to open up my company to unnecessary liability
      - yetanotherforg 4y ago
        Have you ever copied and pasted anything from StackOverflow? Did you ask them if they copied it, if they had permission to copy it, or where it was copied from so you could attribute properly? If so, my hat is off to you Sir. I did have a discussion recently with some friends as to their ethical reasons against GPT and co-pilot generated code.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation. That's like saying anyone who thinks hammers are a good idea is really saying a hammer makes a builder successful, not the builder. It's just a tool, and he's saying tools mean one person can do more. You don't need to straw man a philosophy on to it to then have something to argue against. > employees do the automation, not the founders Founders normally are employees. For the phase or type of company pg is talking about, they may be the only employees.

yetanotherforg 4y ago
Can you explain how Founders are employees in this context? I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth. It seemed to be a justification for the founders receiving 100s if not 1,000s of times the level of compensation as the workers. I would be curious to hear more justifications from him for this. Founders really take far less risk than employees. I say this as someone who missed out on about $75 million from a YC start-up when an unnamed higher-up told them to fire me two weeks before my first vesting, because I had the most amount of non-founder stock in the company (a compensation for which I took a 66% salary cut). (edit, typos and turned 100s into 1,00s)
- clevergadget 4y ago
  Yeah no one has anything to say about this, probably they read it and run to check their agreements sweating buckets. That's messed up, sorry to hear it.
  - yetanotherforg 4y ago
    Many of my friends and colleagues became wealthy thanks to winning the YC lottery, some as founders some as employees. The way they changed afterwards drove me away from the pursuit of money entirely. I'm sure the me in this timeline would not like the me in an alternate timeline where I lasted there two more weeks and achieved wealth status.

the_optimist 4y ago

Stop stealing the internet bits from Claude Shannon. He did the work and deserves his cut.

fleddr 4y ago

The idea that the fruits of automation should be awarded to the single guy on top is ridiculous, and that's not communist thinking. The idea of automation is that we should advance as society. The very point of it is that we need to work less, but it never turns out that way because the benefits of automation are seized by the few. Hence, we forcefully invent new labor regardless of purpose. Half of our economy is keeping each other busy with bullshit to keep this going. And if that wasn't perverted enough, now the message is: actually, we don't need you. At all.

dang 4y ago

I've been around YC for 80% of its existence and have never observed anything that could remotely be described as an "Objectivist agenda". I'd remember it too, if I had. As for "treating employees like garbage", that's just a baseless smear.