7 ms·
I was briefly employed by a robotics company in the US ... robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better. The owner was the son of an old school magna
by scrubs 3mo ago
I was briefly employed by a robotics company in the US ... robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better.
The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA.
Among other things his line has always stuck with me: "A whale that surfaces is soon harpooned."
The company never made money. I think the whole thing was run as a loss on purpose for tax purposes. I became tired of the head manager/engineer combo (big fish in this tiny, tiny world) and left.
Even they knew this company was never really trying to do anything serious. Strange indeed
- cobbzilla 3mo ago> The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA. If you have a lot of money it’s fun to LARP the startup life. The experience working for such a company is highly varied and completely depends on the personality of the founder. But even if it’s a healthy place, it’s usually a black hole from a career development POV.
- jamesfinlayson 3mo agoI know someone who is an accountant for very wealthy people and quite a few seem to have useless children whose failing businesses they bankroll.
- kijin 3mo agoStartups are like sports cars nowadays. People think it makes you look cool if you own one. It doesn't matter if it costs a lot of money to maintain. Yachts and sports cars do the same. That's actually like the whole point of it, after all.
- GJim 3mo ago> whose failing businesses they bankroll Don't confuse a hobby business with a failing business. Plenty of people with independent means run loss making businesses for fun and/or support wives/children doing just that.
- cobbzilla 3mo agoSemantics. If the hobby business never makes a profit and is capturing losses for tax benefits, that’s a failing business. It can be failing indefinitely as long as there’s money to support it, but you can’t call it a successful business.
- GJim 3mo agoYou appear to be suggesting that fun hobbies which don't make money are a 'failure' rather than a success. Not everything is judged by how much money it makes. Have you ever wondered why kids climb trees?
- williamdclt 3mo agoIt's really not that deep: they're characterising the business, you're characterising the hobby. The owner having a good time doesn't make it a successful business. A failing business can be a successful hobby, sure, that's still a failing business.
- scrubs 3mo agoThis wasn't a hobby. At least the head engineer and sales persons were constantly stressed by flagging sales and lack of customer acceptance.
- cobbzilla 3mo agoIt wasn’t a hobby for them but it still may have been a hobby business for the founder. Rich dude LARPing tyrant CEO or Steve Jobs imitator is common.
- KingMachiavelli 3mo agoDoesn't running consistent losses eventually cause tax issues with the IRS? If the losses are offsetting profit elsewhere, I would assume the IRS would become very interested in challenging the validity of the hobby business?
- 3mo ago
- itwaswatson 3mo ago> robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better. I have been on the other side of this, building a frontend that connected to an external service robot that we, with a 5 minute script, managed to successfully prove internally was just a if/then/else state machine. We got paid to make it, so we didn't care, but we knew someone was losing money.
- Mistletoe 3mo agoI can't wait for these AI companies to IPO and be harpooned.
- NavinF 3mo agoWhy wait for IPO? Prediction markets already let non-US persons bet on startup stock prices while the startup is still private. Eg a few weeks ago you could have used a non-US VPN, shorted spacex, and lost all your money :)
- cobbzilla 3mo agofwiw, you’ve perfectly described the feeling of working for a “tax write-off” and how to recognize those vibes. It could’ve been worse, it could’ve been a fraud! But it’s merely a business designed to lose money. It won’t land you in jail but it’s not a place anyone would advance a career.