I think his strategy can work, but the catch is you need some charisma and to persevere over a number of years, which are both harder than they look. Therefore take a hard look at yourself beforehand.
>And to make things even more confusing, our engineers were all using the dogfooding version of Asana, which runs on different AWS-EC2 instances than the production version
... That kind of defeats the purpose of "dogfooding". Sure, you have to use the same code (hopefully) but it doesn't give you the same experience.
Why do you think that being the boat for the length of time to create the value is insane? As the continuing founder in a start-up, I'm pretty sensitive to the idea that the reward is at the end of the marathon. Why would splitting based on a marathon-length rather than a 5k race be insane if what you think you're doing is marathon running?
I just don't think value is only delivered over a 10 year period. It should take a decade (or 7 years) to get your initial 'reward'.
It doesn't make sense to be locked into something for a decade that may not even be the same in a decade. Just personal preference though, maybe someone will be up for decade of vesting.
> I just don't think value is only delivered over a 10 year period. It should take a decade (or 7 years) to get your initial 'reward'.
I'm assuming you meant "shouldn't", but that's not what a 10-year vesting schedule would mean either (all other things being equal); With a one-year cliff you'd receive your "initial reward" (i.e. fully vested equity) by the end of the first year, then continue to vest on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis in accordance with the vesting schedule.
Why does the initial grant have to be enough for the entirety of the company's growth? Why don't you just issue refresher grants to people who stick around?
My fiance works in a t-shirt printing shop and I work as a developer. I enjoy hearing about his work, he enjoys hearing about mine but we know neither of us could do what the other does.
They sit around a table voting on stuff to add to the DSM... You sit with them for like 10 minutes and "Oh you're bipolar." No MRI or blood test... The same people who said being gay was a mental illness. So why trust a industry promoting hate and still promoting ADHD which was admitted as being a work of fiction.
There's a group called Citizens Commission on Human Rights that made documentaries on the subject which are really convincing. Seen their commercial one day on TV, and spent a night watching some of their material.
There's a clip somewhere on YouTube where someone went to like 5 different psychiatrists but was told all different things. Then they also had a mother tell her story about how a psychiatrist killed her son Matthew.
I already had a bad view of the industry, but after watching their content it really reinforced my feelings towards them.
Edit: Found the video I was talking about it. http://www.cchr.org/videos.html The first one on that page, It's about a hour but I think it does a great job at exposing psychiatry. I think everyone including parrents should watch this before visiting a psychiatrist
Yeah, Scientology seems a bit extreme. Apparently, they get in a really hot sauna for hours to cleanse and it sounds really unsafe to me. But besides them being part of Scientology, I do think they make some valid points.
The CCHR has to be considered in context. Robert Whitaker's book, Anatomy of an Epidemic [1], makes the case that Scientologists were used by the drug companies to deflect criticism of the mass use of ineffective drugs:
THE CRITICS BELIEVE IN ALIENS
The story of a "psychopharmacology revolution" had first been
told in the 1950s and 1960s, and then, as we've seen in this chapter,
it was revived in the 1980s. However, the storytellers in the 1980s
were more vulnerable to criticism than the storytellers of the earlier
decades simply because there was now twenty years of research that
undermined their narative. None of the drugs had proven to help
people function well over the long term, and the chemical-
imbalance theory of mental disorders was in the process of flaming
out. As NIMH researchers had concluded in 1984, "elevations or
decrements in the functioning of serotonergic systems per se are not
likely to be associated with depression." ... There was a Grand
Canyon-sized gap between what the broken-brain storytellers
were intimating was true and what was actually known, and that
same gap would appear in their stories when Prozac and the other
second-generation drugs came to market. But fortunately for the
proponents of biological psychiatry, criticism of the medical model
and of psychiatric drugs became associated, in the public mind,
with Scientology.
...
... In 1969, Scientology and Thomas Szasz cofounded the Citizens
Commission on Human Rights, and this group began waging
campaigns against lobotomy, electroshock, and psychiatric drugs.
This proved to be very fortuitous for the APA [American Psychiatric
Association] and its storytelling partners as they raised the flag of
biological psychiatry. Indeed, it is easy to imagine the drug
companies deciding to secretly fund Scientology's protests, eager
as they were to shove money to any organization that would --
wittingly or unwittingly -- advance their cause. For not only did
Scientologist believe in extraterrestrials, they also had gained a
reputation for being a secretive, litigious, and even malevolent
cult. Scientology, Time wrote in 1991, is a "hugely profitable
global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics
in a Mafia-like manner." Thanks to Scientology, the powers that
be in psychiatry had the perfect storytelling foil, for they could
now publicly dismiss criticism of the medical model and
psychiatric drugs with a wave of the hand, deriding it as
nonsense that arose from people who were members of a
deeply unpopular cult, rather than criticism that arose from
their own research. As such, the presence of Scientology in the
storytelling mix served to taint all criticism of the medical model
and psychiatric drugs, no matter what its source.
Those were the storytelling forces that formed in the 1980s.
When Prozac arrived on the market, they were lined up perfectly
for the creation -- and maintenance -- of a tale about psychiatry's
great new leap.
-pg 280-282
Chapter 14, on the next page, opens with this quote: "When it comes to dead bodies in current psychotropic trials, there are a greater number of them in the active treatment groups than in the placebo groups. This is quite different from what happens in penicillin trials or trials of drugs that really work." -David Healy, Professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University, Wales (2008)
>You should save until you have at least two years
It is a little late to be doing this.
I have pretty bare-bones expenses (Fine, my apartment is 40% of my income) but I would struggle to save 24-months of expenses any time soon.
Unless you are making like $250k and living on $50k, I would say it is a little late to be stocking up to survive a downturn. I could do it if given probably 5 years, but I couldn't pull that off in 1 year.
Yes, the sooner you make the changes, the better off you will be. Just like getting healthier.
A huge part of it is mindset. If you are striving to build 24 months of savings, you'll have to think about income and expenses and figure out which ones matter, which ones can go away, and how to improve them in general. There may not be a single silver bullet but there can be a lot of little things that will help in the long run.
I really wonder how many people on HN seriously pay for cable. For me and many of my friends, we just have Internet and watch whatever we want whenever we want. I wouldn't watch cable if it was free. I wouldn't watch it for an hour a night if they paid me $100 a month to do so. The idea of paying $50+++ per month for what I consider to be an absolute waste of my time is crazy to me.
MLB.TV isn't bad for baseball (might have to swing a VPN to get it to work for you, depending on if you live near your favorite team). Football is still overpriced as hell, though.
Imagine really bad shit happened, your company went bust. You had to take a 30% (or 40%) pay cut. Could you survive?
OK, now take that 30% and transfer it into a savings account before anything else. It doesn't exist. Your pay is what's left. Now budget expenses and life.
Start living when you have a little insurance. Even six months buys some peace of mind.
If you have a family you have to modify a little to ensure they can have a tolerable life meanwhile, and a little time out etc. but you get the idea.
If you keep this idea going even in good times you'll be buying rental properties with it eventually.
Yeah... like I like this idea. I just don't know how sustainable it is. I am decent with money (Almost 0 debt, almost 1 month of expenses, etc) but I don't really feel like living in self-inflicted poverty.
I have done it before and I know I can do it, but I don't see the point in inflicting abject poverty on myself just so I am vaguely protected.
I understand what you are coming from, but really isn't for me. (Maybe when my income grows / I don't live in NYC...)
If you only have one month worth of expenses saved you are terrible with money. Planning for your financial future is one of the most important things you can do.
If you're in the tech industry you can afford to save 30%+ of your income. We have a it a lot better than other sectors and make good money.
Take a small pay cut now for a large payout in the future. Don't sacrifice your future for a little fun now.
Sorry to bring the mood down, I have one moderating life experience that is relevant here.
Sometimes while you are doing this you will die.
I had two really good friends who died in their early 30's, both would have made great family men, both saved carefully, got an education at great personal cost, one served in the military, both were austere and diligent in their lives. Their parents did not seem consoled by the large cash sums that they received from these men's estates.
I think that both of them would have been well served to have lived a little more before their time was up. What's the value of amazing maths skills and financial security when you are dead?
I'm sorry for your loss. I can see how that would incorrectly skew your perspective. The chances of dying in your 30's is very low for most people. Spending your money as if that's going to happen is foolish.
In our industry you can save enough money through your 20's and 30's to retire in your 40's. It makes far more sense to do that then to plan on dying in your 30's.
You're talking about the difference between perceived poverty relative to your previous lifestyle versus actual poverty where you're living paycheck to paycheck because you didn't have a sufficiently large paycheck.
Every generation seems to have a big economic shock it has to weather through (or two or three). I think living on a percentage of your income with 6-12 months' salary in the bank is the only smart thing to do when you're able to do it.
I don't see how someone can rationalize that someone making $100k should have to have roommates.
I am not saying they need more money, but I don't understand how we have gotten to the point of chiding people making six-figures like they work at McDonalds and want a BMW.
Is that a bad thing or a good thing? Like, have all your previous places closed, exited, what?