Tech companies, and startups in particular, are touted as the powerhouses of American innovation and economy.
And yet, it seems that the past 5 years of economic activity have been illusory. I expect a similar fate of Uber and Airbnb. Once the dust settles only the staid big co's shall remain.
It's a good point. But I'm alluding more to budding companies, not established companies. Granted Facebook didn't IPO until 2012.
But, as far as I can tell the software industry has contracted into those big 5 tech firms. The siren call of working at a startup and making it is sounding strident.
Knowing what you know now, what startup, if any, would you have joined 5 years ago?
I think it's getting harder and harder to justify. Especially given what mid-career devs at these companies are earning. $150-200k base plus 100k/yr or more in stock after a few years, that's far cry from 90k + 0.1% of some junky seed company with about a 1% chance of IPO.
If you look at my comment history you'll see I've been saying this for a while and I think it'll only get more true with further industry consolidation, which will make it both harder to displace incumbents product-wise, and harder to compete with them salary-wise.
Not everyone joins a start-up to make millions. Some will join just to make a living. There are plenty of startups that can provide a living for a few people with the potential for a bit of nest egg later on. That and the sense of involvement/freedom can be more attractive than a job at big co
I travel frequently, for both business and pleasure. Over 120K miles flown last year; 100+ nights away from home.
I've basically stopped using AirBnB entirely unless there is a 2x difference in price between a comparable hotel.
AirBnB is suffering the same product issues as Uber. Most of the listings now are from professional hosts with multiple properties. This is especially true in "hot" cities. As a result, quality of rentals have really declined from a few years ago, and anecdotally, the prices have also gone up - with all the various fees, it's really not that much cheaper than a hotel. And worse than a hotel, you have little to no recourse when something goes sideways.
I take Uber or Lyft, whichever is cheapest. The ride "sharing" industry is a brilliant innovation, but I seriously doubt it can support Uber's valuation.
Would you please not create bulk accounts to post with here? Throwaways are fine if there's some specific purpose, e.g. something personally sensitive, but we ban users who do it routinely. Hacker News is a community. You don't have to use your real name, of course, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.
What is a bulk account? I don't see mention of it on the site guidelines or anywhere else.
I personally don't want to have an identity on the web. If that's against the rules could you kindly point it out to me?
That's definitely something I'd be interested in learning about.
By bulk account I mean making numerous accounts, each of which is used for a few comments and then discarded.
It's not in the guidelines yet but it will make it in there eventually. In the meantime, it's against the rules in the sense that we don't allow it, and ban accounts that do it, for the reason I explained above.
And yet, it seems that the past 5 years of economic activity have been illusory. I expect a similar fate of Uber and Airbnb. Once the dust settles only the staid big co's shall remain.