Meh.
There might be logical errors in Graham's essay,
but this just looks like an angry and forceful attempt to rebut his ideas because the author doesn't agree with ideas of free market economics etc.
And secondly, I know this isn't the main point but, these "introversion explanations" are annoying and likely part of the reason the industry has problems with diversity.
Looks to me like a lot of the people in the industry want to constantly propagate the idea that "the programmer" or "we the programmers" are utopian introvert nerds to anyone who would listen.
Got me avoiding talking about what I do so I can have normal conversations about sports and politics with people working outside tech.
> these "introversion explanations" are annoying and likely part of the reason the industry has problems with diversity.
Excellent point, thank you. The changes we've seen in the industry even in the 5 years since I wrote this do suggest a declining relevance of the introverted programmer meme. I admit I'm stuck in a 1980s "we're all social outcasts" mindset which doesn't reflect the present day make-up of this varied industry. However, I think certain aspects of the metaphor remain intact. The work of programmers is introverted. The point was that the mental structures that attract programmers are the same ones that can lead to reductionist views of social, economic, and political matters. I've often marvelled at how easily some of the most brilliant engineers apply their ideas about computer systems to human systems, without the necessary due diligence. I'm not saying they all do this, just that the introversion tendency can explain how it happens.
For all I know he might even be right about introversion.
What I'm bothered about is that he makes a blanket statement about "the programmer". Would've been better to say, Graham was probably introvert, there's where his ideas come from.
Why would "ability to create and inhabit a mental utopia devoid of the complications of external reality is a truly liberating experience"
be limited to introvert programmers, like introversion is some kind of super power?
Architects, painters, mathematicians, and many others are just as capable of abstract thought. Most mathematical and physical models could be called "mental utopias". As are financial or economic models for that matter.
No one would claim that because an architect is able to draw a house made of ice cream cones or a physicist come up with a model where frictions is 0 he must be introverted though right?
Why does everything concerned with programming need to be then?
It's similar to claiming that programmers are good at programming because they're white, or male, or fat, or bald...
And people thinking they know everything are common in every field, mechanical engineers, doctors, architects, you can find them wherever you go,
this is not limited to software engineering.
Are you looking for books or examples of societies with free markets?
I'm not an expert but I believe you can research Austrian Economics, laissez-faire, and Milton Friendman. The deepest I went with the subject was "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. I thought it was a good book and had compelling arguments. Its also very easy to read and American-centric so you have a lot of relatable examples.
I said "economics", as in the theory or ideas, not "economies", as in countries.
What I was somewhat sloppily referring to was the classical liberal ideas based on writings of Adam Smith (who's mentioned in the article), David Hume, John Locke etc.
As opposed to the Marxist view I guess.
And I said it because the article argues somewhat (in)directly that management gets paid well because of position of power and luck, not merit,
that free markets don't work, and throws around words like libertarianism, meritocracy etc., but makes no solid economic arguments,
it's explained more from a point of populist left ideas based on my reading.
Note that there's more than one competing idea here, and I personally don't necessarily agree with one single theory, but if you're interested in it in general here are some sources off the top of my head:
Wow this guy really needs to take it down a few notches. Yes, PG's articles present a magical fantasy world dominated by the masterful hacker and visionary entrepreneur. They are inspiring and fun to read. And they may have some truth to them.
Attacking these essays as an oversimplification while presenting a caricature of the introvert and disconnected programmer is borderline ridiculous.
> this guy really needs to take it down a few notches
Author here. Man, if I took it down a few notches, I'd bury myself under my own hubris! I'm nobody, certainly not worth PG's time or perhaps yours, I'm trying to speak truth to power and won't apologize for stepping on anyone's hero worship. I absolutely agree with you that Graham's essays are inspiring and fun to read. I think I made that clear as well. The frustration which drove this essay was his casual observation that the best programmers are libertarians. I don't think that's true and have data to support it. I'm also frustrated to see a powerful man perpetuate self-serving ideologies without acknowledging the influences of power and luck.
> borderline ridiculous
Story of my life. But I think my caricature still stands as an illustration of how the introverted mindset can shut off more nuanced views of social and political structure and lead one to adopt a personal view that serves those in power.
czep, even though I don't agree with much of what you wrote (in the article), I do appreciate you taking the time to so thoroughly expound on the ideas. Paul Graham most likely fell victim to projection of a Libertarian ideal when he viewed "best programmers" from his perspective.
> I'm also frustrated to see a powerful man perpetuate self-serving ideologies without acknowledging the influences of power and luck.
I agree with this above statement maybe or maybe not for the reasons you do.
The "Power Game", or even the lack of willingness or know-how to play it is the reason a lot of programmers think themselves superior to the sales guys who peddle the product of their labor.
The "Power Game" is also the same reason the good sales guys feel that despite being so technically smart, programmers can be damned idiotic fools.
As an introverted "programmer-type" myself, life would be way easier for me if there was no Power Game. But the Power Game is as human as eating, drinking and pissing.
Hell, I get irritated daily that I even have to eat, drink or piss. It feels like a waste of time when I am in the zone with something. Same thing with the Power Game.
Luck... hugely important. Heck, we've all played RPG's and know to fill up that skill bucket ASAP.
Maybe what would really be helpful to programmers is something that can stir inspiration like Paul Graham, but that covers something akin to "The 48 Laws of Power" for the introverted modern day employees.
> Graham’s understanding of economics is woefully pedestrian, un-researched conjecture. His conceptualization of the economics of exchange relies on a stubborn insistence and blind naive trust that the free market is the ultimate solution to which his audience must subscribe. It is distressing that one could allow arrogance to so cloud his judgment that he would embarrass himself by making such claims in an area of study he is clearly lacking any authority on which to speak.
The author sounds rather more arrogant than Paul Graham did. And free markets are the ultimate solution.
EDIT: The more I read, the more ridiculous it gets. The author takes something that Paul Graham said, throws away all of the context, and attacks it as a strawman. The article seems more keen on attacking Paul Graham than making any actual point.
It is also written in a very verbose style that makes it hard to follow whatever argument might be present.
The author, arrogant and verbose though he may be, takes issue with Graham's casual assertion that the best hackers are libertarians, and attempts to deconstrust the psychology underlying this connection. What's so illustrative is how Graham inspires his followers to believe the way he does in order to justify and perpetuate his own wealth. The money quote in my mind is:
> It is amazing how well this piece serves as marketing fodder for Graham’s venture capital arm, Y Combinator. His business model relies on convincing hordes of eager young hackers to sign over their surplus labor to his investors. With logic crafted to appeal directly to the introverted minds of recent computer science graduates, he has no shortage of cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios.
Hey, you're the author! Just wanted to say that was an awesome essay!
Having been through the SV startup wringer several times I totally agree - (hidden) power structures matter much more than people would like to admit, and neither work nor rewards get distributed fairly. And the whole startup hype machine (which includes pg) serves to attract more naive programmers to contribute years of unpaid overtime work in exchange for vague promises of future riches. (But I'm not bitter, just realistic.)
Also your observations about hacker politics are right on. Watching political discussions here is painful.
Sorry to see you're getting crucified here for your dissenting essay, though. People who claim to be rational end up just as susceptible to groupthink :(
It's a really good analysis. Even moreso through the postmortem lens of where we are today (relative to where we were when Paul Graham originally published his essay ~2004).
As you noted, the section about "Wealth and Power" seemed to have been tacked on almost as an afterthought. So it isn't until the end of your piece that you get to this point:
Graham concludes: “The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.” Sadly, the bottom line is that unless you are among a tiny handful of the elite, a laissez-faire economic system would enslave you, not liberate you. The only people who will enjoy the fruits of a truly free society are those with the power to keep you in line. Given more freedom, those in power will first cut off the access to power, to prevent anyone from challenging them. They will immediately go for the jugular. There is no compromise with power and no means to share it. Thus, the power elite will readily command vast armies of people and resources to ensure that you stay down. This will be their first priority. Their second priority will be to extract labor from you in the manner that serves them best. In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road.
If you were to re-write / edit your piece today, my recommendation would be to start off with this as your premise. We have sooooooo much evidence today from many, many people who followed this path recommended by Graham thirteen years ago. Sure, maybe a few of the nerds got to keep their lunch money. However: catapulting a reserve of lunch money into the kind of wealth that matters (the kind of wealth that buys power) just doesn't happen for your average nerd. There's one more layer needed on the recipe.
Graham rightly points out that wealth is not a zero-sum game. Power, on the other hand, is most definitely a zero-sum proposition, and those who have it will stop at nothing to retain it and quash any perceptible threat. Power is a black hole—it consumes everything and yet remains a perpetual void. We see instances of this even with the meager controls in place in our society today. Loosen or remove those controls and power, unchecked, will accumulate until nothing remains. Anyone or anything in its path will be destroyed.
It's hard not to think about the political implications of how this relates to just about everything these days.
You. You wrote the article, posted it on your blog, used your HN account to submit it here, and it is you that is posting a comment in support of yourself. Writing in a way that implies you aren't the author is disingenuous.
"cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios"
characterization, which I've read a good twenty times now. How does this make sense, when generally speaking, if an investor gets rich, it means the company succeeded, and thus the founders get rich too?
But many of the best programmers are libertarians. At a much higher proportion than in the general population, from my (admittedly not well-recorded) observations.
Free markets are an unattainable Platonic ideal. Just like perfect Communism, it all begins to get messy and come apart at the seams when you introduce theory to the real world and allow fully emotional, non-market-rational humans as the free agents.
On the subject of arrogance, spoken like a true believer..
There is hardly ever an ultimate solution to anything, and to take an extreme position on matters is almost always harmful. Things are never simply black and white.
Free markets are a useful fiction that was developed around the time of Adam Smith. They are ( I think, anyway ) a demonstrable improvement over mercantilism. We more or less know how, and we more or less know why.
The problem with "things that are not free markets" is that we simply know very little about those things, and the learning curve is significant. USAian bulk crops agriculture is not a free market, it mostly seems to work well that way but it started under FDR and only reached its present form after decades of tweaking.
In effect ( the theory goes that ) larger price uncertainties will create price instabilities that, net-net, add more inefficiency than pricing things a skosh higher and accommodating overproduction.
As political speech, the term "free market" has been rendered threadbare. "Trade agreements" seem to mostly be more akin to Mercantilism than free markets, and so on.
Not the OP, but I think belief in free markets is not arrogant. In a free market, decisions are made on an individual level with actors affected that know their preferences and needs much better than a central body. I think its more arrogant to suggest that some planning committee would be able to make better decisions for that individual. Of course there are instances where there exists knowledge imbalances and sub-optimal decisions can be made. But the alternative is often no better due to the agency problem of having someone make decisions on your behalf
There’s an entire field of economics dedicated to the way free markets can fail to allocate resources efficiently, even when the participants are free agents acting without external constraints.
Do you think this work is false? Or do you believe that the inefficient allocation of resources is an acceptable price to pay, because “free markets” are more important than outcomes?
I think the biggest trap for developers is that they put all their eggs in one basket. Whereas, of course VCs like Graham wisely spread their money.
Imho, we as a community should put more weight on that aspect, and we should stimulate also the failures of Silicon Valley to come forward with their stories to prevent bias. For example, we've heard some stories of people making truckloads of money on app-stores, but do we really have any bearing on what the average capable developer makes? If we don't want to end up as disillusioned gold-diggers, we should really get that kind of data out.
PG may have become an investor and most newcomers may have forgotten this but before YC he was himself a hacker who started a company and became successful.
Now years later, after having started a company through YC and then becoming a YC partner and now seeing this same kind of magic happen over and over again with hacker founders, I can't help but attest to the fact that his worldview has proven to be valuable.
The disillusioned worldview justifies lying on the floor. The essay's worldview prods you to get up.
> PG may have become an investor and most newcomers may have forgotten this but before YC he was himself a hacker who started a company and became successful.
Yes, that is certainly laudable, but he may be suffering from survivor bias.
I find it fascinating that people interpret his essays as elitist or "meritocratic" (in a dirty sense) when his basic message is optimistic: you, too, can start a startup. The whole self-serving thing, too. How does it make life better for him if more people who shouldn't start startups try? YC just gets more bad applications.
> In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road.
What brand of libertarianism is the author talking about here?
> Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and maintain that the power of the state has to be limited or eliminated in order to protect individuals from the arbitrary exercise of authority. [0]
I think most would agree that "arbitrary exercises of power" would include murder and arson. The author really does his argument injustice by throwing around a caricature of a political philosophy.
Additionally it assumes that in lieu of a government (as in its gradually emiliminated or something) people will just start going crazy and rioting and murdering each other. That is one possibility, but could you imagine, say, Swedes rioting? Or Canadians?
If you assume that it is the case that, absent the government, people will go crazy, then you're also positing the need for a police state and things like survellience.
edit: Apologies for this utterly useless comment. To elaborate: The construct "brand" is a psychological hack, a marketing fnord. Reading about it in a presumably rational discussion is what I found amusing.
>Historically, societies with laissez-faire economic policies have been associated with rigid, hierarchical social structures with negligible social mobility.
Historically, ALL societies have possessed rigid, hierarchical social structures with negligible social mobility, and very few of them had anything close to laissez-faire economic policies.
What made Renaissance / Enlightenment Europe a little better than the rest was its intense competition along several dimensions (political, economic, technological) both between and within political entities; such a world made creative types too valuable to be liquidated or enslaved.
>In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road. This is your free society. Enjoy.
And eventually the bullies would run out of prey -- and would have to prey upon themselves. But it would probably not come to that. Anyone with half a brain would have stopped contributing to such a flawed society a long time ago, and maybe even started undermining it, e.g. the USSR.
"There are so many problems with Graham’s thinking that it is difficult to organize a focused response."
Statements like these are pointless theatrics. The more wrong someone is, the easier, not harder it is to point out where and how. What's the argument?
You have to wait until section 2 to find one:
"...there are actually several critical errors in the above reasoning which render Graham’s conclusions baseless. The first is the idea that measurement of things like quality and success can be objective, perfect and fair. These are not objective facts, they are highly contextual and can be manipulated by power struggles, charisma, clever marketing, or outright fraud. Value is a social construct..."
After about eight paragraphs about how "pedestrian" PG is, his point (finally) is basically that value is subjective and immeasurable. I don't know how true this is philosophically, but for all intents and purposes, if it were true, it would mean that nothing could be better than anything else. [1] It's also a conflation of ideas. Marketing doesn't create value; it distributes and sells it. Value as defined in the original essay is the meaty stuff people want: a home computer, for example, or an affordable spaceship.
"Graham identifies that “Many of the employees (e.g. the people in the mailroom or the personnel department) work at one remove from the actual making of stuff.” So what exactly do they contribute to the wealth generation process? Does Graham imply that without these others working at “one remove”, the programmers could still create the wealth they do? Without the human resources team to coordinate their medical benefits, would the programmers be as productive? Without the legal team to fend off frivolous lawsuits brought by patent trolls [...]?" (And so on.)
All Graham is saying is that programmers are directly involved in the creation of the product itself — its design, engineering, and maintenance. Other people create the social environment that makes it possible for this product to be distributed and not be killed, but don't make stuff in the artisanal sense.
I can understand why it would be insulting if someone claimed that anyone who isn't a maker were somehow useless, but Graham never did.
I'm ten minutes in, and everything I've read is basically a verbose form of "it's all relative" and "things are more complicated than that." Philosophy has a standard refutation to this: we deal with complex phenomena by isolating principles. For example, the abstract idea of value, the distinction between creation and distribution, and so on. It's the most boring thing in the world to hear, "the universe is more complex than that idea captures." All abstractions are reductions.
This sort of argument based on moral outrage and authority about how the real world works holds back truthseeking discourse.
[1] I also have a hard time understanding how someone who has earnestly tried to make good things could want this to be true.
> Marketing doesn't create value; it distributes and sells it.
But that value doesn't exist until marketing "unlocks" it! The example discussed is marketing finding a new vertical which then expands the profitability of a product line without any additional work. A portion of the value didn't exist until marketing sold it to a new market. I don't consider that conflation of ideas, more of highlighting the nuance that quantifiable portions of value cannot be ascribed to individual efforts.
The fact that value is subjective and immeasurable doesn't insult anyone who tries to make good things. I try to make good things too, the value I get from them is the sense of accomplishment that I've done a good job. But whether my "good job" translates into a $1bn unicorn is up to luck, not simply my effort.
I think your disagreement with Graham is over a definition of words. You seem to be saying that creation of value is the indivisible sum of efforts to (a) decide what to build, (b) build it, and (c) sell it. He assumes a and b can be isolated out.
In any case though, take any highly successful company. Imagine if all the marketing people and product/engineering/design people were suddenly segregated, and forced to work without the other. Who's more worried?
I'm not at all saying marketing people are useless, which seems to be the idea you take issue with. They provide value. But (I'm sorry) less than the designers and engineers, and measurably so, from successive thought experiments like the above. That's why they're paid less.
"The fact that value is subjective and immeasurable doesn't insult anyone who tries to make good things. I try to make good things too, the value I get from them is the sense of accomplishment that I've done a good job."
But by your argument, I can steal your sense of accomplishment by saying, who knows how much of your success was due to you? How much was due to the marketing team? 10%? 50%? 80%?
"But whether my "good job" translates into a $1bn unicorn is up to luck, not simply my effort."
On this topic I mostly defer to Hamming's point in You and Your Research. I'd say there's luck involved, not that it's up to luck. While it's true not everyone who can become Bill Gates does, some people outright can't become Bill Gates, while others can. The point is, this doesn't show that value is subjective.
FWIW, I've seen 3 or 4 "rebuttals" of pg essays, and they all read about the same.
For instance, one pg essay mentions how large glossy magazines all cost about the same, and how this spelled difficult times for the publishing industry in the future, given the likely average for a digital book or a website view. Someone wrote a rebuttal from the viewpoint of the publishing industry, which, when unpacked, contained only one concrete point, which was approximately "No, publishing is doing great -- look how many millions of copies Sarah Palin's book sold!"
> Marketing doesn't create value; it distributes and sells it.
I would argue it does create value. Not only for increasing the speed of information, but to attach a sentimental value to an object people like it more. People enjoy coca cola more because of the brand and thus the value is greater.
So I understand the point here, and would say that marketing provides separate value. Distribution networks are certainly highly valuable, but as distribution, not as part of the product. From the perspective of creating things and selling them as one indivisible task, you're right, but I think it's useful to draw a distinction between craftsmanship and selling/storytelling.
Whoa, out of of context. Paul made a point about an idea. Economics is not science. Paul tried to convey the feel of a startup and the ideas which might drive it.
It's a touchy feely piece (not any worse as such). One of the important things to feed ones intuition is to convay how a thing should feel.
This was food for intuition, not a detailed analysis. That's how I read it, anyhow.
I approach any non-peer reviewed work as prose and poetry. Some other people mighr be more stringent.
Readit News
And secondly, I know this isn't the main point but, these "introversion explanations" are annoying and likely part of the reason the industry has problems with diversity.
Looks to me like a lot of the people in the industry want to constantly propagate the idea that "the programmer" or "we the programmers" are utopian introvert nerds to anyone who would listen.
Got me avoiding talking about what I do so I can have normal conversations about sports and politics with people working outside tech.
Excellent point, thank you. The changes we've seen in the industry even in the 5 years since I wrote this do suggest a declining relevance of the introverted programmer meme. I admit I'm stuck in a 1980s "we're all social outcasts" mindset which doesn't reflect the present day make-up of this varied industry. However, I think certain aspects of the metaphor remain intact. The work of programmers is introverted. The point was that the mental structures that attract programmers are the same ones that can lead to reductionist views of social, economic, and political matters. I've often marvelled at how easily some of the most brilliant engineers apply their ideas about computer systems to human systems, without the necessary due diligence. I'm not saying they all do this, just that the introversion tendency can explain how it happens.
What I'm bothered about is that he makes a blanket statement about "the programmer". Would've been better to say, Graham was probably introvert, there's where his ideas come from.
Why would "ability to create and inhabit a mental utopia devoid of the complications of external reality is a truly liberating experience" be limited to introvert programmers, like introversion is some kind of super power?
Architects, painters, mathematicians, and many others are just as capable of abstract thought. Most mathematical and physical models could be called "mental utopias". As are financial or economic models for that matter.
No one would claim that because an architect is able to draw a house made of ice cream cones or a physicist come up with a model where frictions is 0 he must be introverted though right?
Why does everything concerned with programming need to be then?
It's similar to claiming that programmers are good at programming because they're white, or male, or fat, or bald...
And people thinking they know everything are common in every field, mechanical engineers, doctors, architects, you can find them wherever you go, this is not limited to software engineering.
I'm not an expert but I believe you can research Austrian Economics, laissez-faire, and Milton Friendman. The deepest I went with the subject was "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. I thought it was a good book and had compelling arguments. Its also very easy to read and American-centric so you have a lot of relatable examples.
What I was somewhat sloppily referring to was the classical liberal ideas based on writings of Adam Smith (who's mentioned in the article), David Hume, John Locke etc. As opposed to the Marxist view I guess.
And I said it because the article argues somewhat (in)directly that management gets paid well because of position of power and luck, not merit, that free markets don't work, and throws around words like libertarianism, meritocracy etc., but makes no solid economic arguments, it's explained more from a point of populist left ideas based on my reading.
Note that there's more than one competing idea here, and I personally don't necessarily agree with one single theory, but if you're interested in it in general here are some sources off the top of my head:
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations [1]
John Locke - Two Treatises of Government[2]
Friedrich Hayek - The Road to Serfdom[3]
david Hume - A Treatise of Human Nature[4]
Austrian school of economics[5]
Chicago school of economics[6]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_of_Human_Nature
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics
EDIT: Need to add at least Friedman I suppose. From here on out you can google classical liberalism, libertarianism, Age of Enlightenment, etc.
And if you want different ideas, of which I guess the author would support some if he'd actually read / cited actual economic theory,
Keynesian economics, Marxian economics, Economic interventionism etc...
Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom[7]
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_and_Freedom
Attacking these essays as an oversimplification while presenting a caricature of the introvert and disconnected programmer is borderline ridiculous.
Author here. Man, if I took it down a few notches, I'd bury myself under my own hubris! I'm nobody, certainly not worth PG's time or perhaps yours, I'm trying to speak truth to power and won't apologize for stepping on anyone's hero worship. I absolutely agree with you that Graham's essays are inspiring and fun to read. I think I made that clear as well. The frustration which drove this essay was his casual observation that the best programmers are libertarians. I don't think that's true and have data to support it. I'm also frustrated to see a powerful man perpetuate self-serving ideologies without acknowledging the influences of power and luck.
> borderline ridiculous
Story of my life. But I think my caricature still stands as an illustration of how the introverted mindset can shut off more nuanced views of social and political structure and lead one to adopt a personal view that serves those in power.
> I'm also frustrated to see a powerful man perpetuate self-serving ideologies without acknowledging the influences of power and luck.
I agree with this above statement maybe or maybe not for the reasons you do.
The "Power Game", or even the lack of willingness or know-how to play it is the reason a lot of programmers think themselves superior to the sales guys who peddle the product of their labor.
The "Power Game" is also the same reason the good sales guys feel that despite being so technically smart, programmers can be damned idiotic fools.
As an introverted "programmer-type" myself, life would be way easier for me if there was no Power Game. But the Power Game is as human as eating, drinking and pissing.
Hell, I get irritated daily that I even have to eat, drink or piss. It feels like a waste of time when I am in the zone with something. Same thing with the Power Game.
Luck... hugely important. Heck, we've all played RPG's and know to fill up that skill bucket ASAP.
Maybe what would really be helpful to programmers is something that can stir inspiration like Paul Graham, but that covers something akin to "The 48 Laws of Power" for the introverted modern day employees.
The author sounds rather more arrogant than Paul Graham did. And free markets are the ultimate solution.
EDIT: The more I read, the more ridiculous it gets. The author takes something that Paul Graham said, throws away all of the context, and attacks it as a strawman. The article seems more keen on attacking Paul Graham than making any actual point.
It is also written in a very verbose style that makes it hard to follow whatever argument might be present.
> It is amazing how well this piece serves as marketing fodder for Graham’s venture capital arm, Y Combinator. His business model relies on convincing hordes of eager young hackers to sign over their surplus labor to his investors. With logic crafted to appeal directly to the introverted minds of recent computer science graduates, he has no shortage of cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios.
Having been through the SV startup wringer several times I totally agree - (hidden) power structures matter much more than people would like to admit, and neither work nor rewards get distributed fairly. And the whole startup hype machine (which includes pg) serves to attract more naive programmers to contribute years of unpaid overtime work in exchange for vague promises of future riches. (But I'm not bitter, just realistic.)
Also your observations about hacker politics are right on. Watching political discussions here is painful.
Sorry to see you're getting crucified here for your dissenting essay, though. People who claim to be rational end up just as susceptible to groupthink :(
As you noted, the section about "Wealth and Power" seemed to have been tacked on almost as an afterthought. So it isn't until the end of your piece that you get to this point:
Graham concludes: “The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.” Sadly, the bottom line is that unless you are among a tiny handful of the elite, a laissez-faire economic system would enslave you, not liberate you. The only people who will enjoy the fruits of a truly free society are those with the power to keep you in line. Given more freedom, those in power will first cut off the access to power, to prevent anyone from challenging them. They will immediately go for the jugular. There is no compromise with power and no means to share it. Thus, the power elite will readily command vast armies of people and resources to ensure that you stay down. This will be their first priority. Their second priority will be to extract labor from you in the manner that serves them best. In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road.
If you were to re-write / edit your piece today, my recommendation would be to start off with this as your premise. We have sooooooo much evidence today from many, many people who followed this path recommended by Graham thirteen years ago. Sure, maybe a few of the nerds got to keep their lunch money. However: catapulting a reserve of lunch money into the kind of wealth that matters (the kind of wealth that buys power) just doesn't happen for your average nerd. There's one more layer needed on the recipe.
Graham rightly points out that wealth is not a zero-sum game. Power, on the other hand, is most definitely a zero-sum proposition, and those who have it will stop at nothing to retain it and quash any perceptible threat. Power is a black hole—it consumes everything and yet remains a perpetual void. We see instances of this even with the meager controls in place in our society today. Loosen or remove those controls and power, unchecked, will accumulate until nothing remains. Anyone or anything in its path will be destroyed.
It's hard not to think about the political implications of how this relates to just about everything these days.
You. You wrote the article, posted it on your blog, used your HN account to submit it here, and it is you that is posting a comment in support of yourself. Writing in a way that implies you aren't the author is disingenuous.
"cannon fodder lining up on his doorstep willing to eat Ramen and gleefully line the coffers of his investor’s portfolios"
characterization, which I've read a good twenty times now. How does this make sense, when generally speaking, if an investor gets rich, it means the company succeeded, and thus the founders get rich too?
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Where does he try to do this?
On the subject of arrogance, spoken like a true believer..
There is hardly ever an ultimate solution to anything, and to take an extreme position on matters is almost always harmful. Things are never simply black and white.
The problem with "things that are not free markets" is that we simply know very little about those things, and the learning curve is significant. USAian bulk crops agriculture is not a free market, it mostly seems to work well that way but it started under FDR and only reached its present form after decades of tweaking.
In effect ( the theory goes that ) larger price uncertainties will create price instabilities that, net-net, add more inefficiency than pricing things a skosh higher and accommodating overproduction.
As political speech, the term "free market" has been rendered threadbare. "Trade agreements" seem to mostly be more akin to Mercantilism than free markets, and so on.
Ultimate solution to what?
There’s an entire field of economics dedicated to the way free markets can fail to allocate resources efficiently, even when the participants are free agents acting without external constraints.
Do you think this work is false? Or do you believe that the inefficient allocation of resources is an acceptable price to pay, because “free markets” are more important than outcomes?
Imho, we as a community should put more weight on that aspect, and we should stimulate also the failures of Silicon Valley to come forward with their stories to prevent bias. For example, we've heard some stories of people making truckloads of money on app-stores, but do we really have any bearing on what the average capable developer makes? If we don't want to end up as disillusioned gold-diggers, we should really get that kind of data out.
Now years later, after having started a company through YC and then becoming a YC partner and now seeing this same kind of magic happen over and over again with hacker founders, I can't help but attest to the fact that his worldview has proven to be valuable.
The disillusioned worldview justifies lying on the floor. The essay's worldview prods you to get up.
Yes, that is certainly laudable, but he may be suffering from survivor bias.
But it's a big basket. It's expected that you're going to need to try a dozen different variations of the same idea before something sticks.
What brand of libertarianism is the author talking about here?
That sounds like anarchy, not libertarianism.
I think most would agree that "arbitrary exercises of power" would include murder and arson. The author really does his argument injustice by throwing around a caricature of a political philosophy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
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If you assume that it is the case that, absent the government, people will go crazy, then you're also positing the need for a police state and things like survellience.
edit: Apologies for this utterly useless comment. To elaborate: The construct "brand" is a psychological hack, a marketing fnord. Reading about it in a presumably rational discussion is what I found amusing.
Historically, ALL societies have possessed rigid, hierarchical social structures with negligible social mobility, and very few of them had anything close to laissez-faire economic policies.
What made Renaissance / Enlightenment Europe a little better than the rest was its intense competition along several dimensions (political, economic, technological) both between and within political entities; such a world made creative types too valuable to be liquidated or enslaved.
>In a perfectly libertarian society, the bullies would not only take your lunch money, they would murder your family, burn your house, and leave you for dead by the side of the road. This is your free society. Enjoy.
And eventually the bullies would run out of prey -- and would have to prey upon themselves. But it would probably not come to that. Anyone with half a brain would have stopped contributing to such a flawed society a long time ago, and maybe even started undermining it, e.g. the USSR.
Statements like these are pointless theatrics. The more wrong someone is, the easier, not harder it is to point out where and how. What's the argument?
You have to wait until section 2 to find one:
"...there are actually several critical errors in the above reasoning which render Graham’s conclusions baseless. The first is the idea that measurement of things like quality and success can be objective, perfect and fair. These are not objective facts, they are highly contextual and can be manipulated by power struggles, charisma, clever marketing, or outright fraud. Value is a social construct..."
After about eight paragraphs about how "pedestrian" PG is, his point (finally) is basically that value is subjective and immeasurable. I don't know how true this is philosophically, but for all intents and purposes, if it were true, it would mean that nothing could be better than anything else. [1] It's also a conflation of ideas. Marketing doesn't create value; it distributes and sells it. Value as defined in the original essay is the meaty stuff people want: a home computer, for example, or an affordable spaceship.
"Graham identifies that “Many of the employees (e.g. the people in the mailroom or the personnel department) work at one remove from the actual making of stuff.” So what exactly do they contribute to the wealth generation process? Does Graham imply that without these others working at “one remove”, the programmers could still create the wealth they do? Without the human resources team to coordinate their medical benefits, would the programmers be as productive? Without the legal team to fend off frivolous lawsuits brought by patent trolls [...]?" (And so on.)
All Graham is saying is that programmers are directly involved in the creation of the product itself — its design, engineering, and maintenance. Other people create the social environment that makes it possible for this product to be distributed and not be killed, but don't make stuff in the artisanal sense.
I can understand why it would be insulting if someone claimed that anyone who isn't a maker were somehow useless, but Graham never did.
I'm ten minutes in, and everything I've read is basically a verbose form of "it's all relative" and "things are more complicated than that." Philosophy has a standard refutation to this: we deal with complex phenomena by isolating principles. For example, the abstract idea of value, the distinction between creation and distribution, and so on. It's the most boring thing in the world to hear, "the universe is more complex than that idea captures." All abstractions are reductions.
This sort of argument based on moral outrage and authority about how the real world works holds back truthseeking discourse.
[1] I also have a hard time understanding how someone who has earnestly tried to make good things could want this to be true.
But that value doesn't exist until marketing "unlocks" it! The example discussed is marketing finding a new vertical which then expands the profitability of a product line without any additional work. A portion of the value didn't exist until marketing sold it to a new market. I don't consider that conflation of ideas, more of highlighting the nuance that quantifiable portions of value cannot be ascribed to individual efforts.
The fact that value is subjective and immeasurable doesn't insult anyone who tries to make good things. I try to make good things too, the value I get from them is the sense of accomplishment that I've done a good job. But whether my "good job" translates into a $1bn unicorn is up to luck, not simply my effort.
I think your disagreement with Graham is over a definition of words. You seem to be saying that creation of value is the indivisible sum of efforts to (a) decide what to build, (b) build it, and (c) sell it. He assumes a and b can be isolated out.
In any case though, take any highly successful company. Imagine if all the marketing people and product/engineering/design people were suddenly segregated, and forced to work without the other. Who's more worried?
I'm not at all saying marketing people are useless, which seems to be the idea you take issue with. They provide value. But (I'm sorry) less than the designers and engineers, and measurably so, from successive thought experiments like the above. That's why they're paid less.
"The fact that value is subjective and immeasurable doesn't insult anyone who tries to make good things. I try to make good things too, the value I get from them is the sense of accomplishment that I've done a good job."
But by your argument, I can steal your sense of accomplishment by saying, who knows how much of your success was due to you? How much was due to the marketing team? 10%? 50%? 80%?
"But whether my "good job" translates into a $1bn unicorn is up to luck, not simply my effort."
On this topic I mostly defer to Hamming's point in You and Your Research. I'd say there's luck involved, not that it's up to luck. While it's true not everyone who can become Bill Gates does, some people outright can't become Bill Gates, while others can. The point is, this doesn't show that value is subjective.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
FWIW, I've seen 3 or 4 "rebuttals" of pg essays, and they all read about the same.
For instance, one pg essay mentions how large glossy magazines all cost about the same, and how this spelled difficult times for the publishing industry in the future, given the likely average for a digital book or a website view. Someone wrote a rebuttal from the viewpoint of the publishing industry, which, when unpacked, contained only one concrete point, which was approximately "No, publishing is doing great -- look how many millions of copies Sarah Palin's book sold!"
I would argue it does create value. Not only for increasing the speed of information, but to attach a sentimental value to an object people like it more. People enjoy coca cola more because of the brand and thus the value is greater.
It's a touchy feely piece (not any worse as such). One of the important things to feed ones intuition is to convay how a thing should feel.
This was food for intuition, not a detailed analysis. That's how I read it, anyhow.
I approach any non-peer reviewed work as prose and poetry. Some other people mighr be more stringent.