> What's an especially productive 22 year old to do? One thing you can do is go over the heads of organizations, directly to the users. Any company that hires you is, economically, acting as a proxy for the customer. The rate at which they value you (though they may not consciously realize it) is an attempt to guess your value to the user. But there's a way to appeal their judgement. If you want, you can opt to be valued directly by users, by starting your own company.
I wasn't expecting Paul Graham to recite orthodox Marxism. This paragraph is only missing the word "exploited", because he's effectively saying that young good workers are undervalued because a large employer makes more money from them than they are paid.
> Buying larval startups solves that problem for them: the acquirer doesn't pay till the developers have proven themselves. Acquirers are protected on the downside, but still get most of the upside.
The downside of this is of course that the "downside" flows to the not-chosen workers. It's effectively like doing a trial shift, except instead of just a day you have to spend six months on building a business. And during that time, how do you fund your food and rent?
> The math is brutal. While perhaps 9 out of 10 startups fail, the one that succeeds will pay the founders more than 10 times what they would have made in an ordinary job.
So .. what happens to everyone else?
Sure, I like the message that young people should go out in the world, try things, be imaginative, and try to find an employer that will value their skills. And that it's easier than ever to disintermediate the economy. But it needs to come with a recognition of how that's actually funded on the day to day level, and which people are and aren't going to be able to succeed in that environment.