Ask HN: Has PG written any essays about "people who shouldn't do startups"? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has PG written any essays about "people who shouldn't do startups"?

22 pointswyw19 comments

I have a sense that I'm one of these people. I'm risk-averse, perhaps anxious by nature, and I like the structure that corporate entities provide, despite being well aware of how challenging it can be to exist and thrive within that structure at times; and, despite what PG writes in "You weren't meant to have a boss":

http://paulgraham.com/boss.html

It's appropriate, given his audience, that most of what PG writes is very encouraging of the idea that people should just get out there and get things going by themselves.

But, not being familiar with all of his essays, I wonder if someone could point to any that are a little bit more ambivalent about the whole endeavor.

View on HN

You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to do a startup.

You'll find that a lot of people here have something crazy in their genetics that makes them know that they have to do a startup. Like, they could be really happy doing whatever they're doing today, but they'll never stop thinking about how they are going to do their startup. Those are the people that pg is talking to in his essays.

If you ask me, it's about doing what makes you happy. If you prefer to have a job at an existing company, or if you're risk averse, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I appreciate that you say that because I do find it troubling that some people here seem to suggest that unless you are willing to take the kinds of risks involved in doing a startup, you are not really living or actualizing your potential.

It's the attitude that if you work in a company you are just a wage slave and a drone.

It's an attitude that expresses a value system which places a premium on achievement and 'Success' and is not so different from the value system of certain people inside the corporate world who are desperately clawing their way up the ladder to prove something to their peers, their neighbors or themselves.

I don't begrudge someone their ambition to do that if they want to but what I do resent is when someone tries to make me feel that my choices are somehow less if I'm not willing to 'step up'. It all comes down to what you value more.

Robustness, and potential of evolution, of a society relies on its diversity, I think. Tech start-ups stand on the huge body of relatively risk-free infrastructure provided by traditional structured organizations. Although such structure may change from the current way big corporations run, there will always be more people needed to work for such stable infrastructure than trying new things on top of it.

And people are different from each other. Some can draw their potential by taking risks and trying new things. Some can draw theirs by maintaining and gradually improving the existing organization. Some even want to produce things that don't pay their bills (e.g. most artists) so the need day jobs, but they are roots and trunk of rich culture.

PG doesn't say explicitly, but I think his essays aim at very specific type of people, especially those who aren't risk-averse type but are afraid of taking risks because they're educated so.

If you're bothered by those who look down you, you can just remind yourself that their success actually relies on you.

Preface to the following: I don't have enough time to frame my arguments in a more objective view-point, so, for those that read this post please do not take them personally! I respect individual free will greatly and never expound my philosophies unless someone asks :)

I would agree, in the end it is ultimately about happiness and joy. However, if you are inherently seeking personal evolution (which is what joy IS), 9 to 5 will do a lot to suppress that.

Unless you happen to be paid for research or bleeding edge development on some cool project, building webapps for other people day in and day out; or doing maintenance work day in and day out isn't a terribly creative expression IMHO. (Creativity IS spirit, it is an aspect of the intellect - there is regurgitation and then there is creativity)

I resigned from my 9 to 5 (as a systems engineer and web application developer) to pursue my self-education and a startup idea. While I almost did not hand in that letter of resignation, I did, and I am loving my life.

Mind you, I am 22, have 0 debts, 0 dependents, and am willing to live out of a tent and work from the library till my projects begin to generate an income (yes I am a lone wolf).

If you feel fear, that is an excellent indicator that you are staring right at your 'edge'. Edge being that boundary in which you, as a man (I'm assuming you're a man), find your present state of consciousness expanding into; pushing that edge pops the bubble and you begin expanding into that new boundary. The phallus is an excellent symbol, as men (speaking for myself and many that I know, I apologize for the sweeping generalization) we feel purposeless and mediocre when we are not constantly PUSHING, SPEARING, HUNTING, PENETRATING.

Find your edge and lean into it (don't jump off the edge), push push push. Use the masculine aspect of your psyche (intellect, hunter, etc...) to challenge yourself and your edge; you can even do this within the context of a 9 to 5 job, however, you will find at some point the typical 9 to 5 structure of serving your time to someone else is far less appealing than serving it to the greater self that is your life.

If you're happy doing what you're doing, why do you care what anyone here thinks?

Excellent points. I have tremendous respect for start up founders, even those who fail. But for many people, it is simply not the right decision.

This is particularly true for people that value stability highly. This could come from simply desiring it personally, or having a compelling reason (such as family commitments) to seek stability.

Something like this?: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

Yes. Something exactly like that. Thanks.

One thing I disagree with in the article is the premise that people get real jobs because "it's the default thing to do". While that may be true, it's also true that a regular job is simply the most likely way that you are going to make a secure living over the long run since most startups fail.

If your job "fails", you can always get another one and make close to what you were making before. And especially if you work in tech, nothing about what has happened in the economy recently has really changed this reality.

But if your startup fails your next startup is also likely to fail - less likely than the first time perhaps, but still more likely than not.

One thing you neglected to mention: if your startup fails, you can use your startup experience to help you get a job.

Exactly - in fact, when I was evaluating starting my startup, I figured the startup experience - and received advice agreeing with this - would prove more valuable than the equivalent time spent a "normal" job.

Although I had posted it earlier and been trashed for it I will point to "We Don't Encourage Individuals to Form Startups" at http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/12/04/we-dont-encourage-in...

My thesis is that most entrepreneurship is involuntary (either due to fundamental personality characteristics or lack of opportunity to do anything else). If you like the structure corporations provide, embrace it. My only caveat is that most have done away with a commitment to lifetime employment, give some thought to what you might do if you were not able to continue to work in a corporation. I think the best book on the psychology of entrepreneurship is "You Have to Be a Little Crazy" by Barry Moltz http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X... who concludes:

"Entrepreneurs start businesses because..they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days."

I'm actually innately risk averse but I wind up looking wildly devil-may-care to some people because my life circumstances have consistently put me in a position to choose between the safe, secure path of certain doom or the risky, unexplored path of possible doom. Given that scenario, "possible doom" is the conservative risk-averse choice.

I think public school and other bureaucratic institutions help shape people in the direction of expecting bureaucracy as the "norm"....I mean, it seems to me it's a culture and a mindset and a lifestyle and if you grow up with it, it's more comfortable than being out on a limb by yourself. My sons were homeschooled for a long time and they are a lot less intimidated than I am about plans to become entrepreneurs. I have long been torn between wanting to strike out on my own and wanting more conventional success. I'm wired (and probably also trained) to want the perceived societal approval that goes along with making it in a large bureaucracy (big company, federal government...etc) But I just don't fit in.

I currently have a corporate job and that has given me some degree of satisfaction that "Yes! I can make it on those terms!" But I've also been languishing in an entry-level job which doesn't begin to compare to the kind of recognition/success I've had in other (non-monetary) endeavors. I've been very torn between wanting to pursue a career at the company and wanting to strike out on my own. But recent events at work have convinced me that striking out on my own is the more risk-averse path. I can't control what the folks in charge at the company are doing and recent developments concern me. I've also seen that working a regular day job doesn't buffer me from the vagaries of the market as much as I thought it would. It just gives me less control over how to meet the latest challenges than I would have if I ran the show.

So I believe I will end up out there on my own. But I believe it will be a logical progression, step by step, rather than a radical departure.

That would be a rather negative essay and it would not be any productive. Instead of talking about people who should not, we can keep talking about people who should or skills to acquire prior to starting a startup.

In the end, no one knows.

Here's why I disagree with you (I upvoted you because you make a valid point worth debating and weren't an asshole):

There's an instinct in us all to assume that because people are good/talented/interesting in some ways, they must be good/talented/interesting in every way. On Hacker News and in the YCombinator sphere, there is a blunt attitude that if you're at work and not starting something up, you're not being as productive as you could be/are wasting your life. This gets reinforced by everybody here, not because people are assholes about it (most of them are not), but because everybody here is so well-spoken - and most everybody here is wise and talented to boot - that it's easy to look at this crowd and say, "These people are people I like, and they do startups, and because I don't want to do startups there is something wrong with me."

Paul's essays reinforce this. Because he constantly writes from the assumption that yes, building a start-up is good, his essays have slowly taken on the attitude that the Paul Graham way is the right way, no shades of gray. The thing is, from his perspective I'm certain it is the right way. He doesn't bother writing essays for people who don't have his same mentality, and he shouldn't have to frame himself in that way. But the Hacker News mentality is so wholly wrapped around "PG"'s that very often it seems his essays define what's good people and what's bad people here. So if you're not a start-up person, there's something vaguely hostile in that set-up.

Sometimes, thinking about what advice you're giving should not be followed is the most productive thing you can do.

To the OP: My advice is to look for that knowledge somewhere outside of Hacker News. As bright as this community is, it's a very one-sided one and it's that way for a reason. If you want to round out your opinions, look for other communities that aren't so focused on the start-up mentality, and stay there until you build up confidence and realize that in the end, you get to decide what matters to you rather than other people.

Thank you for the feedback.

Hacker News is probably the last place someone will get advices about not starting a startup. It was named "Startup News" to begin with, hence its Pro-Startup audience.

The reason why people here push others to do a startup is because they are doing it themselves and find it quite rewarding. Not necessarily a monetary reward, but a personal satisfaction. If they see potential in someone, then it is normal to ask "Why not give it a try?".

Also I do not believe anyone ever left their extremely satisfying job because commenters push them to do so.

Apparently 20 venture capitalists told the Skype team they were not going to fund them. They were all wrong to the tune of 3B dollars and 10 millions simultaneous connection as of this writing.

This is why I am still confident PG or any investors can make a good judgment about who should start, but not who should not.

Excellent points and very well said. Recently I have been starting to feel down about myself and I noticed that it had to do with reading Hacker News and estimating my value through the lens of this startup value system. Despite the obvious talent and intelligence in this community, as you pointed out, if you are constantly face to face with a value system that is at odds with yours you will either (a) decide that it is not for you and walk away or (b) if you are of a more impressionable mindset, you may start to wonder why you don't match up. In my case, I have been finding the latter, at the expense of my self-esteem. So perhaps, as you suggested, I should take a break from HN for a while, as seductive as it is both in terms of content as well as the quality of the discussions.

Thanks for articulating that so well.

I found myself going through faces of obsessive determination and complete apathy last year. I think part of that's probably just life: Everybody runs into dilemmas. In cases like this, where partly it's a matter of being online talking to a focuses set of people, taking a few months off works wonders. Turn on noprocrast, set your away time to 65536, and figure out what else you can do. I just got access again a few weeks ago, and I don't feel the pull of this community anymore, so I don't feel as committed and frequently hopeless. With luck something like that could help you out as well.

(My other, snarkier advice is to go to Metafilter and look at every thread regarding a Paul Graham essay, because Metafilter's a bright community that loathes Paul Graham. My opinions are somewhere in between there or here, but reading those threads in June was rejuvenating in some ways.)

Going there now.

I agree with this, mostly, and upvoted it.

But I'd add one note of caution: hang out with people you want to emulate, even if you do a piss-poor job of emulating them.

If you want to learn chess, hang out with chess-players. If you want to learn writing, hang-out with writers. The outstanding members of these communities will always kick your ass when it comes to execution -- that's the nature of large communities.

The real question is whether you can be brutally critical of your work and life and strive to be a top notch player while still having a happy and joyous lifestyle. Some people can. Some people can't. If you can't, then your options become more limited.

I look at it this way: whatever I'm doing, there are lots of people much better than me at it. There are lots of value systems both for and against what I'm doing. It's up to me to chose a value system and honestly learn from the masters to really enjoy life. If I do a half-assed job of either I end up miserable and unhappy.

Hope that made some sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com