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Comment by californiaguy | Hacker News Reader

> Let's face it: scientists, engineers, hackers are the tip of the spear, the guys taking all the bullets and all the risks

I used to think this until I started running a business. Business people take the risks. There's nothing stopping a hacker from being a business person and often times there is great overlap, but let's be clear about the semantics here: someone puts up the money for an engineer to do his job, and that's the business person.

Business people fail constantly and with no fanfare. You may not realize this because you're a hacker that's only worked for successful businesses where the management has tricked you into thinking you are responsible for the success of the business, but I assure you that is naive and you are being manipulated successfully because your business people are smarter than you.

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I am not being manipulated, and you didn't get the point I was trying to make. My mistake for not wording my thoughts precisely enough....

OK, let's forget the labels "hacker" and "business person" for a second. The point is that the ones who have the money, are the ones who set the rules. Imagine that I am someone who wants to start a business, and that you are someone who has money to invest. I spend 5 years of my life trying to build a business (not necessarily tech related) and I fail. You invested in 99 other companies and, overall, obtain a return on your investment. Since you have the money, you have the power to spread the risk. If I succeeded, you would reap a great deal of the rewards, even though you had little skin in the game.

Sure, I can hire a bunch of programmers for my company, but it's my company, so I am the first wave who's gonna take the heat if things go wrong... the programmers can always get a job elsewhere.

The point is that the rich and powerful can afford a risk-reward profile that someone who is "in the trenches" cannot afford. Being "in the trenches" is what entrepreneurs, hackers, scientists do. Being a rear echelon pussy is what VC's, politicians and managers do. That's what I meant.

> Imagine that I am someone who wants to start a business, and that you are someone who has money to invest

If you are starting a business, then YOU are the business person. It doesn't matter where the money comes from. There are business people who specialize in investing money, but then there are also business people who actually run the god damn businesses.

> Being "in the trenches" is what entrepreneurs, hackers, scientists do.

ENTREPRENEURS ARE BUSINESS PEOPLE. Holy fucking shit, stop reading Hacker News and try to hang out in reality for a little while each day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_person

Dude, get this once and for all: I said we should forget labels for a while, didn't I? So, fuck the words "hacker" and "business people".

BTW, I am not a nerdy, deluded, emotionally retarded teenager who is enchanted with PG's essays. I have been in the start-up world since 2002, so I know how reality works.

If you had cared to read my previous comment, you would have understood that the distinction is not between hackers and business people, but rather between people who take the risks, and people who reap the rewards. Ideally, high-risk means high-rewards. The whole fucking point I was trying to make is that smart people position themselves to have disproportionally high rewards for the low risk profile they adopt. That's the whole idea.

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