For me its just another sign that 'tech' is growing up. Pretty much any industry creates an economic flow, and the flow is a source of power (some would argue the only real source in peace time), and one can harness that power by having influence over the flow.
Back when the Homebrew Computer Club was meeting and Steve and Steve were there and nerds gathered at the ByteShop to see the latest S-100 board that Geoge Morrow had dreamed up, the total flow was measured in less than a million dollars a year. Few 'professional' power brokers even noticed. Today the total economic impact of 'tech' is approaching a trillion dollars by some estimates, with that kind of flow comes real power. You also get a different class of players in the game.
We joke about people who would sell out their families for a million dollars, however that number gets uncomfortably large as you go up in decimal orders of magnitude. 10 million, 100 million, a billion ?
The stakes are higher today, some people are the barrier to entry you have to get past. It hasn't been a "gentleman's game" for some time now. Kinda sad really.
Right now a lot of dumb money is pouring into tech because there's nowhere else for it to go. I'm seeing a lot of the same kinds of low class opportunists popping up as a result.
I had hoped that the open source wave that hit after the dot com crash would have reminded people about why openness leads to growth not stagnation but I don't think it has.
As others have argued, "Don't be Evil" is Google trying to inoculate itself against growing up too much and always having a nagging reminder to strive to be the company they were in their youth. Perhaps the valley was never a gentleman's game, but it was (and still is) much more so than other industries.
Are we that different to any other industry?
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." -James Madison
“Pay seven figures a year to buy a corporate subscription to my newsletter and I’ll say nice things about your company, and when the press needs a quote, I’ll be there to puff you up. Or, don’t buy a subscription and I will bash you relentlessly.”
Model is thus: Subscribe to our journal, we'll ply you for survey responses/advertising. Fail to pay? You won't get reviewed or if so, it won't be flattering. Advertise? You'll be reviewed, and positively so. Oh, and we'll charge you for the report born of the analysis of the survey data you gave us. Repeat for all major players in a niche field. Welcome to industry publishing.
There are days we can't even disagree like gentlemen here. :-(
For me it's another sign that 'tech' has some serious growing up to do.
I'm way ahead of you.
Please people. Stop. Upvoting. This. Crap.
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"Disclaimer: [$thisBlog] is an investor in [$company]"
...right underneath the story headline involving a company they were involved with. It would force "journalists" to at least pretend to be somewhat objective.
"Or, don’t buy a subscription and I will bash you relentlessly.” Most big companies paid up and considered it a cost of doing business."
Is this seriously what we're all working at? A complex power play to get yourself rich at the expense of any morals or integrity?
How much is /your/ soul worth?
We have real problems in the world, but instead we have a bunch of boys with computers trying to rule the world through their control of media.
Is the world seriously this disgusting and I just haven't realized it yet?
Every industry makes this rationalization.
To some extent, yeah, it is. I don't just mean in tech, thats the nature of the world. Without some cognitive dissidence and rationalization, we'd all be neurotic messes. Or psychopaths.
As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _ecosystem_ is the _ecosystem_ itself
Edit: We live in a democracy. If there is something that stands to significantly harm us, then we should (and can) do something about it. A recent example would be SOPA.
The biggest threat we face is not from Washington, it's ourselves. If we become so torn-apart that forces from Washington can destroy us, it's our fault.
It's rather easy to focus on problems being caused from an external force, but there are often larger and more dangerous threats internally. That brings up back to the startup quote, it's easy for a startup to focus on competitors (external threat) instead of working on their own product (which is really the biggest thing that will make or break them).
> As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _human_ is the _human_ itself.
Plus, I can think of plenty of ways external influences COULD kill the startup ecosystem. Congress could pass laws that make it much harder to start companies. Developers could figure out that the startup value proposition is not that great if you're not a founder. The market for internet ads could dry up (a significant risk to many startup business models). Big companies could develop techniques to quickly iterate on products rather than ceding ground to more agile startups. Laws could change that make it more expensive to acquire startups. Other industries could be created that make startups less enticing to young people. Taxes and security laws could change in a way that makes it much harder to distribute equity to employees.
Any of these things could kill the startup ecosystem depending on the magnitude of the change, and probably a lot of other stuff I'm not even thinking about. The idea that the ecosystem could kill itself also seems pretty preposterous to me. There are parts of the country where there isn't much of an ecosystem, but startups still exist. Startups aren't created because of an ecosystem, but because it is financially and economically advantageous to do so for some people.
Yeah, overall this view that the ecosystem is invulnerable from outside pressures and highly vulnerable to interior ones strikes me as fairly naive.
We don't live in anything close to democracy. It's hard for a populous to change a corrupt system when all the cards are stacked against the greater public.
If somebody is an unscrupulous douchebag, don't to business with them, don't read their blogs, don't upvote their articles. Treat them like the trolls they are.