Basic rules of thumb about the tech industry in particular
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936617376442753024
More Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.
In that spirit, here’s some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already. 67 replies 2,809 retweets 6,836 likes Reply 67 Retweet 2.8K Like 6.8K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless. 28 replies 561 retweets 1,968 likes Reply 28 Retweet 561 Like 2.0K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams (“because software is so easy there, amirite guys?”)
Charge more. Charge more still. Go on. 3 replies 196 retweets 990 likes Reply 3 Retweet 196 Like 990 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn’t. 17 replies 256 retweets 1,020 likes Reply 17 Retweet 256 Like 1.0K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. 14 replies 226 retweets 1,133 likes Reply 14 Retweet 226 Like 1.1K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The hardest problem in B2C is distribution. The hardest problem in B2B is sales. AppAmaGooBookSoft are AppAmaGooBookSoft primarily because they have mortal locks on distribution. 5 replies 156 retweets 781 likes Reply 5 Retweet 156 Like 781 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 Follow Follow @patio11 More Everyone in Silicon Valley uses equity, and not debt, to fuel their growth because debt is not available in sufficient quantities to poorly capitalized companies without a strong history of adequate cash flows to service debt. 10:25 AM - 1 Dec 2017 89 Retweets 549 Likes Rahul RamchandaniKrishaan Khubchandknight of cupscode_monka13phBasti MoritzAndrew Hyunsoo LeeSam Borickfoxgrrl 5 replies 89 retweets 549 likes Reply 5 Retweet 89 Like 549 Direct message Benjamin MelançonTweet text
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Investors in venture-back companies are purchasing a product. It is critically important to understand that that product is growth. The reason tech is favored as an asset class that it appears to be one of few sources of growth available on the market at the moment at any price. 4 replies 141 retweets 707 likes Reply 4 Retweet 141 Like 707 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The explosive growth of the tech sector keeps average age down and depresses average wages. Compared to industries which existed in materially the same form in 1970, we have a stupidly compressed experience spectrum: 5+ years rounds to “senior.” This is not a joke. 13 replies 147 retweets 784 likes Reply 13 Retweet 147 Like 784 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The tech industry is fundamentally unserious about how it recruits, hires, and retains candidates. About which I have a lot more to say than could fit in a tweet, but, a good thing to know. 7 replies 153 retweets 844 likes Reply 7 Retweet 153 Like 844 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More If you are attempting to hire for an engineering position, greater than 50% of people who apply for the job and whose resume you select as “facially plausible” will be entirely unable to program, at all. The search term for learning more about this is FizzBuzz. 11 replies 138 retweets 774 likes Reply 11 Retweet 138 Like 774 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Software companies in B2B which aspire to growing quickly will eventually spend more on sales and marketing than they do on engineering. You can read S-1s of successful IPOs and calculate the ratio; it is sometimes 2X++. 4 replies 130 retweets 600 likes Reply 4 Retweet 130 Like 600 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The chief products of the tech industry are (in B2C) developing new habits among consumers and (in B2B) taking a business process which exists in many places and markedly decreasing the total cost of people required to implement it. 3 replies 239 retweets 965 likes Reply 3 Retweet 239 Like 965 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More There is no hidden reserve of smart people who know what they’re doing, anywhere. Not in government, not in science, not in tech, not at AppAmaGooBookSoft, nowhere. The world exists in the same glorious imperfection that it presents with. 10 replies 413 retweets 1,423 likes Reply 10 Retweet 413 Like 1.4K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world’s population, available on-demand, for “coffee money” not “university money.” 4 replies 195 retweets 929 likes Reply 4 Retweet 195 Like 929 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Weak-form efficients market hypothesis is a good heuristic for evaluating the public markets but a really, really bad heuristic for evaluating either technical or economic facts about tech companies, startups, your career, etc etc. Optimizations are possible; fruit hangs low. 5 replies 49 retweets 365 likes Reply 5 Retweet 49 Like 365 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists. People underestimate how effective a generalist can be at things which are done by specialists. People underestimate how deep specialties can run. These are simultaneously true. 14 replies 1,013 retweets 3,031 likes Reply 14 Retweet 1.0K Like 3.0K Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes. 5 replies 148 retweets 743 likes Reply 5 Retweet 148 Like 743 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More The amount of money flowing through capitalism would astound you. The number and variety of firms participating in the economy would astound you.
We don’t see most of it every day for the same reason abstractions protect us from having to care about metallurgy while programming. 5 replies 120 retweets 803 likes Reply 5 Retweet 120 Like 803 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. There are some exceptions: Waterloo, for example. This is the point where I joke “That’s an exhaustive list” but not sure that a joke. 23 replies 90 retweets 483 likes Reply 23 Retweet 90 Like 483 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Technical literacy in the broader population can be approximated with the Thanksgiving test: what sort of questions do you get at Thanksgiving? That’s the ambient level of literacy.
Serious people in positions of power eat Thanksgiving dinners, too. Guess what they ask at them. 4 replies 75 retweets 453 likes Reply 4 Retweet 75 Like 453 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More Salaries in the tech industry are up a lot in the last few years, caused by: a tight labor market, collapse of a cartel organized against the interests of workers, increasing returns to scale at AppAmaGooBookSoft, and the like.
Investor money does not pay most salaries. 4 replies 43 retweets 394 likes Reply 4 Retweet 43 Like 394 Direct message
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 1 Dec 2017 More This concludes, for the moment, an off-the-cuff list of things which would otherwise be too obvious to bring up in conversation.
Meta thought: you radically underestimate both a) how much you know that other people do not and b) the instrumental benefits to you of publishing it. 41 replies 209 retweets 1,389 likes Reply 41 Retweet 209 Like 1.4K Direct message