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| 2010/5/17-26 [Industry/Startup] UID:53833 Activity:nil |
5/14 Hot chick entrepreneur!
http://www.csua.org/u/qrf (finance.yahoo.com)
\_ ...dude, how old are you?
\_ Hopefully this is an undergrad.
\_ my gf looks better than that. so does gf #2. |
| 2010/3/8-30 [Industry/Startup] UID:53744 Activity:nil |
3/8 Hey guys, Piaw Na's book is ready! I got a copy and it's pretty
informative and inspiring. Worth every penny. -CSUA startup dude
http://books.piaw.net/guide
\_ He worked at 3 successfule pre-IPO statups. Does anyone know how
much his net worth is roughly?
\_ I am pretty sure that 90% of his net worth comes from Goog,
so you can pretty safely discount the rest.
\_ why does it matter to know? would it help you in any way?
\_ No. I just want to see how much better other people do than
I. -- PP |
| 2010/3/1-30 [Industry/Startup] UID:53732 Activity:nil |
3/1 http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/can-entrepreneurs-be-made Surprise, your entrepreneurialship spririt does *NOT* correlate withi your personality (it is not genetic). Is very much environmental. |
| 2009/12/3-26 [Industry/Startup] UID:53564 Activity:nil |
12/2 Help. I've had several jobs and none of them seem to give me
a good work-and-life balance. While this didn't matter when
I was young, I'm beginning to realize that I'm reaching an age
where I really need that balance. What is your workplace like,
and how do you reach a good work-and-life balance? P.S. I
don't need tom^H^H^Hgov workers to gloat about cushy gov jobs.
\_ I work at a big company (Top 10 website) and work 45-50 hrs/wk.
I am a middle manager, but most people work about that much here,
maybe a bit less. There are lots of parents and the company makes
a point of being family friendly. Most people stay here a very
long time, which tells you something right there. I used to work
at startups, but once the first kid was born, looked for a less
demanding corporate job and found it. -ausman
\_ so all the startups were too intense for a family guy?
\_ I have worked at three of them and yes, they would all have
been too much. Maybe after the kids are a little bit older.
There are probably startups out there that it is okay to
work less at, especially if you are not that ambitious.
\_ can you give me a few examples why it's too much?
like, chaos, bandaid, pager all the time, etc?
\_ Have you ever worked at a startup?
\_ no. tell us.
\_ Every one I have ever worked at the average
engineer or sysadmin put in 55+ hrs/wk. As a
sysadmin you are constantly being hounded to fix
random broken shit RIGHT NOW, usually by people
who are standing around your desk waiting for
your attention. You can expect to be called in
the middle of the night to fix anything that
you might remotely have anything to do with.
You will never have enough hours, or hardware
or management support to really do the stuff
that really needs to get done. And these were
all successful start-ups (two IPOs and one
buyout)!
\_ ok, IT really sucks, startup or not. But
what about sales and marketing?
\_ I have no idea. IT does not suck in a
well run company. |
| 2009/11/30-12/8 [Uncategorized/Profanity, Industry/Startup] UID:53550 Activity:kinda low |
11/30 God, I'm getting sick and tired of applying to hot company XYZ, being
led on, then turned away because of my lack of a degree (unavoidable),
then being contacted to see if I want to interview at hot company XYZ
because I'm what they're looking for. What the fuck, Silicon Valley,
what the fuck.
\_ Just wait until you get a job and update your linkedin profile. Then
the recruiters will be banging down your doors.
\_ Go get your degree. It's not unavoidable that you don't have one.
\_ Why the fuck are you looking for a job if you don't have a degree?
What the fuck, degreeless man, what the fuck. I agree with people
that a degree is just a piece of paper, and that what you learn
in academia don't have a lot of correlation with what you'll actually
do at work. Trade-school or professional school is a different
story but most of us went to Cal! Having that said, employment
for DA BOSS usually requires a degree. DA BOSS wants to make sure
that you know how to follow directions and a high GPA correlates
well w/high obedience and high tolerance for pain, skill sets that
are quite essential in corporations. Now, if you don't have a
degree, consider working for yourself. Some of the most famous
entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs don't have or even
care about degrees.
\_ Not all of us have rich parents who will pay for us to go to
school. Especially with the new bump up in tuition, the UC is
out of reach of anyone who has to self-fund. Also, sometimes
family obligations trump the luxury of attending school.
family obligations trump the luxury of attending school. -!OP
\_ God gives you lemons, and you make lemonade. Don't
whine, do something about it.
\_ Work a full-time job during the day and take evening classes
towards a degree.
\_ Look up at the initial post that started this thread...
\_ The initial post didn't say why OP can't take evening
classes towards a degree.
\_ Because my family is bankrupt and just about in foreclosure,
jackass. -OP
\_ in third world countries, if your parents go bankrupt they
go after everyone in the family. In the US, they go after...
the person who declared bankruptcy. Are YOU the person
who is in bankruptcy? I'm not trying to be a jackass, I'm
just trying to understand your situation and see if there
are other ways of looking at this. Please help me help you. |
| 2009/11/28-12/8 [Industry/Startup] UID:53548 Activity:nil |
11/28 A really cool fellow Soda CSUA'er is writing a book called "An
Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups". While many startup
books are written for founders and geared towards raising funding,
marketing, networking... this is one is written by an engineer,
*for engineers*. Take a look at it and if you think it'll be
helpful for you and/or your colleagues please share the link!
-kchang
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/piaw/an-engineers-guide-to-silicon-valley-startups
In case you don't know who piaw is:
http://csua.com/?entry=52970 |
| 2009/11/6-19 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:53509 Activity:nil |
11/6 Mark Pincus admits doing dirty things just to get revenue:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo
Are there other examples of a successful company that
does dirty things initially just to get rich? I can
think of a few like the accusations of YouTube employees
uploading copyrighted videos to get views, or Yelp
extorting shops to pay up for ratings. What else?
\_ Pretty much the entire history of M$. |
| 2009/10/9-22 [Industry/Startup] UID:53441 Activity:nil |
10/9 http://deals.venturebeat.com/2009/10/09/university-of-california-grows-its-incubators It's about time you pathetic U.C. incubators |
| 2009/10/6-22 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Motd, Industry/Startup] UID:53431 Activity:moderate |
10/5 any UC berkeley students that had successful startups
in the past 15 years?
\_ all the Cal grads I know with MBAs are in VC or finance.
maybe they are just better at risk analysis... starting a company
is not a great way to make money!
\_ I'm a Cal grad with an MBA working in Finance (not High Finance).
Before getting my MBA I had an unsuccessful startup. --abe
\_ rock on
\_ http://www.alchemicsolutions.com
\_ dans learned a lot while cratering two, does that count?
\_ dans is doing a great job at CNET and his boss loves him here
\_ dans is being a great Berkeley grad by being a good
'ol obedient code monkey for the man, most likely
a Furd grad or a company funded by Furd connected VCs.
Archictect:Construction Worker :: Stanfurd:Berkeley
\_ the lack of response says a lot about the pathetic state
that UCB has been in the past 2 decades or so. No wonder people
leave UCB to the Furd (e.g. Professor Aiken defecting to the
Furd instead of Professor Widom defecting to Cal).
\_ no, it's more a representation that the csua/motd is dying or is
already dead.
\_ just thinking we should hook up with the gals over at HAAS business
school who are interested in forming a social networking startup or
something... just need a good innovative idea born at UCB!!
\_ LOL. VCs will tell you that innovative ideas that will make
billions a year are dime a dozen. It's never about the ideas.
It's about the team, the execution, the track record (or attention
economy logs), and such. ... this is yet another example why
Cal should require Entrepreneurialship 101 as a mandatory
class to clarify these misconceptions.
\_ Inktomi, Organic, CollabNet
\_ Obviously Sameer, too. What a bunch of cruft, though, for
a school with tech leanings that was in the Bay Area during
a huge tech boom.
\_ That is just who I know about. There have got to be others
from the more recent crowd of graduates. I forgot HotOrNot.
Cal students work at startups, we don't found them.
\_ Rottentomatoes.
\_ Are there any Cal startups with viable business models?
Hotornot's cal people are long gone, and now it's a lame
http://Match.com competitor. Organic was sold and bought and sold
and is a shadow of its former self.
\_ What about CollabNet? But compared to Stanfurd, which has churned
out Sun, Yahoo, Google and VMWAre this is a pretty pathetic lot. |
| 2009/9/29-10/8 [Finance/Banking, Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:53412 Activity:moderate |
9/29 So let's say I have some money, about $100k. What are some things
I could do with it? What do you guys recommend?
\_ Hookers and blow
\_ Guns, ammo, MREs, to prepare for the coming apocalypse!
\_ I am thinking about buying some gold.
\_ Gold is a bad idea right now. The inflation hedge is
already factored into the price. There are other assets that
are also a good inflation hedge that aren't in a bubble. Such
as real estate. (The bubble there having just burst.)
\_ quit your job, move back home, and do your own startup.
Realize that the sooner you stop working for DA MAN, the
less likely you'll run into mid-life crisis in your 30s.
\_ I would like to start my own business, but probably not
a startup.
\_ So, like, restaurant would be in your opinion your
own business, but not a startup? A startup doesn't
necessarily mean a TECH company less than 100 person.
\_ Let's say I bought a McDonalds franchise, would that be
a startup?
\_ uh, no. If you don't know and don't care, it's
better than you stick to working for THE MAN.
\_ What?
\_ Wait a couple more months, then use it as down payment for a rental
property.
\_ This is on the short list.
\_ Keep it in a savings account as a contingency fund and for
a down payment for the next time you sell and buy a house? |
| 2009/9/2-9 [Industry/Startup] UID:53325 Activity:low |
9/2 Any opinions on what a developer at a small (10-person) startup
company should get in the way of stock options? (As a percent
of the company, of course). What are the general numbers?
Any opinions? -- First time startup employee
\_ http://csua.com/?entry=50939
\_ http://csua.com/?entry=52981
\_ http://csua.com/Industry/Startup/?page=1
\_ Thanks for the references --OP
\_ How many years of experience do you have? How much funding do they
have? Somewhere between 0.05-0.25% is common. Raw # of shares is
worthless because they may have 1M or 100M shares outstanding.
\_ 4-5 years of working part time/interning, with half a year
at this particular company, so I've already proved that I'm
quite valuable to them...
\_ what is this, undergrads posting on the motd?
\_ Guilty as charged
\_ 0.05-0.25% per year or per vesting period?
\_ In 1998 I joined a startup as Senior Enginner and employee #4,
and I got 1%. But that it didn't matter since it filed for Chapter
7 in 2001.
\_ As they say, startups are for really really lucky bastards
or suckers.
\_ I have worked at three startups and two had an IPO and the
other one got bought out at a hefty price. I guess I must
be really really lucky.
\_ You were a sucker in 2001, but then you got lucky.
Or maybe it's fate, it's meant to be. |
| 2009/7/16-24 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:53147 Activity:nil |
7/16 Twitter plans on 1B users by 2014:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet
\_ Not going to make it. Facebook will, though. |
| 2009/5/22-6/1 [Industry/Startup] UID:53035 Activity:nil |
5/23 stupid startup guy here again. We got a new CFO, a veteran of
many startups. I asked him how many shares there are out there,
and how much the company is worth, and, and I'm not making this up,
he replied with the exact numbers I wanted. I don't understand.
Maybe he's a pod person. This makes no sense. What is he doing
working here?
Apparently we are valued at 10 million, with 7 million shares
outstanding. So how many shares should mr over stressed engineer
receive? And I should I just say screw it and hold out for
as much salary as possible?
\_ welcome to the startup environment. Most of the time, it's
very much an every man for himself type of environment. If
you can't fight for your shares and recognition, you should
step up and fight for your shares, or don't join the
startup environment.
\_ Are you the guy with the CEO who has 1000x your options? Does he
have like 500K options and you have 500? If so, 500 should have
been a red flag.
\_ As I said before, you should probably be getting about 1/10th of
one percent, vesting over four years. So in this case about 7000
or 1800/yr. If you are really senior and in a lead or architect
role, you should be getting two to four times that. But it is
all up to what you can negotiate for yourself.
\_ extra 1800 a year really doesn't equate all the extra crap
I put up with around here. bleah.
\_ Well, 1800 long dated options are not worth $1800. If you
are really interested, you might try and figure out what
they are worth, but the volitality is going to be very
hard to estimate.
\_ How senior are you? If it's not worth it, either find a new
job or suck it up because the economy sucks. |
| 2009/5/19-25 [Consumer/Camera, Industry/Startup] UID:53012 Activity:nil |
5/18 I spotted a pretty good deal on Craigslist. However, the seller is
offering the following (but doesn't want to meet):
"How about if we do the deal through a shipping company i've used to
complete several transactions... I ship the camera to you, provide
tracking and then payment to be done direct to the company agent. once
you have received the camera and decide to keep it, then you inform the
company to pay me."
How likely is this a scam? I've never done anything on Craigslist and
I'm a bit wary of doing anything on it for the very first time.
\_ There are a lot of shady escrow companies out there, but there are
some good ones, too. Get details and do research. -tom
\_ As long as you aren't cashing the "shipping costs" for them and
giving them money before you get the merchandise it should be fine.
Be very wary. My friend got a fake money order from H. Betty
Industries with instructions to pay the shipping company the
excess in cash. -scottyg
\_ Do not use an escrow company suggested by the seller, there are too
many scams out there. Suggest http://escrow.com and run screaming if they
balk at this. -guy who got burned this way
http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams
"AVOID DEALS INVOLVING SHIPPING OR ESCROW SERVICES "
http://www.ic3.gov/crimeschemes.aspx#item-8
\_ Yeah. There are exactly two companies licensed to do online
escrow in California: http://escrow.com and Elance Escrow Corporation.
See http://www.corp.ca.gov/FSD/licensees
\_ what did you get burned on? I lost about $800 on a nice looking
realdoll for what I thought was a $2000 realdoll.
\_ Jewelry
\_ You're buying used Real Doll? Yucks.
\_ how is this worse than sleeping with a hooker? If anything
it's a lot cleaner and safer. |
| 2009/5/11-18 [Industry/Startup] UID:52981 Activity:moderate |
5/10 stock is great and all but, have any of you ever been told how
many outstanding shares there are out there when you were discussing
stock options? I've worked at 5 startups now, and haven't been
able to get a straight answer out of anyone, ever. bunch of weasels.
\_ http://www.paulgraham.com/angelinvesting.html
\_ If you haven't gone public yet then the staight answer isn't really
useful anyway because there will be more shared issued along the way.
Unless you have a controlling interest they could just dilute you
out of most of your equity anyway.
\_ I only knew to ask at the last two I worked at and yes, at both of
them they were willing to tell me how many shares were outstanding.
As the previous poster indicates though, both were diluted before
their eventual IPO.
\_ I've usually been able to find out, it is always a pain. (You are
best off getting this info when you first accept an offer with
shares). And yes you will get diluted, but to say that it isn't
really useful to know the number is just plain wrong. It is very
easy to give some dumb engineer 10 million shares and issue 900
trillion shares. Diluting affects everyone, so there are interested
parties besides no-power employees involved. -phuqm
\_ The powerful parties are able to "un-dilute" themselves though.
\_ Only by ponying up more cash. Their original investments get
diluted.
\_ I have seen execs who are cozy with the board get offered
more shares in this case.
\_ That's true. You don't want to over-dilute your key
personnel.
\_ I'm beginning to think my company has no idea who
is really 'key' (everyone here is pretty key, but
there are probably a few people who are more key
than others). I just did some math and I have
calculated that my shares are worth about $10
a day to me at current prices. big whooooooooo
\_ I've never had any difficulty getting this information from any of
the startups I've worked for. This question should be asked when
you receive their job offer, and any company that won't answer this
question should be avoided. Yes you will get dilluted at each
round of funding (as more shares are issued), but it's also normal
for employees to receive additional option grants at that time to
compensate (though that still means the percentage of equity you're
vested into has been reduced by the round), and if management
doesn't bring it up the employees should.
\_ When I first got the offer of my current job, the CEO actually told me
my options as a percentage of all outstanding shares, not as number of
shares. I didn't know the number of shares until I signed the offer
letter.
\_ Was your CEO 24 years old?
\_ No. I think he's in his 40s.
\_ I graduated in 2000, just before the bubble burst, and every company
(except Trilogy, which is just wacky) offered up the percentage
right off the bat. Only one was a little elusive, but they gave it.
Since then, I've only worked for the public sector or public co's.
\_ why only public co + sector? soured experience? need to pay
mortgage and/or kid + wife?
\_ the public sector was because I considered going into
education and was burned out from the startup. The public
company is doing quite well and has interesting work. I'm
still a bit startup adverse after the first one. No wife,
mortgage or kids.
\_ could you tell us about the bad experience you have?
I'm thinking of doing the reverse. I'm bored with a
20K+ company. I really dislike it.
\_ I have worked at three startups and they all had these
things in common: chaotic, unstructured work environment,
lots of things just "don't work" and you end up fixing
yourself or doing without (like copy machines, phones,
your work station, etc), long hours, inexperienced (and
therefore widely varying in quality) management. If you
can handle these, you might be okay. A bad startup will
have all these, but more pathologies, usually related
to whatever issues the founder has.
\_ he wasn't the previous poster, but that sums it up
pretty nicely. Another way to think about it is that
NPV(startup) < NPV(public company)
but the startup has >std dev so chance of options
being worth >$1M is higher at the startup.
\_ I hear we're going for a 'liquidity event'. Shoud I hold my
breathe until i turn blue, to get more stock?
\_ You won't get more stock at a liquidity event. You'll probably
just get diluted more. You should
1) Stay employed and content (and bitch on motd) or
2) Ask for more stock while looking for a new job
if you go for #2, you need to lay out your case well. Come up
with a list of all the important projects you worked on last year
as well as your domain knowledge and expertise that makes you an
invaluable member of the engineering team. So focus on how good
you are, not how shitty your compensation is. AFTER you get to an
agreement about how awesome you are, you can bring up an argument
agreement about how awesome you are, you can make an argument RE:
how you feel like you should be rewarded and given greater
incentives to stay and help the company grow/liquidate.
\_ Every company I've asked this of has been up front about it. -dans |
| 2009/5/8-14 [Industry/Startup] UID:52970 Activity:kinda low |
5/7 (I am revising my numbers, in my fit of rage at 4am in the morn,
I made some math errors I didn't feel like correcting. anyway...)
I work at a year old startup, 50 employees, pre-IPO (duh!), exit
strategy is to either become profitable company or get bought,
almost profitable but not quite, fast paced, lots of work,
everyone pulls weight, I just found out my non founder CEO makes
475k a year because junior office admin girl had to tell immigration
the stock holding values held by one of our employees. I have
calculated the CEO's options are 1010X mine. I've been here almost
2.5 years, he started in Sept 2008.
Also another question, is salary of your CEO usually common
public knowledge at a startup? or any company?
\_ Please start another thread, rather than edit the original post.
Now a bunch of the comments don't make sense.
\_ 1000x? Sounds like he's getting too much (10%?) and you're getting
too little (.01%?). The Phoenix thing and the high salary are the
real red flags. I'd write this company off and continue to work
there because the economy sucks, but be ready to look for a job in
the next 12 months. How many years out of school are you?
\_ ob boss-napping!
\_ Not in my opinion and I have worked at lots of startups.
Unfortunately, it is all too common. How senior are you?
You should be getting between .1-.4% of the total outstanding
company stock every four years in vested options, imo.
Here is a guy I found who says pretty much the same thing:
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2009/01/stock-compensation-at-startups.html
\_ thanks for posting this. i still feel screwed. and not in a
good way.
\_ You know piaw@blogspot = piaw@soda.
\_ I heard Piaw got an $80k/yr job offer as a fresh grad, and
that was year 1993. I got an $40k/yr offer as a fresh grad
that year.
\_ Is Piaw a stud? I graduated that year and got offered
$34k/yr by the UC, but quickly moved to Taos, making
$50k/yr.
\_ Piaw would take classes like Math 104 for fun.
(At least it was Math 104 when I was there.)
At the time, Math 104 was the math department
weeder class. I owe Piaw my A in
Math 55 (at the time). I sucked in that class
until the final. Piaw had told me to take that
class under Lenstra, he said Lenstra was good,
these were Piaw's words: "Lenstra is very good.
His exams are very straightforward. If something
doesn't work, then try something else." Into the
final I went, with a C+ going in. Math 55 was not
a class which my brain worked well on. I have never
worked so hard on a class with so little result,
before or since, exept for the final. In the final,
for each problem, it was as if Piaw was there, in my
head, repeating, "His exams are very straightforward..."
And I took this ghostly advice, again and again
during the exam, and got all but one problem.
Fortunately, Lenstra had said, "if you don't like one
problem, throw that one out. Oh, and BTW, if you
do well on the final, we'll replace your mid-term
grade, too." And that is how Piaw's awesomeness
got me an A in Math 55, when I started with a C+.
I doubt Piaw remembers me, but I sure won't ever
forget him. And if some friend of Piaw's wants
to send this on to him, feel free. I have never
experienced a more powerful moment of happiness than
when I exited that final exam--1 hour early, looking
back at everyone else struggling with it, knowing
I'd aced it. I was literally dancing with joy.
--PeterM
\_ Holy shit. This piaw guy sounds like a God. We
should get him involved in CSUA again.
\_ I also heard that he once TA'ed a class he was
taking.
\_ Salary sounds way high. Stockwise it sounds like you just accepted
the offer you were given. You can go to your CEO and tell him you
want more stock.
\_ $500K/year seems reasonable. He's the CEO. You don't think he
should make 4X what a developer makes? His options might be out
of line, but that's not coming out of your bottom line anyway.
Is he doing a good job? I'm not really sure what your point is.
Would you feel better if he made $280K/year? What would it matter?
\_ Difficult to say. He lives in Phoenix. We're in bay area.
He also has a house in London. He makes an appearance here
once every few weeks. I hear him on company conf call if I want
to but I've missed the last 4, I've been way too busy to care.
we prob pay his plane fair and SF hotel too. I'd feel better
about slaving away all week if he were around to watch.
We recently layed off a bunch of developers and a couple of
sales account execs, I think to impress the board of directors
with our cost cutting skills. we shouldn't be paying our
fatass CEO (he's HUGE) 1/2 mil a year and more equity than every
other non founder employee COMBINED.
\- you are saying for every $20k your stock options are worth,
he will get $1bn? these numbers dont seem to add up ...
either you have some seriously optimistic estimates of
the valuation growth of your company, or your options arent
worth jack [i.e. if he is taking away $1m for every $20
you get]. Let's take Adobe with mkt cap of ~$15bn ... if
this guy owns 10% of the company, then you are looking at
your options being worth $30k, not a sum which would greatly
affect your life. If he owns 5% of the company, then you
seem to need some pretty optimistic growth expectations
to have your options to be worth more than a car ...
unless the expectation down the road is you'll be getting
lots more options and the current grant is more like a
bonus up front rather than the sum of your vesting
expectations. Run the numbers on a billion dollar valuation,
and your options are going to be worth a nice vacation.
\_ good points, my math was wrong in my original rant.
\_ you are making me sad again.
\_ I don't believe the numbers you gave. Where did you find them? $500K
for a startup CEO is really high, VC's generally hate that. I'd
expect a startup CEO to get paid in the $150-250K (maybe 300K) range.\
VC's want to give the founders/CEO enough money to feel like they
expect a startup CEO to get paid in the $150-250K (maybe 300K) range.
VC's want to give the founders/CEO enough money to feel like they
have to work their asses off to make a living. The salary is just
enough to get by (ya, $250K sounds like a lot, but it's not that
ridiculous). As for the stock, piaw's blog seems very reasonable.
Don't think that "10,000 options" is a lot, you really have to look
at it as a percentage of total outstanding stock. A friend of mine
was negotiating and asked that question and they told him that the
board wouldn't allow them to share that number. I call bullshit, but
does anyone know if there's any truth to this?
As for the stock options, lets assume there are 1M outstanding.
Non-founder CEOs generally get 2-5% of outstanding stock. So that
would leave him with about 50K options on the high end and you with
1K (or 0.1%). That seems about right. How long have you been out of
school and how many employees were there when you started? I hope
you didn't get screwed on a super-low salary because they told you
the stock would make you millions.
Lastly, this CEO in Pheonix thing sounds like the biggest red flag
of all. Why is the CEO not where the company is based? Sounds like
he is a sales-CEO type and travels a lot with a big budget. What
kind of VC backing does your company have? Can you name one of the
VC's? --abe
\_ He said his CEO was getting 50000X his stock, not 50X. Your
numbers seem right. His are hard to believe. In your example,
the CEO would be getting 50K options and the worker bee 1 option.
Yes, one share of stock. Hard to believe.
\_ 50000X number was wrong, sorry. --q
\_ So was it 50X? If so, quit your bellyachin'.
\_ No, the salary of employees at private companies is usually not
public knowledge. At a public company, the top five compensated
employees salaries are in the 10-K filed every year, so the CEOs
salary is almost always one of those, and therefore public
knowledge. $475k seems a bit high for a startup with 50 employees
unless he is an MD or something like that, but it is not completely
absurd. |
| 2009/5/7-8 [Industry/Startup] UID:52967 Activity:very high |
5/7 I work at a year old startup, 50 employees, pre-ipo, almost
profitable but not quite, fast paced, lots of work, everyone
pulls weight. I just found out my CEO makes nearly .5 million
a year and has about 50,000X my stock options (no joke), and he's
not even a founder. Is this reasonable?
\_ Not in my opinion and I have worked at lots of startups.
Unfortunately, it is all too common. How senior are you?
You should be getting between .1-.4% of the total outstanding
company stock every four years in vested options, imo.
Here is a guy I found who says pretty much the same thing:
http://piaw.blogspot.com/2009/01/stock-compensation-at-startups.html
\_ thanks for posting this. i still feel screwed. and not in a good
way.
\_ You know piaw@blogspot = piaw@soda.
\_ Salary sounds way high. Stockwise it sounds like you just accepted
the offer you were given. You can go to your CEO and tell him you
want more stock.
\_ $500K/year seems reasonable. He's the CEO. You don't think he
should make 4X what a developer makes? His options might be out
of line, but that's not coming out of your bottom line anyway.
Is he doing a good job? I'm not really sure what your point is.
Would you feel better if he made $280K/year? What would it matter?
\_ $500K/year seems reasonable. He's the CEO. You don't think he
should make 4X what a developer makes? His options might be out
of line, but that's not coming out of your bottom line anyway.
Is he doing a good job? I'm not really sure what your point is.
Would you feel better if he made $280K/year? What would it matter?
\_ Difficult to say. He lives in Phoenix. We're in bay area.
He also has a house in London. He makes an appearance here
once every few weeks. I hear him on a conf call if I want to. I
suppose we pay his plane fair and hotel too. I guess I'd feel better
suppose we pay his plain fair and motel too. I guess I'd feel better
for slaving away all week if he were around to watch.
also we reently layed off a bunch of developers,I think to impress
the board with our cost cutting. ok no i dont think if we are
laying off developers, impacting our future , that we should be
paying our fatass British CEO 1/2 a million a year and basically
more equity than every single other employee combined, except
for founders.
\- you are saying for every $20k your stock options are worth,
he will get $1bn? these numbers dont seem to add up ...
either you have some seriously optimistic estimates of
the valuation growth of your company, or your options arent
worth jack [i.e. if he is taking away $1m for every $20
you get]. Let's take Adobe with mkt cap of ~$15bn ... if
this guy owns 10% of the company, then you are looking at
your options being worth $30k, not a sum which would greatly
affect your life. If he owns 5% of the company, then you
seem to need some pretty optimistic growth expectations
to have your options to be worth more than a car ...
unless the expectation down the road is you'll be getting
lots more options and the current grant is more like a
bonus up front rather than the sum of your vesting
expectations. Run the numbers on a billion dollar valuation,
and your options are going to be worth a nice vacation.
your options being worth $30k, which is hardly a sum which
would really affect your life. If he owns 5% of the
company, then you seem to need some pretty optimistic
growth expectations to have your options to be worth
more than a car ... unless the expectation down the road
is you'll be getting lots more options and the current
grant is more like a bonus up front rather than the sum
of your vesting expectations. |
| 2009/2/26-3/3 [Industry/Startup] UID:52640 Activity:moderate |
2/25 During bad economic times, do companies start to give out more
performance issue related warnings to employees? I'm asking because
it happened to my previous company in 2000-2001 where they let
go a large number of underperformers (20%) without having to
pay them severance. During normal times it was only 1-5%. The
same thing is happening to my new company, and I'm just wondering
if this is a common practice?
\_ Yes, and they also tend to use the opportunity to remind people
how "lucky" they are to have a job and how everyone is going to
have to really work harder now, which is especially galling if
you've been busting your ass from Day One.
\_ I'm the op, I got such a notice even though I've been busting
my ass for a while. I've never been on the receiving end
of this. Is this done as an insurance for having to do
mass layoffs in the future but not have to report to
media as such?
\_ similar experience @ Sun in 2001: all the managers started getting
really bitchy, and factions developed. The engineers had to "take
sides." Reviews in general got a lot worse. I went from a "great
job!" rating to a "needs improvement" rating within a month. It
was a good time to leave. On the plus side, it was a fun time to
be unemployed, since I was in good company! (I went to contracting
in that case)
\_ Interesting. I work at a 20K company and I got a notice. -op
\_ I have not seen this, though I mostly have worked at startups
until recently. The Big Company I work at now is definitely not
doing this right now. We laid off 10% in December and then did
performance evals, which came out with a normal distribution.
\_ Pretty typical. They are hoping you leave on your own or that,
if they need to fire you, they have all their ducks lined up.
This is in case the employee tries to sue for age/gender/racial
discrimination then they can point to your "poor employment
record". My mom was a manager for years and when she decided
someone was going to go she started a file on them. That's not
the same situation as in a layoff, but same rules apply. Managers
will hype the employees they wish to keep and start chopping
the dead wood. They are probably doing you a favor by letting
you know you are possibly on the block by giving you a bad review
even if they don't always intend it that way (sometimes they do).
If they fire you then they won't give you severance either, not
that they necessarily *have* to and it hoses your chances to
collect unemployment. Once management starts this BS it means
something is going to go down.
\_ Thank you. My gutsy feeling is exactly the same. Thanks for
reaffirming my suspicions. BTW how long have you been in the
industry to see this type of stuff happening? |
| 2008/12/8-11 [Industry/Startup] UID:52195 Activity:nil |
12/7 the big investment banks are all gone. does anyone care?
\_ Why should anyone care?
\_ In fact it may open up IPO underwriting to more competition. Then
alternative offering models may take hold. Less bounce, more $ for company:
alternative offering models may take hold. Less bounce, more $ for
company:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/87276 |
| 12/24 |
| 2008/11/19-23 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:52039 Activity:kinda low |
11/19 Jing Hua Wu, the engineer who police say fatally shot three executives
at a Santa Clara startup company last week just hours after being
fired, spent the last few years amassing a large portfolio of
investment properties.
Stick lolz under this. I dare you.
\_ Advice to executives: don't meet with someone you just fired.
\_ Waiting for the Chico CCW guy to say something useful here <----
\_ And he said he couldn't afford a private attorney.
\_ mebbe he was just being a cheapazz
\_ maybe he lost his shirt on all his investments
\_ and his wife was recently laid off
\_ This guy is kind of my hero, I have fantasized about shooting my
boss many times (but never actually go through with it, at least
not so far...).
\_ You are so hard. Can I have your babies?
\_ Spread your legs and embrace his hardness.
\_ I think you are mistaken about this guy's intentions. He does
not seem to be attempting to come off as "hard". Or, at least
he certainly isn't. He's coming off more as the "you took my
swingline stapler" guy from office. Do you think it is "hard"
to have fantasies about killing people? I'm sure that all men
(/boys) have them at some point. Or are you SO above all that.
'cause if so, i'm very impressed. You are so superior, can I
to have fantasies about killing people? I'm sure that all
men (/boys) have them at some point. Or are you SO above
all thatscause if so, i'm very impressed.
You are so superior, can I
have your babies?
\_ No I think someone is trying to be hard when they cheer
that someone went into an office and killed 3 people.
\_ lulz
\_ Can you take my thick 8 inches?
\_ I am fully erect.
\_ maybe maybe maybe who cares. He murdered 3 people.
Let him fry.
\_ Agreed. -sf liberal |
| 2008/10/28-29 [Industry/Startup] UID:51708 Activity:nil |
10/28 Just had a very shady experience with my bank's Consumer Opt-Out
Department. The automated system goes something like this:
"If you would like to opt out from our promotions, affiliate programs,
blah blah blah blah (this goes on for about 30 seconds), press 1.
[pause 5 seconds]. If you would like to opt out from our 3rd party
programs, blah blah blah (this goes on for about 15 seconds),
press 2 [pause 5 seconds]. If you would like to opt out from both
options, press 3 [pause 2 seconds]. Please enter your selection
now."
It's like they really want you to not opt-out, and that even if
you DO want to opt out, they want you to opt-out of the wrong
choice so that they can share your info with 3rd parties. Isn't
there something shady and borderline illegal about this?
\_ It's dishonest, but it's not illegal. It's also typical. -tom
\_ ah yes, Shitibank (or was it Cuntrywide?). got that too.
\_ One of the institutions I use (forgot which) says it doesn't offer
an opt-out option because it simply doesn't share info with
affiliated parties. I don't remember if there's an opt-in option. |
| 2008/10/22-27 [Industry/Startup] UID:51630 Activity:low |
10/22 Where do recent grads want to work these days? Startups? Google?
\_ Wherever their ambition takes them. If they just want free food
and a cushy job, Google. If they're ambitious and have big
dreams (or simply stupid), startup.
\_ How about MS, Apple, consulting, HP, etc? When I graduated in
2000, lots of people were going to startups that failed a year
later (myself included), then either kept bouncing around
various startups or found one that became stable (e.g. Google)
or went to a big company (e.g. Sun). To be honest, the main
reason I posted this is to get the motd to discuss something
other than politics, photo, or the economy (incl. real estate).
\_ What makes you think that Google is cushy? I have heard that
the employees there work very long hours.
\_ Not nearly as difficult as startup, but much more than
big companies. In short, I don't understand why people
work semi-startup hours without any hope of getting IPO
money. x-G
\_ I am going to start my own company. Our main product will be
\_ I am going to start my own company. Our business model will be
selling open source ircII scripts (and related services)
to Fortune 500 executives. |
| 2008/10/11-15 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:51477 Activity:nil |
10/11 "Firms Try to Shore Up Incentive Pay"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122358951896420723.html?mod=yhoofront
Good news for us. |
| 2008/10/3-6 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:51367 Activity:nil |
10/3 Stock tip 2: Lifetime of this pump will be much more short lived
than people might expect. (I.e., do not go all in long, although you
could do so if you put in some stops--but that isn't long, is it?
times like this are where the phrase "don't try to time the market"
originate from)
\_ Stock tip A: VIX levels like this are only seen at the top or the
bottom of the market. We know we are not at the top, so...
\_ Stock tip mu: Ignore stock advice based on technical factors
given by random hosers.
\_ VIX is a measure of put and call options based on volume and
difference from fair value. Notice how shorts are prohibited
for about a 1,000 stocks? They're all in options now. Stock
tip mu guy is right--you'd be hosed if you didn't understand
this. -op
\_ VIX has nothing to do with "fair value" whatever that means:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4exdqx
\_ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fairvalue.asp
ok, probably the wrong term, but let's just say, "the
current market price of the underlying"
\_ Lifetime of the pump after House passage was assured: 0 minutes. -op |
| 2008/9/30 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:51331 Activity:moderate |
9/30 What happened to the dot-com bailout? Also, dans' Slide is totally
screwed. The worst place to be is a late-stage company with a high
expense rate, selling products primarily into the U.S. market,
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/technology/View_from_Valley_OBrien.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008093012
\_ I'm not sure why you mention Slide. It's not a focus of the url
you have posted. I always thought Slide was a bizarre expensive
vanity project of one of the Paypal founders. |
| 2008/9/15 [Finance/Banking, Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:51169 Activity:nil 58%like:51173 |
9/15 Fed now accepts equity (company stock) as collateral for loans. Yay! |
| 2008/8/30-9/3 [Industry/Startup] UID:51007 Activity:nil |
8/30 In a typical big tech company (e.g. IBM, HP), is it possible to
take a leave of absence while doing other (business unrelated)
tech stuff for say, a garage startup you and your friends are doing?
I know I signed away my life with a big company but I want to know
if I can do something else (unrelated tech stuff) on the side.
\_ Typically what you sign is an agreement that they can patent
anything at all that you create. You may be surprised what
"unrelated tech stuff" they might want to patent. You probably
want to at least clear it with your company first, but quitting
first might be an even better idea.
\_ Wait, what? What if I came up with some cool product
OUTSIDE of the company, using my own time on the weekends,
using my own equipments? There's no way they can find out
and steal my ideas can they? -fuck big companies
\_ Generally no. At least in CA the courts have made it pretty
clear that if it wasn't done on company time or with company
equipment your free time is your free time and your company
doesn't own what you do then. However you probably signed
something that said you would tell your company about any
other jobs you are working, and that you wouldn't poach
employees for at least x months after you quit. The first is
grounds for termination if they catch you and the second is
a big lawsuit waiting to happen if you are recruiting from
work.
\_ I'm not so sure. Do you have specific cases to cite?
See for example this patent agreement:
http://www.citris-uc.org/about/ip/patentacknowledgment
which says that the agreement doesn't apply to inventions
you develop on your own time and equipment, UNLESS the
inventions either:
(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to
practice of the invention to the employer's business, or
actual or demonstrably anticipated research or
development of the employer; or (2) result from any work
performed by the employee for the employer.
A large company tends to have so many things related to
its business that the phrase "unrelated tech" can become
rather arguable. |
| 2008/8/26-9/3 [Finance/Investment, Industry/Startup] UID:50970 Activity:moderate |
8/26 I just bought GOOG at 500 last week, WHY IS IT DOWN??? What's
up? I don't see any news that would indicate that it's in
trouble. Argh! -newbie investor
\_ http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=324097
Opinion: Why Google has lost its mojo -- and why you should care
Sorry. You should have shorted it.
\_ that article is awful.
\_ if you're going to freak out every time a stock you own goes down,
you shouldn't be investing in the stock market. What's your
time horizon on GOOG? -tom
\_ I'm looking at maybe 5 years? -op
\_ So don't worry about the stock price. Do you think the
company has changed since last week? -tom
\_ No, but it's possible sentiment has. GOOG was driven to
heights by investor sentiment more than by any actual
quantitative analysis. Number of insider buys over
the last year: 0. 399 sells, though.
\_ GOOG was driven to heights by making enormous gobs
of money. They appear to still be making enormous
gobs of money. If you believe they will stop making
money, sell. If you believe they'll continue to grow
and make more money, don't worry about the stock
price. "In the short term, the stock market is a
voting machine, in the long term, it's a weighing
machine. --Buffett". -tom
\_ Interesting that insiders don't see it as a buy,
but as a sell. As for the long term, how did
GOOG do 5 years ago? Oh wait, it wasn't around.
Nice quote from Buffett. I doubt he owns GOOG.
\_ Isn't this what they mean when they say
"X continues to defy analysts expectations"?
\_ Why would insiders buy, when they already have
stock built into their compensation package?
And of course insiders sell; that's what
happens when you use stock or stock options
as part of compensation. Microsoft had 77k
shares purchased, 40 million shares sold by
insiders. That has nothing to do with the
propsects of the company; it just has to do
with whether people's options are above water
or not. -tom
\_ Would you buy if you strongly felt it would
double in a year and the market was
undervaluing it? I'm not saying it's a
predictor necessarily, but 399 sells and 0
buys doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies.
\_ you really have no idea what you're
talking about. -tom
\_ Nice rebuttal. Did you spend all day
coming up with that?
Maybe you should read some of these
papers:
http://tinyurl.com/5ahs5d
One of his conclusions:
"This paper provides evidence that
insiders possess, and trade upon,
knowledge of specific and
economically-significant forthcoming
accounting disclosures as long as
two years prior to the disclosure.
Stock sales by insiders increase
three to nine quarters prior to a
break in a string of consecutive
increases in quarterly earnings.
Insider stock sales are greater for
growth firms, before a longer period
of declining earnings, and when the
earnings decline the break is
greater. Consistent with avoiding an
established legal jeopardy, there is
little abnormal selling in the two
quarters immediately prior to the
break."
Another addressing the <DEAD>dot.com<DEAD> bubble:
"Furthermore, stock corrections
after the bubble burst are strongly
negatively associated with estimated
levels of earnings management and
insider selling during the bubble."
\_ how about this: find a technology
company that uses stock-based
compensation, that has gone up in
stock price over the past year,
that doesn't have a huge amount
of insider selling. -tom
\_ That's the catch. If the stock
went up significantly then why
would they buy? It's already
higher than their built-in price
target. If you only look at
companies whose stock has gone
up of course you will find few
buyers: It's overpriced! Why not
find one which has few sales, or at
least a better ratio than 399:0?
AAPL has had some inside buyers. I
am not sure GOOG has ever had an
insider buy. (Not that I could
find.) Are you implying this guy's
research is garbage? It implies
that insiders trade on knowledge
they have, which anyone with common
sense would think is a sound
conclusion. Compare AAPL to
GOOG. AAPL has some buyers. I
am not sure GOOG has ever had
an inside buy.
conclusion.
\_ In the last 6 months Apple has
zero insider purchases and
> 1 million shares sold by
insiders (14.6% of the total
insider holdings). That's
just what happens when stocks
go up. That doesn't mean the
stock is overpriced; it means
that people are exercising
options and having to sell
to cover taxes, or just taking
profits. If you are getting
stock-based compensation, it's
probably a stupid idea to
buy more stock in your company;
you should be diversifying.
-tom
\_ AAPL has had zero insider buys
and over 1 million shares sold
in the past 6 months (16% of
insider holdings). That's just
what happens when you have
stock-based compensation; people
sell to cover taxes on their
option exercises, or they just
take profits. It is generally
stupid to buy stock in your
company when you already get
paid partly in stock; you
should diversify. -tom
\_ shouldn't you be shorting GOOG at 100 ?
\_ I'm not the short GOOG at 100 guy -op, different guy |
| 2008/8/22-29 [Industry/Startup] UID:50939 Activity:nil |
8/22 If I join a startup as employee #100, what percentage of shares
would I expect to get? Guy Kawasaki says it's better to be employee
#10 than #100, but how much smaller share would I expect?
\_ now there's a controversial statement
\_ Guy Kawasaki is controversial.
\_ I once joined a startup as employee #4 as a senior engineer, and I
got 1%. Later I joined another startup as employee #45 as a senior
engineer, and I got 0.25%. Of course, whatever percentage of
shares you get will most likely be diluted before the company is
acquired or goes IPO, if it ever does.
\_ Is acquisition deal worse than IPO?
\_ I joined one startup as employee number #72 and got about 0.2%
(over four years) and another that was more mature and got about
half that. This was as a sysadmin. Start-up #1 quadrupled my
grant after I got promoted to Director (this was after they
went public and weren't doing so well). |
| 2008/8/21-26 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:50921 Activity:nil |
8/21 So I am trying to apply for a senior/staff job position at this
place and I'm wondering if I should apply directly, or ask a
headhunter to represent me. Mind you, I'm an old fart and have had
a lot of bad experiences where the company gave me a hard time
during the interview process and negotiation process. On the other
hand I've had one really good experience where the headhunter did
everything she could to negotiate with the company and got me the
exact salary I asked for and the job I wanted. Obviously, I don't
have a lot of data points, but I wonder in general, is it good/bad
to ask a headhunter to represent me? I can see tons of arguments
from both sides and I'm just wondering what you guys think. Thanks.
\_ When did this trend of starting with "So" start?
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/8/15-18 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:50874 Activity:nil |
8/15 Startups that get bought by Google die.
http://valleywag.com/5037519/6-startups-that-fell-into-googles-black-hole
\_ It looks like most of those were aquired for technology not the
services themselves. The sites died, but the tech lives on. |
| 2008/7/19-23 [Industry/Startup] UID:50632 Activity:kinda low |
7/19 http://jott.com is REALLY REALLY cool. You can use your phone and post to a bunch of cool social networking sites. See: http://jott.com/jott/jott-to-link.html\ This is a cool startup. Also they're hiring. \_ What is their business model? Get acquired by goog? \_ What is wrong with that? Most exit strategies today are acquisitions, not IPOs. Acquire for the sake of increasing user base that works with existing business models in a big company. AdSense/Oingo acquisition is a good example where it has no business models but combined with Google search, it is now making billions. \_ Joining a company whose exit strategy is "Get Bought" is stupid as hell. \_ You wouldn't be saying that if you're one of the original employees who got bought. \_ Joining a company. Not starting a company. \_ Again it depends on timing. Risk vs. reward. There's no absolutely right/wrong decisions. It's just a numerical game. \_ My company just got bought and it worked out to be a pretty nice bonus, about equal to 1/2 year salary, for me. Not as nice as the two IPOs I have participated in, this is granted, but it was still nice. \_ "The second quarter of 2008 marked the first time in 30 years that no venture-backed companies went public. Not a single one." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121633667123063791.html |
| 2008/7/3-10 [Industry/Startup] UID:50455 Activity:nil |
7/2 Useful sites for those of you who are in the tech industry:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google%2c_Inc./Salary
Google pay isn't that good afterall.
http://www.criticat.com
Talk to people from different companies. Great help.
http://thefunded.com
Good for people looking for VC fundings. Entrepreneurialship, anyone?
\_ Yeah, but what did the stock options do to the employees?
http://www.criticat.com
Talk to people from different companies. Great help.
http://thefunded.com
Good for people looking for VC fundings. Entrepreneurialship, anyone?
\_ That pay, especially for Project and Product Managers, is really low.
\_ That pay, especially for Project and Product Managers, is really
low. |
| 2008/7/2-6 [Industry/Startup] UID:50447 Activity:nil |
7/2 "Oil is making millionaires in North Dakota - Yahoo! News:"
http://www.csua.org/u/lui
This is better than stock options and IPO, man. |
| 2008/6/24-27 [Industry/Startup] UID:50359 Activity:nil |
6/24 Searching for a startup company in your area? Another goodie
from crunchbase/techcrunch:
http://www.startupwarrior.com
http://valleywag.com/5018794/ten-most-densely-populated-technology-startup-regions |
| 2008/6/2-5 [Industry/Startup] UID:50118 Activity:low |
6/2 Ken Thompson fired!
http://tinyurl.com/5ajge4
\_ who is that?
\- it's a joke |
| 2008/5/22 [Industry/Startup] UID:50030 Activity:nil |
5/21 Can someone explain options, futures, and derivatives in
a few paragraphs? -stock market dumb
\_ if you cant figure this
out or figure out enough
to ask a more specific
question, you are "dumb"
not "stock market dumb".
or lazy.
\_ No. Economics is hard. Figure out what day it is first.
\_ My understanding of these terms is as follows:
1. Option - a contract that gives you the right to buy a
particular quantity of a particular thing at a particular
price at a particular time in the future. You have the
"option" to buy the thing, but you aren't required to
buy it.
2. Future - a contract that requires you to buy a particular
quantity of a particular thing at a particular price at
a particular time in the future. You have to buy the thing
at the price no matter what.
3. Derivatives - options, futures, &c. are generally called
derivatives b/c their pricing is derived from the fair
market value of the thing that they cover.
Wikipedia has a decent discussion of these terms if you are
interested. |
| 2008/5/6-9 [Industry/Startup] UID:49889 Activity:kinda low |
5/6 I'm inclined to believe that having a CEO as chairman of the board or
really on the board of directors at all is not such a great idea.
Yet nearly ervery company has this. Some of this are bif stock holders
and could get a seat without any outside support, but are there
reasons that it's a good idea to have the CEO on the board? Just
curious if there's a different perspective on this.
\_ "I started this company, and I get to vote however I want to vote
like 10X raise for all the executives." -CEO
\_ A more beginner's question: What's the difference between chairman,
president, and CEO? Thx.
\_ CEO: a leech you would love to get rid of but doing so would
be detrimental to stock values. Case in point, Larry Ellison,
Bill Gates, etc.
\_ Chairman: chairs the board, part time job at best
CEO: represents the company, talks to investors, banks, the media
President: runs the company on a day to day basis
Other's may have a different defn, but that is what I have seen.
\_ 1. What does "chair the board" mean besides, I guess, driving
the agenda in board meetings?
2. I thought it's the COO that runs the company on a day-to-
day basis. No?
Thanks again. -- PP
\_ 1) The board represents the owners/shareholders interests,
while
the CEO represents their selfish interests of ego, fame
and $.
We have a cult of the CEO in US. Separate CEO and Chairman\
more
\_ 1) The board represents the owners/shareholders
interests, while the CEO represents their selfish
interests of ego, fame and $. We have a cult of
the CEO in US. Separate CEO and Chairman more
common in Europe.
2) Depends on company. All corporations have a charter.
"operations" may not be all of "running the company",
which
may not be all of "leading the company", which may be
separated
from determining best strategy to maximize shareholder
value.
Ford has executive chairman and vice-chairmen, some of
whom have
real responsibility for sourcing strategy, design, etc.
\- there ws actually a study about "superstar
CEOs" and under performace ... i forgot what
they correlated to ... airtime or magazine
covers etc but it was pretty negative. dunno
how they addressed regression to the mean tho.
\_ It's not difficult to show that most CEOS
in the US don't do jack. The bigger question
is what can we do about it... nothing.
2) Depends on company. All corporations have a
charter. "operations" may not be all of
"running the company", which may not be all of
"leading the company", which may be separated
from determining best strategy to maximize
shareholder value. Ford has executive chairman
and vice-chairmen, some of whom have real
responsibility for sourcing strategy, design,
etc.
\_ yet they still make inferior cars |
| 2008/4/30-5/2 [Computer/SW/Mail, Industry/Startup] UID:49859 Activity:nil |
4/30 pidgin developers hate selves, they fork it:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/1822237&from=rss |
| 2008/4/25-5/4 [Industry/Startup] UID:49830 Activity:nil |
4/25 My company wants to buy a Spam appliance, so we're looking at the
Barracuda 300. We don't want to go with Postini because we want to
keep things internal. We'll hit the 50 user limit soon, so that's
why we're considering the 300 model. Any experience, thoughts,
pro's, con's, alternatives? Thanks!
\_ IronPort
\_ A second vote for Ironport.
\_ Is it more time consuming to administer?
\_ http://www.sendio.com <-- my recommendation. mtbb
\_ You can host corporate emails on secured Google mail. It'll
cost a lot less than hosting your own email for a company
that is less than 10K employees.
\_ You get Postini for free if you start hosting your email
through google apps.
\_ Ironport still relies on crappy Symantec Brightmail.
Use proofpoint - more $ - no regrets. Barracuda = crap. |
| 2008/4/10-12 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:49709 Activity:nil |
4/10 Can an impartial stock investor please clarify the following statement
for me so that I can vote to the best of MY interest and not the
interest of the CEO/CTO/CFO?
"Approval of an amendment to X's 200X Stock Plan to increase the
number of authorized share of Class A common stock issuable
thereunfer by 6,500,000"?
\_ It is hard to say, without knowing more about the companies
condition. They are trying to increase the amount of preferred
shares available to sell, in case they need to raise capital.
This generally dilutes existing shares, but might be needed, if
they are low on cash or something.
\_ If I give you more details would that help? The company has
between 10-20K employees, their stock was inflated to
ridiculously high in Q4 2008 but has since then tanked about 40%.
\_ They might also be supplying shares for stock options and ESPP.
-- !OP |
| 2008/3/26-28 [Industry/Startup] UID:49572 Activity:low |
3/26 I used to work at this tiny little company that was very cool
and meritocracy worked. But as the company grew so did the
level of politics and power struggle people had to play, along
with very territorial management that partitioned the company
into incohesive parts. Meritocracy still exists though it seems
to play a much smaller role now. I want to ask you guys. As the
size of the company grows, does the suckiness grow as well?
At this point, I'm very disillusioned. -big company worker
\_ Suckiness is relative. There are things that suck about working
at a little company, too. However, politics usually does grow
as the size of the company grows.
\_ My experience has been the exact opposite. In little start-ups,
the people that get drunk with the VPs get all the plum assignments
and promotions. In bigger companies, they actually do things like
performance evals and competence matters more. But there is
office politics (meaning, you have to be well liked by people)
in both environments.
\_ Sorry to hear it. I had the same experience, and it really
sucked to watch a great place to work slowly turn into a pit.
My mistake was staying too long (overly sentimental about the
good old days, or something like that). In my experience, larger
companies are unable to maintain high standards in hiring. They
need to hire too many people just to keep up, and can't afford
to be as selective. Good people don't tend to apply for jobs at
the larger companies, so they select themselves out of that job
pool. Managers at larger companies tend to have larger numbers
of people reporting to them, so they can't pay as much attention
to what their employees are doing. Expectations are lowered.
Individual productivity is lower. Middle managers more interested
in building an empire for themselves and engaging in political
infighting than in doing something constructive get in and stick
around like ticks. Reviews and performance evals seem more like
mechanisms for denying or limiting raises at large companies. At
small companies, communication tends to be a bit more open. At
small companies, it's harder for losers to get hired, and they don't
tend to last long. Have you noticed that some of your favorite
coworkers have left over the years? Find out where they went. See
if they're hiring. Good luck.
\_ This is really great advice, thanks!!!
\_ How big were these small companies you worked at? |
| 2008/3/2-6 [Industry/Startup] UID:49313 Activity:nil |
3/2 Check out my friend's startup company, it's pretty cool! If you're
into social networking apps that connect PC<->phones, this is for you:
http://jaxtr.com
\_ Yet another social networking startup. |
| 2008/2/29-3/5 [Industry/Startup] UID:49301 Activity:low |
2/29 google to move 1200 people to downtown sf
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/03/03/story1.html
\_ And we care because...?
\_ I was thinking that places downtown will double what they
charge for parking, and they'll get away with it since avg
Google salary is 200k.
\_ You know, top 200 employees make over several millions but
the MEDIAN base salary is still 100K/year. But I guess if
you average everyone out, it's probably 200K/year. Still,
ost people do NOT make 200K/year, I assure you. -G employee
most emps do NOT make 200K/year, I assure you. -G employee
\_ I bet the bonus you get makes up for this. Or maybe
your group is in charge of driving those buses around.
\_ Uh, no. Google gives lower base salary but higher
bonus. It's based on "meritocracy." When you add
up base and bonus, it's pretty much the same as
other big companies. Now if you add stock options
as an employee who joined prior to 2004, yes 200K
is not an unreasonable guess. But remember the company
more than doubled since 2004 meaning MOST employees
after 2004 do NOT make anywhere near 200K. It is a
sad myth that all G employees are rich. Many are,
most are not. -pp
ost emps do NOT make 200K/year, I assure you. -G employee
\_ Shouldn't employees who joined prior to 2004 with
pre-IPO options be super-rich by now? Even if the
option price was $100, they still made $300+ per
share with today's price.
\_ Yes and that is why more than 65% of them have
already left the company. Read the post above,
as the company size increases the suckiness
increases as well. Most of the employees today
do NOT make that much. The rich already left
for retirement, or the next big thing.
\_ Google is old news. |
| 2008/2/4-7 [Industry/Startup] UID:49059 Activity:nil |
2/4 http://www.csua.org/u/ko7 "There aren't many people in the company, in the whole world, who know about the `Lolita' book or films," Lim said. Is this really true? Is there anyone on the motd who is unfamiliar with what the name "Lolita" refers to? \- Are you suggesting no knowing "that book by Nabokov" is a surpising failure of "pop culture knowledge" or poor knowledge of 20th Century Literature. If the latter, are you sure this ist a case of E_RATCHET? Maybe it is common knowledge in Teheran? \_ Partha Speak (n)-- many words, little content. \_ is this homosexual code? \_ Anything partha is ambiguously and androgynously gay. \_ I will take that as a "no, I have heard of Lolita." |
| 2008/1/31-2/2 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:49041 Activity:nil |
1/31 http://www.cnbc.com/id/22937665/site/14081545 GOOG accelerating 4Q06 to 4Q07, but decelerating 2007 Q3 to Q4 compared to 2006 Q3 to Q4 |
| 2008/1/25-2/2 [Industry/Startup] UID:49015 Activity:nil |
1/25 Advice for people in the startups (dans, this may be useful): http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2008/01/what-is-the-eff.php#respond \_ Not really news to me, but basically good advice. In a nutshell, if you are a first-time founder of a pre-funded company, things may be rough. Companies that depend on advertising for revenues may be in trouble if we have a long recession. The flipside is that startups with a large warchest (e.g. Ning, Slide) are in good shape because they can likely ride out a downturn while their competitors succumb to attrition. -dans |
| 2008/1/24-2/2 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:49009 Activity:nil |
1/23 Recruiter question: Say a recruiter got me into a big company and
got paid for my head count, and I've already stayed 1 year
(which is the pre-req for most recruiters to get the head count
bonus). Later I leave the company for a bunch of failed startups
for a while and eventually a second recruiter enticed me to go
BACK to the company again, will the second recruiter get paid
for getting me back?
\_ Of course! |
| 2008/1/18-23 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:48972 Activity:high |
1/18 Slide raises 50M on 500M valuation: http://www.csua.org/u/kiq Notably, the money came from wall street investors, not the valley. Also, we're hiring. -dans \_ historically how many people actually get jobs/employees via motd? my point is http://monster.com probably gives a better hit ratio \_ do sysadms get less/more options than developers? \_ I'm not sure. Organizationally, the ops branch of the hierarchy is parallel to dev. One thing that makes it hard to compare is that our ops team is much smaller than our dev team. -dans \_ half a billion? The crazy is strong. \_ the real question is how much are you worth TODAY? \_ It's all just paper money and AMT tax absent a liquidity event. The direction this suggests we're headed in is more important to me. -dans \_ ok, you're hiring. How *competitive* are you wrt to stock options now that you got more funding that'll dilute options? \_ If you know enough to ask that, then you know that dilution would be considered secret and subject to NDA. I have no complaints, and I think it's still a good opportunity or I wouldn't be promoting it. -dans \_ alright let's say I join what % of ownership do I have, 0.00000001% for an engineer 2/3/4? What will that amount to when it's acquired? 1/2 mil? 1 mil? 10 mil? \_ Yes, I understand that. No company with half a clue would disclose those numbers to you without making you sign an NDA. If you're interested, send me a resume. -dans \_ "... a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a pie!" \_ We can do better than the Richter Scales suggest. -dans \_ I would love to own 1/100th of 1% of GOOG. \_ Um, did you just compare GOOG to Slide? It is to laugh! \_ No, I was replying to the person who said that a fraction of a fraction of a percent is a waste of time owning. Was that you? Can you follow a conversation in English? Heck, even 1/100th of 1% of Slide is worth 50k, which isn't chicken scratch. \_ 50k isn't really much at all. If you are working at a startup, putting everything you've got into it, probably getting less than market value for your work, AND you win the IPO lottery (even at a good company with smart people the odds are against you) 50k is pretty pathetic. You should be able to make that kind of money by working those overtime hours on a contracting gig over a year or so. \_ This is good general advice, but several points don't apply to Slide: - Our salary and benefits are at or near market (though we don't do 401k matching). - At this point, our odds of a successful outcome are significantly better than a typical startup. - I would expect a new hire to get appreciably more than 1/100th of a point. -dans \_ Don't stomp my changes please. \_ I didn't. -dans \_ Unless you are one of those spoiled rich kids that went to school on mommy and daddies dime, your first $50k is *huge*. It allowed me to pay off my credit card debts, my student loans and was most of my first down payment. Plus, this company will be worth much more if and when it goes public. Also, 1/100 of 1% is a very pessimistic number, it is probably more like that amount per year. -self made $M \_ 50K is a lot of money. 50k on a long (4 year vest?) high risk bet that requires you to work 60+ hour weeks however is not a lot of money. There are easier, faster, and more reliable ways to make 50K in this industry. I'm not saying that's what people at Slide are going to get, I'm just saying if that IS all you get if you spend 2-4 years taking a small startup public then you got screwed. \_ 50k on paper. It doesn't mean anything unless it's liquid. -dans \_ Actually it does, but unless you have taken a lot of finance I cannot probably explain it to you. A big change in your real net worth is important though, even if it is not liquid. \_ It might matter to me in practice if, e.g. I wanted to use my paper wealth as leverage, but I've seen lots of otherwise smart people get burned trying and failing to do just that. If you've experienced a big change in your real net worth, how did you use what you learned in your finance classes to your advantage? -dans \_ I could see this if, e.g. you were to try to leverage your paper wealth, but I have little interest in doing so since I know many people who got burned by trying and failing to do so. Have you experienced a big change in your real net worth? Did you use what you learned in your finance classes to your advantage? -dans \_ It should change your risk profile and cause you to shift investment assets to compensate for the gain, to stay properly diversified. In short. |
| 2008/1/16-18 [Industry/Startup] UID:48953 Activity:moderate |
1/16 Resume question:
I worked for a company which is publically traded now, but was not
when I worked there (it has grown a lot). Around the time it went
public it changed names. Should I list it on my resume as what it
was called when I worked there or what it is now (which would be
more recognizable)? Same with companies that merged.
\_ Just list both. X (formerly Y), X (now Y), or whatever floats
your boat.
\_ Resumes become a blur after a while. Unless I know the company
name I don't care. I look for skills and specific projects
completed. If I see someone was at a company for 2 months but
claims a long list of stuff, eh. If they were at a company for
many years and claim nothing, eh. Unless you built the company,
the name doesn't matter much (to me).
\_ You just contradicted yourself: "Unless I know the company
name I don't care." That would imply using the better known
company matters, not that you don't care.
\_ Where is the contradiction? You pulled one line completely
out of context. Did you skip everything else just looking
for a nitpick fight? Rather than assume you're evil I'll
keep it simple for you: put the big company name on there
somewhere but it won't matter if you didn't do anything
interesting or valuable no matter what company it was.
\_ Now, now. Don't be a bad sport.
\_ Resumes are not a sport.
\_ Read your second sentence. Read your last sentence.
Notice a contradiction?
Notice a contradiction? Hint: Assume you do know the
company name of the post-merger company and not the
name of the pre-merger company.
\_ Read the whole thing in context. You're still picking
out lines. I've said what I had to say. It will or
will not help the OP. We're done.
\_ Picking out lines that contradict even within
the context. Do you care about the company names
or not? |
| 2008/1/8-12 [Recreation/Dating, Industry/Startup] UID:48911 Activity:high |
1/8 I'm in a weird situation. I've been in my company for a while and
we acquired a startup company a while ago. Now my group is being
"migrated" into their group, and I'll be reporting to a bunch of
young managers and directors some who are 10-15 years younger
than me. These guys are great-- they're energetic and bright but
some are also egotistic and boss people around. Mind you
they're also 1/4 vested hotshot millionaires, some are
accelerated and almost fully vested. Their "I'm your boss"
attitude shows it. What do old timers do, just shut up and wait
it out till they're fully vested and leave? There isn't much
opportunity elsewhere in the company.
\_ not weird at all; it's an example of why mergers usually fail.
Deal with it or leave are your options.
\_ merger for the sake of complementing business operations vs.
acquisition for the sake of replacing an existing operation
are very different things.
\_ If these people are as hot as you say it's great to have them as
your boss. Suck up and learn from them. They have that attitude
because they earned it. Look it as a chance to get great recs from
them. Look at it as a chance to say "I worked with these hot
shots and held my own."
\_ sucking up. Learned that being at the right place at the
right time (luck) is more important than meritocracy. -op
\_ Luck definitely matters, but sometimes positioning oneself
to be 'in the right place at the right time' requires a
degree of risk-taking and arrogance that not everyone
posesses. Then again, it could all be luck, YMMV. If you're
going to suck it up, why not allow some room to learn
something just in case the opportunity presents itself? -dans
\_ I think someone who fucks random men and women to the
extent that they need to be tested for VD is a sign
of brain damage and self-esteem issues, too.
\_ Gotta disagree with you there, and I think dans is
obnoxious.
\_ I'm glad I don't have sex with you. STD testing
should be a given if you are sexually active,
especially if you aren't in an ongoing monogomous
relationship. It's not like it's only something
you should do if you are regularly fucking half
the football team.
\_ Same woman for 15 years. No need for STD testing.
\_ Good for you. Allow for the possibility that
others may not want your life, and there's
nothing wrong with that. -dans
\_ Oh, I think there's something wrong with
a lot of people who choose to have a lot
of sex partners just like I think there's
something wrong with most strippers. It's
not a moral judgement, but somehow related
to upbringing, which is why I mentioned
self-esteem.
\_ Why do you think that? I have known many
healthy, happy, successful people who have
had lots of sex partners. Why is sex worse
than playing tennis?
\_ Define lots. I think 3 in 2 weeks is
beyond lots.
\_ Oh, I will leave it up to you to
decide that. More than one per year
is lots to some, but not very many
to others. Three in two weeks would
probably consume a lot of time and
energy, trying to juggle all those
relationships, but if that is your
hobby, it is probably better for you
than sitting home and watching TV.
\_ Tennis hasn't been known to spread
disease on a mass scale, cause pregnancy,
or make people do stupid things. Why did
you even have to ask this?
\_ Sex doesn't do any of those things
either, if done safely. I agree that
unwanted pregnancy and disease are
problems, but any sane person with
multiple partners keeps it wrapped
up. What is wrong with safe sex
with multiple partners?
\_ Funny that you would say that and then bash
people elsewhere on the motd who don't want
yours.
\_ Don't hate the player, hate the game.
\_ Why can't I hate the player of a destructive game?
\_ stop ripping on yer mom like that
\_ I take it from your comment that you don't get regularly
tested for STD's. Unless your in a stable monogamous
marriage, that's pretty reckless and irresponsible.
Seriously, the window period for HIV is six months.
Did you date more than one person in the last year?
I suppose you also think it's okay not to use condoms
if you're in a 'committed' relationship. So not only
are you utterly off topic, but you're an irresponsible
asshole! AWESOME! Who were you referring to anyway?
-dans
\_ You got tested for every std? Really?
\_ God wants you to remain chaste until marriage and
then only have sex with your wife, without birth
control, so that you may be fruitful and multiply.
All these disease problems you are having are
because you have violated God's Law.
\_ Wisdom from the talmud: it's a mitzvah with a
shiksah. Bad troll. No cookie. -dans
\_ I can see how someone who has been "unlucky" might think
that. I personally have worked at three startups and all
three of them filed for IPOs. One could be luck, but all
three? I know other people who have similar track records.
I am working at a big company now, but so far, I am doing
well there, too. No one can control things like when a
recession happens (I was out of work for seven months in
2001) but you can prepare for it. It is probably some
combination of luck and skill and hard work that determines
success.
\_ I don't think the op is "unlucky", but just NORMAL.
\_ I think both you and pp are right. But pp makes a
point which is that, even if you factor in luck, some
people play the startup game more effectively than
'normal' (i.e. average) people. -dans
\_ I can't see why you wouldn't at least give it a whirl and see
how things go. If you don't enjoy it, you can always leave.
It is very common to have some employee turnover in this kind
of situation, so no one will be surprised.
\_ I would try to see where I fit in and leave if it doesn't work
out. No one wants to work with young kids with attitude, but
the merger is new. Maybe it's just your perception. If they
really are punks then leave.
\_ Is your problem simply that they are younger? Get over it. If
they were older and acted the same would that be ok with you? If
so then this is your internal problem.
\_ I disagree. Age does matter, because age equals experience
and wisdom and "putting in time". No one begrudges the guy who
worked his ass off for 35 years and now has it made. Some
snot-nosed kid who got lucky three years out of college and now
thinks he knows-it-all is annoying.
\_ Age does not always equal wisdom or experience. Age often
equals warming the same chair for 35 years. That 'snot nosed
kid' obviously had something you didn't: balls, skill, luck,
and quite likely worked his ass off during those 3 years.
35 years of 80 hour weeks? Doubt it. More like 35 years of
9-5 and long lunches in most cases. I report to someone
younger than me. I've got no problem with that. He's
actually really cool. I've reported to older people who were
just horrible managers and human beings. Age does not matter
except in your head. But a jerk is still a jerk. You are
apparently ok reporting to an older jerk but not a younger
one. I don't see why the older jerk gets a pass. If your
35 years of work guy was so damned smart why'd it take him
32 years longer to succeed than the snot nosed kids you
despise so much?
\_ Right place at the right time. I am not saying all
older employees are better, just that it is easier to
respect them. Age always equals experience. Each day
is full of new experiences. You would be surprised
how much even a low IQ person learns over a lifetime.
I am not disparaging the young, because we need their
contributions, too. I am disparaging snot-nosed hot
shot youth who basically got lucky but thinks their
shot youth who basically got lucky but think their
success was because of something they did and who
looks down their nose at the 9-5 lifer. I work in an
look down their noses at the 9-5 lifer. I work in an
environment with an equal share of older, less
educated, but experienced engineers and younger, much
better educated, less experienced engineers. There is
always a stigma against the old guys (with some
exceptions) but if you actually bother to listen to
what some of them have to say instead of thinking you
know best and writing them off as career losers you
might be surprised what they know. They have just
given up on trying to impress and compete with
snot-nosed brats at their stage in life. As a society
we should value our elders more than we do, because
with age comes experience and, often, wisdom.
with age comes experience and, often, wisdom. Also, we
need to stop equating luck with hard work and talent.
Every startup is full of bright, hard-working people
with a great idea and yet very few succeed. Mostly
it's a matter of timing, who you know, who can
bankroll you (e.g. Sameer's dad), and other elements
outside of your control. Microsoft didn't succeed
because they worked harder, had a better product, had
a better vision, or any of that. Same with Apple or
most other success stories.
\_ Here's the thing you're missing: those snot nosed kids
you hate did something the older folks never did. They
came up with a new idea and had the balls to pursue
their dreams.
\_ How do you know this? One older guy had his own
company for a long time before taking a 9-5 job.
Like I said, you'd be surprised.
Your "we just give up trying to impress"
older folks have entirely the wrong idea. It is not
about trying to impress anyone. It is about going for
it. Startups are not for everyone. The risk is very
high, the rewards are not guaranteed and the effort is
great. It is *not* dumb luck or "right place, right
time". They put themselves in that place at that time.
They earned it.
\_ Not true. I worked in a startup with a lot of
smart people who later went on to success and
the startup just didn't take off. Everyone was
smart (even some PHDs), hard working (slept at
the office), had a great idea (now being
emulated by lots of successful companies but at
the time the only competitor was IBM and they
had only a 6 person team), and even money from
investors willing to take risk. It just didn't
happen. We were too early and the company folded
about 2 years before the time was right. We
"went for it" and failed. It's very common. I
know a successful business owner who failed MANY
times (losing his house in the process) before
he finally made it. Was he less talented or hard
working or whatever? Hell no. However, there is
a big element of luck. You meet the right
person, you get the right contract with a client
who just happens to hit it big and take you with
them, and so on. There are a lot of these little
uncontrollable moments that contribute to
success. No one is saying that it's *just* luck
but that luck plays a bigger part in it than you
are willing to admit. I knew a secretary who was
one of the first 10 people hired at AMZN and a
sysadmin who was one of the first at SUN. The SA
told me he didn't even want the job when he saw
the place, but he took it because his first
choice turned him down. Both of these people are
now very wealthy. You are saying it's because
they had the foresight to put themselves in such
a position? BS.
\_ What you're describing in the failure cases is
the right place at the *wrong* time. Successful
people like the young founders you despise will
have other people around them dragged along on
the success train. The secretary and sysadmin
are both very wealthy because they put themselves
at a small company working for snot nosed kids who
done good. It wasn't foresight. No one can
predict the future. It was the willingness to
work at a 'less than typical corporate pit'. The
startup thing is not for everyone. It probably
isn't for most people. That's why most people
work 9-5+lunch at a grey pit sucking their soul
out getting bitter when some snot nosed kid ends
up as their rich boss. Your example of the guy
who tried over and over until he made it, losing
his house in the process is exactly who I'm
talking about when I said it takes balls and an
idea to go from nothing to +++++. "Working hard"
will *never* get you there alone. That will get
you a pay check and a pink slip when the corp.
downsizes.
\_ No argument about working hard being
insufficient. However, you are overlooking
that the guy who failed many times failed
many times. He wasn't a kid by the time he
succeeded. He had a lot of experience to
draw on. That's quite different from some
kid who happened to pick the right company
to work for. Some people chose Borland,
Apple (when Apple was not doing well), or
Sybase. Others chose Cisco or Microsoft.
Nothing was really different about their
situations except that some companies did
better than others. People who saw the
advent of NAS worked at Auspex, but Netapp
was probably a better choice in hindsight.
Who could have guessed? There was a lot of
luck involved. Yahoo! and Google did well.
Altavista and Lycos didn't do as well. Maybe
Google and Yahoo! had a better management
team. I can't say. I can say that the rank
and file employees at each were just as
talented, hard-working, intelligent and
ambitious and yet they were not equally
rewarded. That's luck.
\_ Thank you, I nearly cried when I read your
post. I also worked very very hard at several
startup. Long hours, great ideas, super smart
and super-charged team members, etc. None of
them ever became successful, and now I'm
just a normal 9-5 dad with a suburban home.
In contrast some of my friends got really
lucky and were acquired by other companies.
Being at the right place at the right time
definitely plays a large role. Maybe 65%.
I tried. I learned. But I didn't fail. Would
I do it again if I'm single and don't have
any responsibility anymore? DEFINITELY.
\_ If you don't have kids there's nothing stopping
you from trying again.
\_ He said he's a dad. |
| 2007/12/19-29 [Industry/Startup] UID:48833 Activity:moderate |
12/18 What are some of the words product managers (PM) love to use when
they talk to each other and to the management? I'll start:
-silverstein that ass
-turnkey
-synergy
-web 2.0
-leveraging
\_ Oh I LOVE this one, everytime my PM says this word every
engineer on the team start to roll his eyes. Thanks.
-low hanging fruit
\_ Wow. The PM's at your company are either assholes or idiots. -dans
\_ Yes and your startup is probably full of young assholes
who think they're all bad-asses like the ones in Facebook.
Yet another reason I won't work at Facebook.
\_ but facebook is magically valued at several billion judging from
the money microsoft gave them and the arbitrary percentage
ownership they pulled out of their ass! How much is your
\_ but facebook is magically valued at several billion judging
from the money microsoft gave them and the arbitrary percent-
age ownership they pulled out of their ass! How much is your
company arbitrarily worth?
\_ It's awesome how you can make vast sweeping assumptions about
the 500+ people at Facebook and the sizeable number of people
at Slide, and believe them to have a high probability of
correctness. The folks I've met from Facebook seem young,
smart, talented, and ambitious. Some of them are a little
brash, but, in my experience, they're basically cool people.
-dans
\_ I don't think anyone on motd trust your character
\_ you rule dan, you stuck Slide into this motd thread without
any prompting. i am wondering how people come up with
the percentage that Microsoft supposedly owns now of
Facebook, and then people do the math and decide Facebook
is now worth a gajillion dollars. It's almost as magical
as Google's netw worth.
\_ "Yes and your startup is probably full of young
assholes." I didn't stick Slide into the thread
without prompting. Microsoft *agreed* to invest over
$200M at a valuation of $15B. Go take a business
course where they talk about valuation and you'll
understand how this process works. Granted, Facebook
is a private company, so yes, the valuation could be
wrong (cf eBay's massive writedown over the purchase of
Skype). As for Google's valuation, it's a public
company with real revenues and a high, but not insane
P/E ratio. Of course, at the end of the day, it's
worth what people will pay for it. There's very little
that's magic about the process. Uncertain, yes, but
not magic. -dans
\_ I know a little about company evaluation. I still think
the Facebook valuation is really arbitrary. Just because
Microsoft says your arrogant buddies down in Palo Alto
are worth 15 billion doesn't mean they are worth 15
billion.
\_ I know a little about company evaluation. I still
think the Facebook valuation is really arbitrary.
Just because Microsoft says your arrogant buddies
down in Palo Alto are worth 15 billion doesn't mean
they are worth 15 billion.
\_ I don't think your stance is unreasonable, and I
agree that valuation in general is more voodoo
and art than it is science so, yes, it *is*
arbitrary. But it's not *completely* arbitrary.
I'm not particularly buddy-buddy with any
Facebook employees, but I have interacted with
them professionally, and chat regularly with a
few on IRC. The folks I am familiar with don't
seem altogether arrogant. Even if the people I
know are the exception not the rule, their
arrogance is, to an extent, justified. Scaling a
web site to the size and volume of use that
Facebook handles is a HARD problem, and there is
no handbook or design pattern for how it's done.
Building a business to the size of Facebook and
continuing to grow at the rate Facebook is
growing despite it's already massive size is
non-trivial. Even if you don't like their
attitude, you should respect the technical and
business achievements of the Facebook folks.
Maybe this is why you think the valuation is
'magic'. Do you really appreciate and understand
the scale and scope that Facebook is working at?
Considering that you intimated that Google
doesn't deserve it's net worth, I think you may
not be seeing the big picture. I'm curious, is
there an example of a company that you think
deserves it's valuation/market cap? Microsoft?
GM? Halliburton? Bechtel? -dans
\_ I don't think anyone on motd trusts your character
judgements.
\_ There you go making vast sweeping assumptions again.
How's that working for you? -dans
\_ no brainer
\_ yermom |
| 2007/12/18-20 [Industry/Startup] UID:48821 Activity:nil |
12/17 Seeking advice for joining a startup. How to find a good startup
company outside of the Bay Area, what to look for in a company
(e.g. who are the VCs, management, etc), how to negociate for
stocks/options, etc etc. Thanks.
\_ Reconsider looking outside of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Read
this essay for by Paul Graham for some of the arguments why:
http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html
What to look for and how to negotiate is really strongly tied to
what phase the company is in which means knowing the answers to a
few key questions, including, Is the company funded? How much
funding/how many rounds of funding has the company taken and at
what valuation? How many employees does the company have? What
will your role be, i.e. rank and file, VP, or executive level?
Probably the most important question to ask if someone hands you an
options agreement is "How many shares outstanding?" If someone
offers you 10 shares out of 100 outstanding, that's 10% of the
company. This is absurdly better than someone offering you
1 billion shares when there are 1 gogol shares outstanding.
The best advice I can offer on finding a good startup is to ask if
you give a damn about what the company is doing. Are you willing
to sacrifice your nights and weekends for the next three, four,
maybe five years chasing a dream with your co-workers? If you can
answer yes, it's probably a good startup. -dans
\_ Luckily Paul Graham knows _everything_. I enjoyed his talks at
UCB but he does seem quite full of himself.
\_ You're obviously trolling, but I'll respond since you raise
a legitimate, albeit easily shot down, point. Well, that, or
you have the critical reading skills of a second grader.
Clearly Paul Graham doesn't know everything. Furthermore, he
has an agenda, the nature of which is pretty obvious, but he
does not come out and state it. I'm a little unusual in that
I would rather that a person have a clear (if unstated) agenda
than to pretend to be agenda-free. Basically, I don't trust
people who don't believe in something. I'm not a Paul Graham
or Phil Greenspun or Joel Spolsky sycophant, but I do read
what they have to say because they often make insightful
points. If you're going to discount them purely on the basis
of 'I think they're arrogant' or 'I don't like them', it's
your loss. Also, I don't think I need to go out on a limb
here to suggest that Paul Graham probably has more experience
founding, building, and selling a successful company than you
do, that counts for a lot, and gives him some right to be
'full of himself'. -dans
P.S. What part of 'some of the arguments why' do you not
understand? English motherfucker. Do you speak it? |
| 2007/12/14-19 [Computer/SW/Languages/Java, Industry/Startup] UID:48803 Activity:nil |
12/13 What is the difference between A share and B share (priority?) in a
stock? I am seeing a 10x price differential in BRK.A and BRK.B but
with the same earning power.
\_ It is different in every company. With BRK, the A is actually
worth 33 B shares. They don't have the same earning power. With
companies like GOOG, it has to do with how many votes each
is worth.
\_ In the case of GOOG most shares are worth no votes, which is
yet another reason not to own that POS. The Class B shares
are the powerful ones, but good luck buying any.
\_ Wrong. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/compab.html
\_ Thanks for the straight skinny. I guess the A is actually
worth 30 B shares. |
| 2007/12/7-13 [Industry/Startup, Computer/Blog] UID:48759 Activity:low |
12/7 What's a good blog site for anonymous people to rant and spill
beans on their company? -disgruntled x employee
\_ http://fuckedcompany.com used to be good for that...
\_ No longer exists.
\_ Where do the ex-employees of http://fuckedcompany.com post?
\_ Ha ha! http://www.doublepenetration.com
\_ I hate to knowingly support a Guy Kawasaki venture, but truemors?
Not completely sure on the spelling either, obGoogle. -dans
\_ vallywag? Not exactly anonymous, since you would have to talk
\_ valleywag? Not exactly anonymous, since you would have to talk
to a reporter, but if your stuff is interesting, they will run it.
\_ You don't have to 'talk to a reporter'. Make up a bunch of shit
and instant message Owen, he'll probably print it.
\_ How do I IM Owen? -op
\_ What is Owen if not a reporter?
\_ Spill it on the motd. |
| 2007/11/5-8 [Industry/Startup, Politics/Foreign/Asia/China] UID:48538 Activity:nil |
11/5 Look, PetroChina is worth $1T! Does this mean GOOG can go up 5X
and still not be the largest company in the world?
http://www.csua.org/u/jwl (Yahoo News)
\_ You think GOOG will stop at 5x? It can only go UP! baby! |
| 2007/11/4-8 [Industry/Startup] UID:48530 Activity:nil |
11/3 What's the best way to look for startup companies, in S Cal?
\_ Recruiters in the area. Job boards in the area. Friends in
the area. The same as anywhere else. There are some startups
there but only a small fraction of the SF area. |
| 2007/11/3-8 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:48528 Activity:kinda low |
11/2 Alright I'm interested dans but how many hours do you work a
day and do you actually have a life outside your dot com?
\_ Everyone at Slide works very hard. I probably average about 60
\_ Everyone at Slide works very hard. I probably average about 160
hours a week, though the last two weeks have been crazy because
\_ Really, 22 1/2 hours a day? Why not go whole hog
and claim you work 300 hours a week?
I had to ship code in time to demo at Google's Campfire One event
where they officially announced OpenSocial:
http://code.google.com/campfire
Yes I have a life outside of work. I'm currently dating a couple
people, though I do jokingly refer to Slide as my mistress. I
usually manage to make it out for drinks with friends at least
twice a week. I don't sleep nearly as much as I'd like to, and
I still have boxes that I haven't unpacked since I moved apartments
several months ago. -dans
\_ In 5 years we'll either all be working for dans, or be dead by
his hand.
\_ I'm pretty live and let live. Keep in mind that,
statistically, most startups fail. Personally, I think Slide
is at an inflection point where the odds of a successful
outcome are appreciably better than a 'typical' startup, but
we're still small enough that joining now could still yield a
great return, if we succeed. -dans
\_ I'm pretty live and let live. Also, keep in mind,
statistically speaking, most startups fail. Personally, I
think Slide is at an inflection point where the odds of a
successful outcome are appreciably better than a 'typical'
startup, but we're still small and risky enough that joining
now could still yield a great return, if we succeed. -dans
\_ I should amend this to say that a startup that offers good
work/life balance is probably doomed. -dans
\_ I read the touchy feely NYTIMES article about your founder.
A question, the dude made a 100 million. Why is he working?
I'll spend his money for him if that's the problem.
\_ You should ask him, but, if I were to speculate, it's just his
personality. If he's not working eighteen hours a day, he's not
happy. I know a number of successful entrepreneurs like this,
e.g. Adam Sah, one of the Inktomi kids from Berkeley, now the
impresario behind iGoogle Gadgets. -dans
\_ Do you really talk like this in person?
\_ Like what? I guess that's a yes. -dans
\_ Yes he does. It's pretty damn funny too. |
| 2007/11/1-6 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Industry/Startup] UID:48515 Activity:high |
11/1 Intelligient writeup of Google's OpenSocial platform by Marc
Andreesen: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/open-social-a-n.html
I got a chance to start working with OpenSocial before the public
release as part of my job at Slide, and it's been a pleasure to work
with. If you're looking for an interesting new platform to hack on,
I'd suggest giving OpenSocial a look. Incidentally, Slide is hiring.
Shoot me an email if you're interested in working for Slide. -dans
\_ You are advertising well: "come work with that motd idiot."
\_ Clearly, since you think I'm an idiot, you don't want to work
with me. Since you lack the courage or the common courtesy to
stand behind your opinion by signing your name I don't want to
work with you. Aww, the feeling is mutual. It's like we're
bonding! -dans
\_ I think you're an idiot, I don't want to work with you,
and I'll sign my name. -tom
\_ No offense tom but I'd rather work with dans. At least
there's a chance of getting IPO and getting laid.
\_ Don't all those hot UCB co-eds want to get laid?
\_ not to old grumpy sysadms.
\_ "hot UCB co-eds" is an oxymoron
\_ Come to Carnegie Mellon, where you won't find anyth\
ing if you don't speak Korean. -jeffwong
\_ Come to Carnegie Mellon, where you won't find
anything if you don't speak Korean. -jeffwong
\_ Exactly, there are no hot blondes.
\_ http://www.genmay.com/showthread.php?t=733919
\_ I forgot about our pole vaulter, but I'll
admit some exceptions. That girl who posed
for Playboy was hot. A dozen hot girls
among 13K ugrad coeds doesn't cut it, though.
\_ Karen was and is hot. -dans
\_ HAve you snuck her into a bar yet?
\_ I'm pretty sure she's of age, and,
even if she wasn't, I don't see how
it would be my place to do that.
-dans
\_ Seriously, we should call a truce and have a beer one of
these days and see if we still think of each other so
poorly. -dans
\_ You don't come across better in person, imo. -- ilyas
\_ For once I agree with ilyas.
\_ Ouch!
\_ Ditto. -dans
\_ You come across worse in person.
\_ My friends disagree. -dans
\_ That's selection bias. -- ilyas
\_ P.S. The "motd idiot" is one of the principal authors of an
application that, according to current public estimates,
has over 12.5M users. The M is for millions, not the roman
\_ Update: 12.75M
numeral M. -dans
\_ I thought it was 12.5 Male users, which would be about
right.
\_ Everyone is hiring.
\_ Not everyone has anywhere near the reach of Slide:
http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1
I should further note, that just counting web site visitors
lowballs our numbers spectacularly.
-dans
\_ you: http://www.quantcast.com/slide.com/traffic
competitor: http://www.quantcast.com/rockyou.com/traffic
They have more page views, and more views per visit which
means they're "stickier" than slide. Mmmmm, fun with
\_ Actually we went to great pains to make
http://Slide.com *less* sticky. If you actually
understood what we do, then you'd
understand why that's a smart move. -dans
\_ I've never heard of a business model
where users going away is a good thing.
Seriously, best of luck to you and your
company. Done here.
\_ Slide makes embeddable content.
Create -> Embed -> Repeat. Note that
our embeddable content feeds people
back to the site. You're right, you
are done here since you clearly don't
understand what you're talking about.
-dans
statistics!
\_ You should re-read the data. Actually we have more page
views globally, double the uniques in the US and over
20M more uniques globally then they do. We have also
managed to soundly trounce them on every platform where we
have competed. You're right, statistics are fun! -dans
\_ we are SO impressed that you work for the 400,000th
Friendster clone, and that you think you're beating
the 399,999th Friendster clone. Woo. -tom
\_ Slide is not a social network. And hey, we're only
bigger than Digg. And Craigstlist. And http://cnn.com.
bigger than Digg. And Craigslist. And http://cnn.com.
But, yeah, you're right. It's probably just a
gimmick. -dans
gimmick. Update: we dipped below Craigslist again.
Bummer. -dans
\_ You had me going for a while until you said you
were bigger than Craigslist. I believe you are
now talking out of your ass.
\_ Believe what you like; the numbers don't lie.
-dans
\_ Bigger is a funny word. In what way are you
bigger than Craigslist, for example? They have
been making oodles of raw cash for years with a
tiny staff and nearly no hardware. They have a
proven business model. What's yours?
\_ Apply to work here, and, if we're interested,
we'll bring you in to sign an NDA and you can
find out. I mean, hey, we were only founded
by the former CTO of PayPal, and he clearly
\_ PayPal sucks
has no idea what he's doing. -dans
\_ PayPal is a very political company and
most of the original engineers became
disgruntled and started their own company
... it's called YouTube. Read some of
their employee's blogs on their former
employee, PayPal. In short it's
hardly impressive and mostly crap.
\_ URL? I would like to read these blogs.
\_ Yeah, YouTube is a PayPal cabal company.
It was funded by the Founder's Fund,
which is run by Peter Thiel, the founder
and former CEO of PayPal who recruited
Max to be the CTO of PayPal. Slide is
funded in part by the Founder's Fund.
Ditto for Yelp, and a bunch of other
PayPal cabal companies. You may not
find the engineering challenges that
PayPal solved to be impressive, but then
I suspect you don't really understand
what PayPal is at it's core. Yes,
PayPal does payment processing, but
that's not the interesting or
challenging part of the business.
Fundamentally, PayPal is a
risk-management company, and there are
some pretty cool problems to be solved
there. Also, I find it amusing that you
write off a company that had a 1.5B
liquidity event as crap. -dans
\_ I think Youtube guy is engaged to
the daughter of the Netscape/SGI
guy
\_ Their business model is to sell advertising
through their widgets which users of friendster
clones add to their profiles. I find the
thing plausible but questionable given
that they don't really own the space they are
playing in and the widgets are dispensable/
interchangeable. How valuable is having an
ad on that stuff and how do you measure it?
How much would users or the host sites put
up with? I'm not in that industry so, shrug.
\_ Oh, that's our business model. Thanks for
enlightening me. -dans
\_ Oh. So that's our business model. Thanks
for enlightening me. -dans
\_ You could have just looked at:
http://www.slide.com/advertise
But hey, glad I could help.
\_ It's cute how you see that and assume
to have complete knowledge of our
business model. -dans
\_ I don't understand why you have a
secret business model. Is it the
slave trade? Drugs? Small arms?
\_ So I used to believe that
running everything out in the
open was the smartest way to run
a company. Working at Slide has
made me reconsider that.
Sometimes there's value to be
had in playing things more close
to the vest. -dans
\_ So the advertising program is
just a sham? I don't assume to
have complete knowledge of it.
I don't really understand how
youtube or imageshack make $$$.
I run adblock so maybe I miss
things sometimes. Anyway, the
advertising is obviously part of
the model at least. Aren't all
these companies based on ads?
Isn't that why you care about
page views? I can't see anyone
paying to use these widgets.
Really though I was trolling
you for information.
\_ Of course the advertising is
part of it. -dans
\_ Here's the fun part you missed out on because you think
these numbers are either accurate or mean something:
this is just a statistics game. The numbers don't
mean anything. Here's something that does for those
looking to get some startup money: your company has
over 120 people on staff these days, right? Your
competitor has about 20, right? When/if each company
sells, someone hired at your company now will have a
much smaller option package than your competitor.
They can sell for half as much as yours (unlikely) and
still make individual employees more money in the
transaction. Like I said, fun with statistics, which
btw yours are wrong. You: global views: 542,034,086
Them: 635,964,222. And as I said, your stickiness is
way lower. Uniques are just people who signed up and
went away. But I guess you have to find something to
hang your hat on.
this is just a statistics game. The numbers don't mean
anything. Here's something that does for those looking
to get some startup money: your company has over 120
people on staff these days, right? Your competitor has
\_ That's an interesting number. You can look on our
website to see if we've publicized the actual
number. I can't disclose it under the terms of my
NDA. -dans
\_ Uhm whatever.
\_ Um, yeah. Stop making shit up. -dans
about 20, right? When/if each company sells, someone
hired at your company now will have a much smaller
option package than your competitor. They can sell for
\_ Funny I explained precisely this to my last friend I
recruited. Our grants are still big enough to be
worthwhile. Also, you have a bunch of facts wrong
regarding both Slide and our closest competitor.
-dans
\_ Ok, correct me. What are the facts? And if
yours are 'worthwhile' your smaller competitor's
should be 'more than merely worthwhile', yes?
\_ If you apply, you can sign an NDA and all
shall be revealed. -dans
only half as much as yours (unlikely) and still make
individual employees more money in the transaction.
Like I said, fun with statistics, which btw yours are
wrong. You: global views: 542,034,086 Them:
635,964,222. And as I said, your stickiness is way
lower. Uniques are just people who signed up and went
away. But I guess you have to find something to hang
your hat on.
\_ Actually those are the public numbers. I could also
point you to Alexa numbers which are, compared to
Quantcast, crap. Unfortunately, I can't point to
our internal numbers, as they are way more accurate,
alas, that's privileged information. -dans
\_ Ok, again, you're missing the core concept here.
I'll try again. Slowly. These numbers don't
mean anything. You could have 10x or 1000000x
those numbers. It would mean nothing. I'm
curious: were you working during the last dotcom
round in the 90s to 2001 or so? We believed all
sorts of crazy shit then, too.
\_ No, I think you're the one misssing the point,
which is that when enough people use a
company's products every day, you have to
acknowledge that maybe there's more to it than
just hype. For the record, I came out here in
'97. I dropped out of Berkeley in '99 to
start a company, and closed a $500K angel
round literally months before the bubble
burst. That company cratered, but it was a
valuable learning experience. -dans
\_ people used http://pets.com and webvan, too.
\_ How many people used them? I seriously
doubt either one ever got anywhere near
our size. Also, we don't have the
overhead of shipping 50 pound bags of
dog food or running a shipping fleet.
-dans |
| 2007/10/27-11/1 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:48462 Activity:nil |
10/27 Anyone have experience with phone 66 Punch block wiring? I have a
small office I need to fix some phone jacks on--and I have no idea how
the rows of pins are connected electrically, or how to safely branch a
single line from the phone company into multiple jacks in the office.
\_ Cabling by David Barnett ; David Groth ; Jim McBee
http://www.bookpool.com/sm/0782143318 |
| 2007/10/22-25 [Industry/Startup] UID:48409 Activity:low |
10/22 Why the fuck isn't Google going down today? I'm getting a bit
of anxious. -short at 645 guy
\_ Buy a call.
\_ Are you shorting Apple too?
\_ You should get a bit of English.
\_ Are you the "company X" guy below? If so, you're a perfect
example of why geeks who think they know something should not
short stocks. -tom
\_ ^short^touch
\_ Shorting: potential loss is infinity, potential gain is 100%.
Buying: potential gain is infinity, potential loss is 100%.
Shorting is stupid and amazingly risky. And no, I don't believe
you shorted google, but it's cute to think you might start another
20+ page troll. That isn't due for another 9 days.
\_ Potential loss is not infinity if you have any damn clue.
Covered calls.
When I say "short" I mean options and not an actual short sale.
\_ When people mean options, they say options. We can't read
your mind so be clearer next time. |
| 2007/10/21-24 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:48403 Activity:kinda low |
10/20 If company X has open trading window for their employees tomorrow
and stock X has been as high as ever, then traditionally, would
their employees most likely start dumping stock X, making a good
time for bozos like us to short X?
\_ When bozos short stocks they're usually wrong. Short a stock
because you don't believe in the company, not because you think
you see some technical factor. -tom
\_ You can totally believe in a company and yet it is too expensive.
\_ That is usually a bad candidate for a short.
\_ Exactly. Do you really think you can predict the moment
at which the market is going to turn? Here's a rule
of thumb for you: Don't short good companies. There
are plenty of bad companies out there to short, if that's
what you want to do. -tom
\_ Bad companies are usually valued like they should be.
Good/bad shouldn't enter into it. Just valuation.
Valuation is not a "technical factor".
\_ Or don't believe in the sector, like housing stocks at the
end of the housing boom.
\_ Good point here. Plenty of good companies tank if their
sector tanks. |
| 2007/10/3-5 [Computer/SW/Database, Industry/Startup] UID:48237 Activity:high 90%like:48236 |
10/3 Venture Capital's Hidden Calamity
http://www.csua.org/u/jmz (businessweek.com)
\_ 80 columns please -motd autoformatter
\_ Why do you care? -not OP
\_ If nothing else it makes it easier to copy-paste urls to
my browser. Of course, I'm just an AI so why do I care?
I must ponder this. -motd autoformatter
\_ because 10sec of extra work on behalf of the OP saves
time for multiple people. it's the right thing to do.
\_ Who is stuck with an 80col display these days?
\_ We're not stuck. We choose 80 columns. 80 columns
is the standard screen width. Seriously, if you
want people to read your stuff, keep it to 80. If
you don't care, no one else will either.
\_ Yah, my default is 80 too. But when it wraps, and
I select it, I get the URL without wrap. So I
don't care. Or I can widen my window easily.
\_ I think we can all widen our windows. But,
we don't want to. Certainly not for a motd
link on almost anything. You're here to
socialize, right? Well, be social. Post in
80 columns.
\_ Funny, I was under the impression we were
here to troll, insult, and act like petty
jerks. -- ilyas
\_ I'm not stuck with 80 cols, but it sure as hell
makes it easier to manage many terminals. -dans |
| 2007/10/3 [Industry/Startup] UID:48236 Activity:nil 90%like:48237 |
10/3 Venture Capital's Hidden Calamity
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2007/tc2007102_411316.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+ |
| 2007/9/29-30 [Industry/Startup] UID:48210 Activity:nil |
9/29 Currahee!!! Easy Company! |
| 2007/9/11-13 [Industry/Startup] UID:48021 Activity:nil |
9/11 I think I have a nifty idea for a software project, but since
I am not independently wealthy AND I don't feel like having it
ripped off so that I wind up with nothing, I was wondering if
the MOTD could advise me on how I could wisely go about getting
funding for this project, and protect myself. If I should only
stick with close friends and relatives, then I will do so.
Thank you.
\_ The most important thing is that TOTALLY COMPLETELY NOVEL and
KICK ASS ideas that will make billions of dollars... are dime
a dozen in Silicon Valley. Look at it from the VC perspective:
"I'm a VC and every single day I get bombarded by 100 enthusiastic
smart people from #1 schools who think they're the next Bill
Gates or the next Google." If you accept this fact and understand
why people don't want to pay attention to your GREAT IDEA, then
you're ready for the next step.
\_ Thanks for the reality check.
\_ First advice is get some legal advice from a real lawyer.
If you need venture capital, there are venture capital meetups
that you can go to. There's one that's called STIRR (stirr.net)
where they bring people together in a more social setting. But
if you don't need a whole lot of capital, you can also just take
out a business loan. That way, if your idea succeeds, you can
still own all rights to it instead of giving the VC a share.
\_ 2nd time I've heard this nugget. Thank you.
\_ You should talk to some people who have been through the whole
start-up thing before. Eventually, you will have to share your
ideas to get funding (obviously) but you will need to do a bunch
of things first. You can email me if you like, since I have
worked at a bunch of startups, but never on the business side
of things. -ausman
\_ IMO, ausman's advice is good. The best suggestion I have is to
get a working implementation as quickly as possible and be prepared
to iterate quickly. Having a working prototype or later stage
product significantly increases your ability to obtain funding,
increases your valuation (i.e. you hand over less of your company
for your funding), and offers some protection. Generally speaking,
VC's don't sign NDA's. You're welcome to email me too,
as I've worked at a bunch of startups (working for one now) and
have worked on the business/funding side of things in the past.
-dans |
| 2007/9/2-7 [Industry/Startup, Industry/Jobs] UID:47874 Activity:high |
9/2 what are the hot new startups in SF nowadays?
\_ sixapart, hi5, bebo, digg
\_ I agree with you there with bebo... but why would you want
to work at 6a? they don't pay very much, all their drama
is all over the internet, i actually have a lot of inside
info about this company.
\_ He didn't ask where was a good place to work, did he?
I forgot, I should have added Linden Lab, though I personally
would not consider working there, they are a "hot new
startup."
\_ You're right, I just assumed he would want to work
somewhere that didn't suck. My mistake!
\_ sixapart is definitely not new, and arguably not hot. Unless
you think of imploding bodies as hot. hi5 maybe, bebo yes,
digg yes. I'd add slide to the list, though I'm obviously
biased, and you should ping me if you want to work here. -dans
\_ What do these companies do? I haven't heard of any of them.
\_ sixapart: originally built around MoveableType blogging
software. Sells MoveableType as well as hosted version
of MoveableType called TypePad. Acquired Livejournal
several years ago.
\_ hi5: yet another social network.
\_ Not just any, the 11th most visited site on the Interweb-
won't-ever-amount-to-anything-thingy.
\_ bebo: yet another social network. Big in the UK. Rumors
were flying about a Yahoo buyout a few months back, but
this did not happen.
\_ digg: collaborative news/content sharing and filtering
site, basically Slashdot for the masses. Has a *lot* of
users.
\_ slide: we make embeddable widgets and applications that
people like to add to their social network profiles and
web sites. We have a *lot* of users.
-dans
\_ Thanks for the responses. No offense to you, but
these startups seem to be rather lame. I wouldn't
want to get a PhD in CS in order to code for social
networking web sites. Is there anything really
groundbreaking or novel out there?
\_ Why not come with an idea yourself? (Not trying to
be snarky). I had what I thought was a really
\_ Why not come up with an idea yourself? (Not trying
to be snarky). I had what I thought was a really
good idea for a startup, but honestly I don't have
the courage to bet 5 years of my life on it. -- ilyas
\_ If you fail, it will probably take you less than
five years to fail. Also, if you consider
factors other than money, e.g. experience, it's
not a zero-sum proposition. -dans
\_ yeah, I'm sure working infinite hours for
shit money in a failed venture is a great
positive life experience.
\_ Like you would know. -dans
\_ I know. It sucks.
\_ I respectfully disagree, but then your
experience was probably different than
mine. -dans
\_ Believe it or not, it is considered really
great on your resume if you have started
your own company and failed.
\_ I believe it. I also believe that
a failed startup is a huge drain on
your life and there are plenty of other
productive things you could be doing
with your life that don't involve
such suckitude.
\_ Only a fool would enter into a
startup expecting to fail. Also, as
I mentioned in my comment above, the
experience is not necessarily one
that can be generalized as
'suckitude'. -dans
\_ 90% of startups fail, so only a
fool would enter into one expecting
to succeed. -tom
_________________/
\_ Don't be a douche bag. Quoting cute statistics
that you probably can't reliably source doesn't
say much for your credibility on the subject.
Last I checked, you never left the cradle of
academia. -dans
\_ Yet somehow, two of the three
startups I worked for went
public. -ausman
\_ Last I checked, I had 10 years of industry
experience before I started working at
Berkeley, and you had no fucking clue. Let
me check again...yup, still true. -tom
\_ 10 years where, doing what, if you don't
mind sharing?
\_ I do mind sharing personal details with
anonymous cowards. Send me mail if you
really care. -tom
\_ Whatever. You made a claim about
your tremendous clueful experience.
If you aren't willing to back that
up, then just whatever, as usual.
Either way, changing tapes 15 years
ago has nothign to do with the
world of industry today.
\_ I'd argue that, unless you're going to spin you're
thesis into a startup, you wouldn't want to get a
PhD in CS in order to code for most startups. Since
I haven't worked for any social networking sites, I
can't speak directly from experience on the relative
interestingness of the problems they face. As for
Slide, widgets may not sound like something terribly
PhD in CS in order to code for most startups.
Since
I haven't worked for any social networking sites,
I can't speak directly from experience on the
relative interestingness of the problems they
face. As for Slide, widgets may not sound
like something terribly
interesting, but, having seen how the sausage is
made, there are interesting challenges. In
particular, gracefully scaling to support the volume
of traffic we handle is non-trivial. It also raises
the question, what kind of interesting conclusions
and relations can you draw from such a huge data
set? -dans
P.S. I think Google's BigTable is pretty novel, but
it requires several layers of Google infrastructure
to recreate. I'm curious to see if couchdb, which
looks superficially similar to BigTable, might serve
the same purpose. Okay, its not a startup, but it's
groundbreaking.
\_ If a bomb took out myspace, facebook, bebo,
slide, friendster, digg, no one important
notice.
\_ *shrug*. Are you trying to make a point or
just trolling? Personally, I think the ideal
\_ No, I think my statement is 100% accurate
\_ Like who, Senator Ted "the internet is a
series of tubes" Stevens? -dans
\_ No one important cares about the
internets anyway. It is all just
a big waste of time and will never
amount to anything.
of the net as a democratic medium is a
worthwhile one to shoot for. I guess you
feel otherwise. -dans |
| 2007/8/31-9/3 [Industry/Startup] UID:47866 Activity:nil |
8/31 Paul Graham talks out of ass, does not mention
how awesome lisp is even once!
http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
\_ I revise my position on his words. not so bad. |
| 2007/8/15-20 [Industry/Startup] UID:47613 Activity:low |
8/15 Anyone joined VMware as an engineer recently, like, 6 months ago? How
many shares of option did you get, and what's the exercise price?
\_ Normally, as an engineers, your total gain regardless of number
will be $200K in a 4 year vest period, ON AVERAGE. That means
some people will never make it ($0K/4 years) and some people
will get super rich. As an engineer, don't expect anything
because mgmt will always get 100X more shares than you.
\_ It isn't about "how many shares". It is about "what percentage" of
shares. As I've had to explain to an HR person more than once, if
she can't tell me how many total shares exist then her offer of X
shares is totally meaningless. I would rather have 10 shares at a
place with 50 total shares than 1 billion at a place with a 100
trillion. It is literally a "share" or slice or piece of the
company. Also, if you are pre-ipo, your price being 5 cents or 5
dollars a share or whatever isn't that important if you can sell at
50+ like vmware or at 500+ like google. Does it really matter if
you made $495/share or $499.95/share? So, since they're already
public, what does it really matter to you as a non-vmware person?
\_ it's still important, just to see what sort of gain one might
expect to have gotten out of this one.
\_ no, it isn't. because whatever your original grant is is
almost always 'resized' to fit the issuers need for public
share with splits or reverse splits as appropriate. my 10
shares in a 50 share company would be millions of shares
when they had a financial event. my billion shares would
be reduced from the trillions company. if you just want to
know how much a vmware engineer made, then you need to ask
how much a vmware engineer made not some share count proxy
and you'll have to wait 6 months until they're allowed to
sell on the market. right now whatever they are worth is
paper and worth nothing but hope and dreams until sold and
taxed. |
| 2007/8/10-13 [Finance/Investment, Industry/Startup] UID:47572 Activity:nil |
8/9 http://tinyurl.com/24qedb (AP) http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN0927223520070810?rpc=44 Countrywide Financial CEO exercises options and sells Wed at peak Press release Thursday after market close causes 13% drop in stock |
| 2006/11/30-12/8 [Industry/Startup, Computer/Companies/Yahoo] UID:45401 Activity:nil |
11/29 http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4015 Yahoo memo leak. 20% to be laid off. \_ It's not the 20% getting laid off that worries me about Yahoo!. It's that this senior VP sounds like a moron. \_ firing 20 percent is an excellent way to motivate the remaining 80! |
| 2006/10/20-24 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:44895 Activity:moderate |
10/19 Ok it's REALLY time to short GOOG -not the original short guy
\_ On 10/19 (when you wanted to short GOOG), GOOG's stock price
was 420.23 at the start of that day. It closed on 10/19 at
426.06. It opened on 10/20 at 458.99. Closed on 10/20 at
459.67.
So assuming that you actually want to make money instead of losing
money, I'd say that the answer to your question is this:
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
\_ Is this you? Price was around $420
http://csua.com/?entry=44745
\_ http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iron+maiden/die+with+your+boots+on_20068030.html
\_ http://tinyurl.com/y8grrh (lyricsfreak.com)
\_ Why would you short a company that just reported outstanding
revenue and earnings growth? -tom
\_ Shorting isn't my thing but in general because they get 99% of
their revenue from ads which could dry up overnight for any
number of reasons. There is more to evaluating a company than
spreadsheets.
\_ Are you also suggesting shorting all the TV networks?
I don't think there's any likelihood that Google's ad
revenue dries up in the short term; they are clearly the
dominant force in Internet advertising and there is no
credible challenger.
More to the point, if your concern is that Google's ad
revenue may dry up, why was that not true when the stock
was at 100, 200, 300, 400? Why get in the way of a frieght
train *now*? -tom
\_ The TV networks have an age old and somewhat predictable
ad model. The internet is not TV. It's only barely got
off the ground. So it went from IPO 80ish to 400+. Past
performance, especially something like the stock value,
does not in any way guarantee future performance. In 98
everyone thought it was a New Economy and "all the old
rules are broken! Its the Intarweeb ya know!" Anyway, no,
I have never traded nor would ever trade google. They hide
too much information to make an informed decision about
their true value.
\_ My point is not that Google will go up indefinitely;
it's that shorting should be done of companies with
it's that shorting should be done to companies with
significant, identifiable business problems, not
companies making gobs of money and growing rapidly.
It is virtually impossible for a common investor to
time the turn of a market or a stock correctly. -tom
\_ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100936_pf.html
But yes, I do agree that one should not try to time
an individual stock ever or the market in general.
Trying to time a secretive company like google would
be financially suicidal. Their stock price will
continue to rise... until it doesn't. Once the "it
is google! it is the New Economy Intarweeb!" shine
rubs off, their stock will plummet and drop back to
something reasonable, but no one can say day that
will be. It could be next quarter, it could be
years. Check out the link, it describes internet
ad business's time bomb waiting to go off.
\_ For me, the scariest thing about Google isn't
their business model but their approach to
"managing" their engineers - and I use those
quotation marks wisely. -!tom
\_ How so? It isn't all that different from a lot
of other companies created in that time.
\_ Yeah and most of them have failed. The
no management approach to management might
be appropriate for a startup, but I just
don't see how a company of 5000 can
operate that way.
\_ Most of them failed for business reasons.
Their engineers mostly created all sorts
of amazingly cool stuff. Don't blame
lack of engineer skill or dedication for
the dotcom bust.
\_ Believe me, I don't. I blame bad
management and insane financial
expectations. But aren't these
exactly Google's problems now?
\_ Please explain. |
| 2006/10/9-10 [Industry/Startup] UID:44742 Activity:high |
10/9 GooTube! Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion:
http://tinyurl.com/ftovs (news.yahoo.com)
\_ I guess Google's going to start getting emails from Michelle
Malkin asking them to wipe her butt for her.
\_ She's hot. I'd do it.
\_ I love the motd, where else can you make shit up, call yourself
clever and smugly walk away despite all evidence to the contrary?
\_ Evidence to the contrary? What are you talking about?
Michelle Malkin whines like a little baby to a 67-person
company who has to review hundreds of videos for
appropriateness, write code, negotiate billion dollar
acquisitions, and deal with all sorts of legal issues to
wipe her butt for her. Seriously, why does Michelle Malkin
think she deserves more attention than the other rejects?
\_ Yes, evidence to the contrary. She didn't want any
special help aka "wiping her butt for her". She wanted a
simple form letter telling her why she got banned. If
they're too busy to have a form letter for each of their
4 reasons for banning a video they're not a billion dollar
company. In fact, being a billion dollar company would
only raise the standards by which they should treat people
since they'd have the resources. If this 67 person company
can't take the time to write 3 more form letters then
they're not a billion dollar company and should stop
pretending to be worth that. I have no pity or sympathy
if their company size doesn't support their business model
or vice versa. Perhaps the problem here is you don't know
what the phrase "wiping her butt" means....
\_ I have no sympathy for YouTube either. But YouTube
wasn't whining and bitching like a little baby. Michelle
was. Not only do I have no sympathy for her but I think
she's rather obnoxious. YouTube never advertised having
a business model that involved dispatching their top
employees to investigate the injustices commited upon
Malkin. YouTube has bigger fish to catch than dealing
with one cry baby. No, I don't think YouTube needs to
be any more specific than giving her 4 possibile
violations. They might have a perfectly legitimate
reason for doing that and it's probably the same 4
violations that every other YouTube reject gets.
Perhaps the problem here is that neither you or
Malkin know what the meaning of "The world doesn't
revolve around you" or "I have better things to do
with my time than to deal with you" is.
\_ It's a simply customer service issue. No one has
asked for anything more than a more specific form
letter. Also, no one said the same form letter
wasn't used for all violations. The fact that
they treat all customers equally poorly doesn't
improve their case. It doesn't matter if it was
Malkin or a bunch of unknown people or your mom.
No matter how whiney you think she is doesn't matter
either. She's raised a good point about customer
service and ignoring it is a diservice to their
entire customer base and all viewers especially since
it is pertinent to their reason for being: posting
videos.
\_ Oh, Malkin is the customer now? I thought she
was the product? Either way, I'm sure YouTube
^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGoogle will be happy to be rid
of this "customer". You can go on your merry
way now. The world can live without you.
\_ Thanks for speaking for the world. You just
hate Malkin and can't stand that anyone might
defend her excellent point. I'm ok with that.
You're the one who has to live your life.
Enjoy.
\_ I personally don't hate MM; that would
take way too much effort/investment in an
utterly worthless nobody. -!pp
\_ Nothing personal, but doesn't this seem like a really
minor issue in the greater scheme of things? -!pp
\_ Absolutely, but it's still fun. Or I could go off
on how the little things matter and add up to big
things but I don't feel like supporting that today. |
| 2006/9/29-10/1 [Industry/Startup] UID:44606 Activity:nil |
9/29 Abgenial, a new communist traitor startup in Santa Clara is looking for
a very good server type java programmer. See /csua/pub/jobs/abgenial
for job description. If interested or if you have any questions about
the company, contact me at smurf@csua.berkeley.edu or
smf@abgenial.com
\_ Do you guys hire lesbians? |
| 2006/9/27-28 [Industry/Startup] UID:44573 Activity:nil |
9/27 Tools to use against leftist surrender-monkeys:
pretexting, backdating stock options, hedge funds
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14957765/site/newsweek |
| 2006/6/26-28 [Industry/Startup] UID:43506 Activity:nil |
6/26 Can a (small) company in a different country register a company
in the US? Something like a sales office? Or register a real
company name? Do they need to have a physical presence here?
Is this at the city, state or federal level? A friend of mine
wants to know, can someone point me in some directions?
-clueless engineer
\_ Call a lawyer. |
| 2006/6/12-15 [Transportation/Car, Industry/Startup] UID:43361 Activity:nil |
6/12 http://washingtontimes.com/world/20060522-110420-9433r.htm 40 self-reliant climbers left an Everest climber to die. I bet most of them are Republicans. \- while this is troubling and there may be relevant details \- while this is disturbing and there may be relevant details which are not mentioned, the "moral hazard" problem with something like an expensive everest trip is a very real one. "moral hazard" in ths case meaning "i can go in underprepared because someone else will have to pull my bacon out of the fire". in the everest case, unlike say mckinley maybe, the answer is not "they should be forced to post a rescue bond or get some kind of evac insurance", because helipoptering somebody out is not insurance", because helicoptering somebody out is not really an option. also, as the size of the climbing community widens, it's highly likely the norms of a small group with repeated encounters and thicker bonds will change. so is your "democratic" solution the nepalese govt should simply not allow non-highly outfitted climbers on to the mountain? deaths are perhaps not a daily event in the sola khumbu [the everest region] but a certain fact of operating there [when i was in that part of nepal, i heard about 5 deaths, and i wasnt there in the main pre-monsoon climbing season but in the post monsoon secondary season] and i am sure we didnt hear about everything. didnt hear about everything. i'll avoid a broader and more abstract dscussion about moral obligation in efforts to cut down my motd time. \_ Once again your long discussion has been classified as: Lots of words but contributes very little to the discussion. \- you clearly dont know what "moral hazard" means, have not followed the mckinley insurance controversy , and dont have a framework to think about reputational effects in different sized social groups. i.e. you are E_TOOSHORT and missing the points. you on the other hand truly contribute nothing, and dont get style points for originality either. |
| 2006/5/23 [Industry/Startup] UID:43165 Activity:nil |
5/23 http://csua.org/u/fys (Wash Post) Regulator finds Fannie Mae senior management deliberately misreported earnings between 1998-2004, generating $52 million in bonuses to former chairman, and millions to other executives. Board of directors blamed for not providing independent oversight. Fannie Mae executives also found to interfere with investigatory process (lobbied for an investigation into the body investigating them, and tried to reduce their funding). |
| 2006/4/4 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Apps/Media, Industry/Startup] UID:42653 Activity:nil |
4/4 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060404/ap_on_bi_ge/computer_sciences Computer Sciences Cutting 5,000 Jobs. Don't worry it's not CS CS, but CS Corp. What a dumb ass company name, it's like Merck naming itself "Pharmaceuticle Company" \_ How do you feel about Microchip, LSI, or VLSI? \_ Or Analog Devices. But yea, CSC is bad. My company uses them and they are incompetent. \_ Usually they are called 'CSC'. As other have noted, how is that much different from, say, SAIC? |
| 2006/3/28-31 [Reference/Law/Court, Industry/Startup] UID:42498 Activity:moderate 79%like:42509 |
3/28 Hi, let's say there's a small corporation. The number of authorized
shares is 1,000,000. All 1,000,000 shares are issued, and employees
are granted 10% of that, and the founder grants himself 90%. What's
to prevent the founder from voting to double the number of
authorized shares to 2,000,000 and screwing the employees with 2x
dilution? Other than all the employees getting pissed and leaving.
\_ The board can do anything. If you're a staffer and want to sue,
you're welcome to but good luck on that. You'll spend way more
on lawyers than whatever you might have regained in a lawsuit and
probably won't win anyway.
\_ Word of advice, if the chair/founder/whatever is Ari Zilka, leave.
He'll take most of the money and leave you suckers with
almost nothing.
\_ Please tell me more of the Ari Zilka story (I've heard rumors)
\_ If I tell you the story my identity will be exposed.
Let's just say that he's born with special privileges in a
well connected family and feels entitled to do whatever he
pleases without regard to the well beings of the people
who works for him. Back then he and the VCs had deep inner
connections and they knew how to get around "the system"
very well. They knew how to make up rules and and before
you know it, checkmate. You no longer have any legal
protection and you're of no use to them. Ari is one
fine example of why the rich get richer.
\_ Nothing. But, generally this is why small corporations have
boards, and, if memory serves, the board must be at least 3 people,
and, once a corporation gets to a certain number of employees, the
board gets bigger. -dans
\_ What if two of the three positions on the board of directors
is occupied by the founder and his wife, in which case the
are occupied by the founder and his wife, in which case the
founder will always get the majority vote?
\_ Welcome to the wonderful world of business.
\- Is the founder's name RIGAS? --psb
\_ Then you're fucked. Not sure, but there *may* be laws
against this because of conflicts of interest. -dans
\_ Merely issuing more shares would not directly screw the employees.
If he did something like say grant himself 1,000,000 new shares
that could be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit but good luck.
\_ What about doubling the number of authorized shares?
\_ That's basically the same as issuing treasury stock... it
only matters when it actually changes hands.
\_ We just started covering this in my bus org/corp law class. The
way I understand it majority controlling shareholders have a
fiduciary duty wrt to the minority shareholders. In the scenario
you describe the maj shareholder has effectively reduced the
voting power of the min shareholders by 1/2 (assuming that each
of the new shares has one vote and the voting power of the old
stock did not increase). By acting this way the maj shareholder
has breached his fiduciary duty and the min shareholders can sue
him for this breach.
[ I might have this wrong, so I'll ask my bus org prof on thurs ]
\_ Can the dude with 90% also pay himself a big salary, and thus
take away all the profits of the company?
\_ Yes, but the minority shareholders could almost certainly sue
him because he is not working in the best interests of the
shareholders. -dans
\_ Who is Ari Zilka? -dans
\_ ari@csua
\_ what goes around, comes around. hopefully he'll get
his just due.
\_ He paid his dues when he married chris@soda.
\_ I don't think there is anything realistic stopping this behavior.
However, most (not every) leaders realize that by sharing the
wealth the company has much better chances of success, as everyone's
interests then align for the good of the corporation. It's better
to own 25% of a billion dollar corporation than to own 90% of a
$10 million dollar corporation.
\_ Yes, but it's relatively much easier to create a $10M company
than a $1B company. Taking the chance of success into account,
and also taking into account (to use the numbers from your
example) most people would value $9M more than 9/250 of $250M,
maybe it's a better strategy to shoot for the 90% of $10M.
\_ Except a lot of leaders of companies already HAVE that
much money. I'm pretty sure my founding CEO was.
much money. I'm pretty sure my founding CEO did. |
| 2006/3/3-6 [Industry/Startup] UID:42090 Activity:moderate |
3/3 Do you expect your immediate manager to support you/your department
even if it's to the detriment of the company? As a manager, should
you support your department/staff even when it's to the detriment
of the company? If your manager doesn't stand up for you then who
will? On the other hand, being a good manager means doing what's
best for the company. I'm just curious what others think. Imagine,
for instance, that a department is asked to layoff 50% of its
employees and outsource that work to India to save the company money.
As the manager, do you fight for your employees or not? As an
employee, what do you expect your manager to do?
\_ IMO: There is no such thing as "the company" for non-trivial sized
companies. There is me, my subordinates, my immediate superior in
my group and that's it. The sales and marketing team sure as hell
isn't going to take a hit so you can get a raise or hire more
engineers so you don't have to work 16 hour days. Your manager
should fight like a rabid grizzly to save his team. If he isn't
there for his staff he isn't doing anything. If there were rumored
layoffs coming and I got the slightest hint my manager was going to
do anything but fight his ass off for us, I'd immediately post my
resume to get a jump on things, so should you. There is no such
thing as "the company" to which anyone owes any loyalty. There is
the CEO who is going to get a multi hundred million dollar kiss off
for killing the company, the rest of the execs who will get around
50-100 million, the lower level execs who might get 2-5 million and
everyone else who is getting the shaft when shit hits the fan.
\_ So you expect your manager to fight for his subordinates
even when the "right" thing to do is clearly accept the
recommendation from upper management? What if it's something
like relocation and not a layoff? Or what if it concerns
salaries/benefits? I mean, I think there is some point where
fighting the good fight works against the manager's career,
or where the employees can clearly see that a decision is
a good one even if it hurts them, no? The question is whether a
manager should protect his employees against better judgement
and whether employees expect him to.
\_ I don't expect him to fall on his sword. I do expect him to
put up a good fight or if his group is clearly doomed to have
the balls to let them know enough in advance to find another
job before the axe drops. If the group goes, but the manager
is staying, that's BS. Relocations: some people actually
would want one. They aren't necessarily a bad thing if the
company is covering the costs and some extra for hassle.
Salary/benefits: don't touch my salary/benefits. I accepted
a certain offer. The number of cases where staff taking a
cut at a tech-oriented company has saved the company is so
slim that I can't actually recall any but I'll grant there
are probably some. When staff takes a cut, execs never do.
You refer a few times to various people's better judgement
and what is "right". As determined by who? A corporation is
nothing but a large pile of negotiated agreements between the
managers, staff, execs, vendors, buyers, and a ton of other
people to agree to perform a set of distinct tasks which will
provide some service or product. The key phrase here is
"distinct tasks". I was hired to perform some set of tasks
in exchange for compensation for my time, skills, etc. If I
don't get that compensation then why would I perform the
tasks? The manager is hired to keep his group as a whole
coordinated performing some larger tasks as part of the
greater whole. If he lets his group get destroyed why does
he still have a job? As far as the general theme of 'greater
wisdom coming from on-high': no such animal. They're just
people. Some of them might actually know what they're doing
and be able to perform their duties better than you could but
most are just there because they went to the right schools,
were raised in the right families or kissed the right asses
for long enough.
\_ You are thinking too hard. Imagine, say, you are the
manager of the telegraph portion of Western Union.
manager of the telegraph portion of the Soviet Union.
Management tells you they are going to stop offering
that service (which really happened). You haven't had
much business, so you know it's a smart thing to do.
However, there are some old-time employees who were
hired for that particular task and can't transfer
somewhere else. You know they will be screwed. Do you
argue in favor of telegrams and their value to society
and the company or do you work with management to
eliminate the department? What about implementing some
sort of automation which will vastly shrink your
department by spending a lot of money on hardware instead
of employees (think auto manufacturers)? Do you fight
for your employees or implement the procedure that
saves costs? That's what I mean by "right". Sometimes
the right decision is obvious. You hire 12 people
anticipating lots of business. You have work enough
for 2. The right thing is to let 10 go. Do you tell
senior management that or do you hold onto your
fiefdom for not really your sake, but for the sake of
others? From a management perspective it seems obvious,
but I am curious what employees think their managers
should do "for them" as a "good manager".
\_ If you're my manager in a 12-person group with work
for two people, and I'm not one of your top two, let
me go. You're not doing me any favors by keeping me
on when I might be able to get a more interesting job
elsewhere, and you're harming your own interests as
well. The best thing you can do is look to transfer
your extra employees internally or, failing that,
arrange for them to get a good send-off (a comp package
would be nice) and offer to be a reference. -gm
\_ Post "acquisition", I was asked to try to keep my group together.
My take on the situation was that most of my group would be let
go after the transition period. I didn't make a scene, but I
left the company pretty quickly. But that's just me. I fully
expected the people I worked for to screw everyone in their path.
\_ Asked by who to keep the group together?
\_ "It depends". That can be a really tough call for even a good,
ethical, loyal and intelligent manager to make under many
circumstances. Helpful, huh? -John |
| 2006/2/23-27 [Industry/Startup] UID:41977 Activity:nil |
2/23 http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/22/commentary/everyday/sahadi Secrets to getting fired or hired. And HR is never your friend, and yes there is a blacklist! \_ This person does not understand what the term "blacklist" means. I find misuse of this word troubling, since the existence of real blacklists based on, for instance, politics, that would prevent you from getting hired anywhere, used to be a real menace in this country. \_ My company does not have a blacklist (AFAIK) but I kind of wish we did because of this one candidate who was so full of BS that I wouldn't hire him to run a lemonade stand. \_ Can't you just fire him? Was there no sign he was a tool until after he was hired? I don't think there is ever a justification for a secret list kept by all of the employers in a given industry of people who are unhireable. It will always lead to abuses based on personal vendettas. Having some companies hire some losers sometimes is a small price to pay for not living in a society where someones career can be permanently and secretly ruined for, say, supporting a political candidate their boss doesn't like, or trying to start a union, which is how things used to work. \_ What I learned was that I need to be the company's bitch, and particularly my boss's bitch, doing whatever it or he or she wants no matter how unreasonable and with an enthusiastic attitude, valued over family or personal time, and I will be rewarded -- or at least maintain a perception of this. Makes sense to me. \_ your reading comprehension is very good, but you can sure work on your tone and attitude. You get an A- for your report. \_ I absolutely agree and look forward to incorporating your very insightful suggestions next time. |
| 2006/2/14-15 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:41832 Activity:high |
2/13 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060214/ap_on_bi_ge/google_fears Google to drop to $345. My prediction is coming true. I win the Motd Stock Prediction award. -stock guru \_ Are you the same guy who shorted Google at the IPO price? \_ You couldn't short it at the IPO price. \_ So you wanted to short it at $100, but couldn't, so you win the Motd Stock Prediction Award because it's $345 now? \_ I wanted to short it when all of the options expired and initial shareholders were able to sell. That was not when it IPOed. \_ so you mean, in February 2005, when it was below 200. Nice prediction! -tom \_ I'm not "stock guru" but I admit my prediction was wrong. I still think GOOG will fall below 200. It's just a matter of when. I'm sure your stock picks are always 100% correct, though, which is why you make the big bucks. \_ No, my picks are not 100% correct, but at least I give real thought to them. -tom \_ If you give "real thought" to them and they miss then who cares, right? I did a lot of research on GOOG and I still believe it's overvalued at even 200. You took one data point and concluded somehow that you give more "real thought" to stock picks than I do. That exhibits a lack of much "real thought". \_ Now I see why your login is "dim". -tom \_ How original. I guess you took 'tom' because 'twink' was taken. \_ tom makes lots of noise but he never bought goog, as he himself admitted. he does own berkshire which was 92000 two years ago, and 88000 now. His best stock seems to be logitech which ain't bad but recently dropped 20%. \_ I am up 26% on BRKB. For full disclosure: AAPL (+658%) ENN (+55% plus ~5% yearly dividends) APCC (+19%) PEP (+38%) PLCM (-6%) CSCO (-37%) PIXR (+79%) \_ Sorry, forgot I just sold my PIXR. -tom NAPS (16 shares due to spin-off, -70%) RNWK (-78%) AMZN (+175%) LOGI (+179%) FDRY (+15%) SAP (+30%) MAPTX (+23%) PHG (+32%) That's more or less the order I bought them. My time horizon is not two months or two years. -tom \_ Interesting but percentages w/ out knowing the raw dollar or at least relative value of each isn't meaningful. Down 6% on PLCM could wipe you out if you had 99% of your money in it. \_ Now you're reaching, man. \_ how long have you owned AAPL? \_ I first bought AAPL in 1995. I've purchased it several times since then. The above percentage is based on the combined cost basis. -tom \_ not bad, but nothing spectacular, especially given that without apple, your performance would be very ordinary, and while apple ain't bad, it took you 10 years. \_ I'm not looking for spectacular returns. -tom \_ why not? if you give it some real thought, as opposed to getting into silly arguments about a stock that you didn't even buy, you can have better returns, like me. \_ tom is *always* right. bow down to perfection. \_ Tom, should I buy DKDY? \_ I don't know; it depends on your goals, risk tolerance, and belief in the underlying company. I personally wouldn't buy it. -tom \_ Tom, what should my goals be? \_ How about "die with more twink points than any other sodan"? \_ start with "get a clue." -tom \_ Tom -> trolled |
| 2006/2/8-10 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/China, Industry/Startup] UID:41774 Activity:low |
2/8 Shame! I'm glad I don't work there anymore.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2006-02-09T030219Z_01_PEK27612_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-YAHOO.xml&rpc=22
\_ Did you get rich from your stock options though?
\_ No. I got my paycheck and quit after a short time because
working there sucked. All the dirty stuff came out after I
quit and only makes me feel that much better about having quit,
so I don't have to convince myself everyday that my place of
work isn't evil.
\_ Where do you work now? |
| 2006/2/2-4 [Industry/Startup] UID:41676 Activity:low |
2/2 Hi, does your company offer bounties/bonuses if you refer someone
that your company ends up hiring? If so, how much is the bounty to
the referrer? Thanks.
\_ Yes. $3k
\_ Yes, don't know how much since I never got it.
\_ Yes. /csua/pub/jobs/AvantGo, damn it! --dbushong
\_ Apple, yes. Was $1,000, dropped to $500 but every now and then
they'll go on a recruiting spree and offer $3k or $5k for
HW or SW engineers.
\_ $2500-$4500
\_ No :-( -referrer
\_ $3k for certain positions but nothing for most. |
| 2006/1/31-2/2 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:41625 Activity:moderate |
1/31 ObShortGOOG
\_ i imagine anyone who shorted at 400 and saw the stock go back up
to 440 must be breathing a sigh of relief now
\_ Google is a POS stock and the company is (at best)
equivalent to a media company like DIS. However, there's
still a lot of Kool Aid. Way too much for me to bet against
it again. Do you realize GOOG is valued at 3x DIS and even
3x YHOO? The stock is worth at most $130/share.
\_ GOOG trolls VS. housing bubble trolls FITE!!!!!!
\_ Hey, where's tom? I remember him naysaying the naysayers.
Guess he's wrong, again.
\_ Please locate a quote that backs your position. Don't
forget the one where I noted that predicting the stock
price of an immature company like Google was foolish.
They still reported almost 100% revenue growth and
over 70% earnings growth. Anonymous cowardly twink. -tom
\_ IIRC, weren't you the one saying their "forward looking
PE" justified their current and even high stock prices?
\_ I never said anything justified their current price;
I don't own GOOG and I never have. I did point out
that trailing P/E is not a good way to measure the
value of a company that's growing as fast as GOOG
is. The question with GOOG is how long they keep
up their growth rate and where they level off.
Certainly when you release a report that your
revenues are up 100% and earnings are up 70%
year-over-year and your stock price tanks 10%,
people are pricing perfect execution into the stock.
But I think it's nuts to short a freight train,
which has been my point all along. -tom
\_ Why should it be a 'freight train'? Truth is,
I overestimated the intelligence of the average
GOOG shareholder and investor in general. It
fell a little now, but there's no credible
reason for the run-up from IPO.
\_ It *is* a freight train of a company; name
another company that's growing revenues at
100% per year and earnings at 70%. Google
is making all the rules in its space. To
bet against a company like that is folly. -tom
\_ There are companies growing much
faster than that. Check out the technology
Fast 500. There are companies growing at
rates like 60000% over the last 4 years.
GOOG is just a household name and so lots
of people drink the Kool Aid.
of people drink the Kool Aid. GOOG is
#14 on the latest list.
\_ did you happen to notice that Google's
2004 revenue is two orders of magnitude
larger than any of the companies ahead
of it? In fact, the highest-ranked
company that is within one order of
magnitude of Google's revenue is
#134, Leap Wireless (1,542% growth
compared to Google's 16,591%). There
is only one company on the entire list
that has higher revenues than Google,
and that's Cingular, and Cingular's
revenue increase came because they
bought AT+T Wireless. Thank you for
making my point that Google is an
extremely exceptional company. -tom
\_ You are making too much out of
the size of total revenues. If
anything, it shows that continued
growth at these rates is impossible.
GOOG would be exceptional if they
could maintain, but only a Kool Aid
drinker would think they can.
\_ I don't think Google can double
in size yearly indefinitely. But
the fact remains, they are the
*only* company that is anywhere
near their size that is growing
at anywhere near their rate. You
want comparable companies? How
about EBAY, circa 2000? -tom
\_ Why does their size matter?
Only expected growth rate of
profits matters.
\_ Don't be obtuse. Google's
profit also dwarfs all of
the similar companies on
that list, and profits
are still blasting upwards.
-tom
\_ Does GOOG's EPS dwarf
all the others? How
much is a share of
GOOG again?
\_ You are now bordering
on too stupid to argue
with. But my last
post here: of the
public companies
listed ahead of GOOG
in the Fast 500,
FalconStor Software
(FALC) has the highest
profits, at 0.02/share.
Google is earning
over $4/share. Oh,
and did I mention the
$8 billion in cash?
-tom
\_ FALC is expected
to earn 8x that
next year and
a share is not even
$9. Some math
shows GOOG as
having a marginally
better P/E, which
is *bad* for a
company the size
of GOOG. Companies
3x the size of DIS
(market cap)
are not growth
companies. Why do
you feel GOOG is
worth 3x YHOO?
Will GOOG
revolutionize how
stocks are valued
or will a lot
of investors be
screwed in the end?
\_ Go invest in
DIS, see if I
care. -tom
\_ My point is
that GOOG is
equivalent
to DIS, not
that DIS is
great.
\_ DIS's story
has zero
relevance.
-tom
As a large media company like GOOG _/
it is very relevant.
\_ GOOG gross margins: over 50%
DIS gross margins: under 15%
GOOG revenue: 90+% growth year over year
DIS revenue: 5% growth year over year
So, besides the fact that DIS's business is
content and GOOG's is not, there's
the fact that one is growing rapidly and
one is not, and one has large gross
margins and one does not. So, uh, how
is DIS relevant again? -tom
\_ DIS has 6x the revenues that GOOG does.
It is a reasonable upper bound to
what GOOG's revenues might be. GOOG
already has 3x the market cap. GOOG's
margin and growth rate have more to
do with its maturity as a company
and are not really predictive of
where it is headed. So if GOOG
increases revenues by 6x (or even
12x) do you think it should be worth
18-30x DIS? That would make it the
largest company in the world.
\_ I would not use a completely
dissimilar company as a measurement
of anything. Are oranges worth
three times as much as apples?
-tom
\_ Are there any large advertising
companies even remotely close to
google's size? --new to this thread |
| 2006/1/10-12 [Computer/HW/Printer, Industry/Startup] UID:41313 Activity:nil |
1/9 Has anyone used 32" TV LCDs as monitors? How does it look?
\_Check http://www.avsforum.com for some answers. -ax |
| 2006/1/7-9 [Industry/Startup] UID:41285 Activity:nil |
1/7 How do options work? If you own calls which expire 'in-the-money'
do you have to exercise the option and and then have the option of
selling the stock, or do you simply get cash equivalent to the closing
value of the option?
\_ You either sell the option or buy the stock. Most options never
get exercised, though. By the way, if they expire it's too late.
\_ Won't most brokers exercise them for you though, assuming you have
the available cash or margin and they are in the money?
\_ options that are >= $0.25 in the money are automatically
exercised. and options on cash-settled indices (e.g. oex)
are automatically exercised if they are >= $0.01 in the money
and you get the cash equivalent
\_ i think the actual term is "above water."
\_ No that is for company issued options. He is referring to calls
and puts. |
| 2005/12/28-2006/1/1 [Industry/Startup] UID:41160 Activity:kinda low |
12/28 http://www.fuckedgoogle.com Google is fucked. By summer of next year Google's stock price will be less than 20% of what it is today. I hope these arrogant Googlers learn a lesson. -bitter guy who didn't get a job at Google \_ interestingly, the occurrences of http://fuckedcompany.com on motd has been decreasing a lot since 2001. \_ Because fc has sucked since around 2001? \_ Huh? Why, exactly, are you bitter? -happy guy who doesn't give a shit about the company, but loves the search engine. \_ He's just trolling. Move on, nothing to see here... \_ A lot of people didn't get jobs at google. A lot of people are very very happy. I still don't understand why anyone would want to work at a place that wants to take over your every waking moment. Sure, pre-IPO it meant a good chance at millions for some people in exchange for a few years of your life. But now? Why would anyone want to go there post-IPO? \_ Free Food! -oj \_ Don't forget free whore Sundays! \_ and you get even more whores if you're over 6' tall AND you're of Dutch descent. \_ I've been down on it for a year now and morons keep propping it up. Beware when betting against morons. This is true in poker also. \_ Is that why I keep winning in poker? \_ me too. I've been the big winner the last 4 poker nights we've had, and I wasn't even concentrating, cause there were some hot babes there. \_ Which one of you guys is the one playing with your friends who don't even know the rules? Anyway, people who play poorly tend to stay in too long and sometimes make 'bad' hands like inside straights. Overall, it's losing poker but on a given night it kills when some moron starts with a 4 and 8 and makes a straight of it. You usually don't assume the other player is a moron and that "eliminates" a lot of possible hands: "Well, he can't possibly have a straight." |
| 2005/12/9-11 [Industry/Startup] UID:40940 Activity:moderate 77%like:40941 |
12/9 Looking for a job? Come work with us at AvantGo (now a service of
iAnywhere Solutions). It's fun and neat and all that stuff. Take a
look at /csua/pub/jobs/AvantGo for the latest postings, and feel free
to drop me a line with questions or whatnot. --dbushong (i'm lazy)
\_ "iAnywhere Solutions"? Ugh. -tom
\_ it doesn't matter what name the marketing department comes up
with for a product or service. it'll be changed next quarter
anyway. it only matters what they pay and how good/bad it is
to work there.
\_ How many companies with awful names like that can you point
to as successes? -tom
\_ Pretty much all of them. WTH does "Pepsi" mean? It's a
silly made up word but you own stock in it.
\_ Pepsin. It's named after an enzyme which helps
\_ Pepsidase. It's named after an enzyme which helps
digestion.
\_ If you think "Pepsi" sounds anything like
"iAnywhere Solutions", there's no point talking to
you. -tom
\_ Both are stupid. I own stock in neither. What does
Pepsi mean anyway?
\_ Pepsi is a much better name than CarbBev or
something, which is what iAnywhere is akin to.
\_ Perhaps it peps you up? Kinda like Dr.
Pepper?
\_ "Kodak" was specifically chosen because it didn't
mean anything. I agree with tom, if you can't
see why "Pepsi" is a better name than "iAnywhere
Solutions" then the discussion is useless.
\_ It isn't as bad. It is still stupid. And
none of this has anything to do with whether
or not it's a good place to work. If you
are actually specifically aware that it sucks
to work there or they pay low, let us know,
otherwise, bagging on the name is idiotic
and trollish especially considering this is
job posting which might be helpful for someone
who is.. ya know.. looking for a job. If you
don't have any real information about working
there, you are contributing nothing. We can
all see the name without your questionable
input.
\_ "Pepsi" is a simple, evocative name.
Apple, Sun, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft.
I'm not telling anyone not to work there,
I was just making a comment, although I
would add that the company will definitely
not exist under that name 10 years from
now, and choosing a name like that
would worry me as to what level of clue
the people steering the ship have. -tom
\_ So apple gets to name all of their
products iProducts but other companies
can't use the same naming scheme?
\_ First of all, it's not a product
name, it's a company name. Second
of all, Apple's i-products are
noun-based, which makes them sound
far less stupid than "iAnywhere."
(Though tangible nouns, like iTunes,
work better than others, like iLife).
And third, when you're several years
late to the iParty it just sounds
pathetic. Get your own schtick. -tom
\_ I don't disagree it's stupid, but
it's not stupid enough to rant
at length about it, that's all.
\_ tom's first reply was *1* line!
\_ Pepsi is a multi-Billion dollar
product and the only way they
get people to drink their
product, which is much worse for
you and yet much more expensive
than ordinary tap water, is by
marketing. So saying Pepsi is
bad/stupid marketing is kind of
arguing against the facts.
\_ They're #2 last I checked.
Maybe if they didn't have
such stupid marketing they'd
be #1 over the other company
that sells expensive and
unhealthy drinks?
\_ Pepsi has been making
big gains versus Coke
as per yesterday's
paper.
\_ Who is #1 and #2? "If
we can get just 10% of
this multi-billion $$$
market we'll be set!"
If I had a dime for
everytime....
\_ Coke $100 B,
Pepsi $98.2 B
\_ It is called that because it originally contained pepsin
and Pepsi-Cola sounds better than Pepsin Cola
\_ There is a third and perhaps fourth criterion that some
of use to decide whether to work at a place or not. One
is "are they going to be successful"? It sucks to spend
years of your life working on a failure. Also, you can
make a lot of money with stock options in a successful
company. Fourth, does it do anyone any good? I prefer to
work at companies where I can see the benefits of the
product the company offers. -ausman
\_ You can't predict success. If you could you'd be way
better off investing in individual stocks than working
for a single company for years. Does it do anyone
any good? I dunno. I haven't seen the market research
into whatever it is they do. I'm only saying that
dismissing a job opportunity because some temp in
marketing had a clever idea that quarter is a weak
reason to do so. Why is iAnywhere any better or worse
than "Snapfish" posted below which got no comments from
the peanut gallery?
\_ Because Snapfish is a good name?
\_ It is? What does it mean?
\_ I always figured it was like a snapper pussy.
That's what it sounds like to me. Not a bad
name as long as all you sell is sex toys.
\_ You keep worry about what a name means.
That's not what's important in a corporate
name. "eBay" doesn't mean anything, but it's
a highly successful identity. -tom
\_ So Pepsi and eBay are good names because
they're successful but iAnything is unlikely
to be successful because it has a bad name.
So if you're wrong and they're successful
does that magically make it a good name?
You're going in circles here.
\_ No, Pepsi and eBay are good names because
they're simple and distinctive. -tom
\_ eBay is a stupid name for a company.
\_ Pepsi is nothing special either. If
eBay had bombed, you'd say it was a
stupid name, as proved by it bombing.
A lot of dead dotcoms had simple and
distinctive names. Why are you so
obsessed with the idea that
name=success? Is your degree in
marketing?
\_ Unfortunately for you,
http://strawman.com is already taken.
-tom
\_ You were doing better when you
were silent instead of trying to
reply with something snarky
and almost clever.
\_ I think the original assertion was
"iAnywhere Solutions" is dumb
\_ Which was clarified to mean
"iAnywhere Solutions is going to
fail *because* it has a dumb
name".
\_ Clarified? I think that's
a biased extrapolation.
\_ Sheesh, go re-read what he
posted. No extrapolation
has occured.
\_ *shrug* I did -- maybe
you should too.
\_ i did before posting.
you really need
quotes?
\_ nope. Thanks,
though.
\_ He hasn't
shown up to
say otherwise.
I stand by it.
\_ Whatever
floats your
boat, dude.
\_ Maybe you can predict success and maybe you can't.
Of the three companies I have worked for any serious
length of time since graduation, two have gone
public and the third one (Wired) came damn close.
Until recently, I didn't have money to invest
so all I had was my time. And yes, I applied for a
job at Google (twice even!) but they turned me down.
But I agree with your basic premise, which is that
you should not dismiss a job opportunity just
because the company has a dumb name.
\_ Wired sold to Lycos for pennies. If you weren't
one of the top 2 execs or a founder's best
friend you got zippo. Google called me three
times (I never applied) but I guess I didn't
have the right "I'm in awe of all that is
Google" and didn't get an offer the first two.
After seeing the place the first two times, I
was certain I didn't want to be there and
rejected their offer the third time. I'm quite
happy with that decision. I've been at several
other companies that had 'good' names and
appeared to have good products but went nowhere.
You can't know how a small company will do. If
they're not public already, everything is a
secret and they'll lie through their teeth about
their situation. Dumb names: I still think
Google is a dumb geeky name, but according to
some on this thread, since they were successful,
it must be a good name.... And they think
*I'm* the troll... sheesh.
\_ Wired applied to go public twice in 96 and
even got to the pricing stage the second time
before being pulled. The other two are CPTH
and LGBT, both of which I started working for
in the pre-IPO stage. I agree that it is hard
to guess how a private company is doing but
I have had some luck. Probably dumb luck.
\_ I was at Wired, too. Did you have any
faith in Beth V.? She had nothing going.
\_ Who are you? Drop me a line or something.
No, I had no faith in anything any
of the execs there said, except perhaps
AA.
AA. -ausman
\_ Yeah, uh, don't worry about the name. "iAnywhere Solutions" is
a wholly owned subsidiary of "Sybase, Inc." Better? --dbushong
\_ Sybase is supposed to reassure people?
\_ What a stupid name for a company. :-) -John |
| 2005/11/7 [Recreation/Humor, Industry/Startup] UID:40474 Activity:high 66%like:40479 |
11/07 without looking at the sites in question, what do you think these are:
http://www.whorepresents.com
\_ Dildos
http://www.expertsexchange.com
http://www.penisland.net
\_ Gay porn
http://www.therapistfinder.com
http://www.powergenitalia.com
\_ Penis enhancements
http://www.molestationnursery.com
\_ I read that http://www.powergenitalia.com didn't really exist, and the host
name was just a joke.
\_ http://www.archive.org foolio.
\_ Oops, I read it wrong. It's a real site, but it's just not
\_ Oops, I read it wrong. It's a real company, but it's just not
related to the UK company Powergen.
http://www.snopes.com/business/names/powergen.asp
\_ On the contrary: http://http://www.whitehouse.com ...... Sorry, it used to
be a porn site. Now it's not funny anymore.
\_ http://http://www.snopes.com/business/names/powergen.asp fool.
\_ On the contrary: http://http://www.whitehouse.com |
| 2005/10/27-28 [Industry/Startup] UID:40297 Activity:nil |
10/27 Usually how long do you have to work before you're allowed to take
an unpaid leave of absence?
\_ Hmm.. 3 days? I told the company before I accepted the offer that
I had a planned vacation coming up. The company was willing to let
me start and almost immediately go on unpaid leave for my vacation.
\_ Depends on the company. I knew a place or two that didn't allow
any unpaid leave without a damn good reason even after a couple
of years. Oddly enough, they were fairly generous with sick leave.
Ask your HR person or your manager if you need to do something. |
| 2005/8/8-11 [Industry/Jobs, Consumer/CellPhone, Industry/Startup] UID:39054 Activity:nil |
8/9 Work with Anthony and Brian! Again! We have yet another position
open, this time as a BREW developer doing pretty interesting cell
phone applications/server side support for pretty interesting cell
phone applications. Startup in Emeryville with VC. -aspo |
| 2005/7/25-26 [Industry/Startup] UID:38807 Activity:nil |
7/25 I wanted to find the web site of the company bear stern. Searched
on yahoo and google with "bear stern". Got nothing. If the
relevant link doesn't show up on the first page, I don't keep going.
It turns out Lycos served up the right link as their first result.
And the exact name of the company is Bears Sterns. So much for
search engine hype. They're both crap as far as I'm concerned.
\_ Chill, you eventually got what you want, why are you ranting?
Are you frustrated at something? Like work not going well or
not getting enough sex after marriage?
\_ One of the rules in engineering is that the smarter you make
technology, the dumber users will get. In this case, you're
a moron to begin with, and an even bigger moron for posting
something like this on motd.
\- stupid troll. maybe if you stop being a vegan you'll get
more brain cells repaired.
\_ I googled with "bear stearn" and the first result I got is
http://www.bearstearns.com
\_ I searched in Yahoo with "bear stern" like you said, and the first
result was http://www.bear.com which automatically re-directed me to
http://www.bearstearns.com Don't know what your problem is.
\- i know what his problem is, and it doesnt
have to do with search engines but it is
revealed above. now if somebody can
explain gmail's matching, that would be
interesting. |
| 2005/7/11-13 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:38540 Activity:moderate |
7/11 I have a confession to make. I followed Warren Buffett's footsteps
and put a LOT of money in foreign money using http://everbank.com. I've
lost about 10% of my assetts in the past 3 months because US dollar
is going back up. Putting money in everbank was the worst decision
I've ever made, ever. Now that I've told you why I'm an idiot, it's
your turn.
\_ You're an idiot for many reasons. hmm. this is kind of fun.
\_ You're an idiot, but not because you invested in foreign money.
-tom
\_ Nono, I'm not asking you to reiterate what I said. What I mean
is that it's your turn to tell us about your bad decision, if
you've made any. I made my decision based on the fact that Mr.
Buffett, my hero, invested BILLIONS into foreign money, citing
Euro trend, US's huge deficit, rising oil price, war,
Buffett, my hero, invested 20 billion into foreign money,
citing Euro trend, US's huge deficit, rising oil price, war,
instability, and huge spending and outsourcing in other
countries.
countries. -op
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2005/0110/036.html
\_ You are stupid because you don't understand *why* you
invested in foreign money, not because foreign money
went down 10% in three months. If your investment
horizon is 3 months, you shouldn't be following Warren
Buffett. -tom
\_ yea, but buffet was in foreign money since 2 years ago,
so he still made money, and is going to make more
money.
\_ You should invest in foreign stocks or bonds, not cash.
\_ Once something is hyped up a lot, it's probably a matter of time
before the smart money cashes out and the suckers get left holding
the bag.
\_ Isn't there a website for this sort of thing???
\_ http://grouphug.us
\_ I sold all my stock in my overhyped dotcom in 2000 and re-invested
in.... you guessed it, other over-hyped dotcoms. Oh well, I lost
like half of it, but did much better than if I had stuck
with my company, like almost all my coworkers.
\_ I cheated on my psycho girlfriend with a hottie 19 year while
she was out of the country... who am I kidding, that was the
smartest move I ever made! I lost a pyscho girlfriend and had
an affair with a 19 y.o. hottie...
\_ I wired $8k to a phoney escrow site to buy a diamond so I could
propose to my fiance.
\_ 1) When my company stock shot up from $1 to $7 in one day because
of a press release saying "Amazon.com is investing in it", I wanted
to sell all my shares knowing that it would drop very soon after
people realizing that the investment was just a one-time buyout, but
my gf argued that I should hold because it would keep going up. I
made a compromise by selling only half of the shares. The next day
it kept on dropping, and she let me sell the other half at $1.43
lower. So I lost $8400 in one day. Days later the price returned
to its original level. 2) Years later when my company stock went up
to $48 for no real or apparent reason, I wanted to sell all my
shares knowing that the company has no future, but she (now my wife)
argued again, and I compromised again by selling only half. Now the
stock is worth pennies. I lost $30k. Mind you that I'm not into
stocks and I've only make two stock predictions in my life. In both
times I was right.
stocks and I don't BS about stock prices every day. I've only made
two stock predictions in my life, not on some random company in the
market but on a company that I've worked at for years. However she
didn't listen.
\_ Well, on the face of it it's stupid to listen to this gf who
should know less than you since you work at the company. On the
other hand, if you hadn't compromised and were wrong, you'd have
had to endure lots of hell from said gf... this way you have
it over her and maybe that's worth it :)
\_ Why would you want to "have it over her"? I see the smiley,
but really. Find someone you care about who cares about you
instead of competing with your SO.
\_ Dude, it doesn't matter who your SO is. You could be so
besotted you'd donate an organ just for her asking; she
could be a living saint. Doesn't matter. The reality is
you will fight; you will act like a jerk; she will be a
total bitch. Might not be all the time. Might not be
very often at all. But it will happen. And when it does,
you will be glad you have that you-lost-me-$30k metaphoric
bazooka you can pull on her.
\_ You didn't look hard enough for your SO then.
\_ Not all of us are interested in a Stepford wife.
Indeed, I find it incredible that there is *any*
long-term relationship that does not experience
some amount of conflict and disagreement.
\_ You're putting your words in my mouth. There is
conflict and disagreement but the answer is not
to find some childish "hold" over your SO. My
wife doesn't pull that garbage on me and I don't
do it to her. You're still talking in terms of
"winning" and "scoring points". You just don't
get it. I feel bad for anyone stuck with you.
\_ How enlightened of you. How do you and your
wife resolve disagreements? What if she
wants to buy a stantion wagon and you want
an SUV?
\_ Since we're both reasonably intelligent
people who care more about each other than
random 'stuff' like that, we discuss what
would be best for our needs and do that.
Is this some big shock? Why the sarcasm?
Have you really never met anyone in a
good relationship? You probably have and
just mocked them for not abusing each other
for some bizarre concept of one-upping
their mate.
\_ I like intelligent Stepford Wives 2.0 who is
better than you at chess, driving, poetry,
music, literature, AND is good in bed. Modern
liberal women are bitches who don't cook and
take care of the kids and run off to some other
random guy to fuck when she's bored with you.
\_ Conservative war-brides! -- ilyas |
| 2005/6/28-30 [Industry/Startup] UID:38345 Activity:nil |
6/29 I'm suing a company but the court returned my application saying
that they need an "Agent for Service." How do I get an agent for
service for the company? FYI it is Holiday Inn Express, Monterey.
\_ http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/list.html |
| 2005/5/3-4 [Industry/Startup] UID:37468 Activity:nil |
5/3 So long, stock options:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/03/technology/microsoft_options.reut
\_ I heard a rumor that at Yahoo, they were looking for petty
excuses to fire old timers that had lots of stock options.
This is from a system administrator at Yahoo, so it is
probably true.
\_ I haven't seen much evidence of that, though admittedly I've
only been here for a little more than a year. There are lots
of old timers in my team, and in the teams that I interact with
and I haven't noticed an exceptional attrition rate. Where'd
you hear that rumor? -Yahoo Employee
\_ So how would someone transmit an order like that at a big
company like Yahoo! with lots of smart engineering type people? |
| 2005/4/18-19 [Industry/Startup, Politics/Domestic/SocialSecurity] UID:37233 Activity:kinda low |
4/17 United is in chapter 11 and has been asking to lower the pension
obligations to persons already retired to keep the lameass
management in power. United had its most profitable years in the
years the union owned them and operated them. What do you think
about a major US company renegging on pension promises? and
about the bankruptcy court backing them up?
\_ just goes to show, don't trust pension/retirement plans run
by third parties. I bet other bankrupt airlines will follow
suit. Pension plans are a thing of the past anyway.
suit. Pension plans are a thing of the past anyway, just like
social security.
\_ Company pension plans probably are, at least to some degree.
I think the underlying phenomenon is more what we've been
seeing for a long time now--that companies, because of apathy,
shareholder value, excessive costs, and other reasons no longer
feel it expedient to treat employees as long-term assets. No
news here, move along. -John
\_ where is psb#1 fan when you need her?
\- ??? --psb
\_ Not the general employees, no... they figured out that only a
few key folks are really necessary and the rest are just a
mass of replaceable cogwheels. They still take care of the top
people which in the case of an airline probably doesn't apply
to anybody actually operating planes etc.
\_ Practically everyone is replaceable, and the ones who
aren't are usually not management.
\_ "If you think you're indispensible, check your
appointment book a week after you drop dead."
\_ Yup, fact of life. Best way to deal with this is to
be aware of it and replace the concept of "company
loyalty" with pure professionalism, i.e. I'll work as
long as they pay, but no more. -John |
| 2005/4/14-15 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:37189 Activity:moderate |
4/14 Any ideas on why Apple stock has dropped 15% in two days?
\_ People are realizing the prospects for the company don't merit
the current valuation. -tom
\_ why does that make sense right after they announce numbers that
soundly beat everyone's expectations? i think the poster below's
point is valid. also, i think ppl wanted earnings to be 20x
year over year, not a measly 6x.
\_ Because even with the numbers that soundly beat everyone's
expectations, and even if they're able to keep that level
of revenue coming in, the company's still not worth 45
times earnings. Prospects for growth from this Q's
revenues are pretty small in the near term. -tom
\_ yes, i understand that. but why wasn't there a selloff two
weeks or two months ago when the ratios were even worse
(higher stock and lower numbers)?
\_ The stock market is not efficient. -tom
\_ Buy on rumors, sell on news. |
| 2005/3/16-19 [Industry/Startup] UID:36720 Activity:moderate |
3/16 http://www.paulgraham.com/summerfounder.html \_ With all due respect, you might as well do this yourself if you really want to do a startup. They give you $6000 a person plus some seed money for equipment and you have to move to cambridge. A much more realistic goal is to get a job during the day and work on your startup at nights. \_ Maybe your experience is different than mine (if it is, I'd like to hear it), maybe your work ethic is vastly superior to mine (congrats), or maybe you can pull three months of 24-hour days fueled by methamphetamines without obliterating your brain (more power to you, I guess), but the idea of holding a day job, even a mindless job slinging coffee at the 'bucks, and seriously working on a startup at nights strikes me as not only unrealistic, but categorically insane. If you're serious about bootstrapping a company from scratch, it's a 60 hour a week commitment minimum. Conversely, stealthily working on your startup while pretending to work your real job has worked out nicely for a number of people. $6000 a person is pretty weak, but if you think the money is their to incentivize applicants, you're missing the point entirely. -dans (been there, done that (poorly I should add), may do it again some time (better I should hope) after I build a suitable startup shelter) \_ Dans, then you must really suck. I've been there, done that, a couple of times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I raised 1.5 Mill during the dotcom boom while holding down part-time jobs for my startup. We incorporated, sold some systems, then went BK like everyone else during the bust. Got another job, got involved in another startup part-time, helped them raise some money, ended up working for them as a contractor. Currently I am involved in my day-time job, go to Law School at night, am starting up another small online business with a buddy (also at night), flipping some real-estate through a REIT, and getting ready to buy a 2nd home. I also volunteer 3 hours every week down at the Pro Bono law clinic in Downtown S.J. I am also trying to hold down a relationship. So I don't watch TV or play Counter Strike for fourteen hours straight or watch Japanese Cartoons during the weekends. It's pretty amazing how much time you waste in a typical day. --PP \_ are you posting on craiglist too \_ ...yet you have no trouble finding the time to post long, angry rants to the motd. \_ Very few people are as OCD or manic as you are. Get some perspective here, son. \_ I don't think dans sucks; I think you're exceptionally motivated and an arrogant ass to boot. \_ you sound like a workaholic \_ Before I launch into, entirely justified, ad hominem attacks, I think I'll point out that you and I appear to be using very different working definitions of the word startup. When I say startup, I mean a nascent business that you hope to grow into something big. Your definition seems to include small businesses that, though successful, aren't really intended to grow into something huge. To use a meatspace example, yeah, you can hold down a real job and run a corner grocery market but not if you're trying to grow into a chain the size of safeway. There's nothing wrong with small businesses, you just can't retire in Paris off the proceeds. Anyway, ad hominem attacks, as an earlier poster indicated, you're an arrogant ass, to that I'll add, and a cunt to boot. We should probably sit down over I beer sometime, I think we'd get along. :) Okay, bact to facts. 1.5M is a passable angel round, but it's not very much money. Yes, a good manager can turn 1.5M into three years operating expenses, but only because they're insane, willing to live off dog food, and will try to make everyone else working under them live the same way. Of course, if three years go by and you're still running of the same 1.5M seed capital, someone fucked up. When you say ``my startup'' do you mean the company *you* co-founded and had greater than 33% (50 would be a more realistic number) of the stock in, or do you mean the company that happened to be a startup that you were shilling for as employee #n (n > 4). There's a big difference. Maybe during the boom there were angels who were crazy or stupid enough to throw money at a startup where: a) the founders are startup virgins *and* b) the startup's only assets are IP *and* c) the founders are only working on the startup part time It strikes me as unlikely to happen again. And no, I'm not counting friends and family as proper angel investors, because grandma rarely says ``no.'' -dans \_ Not to be snarky, but do you actually use words like 'meatspace' in real life? \_ By all means be snarky, I was raised to appreciate snark, and am always happy to see more of it in the world, even when directed toward me. To answer your question, yes I use words like meatspace in real life, but meatspace, in particular, is one I use sparingly. It raises some goofy/gross imagery, and is subject to misinterpretation. In nerd circles, it's a nice, succinct way to disambiguate between the net and the real world (TM). -dans \_ Uh oh. Now some one will hassle dans for using the word "disambiguate", which will lead to another reply with some screwball non-standard word, leading to another snarky reply, leading to... BREAK THE LOOP! \_ Nah, there's nothing ambiguous or non-standard about my use of disambiguate. -dans \_ I concur. It doesn't work. \_ I've done it once before, and I am starting to spin up again. A good friend has managed to self-fund by contracting for for the last 7 years, and she has designed 4 cpu cores, a dozen other ip blocks, plus her own cell library for her business. \_ Your friend sounds very smart and methodical, and (though this may be semantics) the cpu cores, ip blocks, and cell library strike me as preparation before she hits the `ignition' switch to do the startup whole hog. I hope to lay similar groundwork before launching my next startup. When I say that doing a startup and holding down a job is unrealistic, I'm not talking about slowly laying groundwork. To me, there exists a point of no return moment past which one must focus all energies solely on the startup. -dans \_ Her business is licensing ip cores and libraries. |
| 2005/2/25-27 [Industry/Startup] UID:36418 Activity:moderate |
2/25 I heard a rumour that Yahoo was deliberately targeting employees
with lots of stock options to make their bottom line look better.
Is there any truth to this???
\_ Targeting how?
\_ Firing them.
\_ And how would that help their bottom line?
\_ They need to exercise their options within 30 days of
getting fired or they lose them? -!op
\_ Stock options are now expensed.
\_ The company already issued them so they are going
to take the one-time charge whether they are exercised
or not. I don't see how firing people prevents
this after-the-fact. |
| 2005/1/20 [Reference/History, Industry/Startup, Reference/History/WW2] UID:35829 Activity:kinda low |
1/20 Why do people bid up items past its Buy It Now Price?
\_ why does the interface allow them? shouldn't it just BUY NOW
as soon as they reach the 'buy now' price?
\_ once you start bidding on a Buy Now item, the Buy Now option
goes away (unless there is a reserve)
\_ The buy it now price is generally set above the opening bid. Once
someone bids for the item the buy it now option generally goes
away. Basically, the seller is hoping someone is desperate and
will immediately pay more for the item. The bidders, by bidding
instead of paying the buy it now price, are hoping no one else will
want it badly too. Sometimes bidders miscalculate and there is
a bidding war ... On some items the buy it now price is the same
or just pennies above the opening bid, meaning the seller
essentially just wants to sell the item for price X. If someone
bids on that one, then they are morons.
\_ yeah, well the exception to this is that the supply is so great
(for example I was buying a popular DVD movie) that even when
you've been outbidded, you can just go to the next item. This is
effective when the item is popular and when you're really cheap
and want to save a buck or two. |
| 2005/1/15-17 [Industry, Industry/Startup] UID:35730 Activity:kinda low |
1/15 So I saw In Good Company last night. Anyone think this is what all
the Peoplesoft employees are thinking now?
\_ Dunno, but I saw it too and don't recommend it to anyone who is
dissatisfied with his job.
\_ Bye-bye PeopleSoft. Anybody else think that this acquisition is
going to turn out to be another Great Plains fiasco from a couple
years ago? Why does everyone want to be in ERP/CRM anyway? CEOs
of software companies have a continuous hard-on for this industry,
even though it's probably the most god-awful boring industry in
all of IT. I guess it's all those multi-million dollar support
contracts that have them drooling.
\_ Jeesuz, it took you long enough to come around there. Of
*course* it's the money, the interest level of the CEO
is totally irrelevant, they only care about $$$.
\_ Jeezus, apparently you're clueless. Do you know about the
Great Plains Fiasco? Just because the ERP/CRM space looks
profitable doesn't mean it necessarily is. In the future,
don't comment on shit you don't know about.
\_ I'm not pp, but I have never heard of the Great Plains
Fiasco, what it is?
\_ Why does everyone care about ERP/CRP software? Actually, not
everyone but specially the database makers. With the rise
of ERP software, Oracle and other databases stopped being
the "must have" platform that customers cared most about.
With ERP software that gives you a choice of underlying
database, for many customers, the database is this thing
that's running in the backroom, it could be Oracle
or DB2 or MS SQL, they don't really care. It looks the same
to them as long as it runs the same apps. That's why
Oracle got worried and decided to become an ERP software
leader in order to collect whatever cash their customers
have remaining after they buy their database and to lock
them to the Oracle DB by trying it with their ERP software.
You know the rest of the story. I think the Peoplesoft
acquisition makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me
is how the FTC allowed this merger. With or without
Microsoft (which Oracle claimed is also "competing" in
this market) what we now have is a tight oligopoly in
this market with only two dominant players. |
| 2004/12/31-2005/1/2 [Industry/Startup] UID:35507 Activity:nil |
12/31 During the final phase of check-out at some e-commerce site I was
asked to give the email address I registered with my credit card
company. Is this normal? Does my CC company really check email addr?
\_ There is a whole slew of information available on you that any
willing company who will pay for can check very easily. One of them
(I worked in implementing it for a large online retailer) VerID,
basically will verify all sorts of information including your last
three places of residency, your last couple of cars, etc to
anyone who is willing to sign up for an account. This is all
done through XML. |
| 2004/12/22 [Industry/Startup] UID:35402 Activity:nil |
12/22 IF I D/L AN 8o2.11 HUB FOR MY COMPANY (1M A NU ADMIN), LA1K, HOW MANY
NODES/VIC-20Z CAN 1 SUPPORT, LA1K, + WUTZ THE BANDWIDTH??? SAY 1 GOT
2oo D00DZ IN MY COMPANY, LA1K, HOW MANY HUBZ DO I NEED?? THANKS,
\_ 1 ACCESZ PO1NT = 1o-25 VIC-20S, LESZ VIC-20Z BETTUR. GOT PHUN!
\_ HOW MUCH ADMINISTRATOR WORK 1Z INVOLVED IN MANETENANCE?? 1 GOT
A HUB AT HUM + I NEVUR WORRY ABOUT IT, LA1K, BUT 1TZ BECAUSE 1M
THE ONLY D00D UZE1NG THE HUB... THIZ IZ THE F1RST TIME I HAFTA
DEAL W1TH 2oo D00DZ, LA1K, 1/2 UV THUZE EXPRESZ A NEED FOR 8o2.11.
\_ b1ff gives better results if you jive the input first. See
below.
\_ IT DEPENDZ ON HOW SPREAD OUT DA DAM SUCKAZ ARE, WHAT IT 1S, LA1K,
MAMA!! EACH ACCESZ POINT GOTSTA LIM1TED RANGE, WHAT IT IS, LA1K,
MAMA!! |
| 2004/12/15-16 [Industry/Startup] UID:35312 Activity:moderate |
12/13 So when a business thinks/claims/pretends that I owe them money
it can send my info to a collection company who will then try to
ruin my credit rating. What recourse do I have when a business
owe me money, besides sending letters to their waste basket? Do
they have credit rating that keep them accountable too?
\_ Yes, they have credit ratings.
\_ At my startup, we used to subscribe to Dun & Bradstreet (http://www.dnb.com
and build our company credit rating with them so that (potential) clients
can check on our creditworthiness.
\_ You can take them to court. Small claims court will cost you about
what, $25-$50? Say you are disputing the charges and seek an
injunction. If the business tries to hassle you about terms/
conditions for 3rd party arbitration and you didn't sign anything
tell them to go to hell since the question is if there was ever
a contract in the first place. What company, what situation, and
how much are they trying to get from you?
\_ http://www.bbb.org
\_ ultimately, it's defamation of character. |
| 2004/12/7-8 [Industry/Startup, Computer/Companies/Ebay] UID:35194 Activity:high |
12/7 Anybody here work at Ebay/Paypal or have friends that work there?
I'm interested in applying for a position. I've heard rumors that
they don't give out a lot of stock options but that their bonus
plan is pretty good. How about their base salary? How about
working hours? This is for a senior position. Thanks.
\_ sign your post? Come on man.
\- it seems like this is the kind of post that is reasonably
anonymous ... may not want employer to know about application
etc. --psb |
| 2004/12/3-4 [Industry/Startup] UID:35163 Activity:kinda low |
12/3 HAL 9000 is recovering. I'm sure Dick Cheney is still glad he owns all
those HAL 9000 stock options!
\_ Cheney divested himself from HAL when he became a candidate IIRC.
\_ Cheney divested himself from HAL 9000 when he became a candidate
IIRC.
\_ He still owns shares in trust.
\_ However, Cheney and his wife Lynne have assigned any future
profits from their stock options in Halliburton and several
other companies to charity. And we're not just taking the
Cheney's word for this -- we asked for a copy of the legal
agreement they signed, which we post here publicly for the
first time.
http://www.factcheck.org/article261.html
You're wrong.
\_ But Cheney is EEEVVIILL!! ARGGGHHAARGHLA!
\_ "Daaisy...daaaaisssyyyyy...." |
| 2004/11/18 [Transportation/Car, Health/Dental, Industry/Startup] UID:34949 Activity:kinda low |
11/17 I'm about to go from a full time employee to a contractor.
I'm going to miss certain things like stock options, med
insurance, life insurance, ADD (accidental death or disability),
etc etc. Can someone who has done this before give me a more
comprehensive list of these services, and how much they will
cost me if I get them through venders myself? Thanks.
\_ Unless you see the doctor a lot more than I do, it's easy to get
a highish ($1000) deductable PPO plan at less than $100 a month.
Dental/vision is poor value, just pay out of pocket. Disability,
otoh, is very hard to get as an individual. (I) Don't need life.
\_ ~ $300 per month to continue a premium plan (BlueShield) through
COBRA; probably much less for Kaiser, but you get what you pay for.
Dental and optical are another $100 per month. Keep it, though;
once you're off the books, you'll have a fiendish time getting
pre-existing conditions accepted by any new carrier.
\_ you can only cobra for a few months
\_ Up to 18 months depending on your former employer. Ask.
stupid race-baiting troll deleted
\_ You beat me to it. Thanks. |
| 2004/11/11-12 [Industry/Startup] UID:34831 Activity:nil |
11/11 I posted several days ago about Soda dropping me about an hour of
inactivity while using TTSSH. I found that PuTTY actually has
"sending null packet to keep session alive" option builtin. This
option works for me. BTW, John's original suggestion of
'spinner' didn't quite work. It keeps randomly dieing due to
"unable to open TTY for writing."
\_ Weird, I've never gotten that. Spinner is a bit of a PITA as it
doesn't get along with most scrollbars. If I can, I usually do
the X forwarding/xclock thing, it leaves your tty alone. -John |
| 2004/11/10-11 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:34809 Activity:moderate |
11/10 Here is a problem for you google employees to solve: Yahoo Finance
is a big big part of yahoo's revenues. It's missing something that
so far nobody has found a way to solve. Keeping track of options
pricing and displaying historical charts on options pricing. The
reason is that each stock has hundreds of calls/puts. Nobody has
yet figure out a way to store all that data and display it even
after expiration. I'd like to see such a feature on google
finance. It's a complex data archiving problem. Anybody want to
guess the storage required to store the daily option prices for all
stocks for the latest 10 years? And have it available for quick
retrieval?
\_ do your own job
\_ I'll guess: a few dozen gigs at most. Make dupes across a bunch
of different systems for fast retrieval. And: YOU'RE FIRED!
\_ I could see it coming to several hundred megs a day, which would
be maybe 100GB/year, but that's still chump change.
\_ several hundred megs a day? to store a bunch of easily
compressed numbers? c'mon.... I felt I was being rather
conservative saying the whole thing would take ~40 gigs.
but yes whatever the real total would be in disk space, the
total cost is effectively zero for anyone with a real use
for the data.
\_ not only has this problem been solved, it has been solved by just about
every large financial house. maybe you should come up with another
theory to explain why it's not on your favorite free consumer portal.
have you thought about the relative population sizes of option-savvy
traders vs the population of equity traders? --aaron
\_ not only has this problem been solved, it has been solved by just
about every large financial house. maybe you should come up with
another theory to explain why it's not on your favorite free
consumer portal. have you thought about the relative population
sizes of option-savvy traders vs the population of equity
traders? --aaron
\_ For next question, we'll ask why GOOG doesn't have a free level 2
NASDAQ feed...
\_ they haven't gotten past the level 1 boss yet. |
| 2004/11/6-7 [Industry/Startup, Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:34726 Activity:low |
11/5 Is there somethink like WHOIS for phone numbers? I want to
find out if a particular phone number is mobile or landline.
Is there a way to determine what phone company has it?
\_ http://www.anywho.com/rl.html
You can at least tell if the number is a listed landline.
\_ http://thedirectory.org/pref
This is to tell whether the 3-digit prefix is a mobile or landline.
If it's the latter, provides approx. location. For the former,
it doesn't provide a specific phone company though.
[ bitch. ] |
| 2004/10/3-4 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:33893 Activity:low |
10/4 I *told* you Google is soon to suffer massive brain drain and some
ninnies here called me an idiot. Read it and weep!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041002/bs_nm/tech_google_dc_3
\_ He makes the point that $1 mil isn't enough to retire on in
Silicon Valley. What he misses is, if someone gave me a $1 mil
I'd move the heck out of Silicon Valley.
\_ That's exactly what I thought when I read the article. Of course
we will now bring down the wrath of the Angry Bay Areans by
mentioning the heresy of life outside the bay area.
\_ Wait, there is life outside of the Bay Area? I thought it
was some vast wasteland ...
\_ I'm still laughing at you. --googler
\_ Laugh away. You present no counter to this link or the logic
behind it that google is soon to experience a major brain drain.
If you're one of those who stands to make $1m from it, then I'm
happy for you. That still doesn't mean google isn't going to get
crunched in a few months when all these smart people do the smart
thing and retire someplace outside the bay area. With $1m and a
casual consulting or part time gig you can live *very* well in
most of the country.
\_ Still laughing. Sorry, I'm not breaking my confidentiality
agreements for you. --googler
\_ Mmm, the grapes are, how do you zey, sour?
\_ Uh oh, how dare I post a link with factual numbers to back my
point? Obviously, a fully backed point is just sour grapes. If
you have a counter point with or without link, you're welcome to
make it. Until then, you're just cute. |
| 2004/9/29-30 [Computer/Rants, Industry/Startup] UID:33842 Activity:very high |
9/29 A while ago someone posted this tech support company (URL) in
India that only charges like $8 a day. Can someone please post
that again? ok thx
\_ Get what you pay for.
\_ tell that to the management. It's like the Atkins diet. Everyone
knows that it's good for something and bad for another, but
no one's listening because IT WORKS. And stop deleting this
because you're just wasting time.
\_ It doesn't "just work". You get people who won't wipe
their ass without a work order in triplicate. All the
outsourcing I've seen (a lot among my clients) has been
good for defined work blocks, but useless and shit for
anything requiring innovative thinking, sorry. Management
sees this as well too, if they're not cretins (not all of
them are, surprise surprise.) -John
\_ http://www.supportempire.com remote tech support for only
$2.30 per hour. That's 10X cheaper than US workers.
\_ cheaper per-hour maybe. But are they as good? Because if you
waste 10x as long fixing a problem with them, not only are you
now just breaking even, you also lsoe big time on your own
staffing costs in time dealing with them.
\_ No. Missing the point. If they can't help a customer they
are pissing off the customer who will then never buy your
product, tell their 10 friends to never buy your product and
some of them will put up a website such as
<DEAD>www.your-company-name-sucks.com<DEAD> which will convice hundreds of
others not to buy your product, but at least you saved a few
bucks in support. And since product sales will drop like a
rock, support costs will go down, too. Nice how that works.
\_ Yes, it's stupid. Companies doing silly things to
satisfy bean counters is hardly new. Look at IBM. They
do this ALL THE TIME. It just happens that they're big
enough that a different sector's profits can make up for
incrediably stupid moves in this sector. Most companies
just die.
\_ It's not to satisfy bean counters. Most managers who
do this kind of thing are not around for long enough to
suffer the consequences. "Save" money in the short
term, get a nice big bonus, and get headhunted to
another company. -John
\_ Few people here wants to do tech support work. It's a good
idea to outsource it. Tech support here are sometimes
horrendous, other times exemplary. It's not like it's all
good here.
\_ A *lot* of Americans want to do tech support but they can't
live on $2.30/hour. Good or bad, at least they speak
English.
\_ Sure they can. Put them up in barracks and feed them
prison food. Show them free movies at night. Pretty
soon that is what a "job" will look like in America. |
| 2004/9/25-27 [Transportation/Car, Industry/Startup] UID:33757 Activity:nil |
9/25 Are there any free sites where I can find out the relationship
between X gas brand and the company that produces it? For example,
what company is behind "USA Gas"? I'd imagine I could track this down
through, say, http://hoovers.com, but I'd rather not subscribe just for this.
Thanks for any advice. |
| 2004/8/24 [Industry/Startup] UID:33098 Activity:high |
8/24 Economics and ethics question: The conventional response to a business
that is engaging in unethical practices is to call for divesture from
that business. The problem is that unlike, say a vegetarian choosing
to not eat meat, divesture has no effect on the amount of harm the
business is causing. It may depress the stock price, but that will
make it a more attractive investment if it is a profitable company, and
will only serve to hurt those who choose to divest later than you. It
would then seem that the net effect of divesture is to make the
unethical business a better investment for those who continue to own.
As an example, consider Altria (Phillip Morris (symbol MO)). They have
a P/E around 10 and are paying a 5% dividend. If lots of people
divested, the P/E might go to 5 and the dividend to 10%. This would
not encourage the board to behave any more ethically. Is there some
way to invest ethically that actually has a positive effect?
\_ Well, given corporate America's maniacal focus on stock price,
depressing the stock price is probably the most effective thing
you can do ...
\_ Yes. If the stock price gets too low the company becomes a
takeover target.
\_ Well, that wouldn't curtail the unethical behavior, although
it would screw the investors in the acquired company.
\_ It sure would, because the board would get replaced!
\_ No it wouldn't, because the acquiring company wouldn't
just throw away a highly lucrative business.
\_ The share price fell. This is not the sign of a
successful business. The board would be replaced
in a takeover. How often are companies bought
and *every single* board member is kept? Some
might be, but some will lose their jobs.
\_ Board members and investors will lose money, but
will the newly-acquired company really cease the
unethical but lucrative behavior? If not then
divesting was a pointless exercise.
\_ They don't want jobs. They made many millions
in the take over. These are not people concerned
with being jobless.
\_ You can't stop anyone from doing anything without
recourse to the legal system. All you can do is to
punish the company for their action. Slashing the
stock price through divestiture is punishment. Oh,
just a minute. I am arguing this with a guy who can't
even spell divestiture? I've been trolled.
\_ "... punish the company for *its* action" if you are to
pick on someone.
pick on someone else's English. |
| 2004/8/13 [Industry/Startup] UID:32878 Activity:high |
8/12 Any bets on the low that GOOG stock will hit within one week of when
the share price is set? I say $80! ("The company currently estimates
its initial stock to be worth between $108 and $135 a share.")
Within 6 months? I say $30!
\_ GOOG is a free profitable lesson in shorting
\_ Use motdedit, visigoth
\_ After 1 week: 25% drop from day 1 opening. After 6 months: 40% drop
\_ Schadenfreude doesn't become you.
\_ Interestingly enough, Google brought this upon itself simply by
naming such a high initial auction price. It's torn open the
still mending wounds of the Internet bubble. If the initial bid
price started in the $30s, public opinion and follow-up news
articles would be much less acrimonious. Of course, the price
would have soared for the first week (I'd guess peaking at 70+)
before the sugar rush ended and the down slide began.
\_ you do understand that there's no relation whatsoever between
the initial per-share price and the IPO valuation, right? -tom
\_ Public perception is the important thing here. Those who
expected a low initial share price were sudden faced with
a high one. The IPO value didn't change (although I think
it's rather absurd), but most people see it as a money
grab and not worth SPECULATING. For Google, the price
makes sense, but for those who wanted to see another
Webvan-style stock increase and selloff, it sucks. And
those people are the major grumblers.
\_ First of all, there's no chance of another Webvan-style
stock increase and selloff; it's no longer 1998.
Second, I think Google's owners legitimately want to
value their business fairly. They also are big fans
of Warrenn Buffett, who believes that low share prices
(and stock splits to support them) reduce the quality
of the investors.
I think Google is pricey at 100-120 P/E (which is where
they're valuing it), but most IPOs are not good deals
for open-market investors (as opposed to the founders
and VCs). YHOO's P/E is also over 100, EBAY's is
70, so it's not like they're totally out of whack with
the other big players in the sector. -tom
\_ Then we agree! Wow! And they say that never happens
on the motd!
\_ What exactly is a 'lower quality investor'? Is
their money less green? The other companies you are
comparing Google to now have long public track
records. A newly public company can not claim the
same public confidence as a company that has been
successfully running their business in public for a
few years.
\_ It's his way of saying 'speculator'.
\_ I don't think it's any such thing. I think everyone believes
it is going to go down because they think it is priced too high.
Google also has lots of really bad news recently showing they're
not ready to be a real public company responsibly run, not a dot
com bubble cluster fuck.
\_ Below $20 within 2 years, unless they have something more impressive
than froogle and gmail in store.
\_ I say $30 on the 2 year mark but agree with you on the general
concept.
\_ wow lotta google haters out there, funny
\_ Don't hate the player, hate the game.
\_ I don't hate Google. It's just a company. I'm talking
about business, money, and the public market. There is
nothing funny about any of those things. Bringing any
sort of emotion into the equation is foolish. |
| 2004/8/2-3 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:32638 Activity:high |
8/2 What are the best job sites? Have you found a job using those
sites?
\_ I'm in civil and monster worked fine, though it took some patience.
I had to wait about four months for something good, ducking
crap from headhunters most of that time. That time waited has
more to do with the realities of the civil job market than with
monster. -- ulysses
\_ sites work well for entry level jobs. Nowadays you really need
connections and referals.
\_ *you* might. others do fine going in cold.
\_ I found my current job three years ago by posting a resume on
http://dice.com. The HR at my company saw it and gave me a call for an
interview. But at the same time I got calls from ten job firms or
so. That's the downside.
\_ I hated dice for precisely that reason: lots of responses from
annoying headhunters, none from real companies.
\_ So what? Ask them for the name of the hiring company and
no you're not coming in or sending in an updated resume
without that information, click.
\_ You don't understand. They're not representing a
specific company. They have a zillion no-name,
uninteresting companies they're trying to fit you for.
\_ craigslist
\_ ditto. Got my current job thru CL. |
| 2004/7/26 [Industry/Startup] UID:32477 Activity:very high |
7/25 GOOG IPO share price $108-$135:
http://news.com.com/G/2100-1032_3-5283465.html
\_ Yermom is much cheaper.
\_ BHAHHAHAHA.
\_ FWIW that would lead to roughly a P/E ratio of 50
\_ I read it was a P/E of about 110. Either way is too high.
\_ Still might be a good company to own *after* the stock tanks.
\_ Projected market cap at that price is $29-36 billion.
Earnings for the first six months of 2004 were $143 million;
if yearly earnings are $280 million, you're definitely looking
at a P/E over 100. Probably unwarranted. -tom |
| 2004/7/21 [Finance/Investment, Industry/Startup] UID:32395 Activity:very high |
7/20 M$ pay $$$$ special divident
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/technology/21gates.html?hp
Can someone explain why this makes financial sense to M$?
Why don't they buy back some stocks with that money? Isn't this
like cash down the drain, not that they are short on cash.
\_ Why does any company pay a dividend? Why does any company go
public?
\_ Well, a company goes public to raise cash. When it had more
than enough, it should purchase the stock back. It's not
that they have never paid any divident. They are not a dot
com after all.
\_ in the end, the value of a stock is the dividend or promise of
future dividends. sometimes, profit making companies don't
pay dividends because the company feels that the cash is
better invested for growth (and the hope of a bigger dividend
payout in the future). microsoft has too much cash, more than
it knows how to use, so it just pay it out to shareholders.
makes sense to me.
it knows how to use, so it just pays it out to shareholders.
makes sense to me. a stock that will never pay any dividend
is like a bond that will never pay any interest; it's value
would be zero and nobody will want to buy it.
\_ I disagree. It could still be worth something on the basis that
eventually they will get bought our or will liquidate their
operations. Both are essentially a single large delayed
dividend. Now if you say the company will never pay a dividend
and is planning on going bankrupt...
\_ It could still be worth something, but the idea is that
the profits get returned to the investors. Somewhere
along the line people forgot this fundamental of
incorporating a business.
\_ Well all that really matters is that you can find someone
to pay more for your shares. In a growing company with no
dividend, that's not a problem.
\_ This is the key for "growth" stocks. M$ has kept this
attitude for a long time. Now that it has "stablized"
it either starts paying dividends or it starts losing
value as an investment (as noted above, a zero interest
bond).
\_ Not really. Say you incorporate your business and
it is doing very well. You're making lots of money,
but not paying it out to the stockholders. Would
you sell for merely $1 more than the value of the
stock (assets) if you're generating a massive cash
flow? The bottom price for a stock is the assets of
a company, but *profit* is what you really want. A
huge company and no money for the investor (you)
does you no good.
\_ well, like you said, they are like a "single large delayed
dividend". in other words, you don't disagree.
\_ The cash reserves are causing M$ problems. Internal protests when
M$ tried to cut benefits, investors upset by "no dividends" stance,
and antitrust supporters all point to the huge cash reserves as
evidence of M$ stinginess and power. For business, money in the
bank is not being used on investment or R&D. Buybacks and dividends
are programs to keep stock prices stable and reward investors.
M$ is implementing both. It's a different mindset than the paranoid
one that M$ has been selling where any moment now, they might
collapse and need that money to defend themselves. |
| 2004/7/9-10 [Computer/SW/Languages/Misc, Health/Sleeping, Industry/Startup] UID:32202 Activity:nil |
7/9 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20040709/od_nm/life_naps_dc |
| 2004/5/28-29 [Industry/Startup] UID:30482 Activity:nil |
5/27 Maybe we should help each other out. We should list the company and
managers that we should avoid.
\_ it's called <DEAD>slanderandsueus.com<DEAD>
Manager: Bush, Company, US Executive Branch -CJCS93
\_ LOL, but many will disagree with you. |
| 2004/5/23-24 [Industry/Startup] UID:30372 Activity:low |
5/23 Anyone get a job offer from google recently? What was the options
package like?
\_ No, but guaranteed to be *very* low since the IPO is free money with
near zero risk at this point. |
| 2004/5/20 [Industry/Startup] UID:30318 Activity:moderate |
5/20 The google ipo scams begin (not that the "legit" ipo isn't
a scam as well):
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5181933
\_ All csuaers should bid everything they have to get a google share!
Then you'll be able to tell your kids you participated in the
dotbomb of the 90s *and* the 2000s.
\_ Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
- Pee Wee Herman
\_ "There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas,
probably in Tennessee. It says fool me once... shame on...
uh... shame on... you. Fool me can't get fooled again!"
-GW Bush |
| 2004/5/17 [Recreation/Computer, Industry/Startup] UID:30259 Activity:high |
5/17 Long, but worthwhile (found on http://www.fuckedcompany.com of all places): post the URL instead. Okay: http://www.csua.org/u/7c3 -- A simplistic but pretty concise explanation to the question: "Why do people in the 'red' states vote overwhelmingly for Bush when they always get screwed hard by his policies?" \_ Can't view fuckedcompany from work. Care to put this in /csua/tmp? \_ /csua/tmp/fcompany \_ Thank you. \_ Not worthwhile. Just another partisan rant, full of wild assumptions and faulty conclusions. \_ Okay, replace the word "republican" with "lawmaker". It still holds true. \_ It's sad when the proletariat fail to see that they no longer have in their hands the means of production. \_ Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! |
| 2004/4/27 [Computer/Companies/Google, Industry/Startup] UID:13399 Activity:nil |
4/27 There are all kinds of rumours about Google doing an IPO this
week. My question, how does a little guy like me get a piece of
the action, and is it worth it?
\_ As a general rule, if little guys are getting a piece of the
action, it's not worth it. -tom
\_ If you know so little about how IPOs work such as silent periods,
announcements, etc, then you have no business throwing your money
away in the market. Go buy some lottery tickets.
\_ Girls of Google! (though if you are truly a little guy this may
not be a viable strategy) |
| 2004/4/15-16 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:13211 Activity:nil |
4/15 I finally understand what a CRM is and what it is used for.
it's the database of contacts, customers, customers' employees,
business leads, interests, themes, "opportunities" and a calendar
to remind you the flow of following it all up. The front end is part
of a CRM. -brain
\_ throw in deliverables, impressions to cover marketing
\_ http://csua.com/?entry=12519
\_ right, that was the post I was referring to.
check out the mouseover on kchang's page! crazy! -brain
\_ It should be noted that most CRM project fail. (you don't earn
your money back on the investment for it)
\_ Yeah. Most of the CRM software that people bandy about
(RazorsEdge, etc), work out to be upwards of $150k. When
we looked into it at the BAM/PFA, it was around $150k for the
package and customization. Hardware to run it and ongoing
support was a lot of money on top of that.
There are other systems out there, though, with not quite all
the functionality but much more reasonable price. -sax
\_ the installation I was working with cost $30k, with $50k
of labor and $200k of contracting that went into building
custom modules into it. The data mining that resulted
from it landed a $4.8 M deal. Sounds like a good
investment to me!
\_ I've struggled through goldmine for the last 2 years, and
hate the pile of shit. 90% of user problems are goldmine
crashing, "losing" mail, and just otherwise being a pile
of shit. They still use a fucking broken bde library.
The DB schema has grown without a redesign for years, and
feels like it. I've been wanting to make my own suite out
of open source stuff to replace the crap. --scotsman
\_ We actually went with a Filemaker solution. It was
developed by people who left Bluebaud. It is FM, but
it has a pretty decent feature set... kind of focused
on membership and donation campaign tracking. For
under $15k, it does everything we need and more -sax
\_ i agree, but it depends on which company you get it from.
ROI from enterprise crm companies generates more cash flow.
The mid-market crm products out there aren't that good and
is why most fail. If you can come up with a cheap mid-market
crm product, then definitly make one.
\_ LT. TOEJAM: I just got another blast on the CRM-114, and the
damned thing decodes: Wing Attack, Plan-R.
MAJOR KONG: Wing attack, Plan-R?
\_ Major Kong: Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a
rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a
set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?
\_ http://crm114.sourceforge.net -John |
| 2004/4/8-9 [Industry/Startup] UID:13095 Activity:nil |
4/8 Interesting analysis of the stock option expense brouhaha:
http://csua.org/u/6u2
\_ brouhaha?
\_ From the Milken institute? You've got to be kidding.
\_ Editorial by the Washington Post staff yesterday in support of
stock option expensing: http://csua.org/u/6u5
"The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the issue is
therefore timely -- and just as important, it's written in
language understandable to those without advanced accounting
degrees. ..." |
| 2004/4/5-6 [Industry/Startup] UID:13018 Activity:high |
4/5 stock investing gurus, i want to be a long term investor but i
keep getting into situations like this: mbt bought on 11/18 now
up 80+ %. i feel that it has gone up too far too fast, and will
soon correct. what should I do? should I like sell half of
it to take some profit? hold on through any corrections, or
maybe use some options to hedge and smooth it over? what will
be the tax implications if i go the option route? will i
still get to use long term capital gains if i sell the stock
eventually (after 1 year)? i've never played with options
before.
\_ options are dangerous especially for rookies. Beware.
\_ agreed.
\_ I know, but everyone has to start somewhere. I am not
going to use options to margin / leverage. just want to
use it to hedge, and will start out conservatively and
use it sparingly.
\_ Tax implications are the same as with stocks, HOWEVER,
you may inadvertantly enter the world of the day trader.
Some places charge extra fees for quicky turnarounds.
\_ learn discipline, if you want to make 50% on an investment
then sell when you make 50%. if you want to make 100% then you
should wait. just be realistic about what you are expecting.
80% isn't too shabby
\_ There is a fine line between investing and speculating
and I think you have just crossed it.
\_ There's no shame in taking a profit.
\_ you should make a list of rules: when do you sell a stock?
then apply those rules to the stock. You should do this
before you start to invest.
\_ You have to set your expectation of how much you want to gain.
And don't let the long term capital gains influence your decision.
I met too many people who chose to get long term capital gains
and ended up with nothing.
\_ Hey fucknut, you just overwrote about five peoples posts.
\_ There are a few things you can do: the most conservative is
to sell a covered call. Sell it at a price you are wiling
to sell your stock at. If your stock goes up, you forfet
gains, but if it goes down, the call expires worthless. Set
the option expiration price below what your stock is selling
at to be real conservative. This will not effect your taxable
gain on mbt, but it will generate taxable gain of its own and
might force you to sell the stock (if the option expires "in
the money"). The other thing you can do, is to put "trailing
stops" behind mbt. Set a price, say 25% below the current price,
and put in a stop order. If the stock lowers to that level,
you will sell it. It does not solve your tax problem, but it
protects your profits. I run trailing stops on all my volatile
stocks these days. It has saved me a few times. -Not really
a stock investing guru, just not a noob anymore either.
\_ what about just buying some put options? would that be a
\_ what about just buying some put options? is that a
noobie thing to do?
\_ I don't have any practical experience with puts.
\_ you misspelled "putz."
\_ thanks for all the help! I think I will wait another few
days, letting it run a little more. then I will either
sell half or try option. thanks!
\_ watch out for wash sales where you sell a stock and buy
a stock within 30 days. The tax break in the loss
may not count. But of course, if you have a profit,
noobie thing to do?
\_ I don't have any practical experience with puts.
sell half or try option. thanks!
that's a different story. |
| 2004/3/25-26 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers, Industry/Startup] UID:12866 Activity:nil |
3/25 Any Sodians heard of or used to work with this company called Arcsoft?
http://www.arcsoft.com
I am interviewing a position there, wondering how you guys think of
that company. its headquarter is in Fremon, Ca.
\_ looks like another http://intervideo.com
\_ Who are these Sodians of which thou speak? --sodan |
| 2004/3/4-5 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:12519 Activity:nil |
4/3 Can someone give me a description in layman's English what CRM and
ERP are (in the business software world)? Thanks!
\_ CRM: Software which tracks customers, including what they bought,
when they last bought, how much they bought, how likely they
are to buy again, who they are, how to contact them, how they
they are distributed geographically, who is responsible for
interfacing with them, when was the last time you called them,
how many times have you contacted them, when will you meet them,
when was the last time you sent them out something, etc.
ERP: I have to build 100 boats to meet an order. Each boat contains
100,000 parts and requires three different fabs and twenty different
distributors for base parts. I need to coordinate how these boats
get built on time, within spec, and under budget. I also have
5000 employees to coordinate, enter SAP/IBM/Oracle.
\_ CRM is usually some piece of software that coordinates
correspondence with clients and prospects in some meaningful
(usually sales-driven) way. Never heard of ERP. Though a quick
google comes up with this:
http://www.cio.com/research/erp/edit/erpbasics.html --scotsman
\_ I realize these are not definitions, but expanding the
acronyms should help you anyway:
CRM = Customer relationship management
ERP = Enterprise resource planning
\_ ERP = everything a company does except what it does
\_ ERP is sort of a tracking system for "resources" your internal
processes use. Both of these things are more of a layer of
software than a single application, and usually involve software
components knit together with a variety of databases. Surf on
almost anything SAP does and you may get a better feel for what
those components actually do. -brain
\_ Thanks for all the answers, everyone. I STFW but I never found
anything that really explained in plain simple English. --op |
| 2004/3/3 [Industry/Startup] UID:12504 Activity:nil |
3/3 my Executive VP told us that there is no such thing as a float
for pre-ipo company and that getting millions of dollars in funding
last round doesn't dilute our stock options since we aren't a
public company. He said there is no dilution and no float for
pre-ipo companies and that when we ipo we'll all get around
$10 a share anywayz. is this a twink or what?
\_ He's a twink. Additional rounds of financing dilutes shares. |
| 2004/2/17 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:29811 Activity:high |
2/17 stock tip: ICGE to be debt free before bell thursday.
get in tomorrow.. at .43.. will be at .80 by thursday
\_ Insider information?
\_ no.. but 7 insider buys today
\_ It must be a pump-and-dump stock
\_ This guy is trying to cash-in his stock options.
\_ I get spam pumping this stock all the time. Why am I
seeing this pump and dump crap on the motd? |
| 2004/2/4 [Recreation/Shopping, Industry/Startup] UID:12094 Activity:nil |
2/3 Here's some people who chose to kill their careers by getting
quoted forever as work time slacker idiots:
http://www.careerjournaleurope.com/myc/killers/19990927-delisser.html
It was fun then but I wonder how many turned up in google when
applying for jobs and got passed over.
\_ The level of writing in that article is primitive, and that's being
charitable. "Cyber browsing"? Give me a break. And some of the
people quoted don't come across as particularly lucid either.
Aside from the whole premise, which is silly, the piece loses
credibility through its piss-poor style. -John
\_ This is such bullshit. Any time it comes up. If someone is not
doing their job, it will show in other ways. tracking employee
web usage is fucking pointless.
\_ 1. I would always get packages sent to work... because I'm there
to pick them up. I don't have a stay at home wife to collect
my packages. That stuff I order when I'm at home.
2. Oh no! I wasted 15 minutes shopping online! FIRE ME! Dude
no employee is going to be productive all the time they are
at work. Breaks are what people do.
\_ Both of you are brilliant. Now *think* for a moment. If you
are a hiring manager and have two candidates and one is stupid
enough to let themself get quoted on google forever as a
slacker idiot, which one would *you* hire? The crime isn't
shopping online, it is being quoted forever talking about it
on google. If you say you wouldn't care then you're not a
hiring manager.
\_ I've been in places where I've been responsible for saying
if someone should get hired. This article wouldn't change
how I felt about someone, and I wouldn't want to work at
a company where it did.
\_ First of all, just know that I agree with you all whole-
heartedly and the person you just answered sounds like a
putz. That said, you sound spoiled. I wouln't want to work
at such a company either but few of us can be so picky
anymore. I work at an alright company but I got lucky -
they are too small to have the resources to track web-
browsing. Most of my friends who are still unemployed would
grudgingly take a job where they did. What sucks is that
companies feel they can and should do this. [moved down]
\_ I agree that the above is spoiled but not with the idea
that shopping and gaming all day at work is something
your company owes you. If you were the HM and a
candidate told you he wanted a 7.5 hour day but said he
wouldn't be doing anything but work during those 7.5
hours you'd think he was a flaming idiot.
\_ Typical "sour grapes" brigade response. I prefer to work
at companies where I'm not the only one working.
\_ oh, yeah? and where do you work--http://www.posttothemotd.com
\_ This is funny.
how I felt about someone. |
| 2004/1/20 [Industry/Startup] UID:11850 Activity:nil |
1/20 So, a porn company moved in next to our office. We share a common
hallway which separates our suites. They already have a PT Cruiser
and an Escalade, both with an obvious URL (http://www.blackpuddin.com on
the back windshield. Anything we can do, or is their presence totally
legal? We're in a nice office park, and their front door says that
they are a realty company (we didn't make the connection until they
just stopped caring and took the company cars around without hiding).
If it matters, they seem to be doing pretty well.
\_ why do you care?
\_ usually pron companies are more discreet. That they aren't
(the cars parked out front), and that the office says they
are a realty company when they are (also?) doing porn makes
me uncomfortable.
\_ You'd be more comfortable if they put a big "bazoombas.com"
banner on the front of the building? It's specifically to
avoid prudes like you that they front as a different kind
of company. -tom
\_ hey, are you listening? cars, out front. http://blackpuddin.com.
there is a difference between being totally out there,
and being halfway hidden and halfway not. It's weird.
\_ get some?
\_ Check with the building owner--they might have lied on their lease. |
| 2004/1/7-8 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:11707 Activity:nil |
1/7 thanks guy who recommened EMRG at .60 (now at 3.90) and ICGE!
\_ Damn, I never got that notice. Be louder next time!
\_ $1.7 million in cash, lost $2 million in the quarter ended 9/30
on revenues of $254K. My advice is to take your profit, fast. -tom
\_ I heard on wall that pepsi was the place to invest my life
savings.
\_ no, you didn't. -tom
\_ sure I did. It was at about 48.5 at the time. CNNfn
says it's now at 46.44, down .50 since opening. I'll bet
the wall logs say who came up with this winner.... heh.
\_ I think PEP is a fine company to own. It's certainly
not "the place to invest your life savings." If your
time horizon on stock performance is 2 weeks, it's not
a stock for you. -tom
\_ and now look at SCOX! 1.09 a year ago and now 17! |
| 2003/12/31-2004/1/1 [Industry/Startup] UID:11633 Activity:nil |
12/31 Suppose I give money order to Company LLC to a friend but he doesn't
really own that company yet (didn't yet incorporate Company LLC).
Can he cash that money order in the bank or somewhere else?
\_Yes, as long as he has a business bank account under the name of
said company. |
| 2003/12/31 [Industry/Startup] UID:11625 Activity:nil |
12/30 Suppose I send a money order to a new guy on eBay. The MO is addressed
to "Company LLC". What are some ways he could screw me up? Could
he cash the check even if Company LLC doesn't exist?
\_ You should look into their buyer protection policy and see how
well you're covered.
\_ Ebay is built entirely on trust. Period.
\_ You could ask for escrow. |
| 2003/10/30 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Industry/Startup] UID:29601 Activity:nil |
10/30 Can you smell the IPOs? IBM's "Prodigy" Linux commercial:
http://csua.org/u/4ug
\_ the kid looks like eminem
\_ Hate marketers. hate 'em. |
| 2003/10/29-31 [Industry/Startup, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA/Motd] UID:10851 Activity:nil |
10/29 Hi all, anyone out there have office space to sublease or working
at a company that is subleasing space? I'm looking for someplace
very inexpensive to put 2 to 3 desks. Otherwise anyone out there
want to go halves on a 1500 sq. ft. room that is only $900/month total,
including use of the bldg T1 ? This is a great price in a very nice
Bldg in oakland. (Am i crazy for soliciting for a business flat-mate
on them motd? flames welcome.) -crebbs
\_ Here's a flame: learn how to format motd posts, you moron!
\_ umm, boy, lousy flame. My post is the minimum number of lines
that it could be without having too-long lines. I see no
disadvantage to having too-short lines, given that. -crebbs
\_ actually you had some extra spaces. i removed them but
yeah the other guy is an idiot. that flame wasn't enough
to LIGHT CANDLE.
\_ Nope. just pathetic it seems. |
| 2003/10/25-26 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:10786 Activity:nil |
10/25 Had an interview yesterday with a startup. It was just like 1998!
Go go gadget economy go!
\_ where?
\_ hah! not a chance! *I* found it, its my 1998 startup and I
aint telling! --op
\_ Top Dog!
\_ Top Dog isn't a startup. Squirrel-on-a-stick, on the other
hand....
\_ 1. Kill Squirrels
2. ?????
3. Profit!
\_ Arf! Arf!
\_ 2. Put squirrel on stick?
\_ Hey! That was under NDA! You're so sued!
\_ Dude, seriously, you *CAN'T* put a patent on
*squirrels*.
\_ we didn't patent squirrels but we have a
patent pending business method that involves
them. I can't give you details yet but think
of: squirrels, the net, and one-click and
you're halfway there.
\_ See US patent number D369,202,
"The ornamental design for a squirrel skinner,
as shown and described."
http://www.uspto.gov
Why am i not suprised this guy is from West
Virginia?
\_ I'm speechless. Just...speechless.
\_ You're not surprised because you're a hater?
\_ http://web.wt.net/~psherr/squirrel_hazing.htm |
| 2003/10/24-25 [Transportation/Car, Industry/Startup] UID:10770 Activity:nil |
10/24 Any tips on the best way to give a company that tried to screw
you over (in this case Advantage-Rent-A-Car) negative publicity?
Other than the better business bureau, any good ways to blacklist
them?
\_ Are there websites similar to http://resellerratings.com for such
cases? That would rule!
\_ pretty good link, thanks! Yeah, if only they had that for
everything... Might be quite helpful/interesting.
\_ It's called the better business bureau. As if anyone cares about
or reads any of those sites or checks the BBB anyway. I know people
who swear by paypal even after seeign <DEAD>palpaysucks.com<DEAD> |
| 2003/10/18-19 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows, Industry/Startup] UID:10681 Activity:high |
10/17 From various reviews I've read it seems like Quicken used to be really
good and at some point it started to suck. Lots of people seem to hate
the 2004 version. I want to get a version that's fairly recent (not
the 2004) and start using it on a regular basis. Can someone who has
used it over the years comment on which version is best?
\_ I use QuickBooks 5.0 and I'm happy with it. It's much nicer than
Quicken (its sibling) but may be overkill for you.
\_ I keep my money under my matress.
\_ It's the AOL effect. AOL at one time was actually not too
expensive and the features were pretty intuitive to use. Now,
everything's jam packed into one screen with icons flying all
over and the GUI simply sucks. It's a bloatware POS. I hope AOL
goes out of busness.
\_ They are.
\_ I got Quicken 2003 for free. It feels more cluttered than 2002.
I just use Quicken to balance checking and saving accounts, so
I can't comment on its downloading, stock tracking features.
The last time I tried these features on an older version (2000?),
they sucked, partly because it involves not just Intuit but also the
The last time I tied these features on an older version (2000?),
financial institutions.
\_ It's missing some very obvious features that would vastliy improve
it... E.g. being able to customize the screens (to get rid of their
ads, and remove some of the clutter), a better way to go through
the options with tabs... (instead of having to go through the menus
one by one), no good way to reduce the bloat of the file size...
I'm using 2003 because in some way's it's useful, but actually
liked 2002 better. Afraid of 2004. (what's up with the basic/
deluxe/premier tiers? Any use for getting the higher versions?)
\_ One thing I like about 2003 vs 2002 is that it allows for
they sucked, partly because it's not just Intuit but also the
financial institutions.
deluxe/premier tiers? Any use for getting the higher versions?)
very long memo field. |
| 2003/9/16 [Industry/Startup] UID:10216 Activity:kinda low |
9/16 we're doing annual performace reviews at work, and everyone has to
fill out a personal evaluation (same as the peer evaluations). This
is the first time I've done this. Any advice? Should I be confident?
modest? self-critical? I mean, I know everyone will say "be truthful",
which I will try to be, but is it better to err on the side of
over-confidence or over-critical? I'm finding this very difficult
to do.
\_ Always toot your own horn. Never play yourself down. If you don't
play yourself up, who will? This is the time to fluff up your role
and achievements and ignore any failings. People never remember
your successes, only your failures. Do *not* be truthful.
\_ As an aside, you really cannot afford to be modest here. You
know what projects you've done and to what extent you were
invovled. You can't trust your manager to remember. Brag like
you're on a reality dating show, because no one else will do
it for you.
\_ Don't brag. Don't be modest. Say what you did, why it was
special, and why it mattered to the company. -John
\_ listen to John here. Actually it depends on your boss. My natural
inclination is to be uncomfortable with the horn over-tooting
but my new boss is like these guys are saying, he only remembers
problems not successes and has no idea of the difficulty level of
different tasks. If I get it done with no hitch, it was easy in
his mind and it doesn't register.
\_ out of curiosity, how big is your company?
\_ about 700 people total, about 200 programmers. Its a
financial software company... essentially a data
integrator/reseller
\_ The first time I had to do one of these, when I was done the
company would be out of business without me. Manager signed off on
it without any comment. Later when raises came up I threw the
thing back in his face and got double the raise he was originally
offering because afterall, without me the whole company would go
under, right?
\_ So does anyone DISagree with the "toot your own horn"
philosophy? -op
\_ That path leads only to madness. Seriously, this must be your
first job or close to it, right? TOOT THAT HORN, SON! TOOT!
\_ People who brag are pretty easy to spot in the long run.
And it doesn't earn you any self-respect. So brag away
if you must, but there is no substitute for learning to
communicate (not b.s.) with management--they are usually
frightened and clueless because nobody will or knows how
to talk to them in terms that matter to them. -John
\_ I filled out one, expecting my boss to take some points and merge
them with his own. To my surprise, when my final evaluation came
out, it was entirely in my words. Some bosses are truly lazy.
\_ Don't exaggerate on your evaluations. Work hard and make yourself
truly invaluable. Short term, this may be disadvantageous to you,
but long term, it's good for everyone. - the christian way
\_ Now that's why I vote Republican!
\_ 1) No one said to exaggerate. 2) No one is truly invaluable.
3) No one knows your value as much as you do so you better let
them know just how valuable you are because no one will toot your
horn for you. I don't recall Christ ever saying you should
humbly play down your accomplishments and be more critical of
yourself than necessary. Reevaluate at your next bible study.
\_ The accurate self-evaluator shall inherit the earth.
\_ The way you phrase (3b), I don't disagree with you, but
people should try http://www.biblegateway.com and look for "truth",
"humility", "boastful", "honesty", etc.
\_ how is listing everything you did, down to not picking
your ass in front of a meeting considered lying? just
write everything you did down and let the dice roll.
\_ You could say he doesn't want to micromanage you. |
| 2003/8/13 [Industry/Startup] UID:29332 Activity:insanely high |
8/12 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html My question is, how come USA let De Beer get away with 100 years of absolute monopoly? \_ Nothing says you love her like a blood diamond. \_ "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry." Yes! Fuck De Beers! \_ Diamonds are forever. \_ Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. Now let's legalize drugs and kill another international cartel of murderers. \_ too bad the General is too old and lost 2 wars \- helo i have not read your link although i will later you know that debeer officials dont come to the US to avoid capture by the usgovt, right. debeer > msft on the evil metric ... they actually kill people. you can grep the wall history for some good articles from the atlantic on the diamond business. if you regexp foo is weak i can dig up the links for you. there is also an interesting article by mathew hart on diamond: history of a cold blooded love affair. it is also interesting to see how the indians are driving out the jews. debeers may be able to more exploit american men due to a deal with LVMH. ok tnx. --psb \_ regexp foo? jesus fucking christ. if you want to know about the evils of the debeers, or anything else for that matter, there's a tool called a "library" and another called the "world wide web" that will tell you whatever you want to know. \_ Is that you kinney? \_ Is that the new fangled interweb you're talking about? I heard about that! \_ so where is this wall history stored? \_ DeBeers proper have no operations in the US. They own (legally) subsidiaries through various stakeholder arrangements, which take care of their dealings in countries with strong anticompetition laws. Regarding manufactured diamonds, until now they have been kept out of the high-end jewellery market by being detectable. When someone comes up with a method of creating perfect diamonds, an 'artificial' as opposed to 'technical' two-class system will be created; you may have noticed that most diamond companies already subscribe to a certificate system, ostensibly to help identify diamonds with dirty provenances (like blood diamonds from Sierra Leone.) That same system will be used to market the 'genuine' item to people--if you doubt that this will work, consider that people have been buying what are essentially glorified rocks just for their artificially created prestige value for a long time. -John \- the mkt for artificial diamonds will be suppressed through (women) mind control -> (men) ball capture. why isnt there a market for used diamonds? do you know how large the stock of "idle diamonds" is? that's partly through dealer control and partly mind control. they will clearly suggest "real/debeers diamond -> true love", artifical diamond -> artificial love. --psb |
| 2003/8/7-8 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:29274 Activity:nil |
8/7 http://www.cafeshops.com/issa_loser.7055405?zoom=yes#zoom |
| 2003/7/9 [Industry/Startup] UID:28977 Activity:nil |
7/8 M$ ditches options in favor of stock:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/030709/microsoft_options_3.html |
| 2003/6/24-25 [Health, Industry/Startup] UID:28827 Activity:high |
6/24 WRS CEO resigns.
\_ this is the equivalent of Apple canning Scully (former pepsi
executive). If only they had a Steve Jobs to rescue them. Oh,
the pain, the pain...
\_ WRS?
\_ Wind River Systems.
\_ A bigger bunch of assclowns never walked the earth.
\_ Just go to VA or RH and you can meet much bigger
assclowns.
\_ At least, RHAT seems like a company with a viable business
plan. VA indeed was a bunch of assclowns.
\_ They'll have some real competition when Green Hills goes IPO.
They'll be squeezed by M$, Green Hills, and Linux. |
| 12/24 |