Sweet Jesus, it's been a long time since I updated this. Judging by the total lack of emails or comments asking for new updates, I can safely conclude that it was indeed only my mother reading this. Hi, Mom! Happy Mother's Day!
Anyway, I felt that urge to spill my guts all over the internet and decided to do a bit of writing about my hero Paul Graham's fairly insulting essay, You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss. Paul likens programmers working for actual bosses in companies larger than say, three, to caged and listless zoo animals, while he and his co-founders are the glorious lions romping about on the plains, living a life of danger and adventure.
Uh, sure. Ok, Paul. While I understand how you can (and often DO) advocate the life of a founder or co-founder since you were one, how can you begin to paint a picture of working in a large company? I mean, have you ever worked in one of these "large" companies? Yes, you co-founded Viaweb, and it sure was awesome. Now you have this YC thing, and even more recently the increasingly popular founder/startup news forum, Hacker News. And we all know the tales of horror and stupidity that arise from people working braindead jobs for huge companies. Bosses that ignore your every suggestion, waste your time endlessly, and insult your intelligence with busy work and useless projects. Bosses that micromanage and constantly pepper you with requests for the dreaded status report.
But, Paul, there are also magnificent bosses. Bosses that encourage you to learn new technologies and methods, that send you to useful seminars and conferences, and that listen to what you have to say. Bosses who wade into the trenches and code with you, and admit when they are wrong. Best of all, bosses that respect your estimate of when a project will be completed and acknowledge that you probably know what you are talking about, since you wrote the damn thing.
I've had both kinds of bosses. The good kind are rarer, but they definitely exist. Find one and work for her/him. They are worth sticking with.
And to extend your caged lion analogy a bit further, do you know what happens to a lion that is hurt or ill in a zoo? A team of people step in to make him better, at great cost to themselves and little to the lion. Enter the wonderful world of cheap health insurance, found in these "large" companies.
Now, this isn't a prefect analogy, of course. All you glorious co-founders and dashing entrepreneur lions can certainly acquire a healthcare plan, though at greater cost. But many founders seem to ignore the possibility that they may be injured and forge ahead putting every spare cent into their startup. It certainly isn't cool or edgy to worry about health insurance, but when these super-cool founders need hospital help and have to sideline their startup (or even bail on it) to pay their hospital bills, they have ceased to be hunting lions.
Food for thought, Mr. Graham.
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