[tptacek]

This EIR thing† is one of the weirder beliefs he has about the startup market. I know hundreds of people involved with startups and many tens of founders, and I have never even heard of someone in my social network getting an EIR position.

The reality of EIR positions seems to be that they're places that VC firms park executives that they're almost willing to fund "on spec". That is: people who have already made them a shitload of money. I cannot find a way to give a shit about some VC firm paying a 50 year old former CEO to wait around for the next social cat picture startup to helm.

† He didn't say it here, but use the search box below to look for the phase "EIR sinecure"

[michaelochurch]

That is: people who have already made them a shitload of money.

Also: people they owe favors, kids of Senators whose votes they need to sway, and people they did embarrassing stuff with in MBA school who are now getting the EIR job as a form of hush fee.

The whole world runs on extortion, influence peddling, and favor trading. That's thousands of years old and hasn't changed much. But technology was supposed to be different and maybe, at some point a long-ass time ago, it was.

[tptacek]

You write comments like this and I worry about your mental health.

Not because I think EIR positions are fairly allocated among deserving people, but because you've clearly fixated on something as petty and irrelevant as EIR positions at venture capital firms.

What in the world could possibly matter less to young entrepreneurs than EIR positions?

And yet here you are with stories about EIRs used to hush up things that happened at business school or bribing Senators. You've taken the time to actually tell yourself stories about them. About EIRs. The most boring feature of a VC firm. The guy they bring into the room to screen you when you're not compelling enough to get a meeting with an associate.

If I'd been offered an EIR position at a VC firm, I'd worry about what I'd done wrong, shortly after checking my hairline and hair color to make sure I hadn't suddenly gone grey and bald.

[michaelochurch]

About EIRs. The most boring feature of a VC firm. [...] If I'd been offered an EIR position at a VC firm, I'd worry about what I'd done wrong

See, you're doing the right thing here. You're ridiculing the welfare-for-rich-people system out there, just as I am. That's a first step. First, you use ridicule and attack prestige; after prestige falls (and mild embarrassment does that job) you hammer away at legitimacy underneath. Then, the corrupt edifice falls away and you can build something new.

High real estate prices and low occupational autonomy are the surest sign of congestion. It means the wrong people are winning and it's up to the rising generation to fix the world.

[tptacek]

Michael, the other thing I do right is not bothering to tell myself stories about the injustices of EIR positions. I'm not simply "mocking" them. I'm right about how irrelevant they are, too. Not in some grand-scheme-of-things way, but in their irrelevance to getting companies funded in 2013.