"One thing that is not spoken about in the early-stage tech world is how many startup founders come from money or stability. I’m by no means saying this applies to all founders or early-stage startup employees. But if you dig a little, you will see the “risk” that some of these people are taking is not as risky as they may seem."
This is really true. The business risk may be very real, but the personal risk for many is relatively limited. For some people, going without a steady income is to truly be without a safety net and risk having to sleep in a shelter. For me, when I started my company, I went in knowing that if we ran out of money, I could get a nice dev job within a few weeks and not only bounce back, but bounce forward (or at least sideways). If things went really sour, I might even have to move back to my hometown for a couple months. Gasp!
In this world, agency is a privilege that's hard to measure. I feel like sometimes people underrate their own and mythologize their self-madeness, but overrate that of others and pathologize them as lazy or cowardly.
That might explain why people act bizarre toward me when I say that I cannot risk moving now, or that I cannot buy x, or y, or cannot do z, because my life is too instable...
I have lots of debts, and the job market for programmers here in Brazil suck (ie: most job offers I had paid less than what I pay in my loans), if my startup crashes and burns, I will crash and burn too, I have no plan B, or C... it is just, it MUST work, otherwise I am screwed.
People do not understand that, and think I am nuts.
> For me, when I started my company, I went in knowing that if we ran out of money, I could get a nice dev job within a few weeks and not only bounce back, but bounce forward (or at least sideways).
This thinking appears all too prevalent today. Yes, the market is currently hot and experienced, talented engineers can often find new employment in a matter of days or weeks.
But the market is not static and if you assume that you will always be able to find a decent new job in a short amount of time and that your worst case scenario only entails two months of little to no income, you're overestimating the strength of the market and underestimating your risk.
As I've noted before, this type of thinking was common in the first .com boom. Then the market shifted and a lot of talented people went from having six-figure job opportunities on tap to collecting unemployment.
Bottom line: your perceived viability in the current job market is not a true safety net. Cold hard cash is.
There are a lot of people who take for granted that they have a family/town to return to if things go really bad. I've got that safety net and appreciate it very much. My wife (before she met me) did not. It's taught me a lot and makes me cringe when people start talking about "risking it all".
In this world, agency is a privilege that's hard to measure. I feel like sometimes people underrate their own and mythologize their self-madeness, but overrate that of others and pathologize them as lazy or cowardly.
It's a known tendency called the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Life is infinitely easier when you know, at the end of the day, no matter how bad you fuck up you still have your parents to fall back on versus if you fuck up, you're on the street. It adds a whole new layer of privilege.
While that's true, I do wonder if there's a certain level of hunger that you get if you don't have your parents' wealth to fall back on, or a trust fund or whatever. Gonna make a "Dark Knight Rises" reference here, buckle up. During the escape scene from the prison-pit, Bruce Wayne only makes the jump once he takes off the rope and uses the fear of death to drive him. I wonder if that can be a motivator for some people.
It is. I grew up in a bit of a different family. My grandparents are very wealthy.
My family does not transfer wealth. My Dad and my uncles are all self made men, the only thing they have to fall back on is the bed and food at their parents if things go south, not a cent of their money, and this has been made clear from their modest, even poor upbringing. No private schooling. No excessive tutoring, no special hires. You are dealt the same hand as everybody else. To my grandparents and parents, simple having FOOD and a free bed to fall back on is more than enough to alleviate any stress we have.
Everybody in my family works like dogs to reach my previous families wealth, and now it's the same for me. As soon as I was legal, my parents gave me $1000 for rent and food for the first two months of living on my own or I can return and pay them rent and still live under their rules.
While I'm not on the streets, the shame of having to return is a great driving force. The moment I moved out I didn't waste a second, I got to work, everyday, all day, because time was limited.
You have food and a free bed to fall back on. That's an immense safety net--exactly the kind of privilege we're talking about. And presumably that free bed is in some safe, comfortable suburb or at least the nicer part of the city, the food's not too bad either, and you can even take your MacBook home with you.
Some people don't have any living family members who can take them in. Both of my parents, all of my grandparents, and my only aunt are all dead. The rest of my family are people I don't know too well. I don't have the safety net you have. I've known immigrants who send most of their money back home to their parents. I know parents who have to support their own children.
Being young and childless with parents willing to take you in and feed you is a huge privilege and a massive safety net. Don't go around saying you're motivated because you don't have one.
Absolutely and I am thankful for the chance my parents give me. However I wouldn't think of returning until I have truly exhausted every single opportunity in getting together cash to stay afloat.
>Don't go around saying you're motivated because you don't have one.
Not a chance, I recognize my gifts and it motivates me even more.
As a 46 year old, white male with almost 20 years of IT experience, what I hear a lot of these startups saying is, "We don't really give a shit about you, your life or your time. We want to suck out a decades worth of input in 2-3 years and when you burn out, fuck you. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."
Who wants to live like that? These expectations will continue to gradually get WORSE...if you can imagine that. Until (and if) they run out of new recruits who don't know any better.
The fact that a startup founder tweeted "disappointment" about a very personal choice that a developer made makes me inclined to believe that I would run very, very, very far away from working for this person.
You see that as a downside. I see it as an upside.
I'm in the same place as you (42/20), and I've always loved working for startups. Just make sure they're paying you by the hour (contracts are best) and let them suck as much of your experience out as they need. And be sure to charge accordingly, since the thing you're selling isn't your butt in a seat, but the 20 years of accumulated knowledge and that giant \code\ folder on your hard drive with the solution to every problem they could conceivably have solved half a dozen times for previous gigs.
Incidentally, "2 years, then dodge the door" is a great way to get one's self acquainted with tons of technology and stay up to date on the flavor of the month while always having a good explanation for moving from job to job. Better still is "6 months then straight into the ground", having build something big and cool from a green field and watched the kids burn through their VC while buying you and the dev team fun toys to play with.
I guess it's all about outlook. If you look at it as them taking advantage of you, well, maybe they are. If you look at it as them needing you a lot more than you need them, well, that's a pretty fun (and lucrative) place to be.
Edit: To be clear, in the above scenario, 40 hour work weeks (or whatever makes sense for you) are non-negotiable. They are free to work 60 hour weeks if they like. Your contract should include the understanding that you don't plan to follow suit. Extra hours should be rare, on your terms, and well paid.
I like to work for small companies that have a bit of startup thinking (let's get things done, build cool stuff and be open minded about fresh and contrarian ideas) but that are run by people who have a more balanced view of how much time their employees should work.
At my stage in life (speaking only for myself), I don't buy into those BS sales jobs from hiring managers of getting rich on options, working until you're burnt out because you're changing the world, etc.
Only work on contract. Only bill by hour, day, or week (depending on how good you are). I don't believe in loyalty to a company or scene. I'm here to make money to fund my own life, that's it.
Or you could, you know, do what the headline says: don't try to force a style of work that you like onto everyone.
Just as other people may not share your taste in food or music, they may also not share your taste in work environments or patterns. And they are not wrong to have different tastes than you do.
But what do you think causes burnout? Doing 10 years of work in 3 years? To me, that's energizing. What causes burnout for me is doing the same thing too many times.
Also, doing too little work over too much time with too many chefs spoiling the broth.
Also, repeatedly building things that get scrapped due to a change in direction.
So I've found startups less burnout-inducing than big companies.
I've interviewed for a few startups recently. They mentioned "startup hours". When I drilled deeper into their hours, it basically meant you're on call 24/7.
I asked them to compensate me 400% of my wage to work hours which I'm not supposed to and they scoffed at me. I told them to take a hike.
Do not ever put a job on a pedestal simply because OMG JOB! You are worth more than you think, and nobody is worth sacrificing personal health for someone elses business that may or may not become profitable.
Almost every employer I've had has emphasized the extreme hours before making an offer. It has never turned out to be a problem.
Only once did I object, and I didn't get the offer that time.
I think they say this stuff because it's part of their self-image; they really believe they're working crazy hours when in fact they're working 45-50 hours/week. Also because they want to screen out those who really want banker's hours and have no flexibility.
Who on earth wants banking hours (I'm assuming you're referencing the hours that were outlined in recent articles on HN)? I work in a bank and we're forced to not work anywhere beyond 37.5 or they're liable..
Anyways, I went on trial at one of the few startups that offered to hire me as a contractor. The hours were truly insane. Developers practically lived there, which is why I think startup offices are so much more than the standard corporate office (having video game rooms, lounges, free breakfast/lunch/dinner, other perks I'd rather make $ instead of).
3 of the 5 times where "extreme hours" were outlined, they really have been, extreme hours, hence why I'm so "extremely" turned off from your job so much so I charge a crazy premium to work those hours.
"Banker's hours" or "banking hours" is a longstanding U.S. idiom for very short days. It comes from a time when retail bank lobbies were only open from, say, 10:00am to 2:00pm, Monday through Thursday.
I'm exaggerating slightly for effect, but probably not much. Going to the bank used to be a highly inconvenient thing for people who worked jobs that did not let them pop out for an errand whenever they felt like it (manufacturing, retail, service, etc). So the term "banker's hours" also has a connotation of the privileges of the rich--people living lives of leisure and freedom. (including the bankers themselves of course)
Ah yes that is true we can leave pretty much whenever we want for however long, as long as the work gets done. Thank you for reminding me of yet another perk that I didn't fully take in.
The cool thing about starting your own business is that you can build it however you like.
You can work 80 hour weeks or 10 hour weeks. Your choice. You can neglect your friends, family and health, and work yourself into the ground. Or not. Again, entirely up to you.
Surprisingly, the end result will probably be roughly the same. If you're good at building software, and work in bursts like most of us do, then a few good deep sessions a week will get your thing built plenty fast. And since so much of the other 90% of building a successful business is measured in "calendar time", it really doesn't hurt much if you don't get in 60 good hours one week.
Naturally, if you take VC money, they might prefer you do things the "normal" way. Fortunately, that's another thing you get to decide whether you want to do.
The freedom is indeed one of the biggest draws but I've found that with any degree of success there is also an automatic reduction in freedom because your responsibilities go up. Hard to balance that.
This is a pretty insightful statement. I would modify that a little bit from 'success' to advancement. In academia you non-academic duties increase as you advance. I've seen a handful of people pull things off such that they have a small lab and don't put in for promotion (they stay associate or instructor). They trade pay for less management duties.
The freedom is indeed one of the biggest draws but I've found that with any degree of success there is also an automatic reduction in freedom because your responsibilities go up. Hard to balance that.
That is SO true. Just to illustrate in a bit more depth... as a developer / founder, here are some things I have to do as a founder that I never had to do as a developer:
1. do market research. Browse US census data, find SIC/NAIC codes, look up demographic information on businesses that we want to target.
2. Scour LinkedIn, Hoovers, etc. for contacts at companies we want to sell to.
3. Compile lists of contacts, cold email / cold call those contacts and try to get meetings.
4. Read sales books, try to develop a sales process for our company.
5. Go out and meet customers, try to identify their problems, then either sell them something and/or plug that feedback back into our product roadmap.
6. Go take sales training.
7. Read marketing books and blogs and articles, put together a marketing plan.
8. Write content specific to out "content marketing" strategy, post on our website, blog, etc.
9. recruit co-founder(s), intern(s), etc.
10. Go to startup related events to get to know the local VCs and angels, just in case we decide to raise a round of funding at some point.
11. Recruit members to our advisory board. Meet advisors, take their advice and figure out how to try and incorporate it
12. Write marketing collateral, white-papers, brochures, etc.
13. Write press releases
14. Distribute press releases.
15. Monitor press to see if we get any mentions. Follow up on those as appropriate.
16. Join industry associations relevant to our target market, attend those meetings to try and meet potential customers, partners, etc.
17. Scour for potential partners, investors, customers, etc.
18. Develop pricing model(s), deal with financial projections.
19. Manage corporate paperwork: File to incorporate, file periodic updates with the secretary of state, tax returns, etc.
20. Manage the product roadmap. Research potential new features and technologies, and prioritize that stuff.
21. Go to "leads group" meetings to exchange leads
22. Go to general networking events (Chamber of Commerce events, etc.) to network and seek customer leads, etc.
23. Respond to inbound leads that come in as a result of our marketing efforts.
And all of that is on top of actually writing code and building the product. So yeah, while being a founder can lead to more freedom in some regards, there is definitely a tradeoff in terms of added responsibility. And once you have co-founder(s) or other people on your team, you feel more pressure because their futures are at stake as well.
> with any degree of success there is also an automatic reduction in freedom because your responsibilities go up.
It's not automatic. It's up to you to choose to what extent you want to exploit that success. If you want more freedom and less responsibility, hire less people than you can afford to, and take less contracts than are open to you. Stay small and be free, or grow big and be rich.
Your thought reminded me of a Ian Langworth's recent quote: "Today, as CTO and co-founder of Artillery, I’m split between infinite freedom and infinite responsibility."[1]
Building a business is very hard work. Some people can pull it off working few hours a week, but the majority will tend towards the 60-80 hours and be able to eventually taper that if they're lucky.
The term "startup" doesn't intrinsically say anything about a business other than that it's new. But the discussion about "startups" on HN and in the popular press assumes it means
1) long hours
2) a bunch of young guys
3) aiming at extremely rapid growth (often measured by users, regardless of revenue)
It's probably a losing battle trying to and change that use. If the shoe fits, call it a startup, otherwise just use consulting business, small-business, or whatever other term describes it. It's not like you're losing out on something by not calling a web development shop a startup.
Personally I think the term startup is overused. I regularly see simple premium membership sites paraded around as startups in all the startup news feeds.
I work for a small company (less than 20 people including contractors) that has been in business for 16 years. When I left my giant-ass defense contractor job to come here, a couple people there insisted on referring to it as a "startup". It is rapidly becoming a word that means whatever the speaker wants it to.
Point 1 is decidedly a part of American work ethic. Plenty of startups in Europe have sane work hours, for example. Admittedly, the amount of startups that recently became successful here can be counted on a single hand, but that doesn't invalidate the point.
No, but a startup is a company designed to grow into something much larger very quickly — that (historically) requires a massive amount of work. Small businesses can require 80 hours a week too, but they traditionally serve a much smaller segment of the population.
Frankly, I'm surprised the attitude of many people seems to be: "I'm going to work at an established company for X years to get experience, then break off to start my own."
Then they write blog posts and postmortems about how they lost their friends and spouses, became horribly unhealthy and severely depressed. But it was worth it in the end, of course.
The article talks about startup founders having low risk because of money and stability, and that's absolutely true in my experience (especially of people who jump into startups immediately out of college).
What the article fails to mention, and I think is just as important, is that the RELATIVE risk of the startup lifestyle continues to decline as traditional, "stable" jobs slowly become a thing of the past. I'm part of a small (but growing) freelancer agency, and when I try to convince others to join my firm, relative risk is a large part of my pitch.
When the "safe" option is to work at a bank or consulting firm, is it really all that safe? Many students think so, but have to be reminded that some of these firms average less than two years of tenure per new employee. Large tech companies have been somewhat safe over the past 5-10 years, but still put you at the mercy of corporate-scale layoffs that may have more to do with your product and the company's finances than your skills.
In a startup or small company, the risks are much more upfront and come with corresponding compensation, usually in the form of equity with growth potential. Large companies typically do not reward their employees for the risk they assume, because there is a perpetuated assumption that they provide a high level of security. So if we're all forced to bear a high level of risk, at least we should be compensated for it.
This is an interesting perspective. However, I come for a different vantage point: I'm a terrible employee and I feel that the world worked hard to force a "corporate career path" on the wrong guy for years. Perhaps startup life should be always an anomaly because it isn't for everyone, but it's the only place I've ever felt like I was a meaningful part of meaningful work.
I do think it's still underrepresented as an option, though that appears to be improving. Also, access to investment and radically cheaper startup costs have made this very difficult path just a little less difficult. I think it's an amazing time to start something, an amazing time to be an indy developer. I also think these early-stage laboratories will help replenish some of the SMBs America has lost on the street corners. Maybe the days where you can make a living as a local grocer are gone. But the days to make a living as an innovative, startup grocery delivery service are just beginning.
EDIT: It's timely that the post immediately under this one on the front page is "Pushed to the limit as a banking intern". Maybe it's just my nature, but I didn't work less in a corporate environment. I was just more disconnected to my work and the results. I didn't feel the same impact.
I'm not so sure your vantage point is that different. The issue here is risk. The bank engineer may love the idea of doing a startup, but if they're like me, it's vitally important that one's spouse and children get to eat every day. More important than having meaningful work. In reality the decision isn't that stark, but it does serve to highlight the thought process.
You bring up a great point that some people are naturally great fits for startup life and terrible fits for corporations. As the ecosystem improves for startups, fewer and fewer of these types will be forced into corporations which hopefully leads to more productive and happier people overall ("improved overall utility" if you're an economist).
One of the things we talk about a lot is how overtime and working more than 40-50 hours a week is always a management failure. We didn't raise enough money, or plan well enough, or get enough people, or understand what we were doing, etc. We work really really hard, but we make sure it's within those parameters, except in some really rare emergency scenarios.
During interviews, people always look at me like I have two heads when I try to actively talk them out of doing startup. It's not romantic, it's not horrible, it's just different. At different times people will be amenable to that lifestyle, but not always.
I get so tired of everyone talking about "startup life" and I think a lot of it is just tagalong marketing. We can't figure out ways of pumping up our businesses or what we're doing so we just tag onto this shiny intangible lifestyle that's already marketed by movies or other blogs.
Startup life has always been bullshit. Making cool things with great people has always been cool. No matter what stage you're doing that in.
I'm glad to read this, nemesisj. I was just reading last night the parameters for applying my startup idea for inclusion in the YC program, and was getting pretty excited that such a program exists.
I'm new to actually trying to be an entrepreneur (as opposed to just thinking about it), and it is encouraging to read that your version of working more than fairly-standard full time is management failure. I agree entirely.
I think the keys are to develop habits around working full-out during the day, planning well, not allowing yourself to inflict a culture that relies constantly on heroics for success, and taking responsibility for when things don't go as planned. That's hard to do, and requires true leadership. I've been on both sides (success and failure) in that area. Good luck!
A 'startup' need not be something in
Silicon Valley, based on information technology,
venture funded, and intended for an exit at
$1+ billion.
Working at GM, GE, IBM, Cisco, or any of a long
list of other famous, big companies tends to
be a long walk on a short pier and not a 'career'
with which one can get hired, buy a house,
support a family, grow in prosperity, pay for
college for the kids, and retire comfortably.
Why? Such a career needs to last about
45 years, and in all
of the history of the US since the Industrial
Revolution there has been only a tiny fraction
of jobs in large corporations that could be
the basis of such a career.
E.g., might have
joined IBM in 1950 and then, 44 years later,
lost the job when the company lost $16 billion
and went from 407,000 employees down to
209,000 and cleared out rush hour traffic jams
in a large chunk of Upstate NY. That was about
the best shot at a 45 year career in IBM: Join
before 1950? IBM was not much of a company then.
Join IBM after 1950? Likely the job would last
less than the 44 years of my example.
GM? Shipped
most of its jobs out of the US, helped Detroit
and much of Michigan and much of the Midwest
Rust Belt look like a war zone, and went bankrupt.
GE? Discovered that good products made in Japan
sold quantity 1 retail in the US for less than
the direct, marginal manufacturing cost at GE,
and GE closed down big chunks of their business.
So, what's keeping people in the US employed?
Mostly small businesses, especially ones with
a geographical barrier to entry. Such businesses
do need to be started and, thus, are startups.
The US has millions of such businesses all
across the US in big cities down to towns
that are just crossroads. Net, startups
are most of what is keeping the US economy
running.
So, the broad idea that startups are rare
and strange with a lot of obscure aspects
is a bit silly. E.g., long lists of points
of tricky advice on just how to do a startup
are a big silly for nearly all US startups.
E.g., in my neighborhood, the guys mowing
grass show up with a relatively new truck
worth, say, $30,000, towing a trailer with
at least one lawnmower worth maybe $15,000 --
could plug together quite a server farm
for that much cash.
I think that while it's certainly not for everyone I think there's a powerful reason to overly emphasize and encourage it.
Not to promote needless suffering, but rather simply because, at the end of the day, they are one of the principle sparks that makes the other jobs possible. My relatively stable corporate existence, even if plagued by all the hallmarks of big dumb corporatism(s), is a blessing (and I do consider it a blessing, especially for where I'm at in my life) that was made possible by a key core of individuals who were the ignition points for the seeming stability I have access to now.
I believe that the very reason to push, even to some excess, even to the point of some idealizing, of start-up life is among a few vital needs that must be fulfilled in a society if that society has hopes to insure longer term availability of stable options among all possible economic paths.
Like industrialized agriculture, for all of it's ills, evils and problems, the shear population, as it exists and continues, demands some version, some manifestation, of a system that shares at least some of the key attributes.
Start-up culture is both the seeding and blood letting that makes stable private and public professions possible. In many ways it's the agriculture of our day. Subject to whims of forces akin to climate and nature, but who's volatility makes all the growth and upward movement possible.
It's not about hard work, it's about how much of who you are must be devoted to the career. I work very hard at a 400 person company. but I get to go home after about 42-48 hours a week and enjoy being me. That involves chess, guitar, politics, and billiards. Founders and ground floor engineers ARE the business, the code, and the company.
I just did three startups, all back to back, in NYC. I needed a break and less risk in my life. I got a sudden mid-life urge to settle down so I moved to the suburbs and I now have an easy, well paying, enterprise job. No teams to manage, no insane schedules, no Sunday morning phone calls, no 80 hour weeks, no more high blood pressure or anxiety attacks. No equity either, but I'll sacrifice that now for my non-startup job. Just a 40 hour work week and great salary/benefits. I won't get rich. But I'm okay with that at this moment. I do want to start a business in the future, but it will be a lifestyle business where I can set my own hours and pick my projects.
I'm in year 14 of my corporate job after three startups in the 90s (yes, we had them back then.) I can't believe how great my current job is but I'm still thinking about going back to startups once the job security is less important (e.g. once my kids are rich enough to support me!)
In terms of what you said about risk, I think most of the time when people talk about a startup being a risk what they mean is that the business itself is risky, that it's most likely going to fail. While sometimes it might be the case most of the time I don't think people are talking about any personal or financial risk to the founders, though that's just my perception and what I've always understood it to be meant when people talked about risk in a startup. Of course, a founder can definitely take on some personal or financial risk in a startup but I've rarely seen or heard of cases like that, when we talk about startups most of the time we talk about some sortof VC funded entity. Although plenty of small businesses are funded by the business owner, but most small businesses aren't really "startups" either.
Finally, there is the risk of failure to the founders, which can be quite demoralizing and possibly personally devastating, especially if it's the first time. I think how much a failure would impact someone just depends on their personality and how easily they can mentally move on, even if it didn't have any major financial impact. I mean, it is quite a bit of time and effort that could be wasted on something that ultimately fails; unless you view it as a learning experience and draw the right lessons and are able to move on to the next thing, whether it's another startup or more stable employment at a company that already went through the risky phase and won.
Many aspects of this post somehow resonated with me. I spent many years in corporate employment because I don't have any backup options. I also feel like I've wasted some time where others learn more about business the hard way. I'm now part of a startup, after my last jobs were with banks, and I believe the route from startup to corporate or the other way around can lead to a similar destination. The only difference is what experience you bring to the table, and a wider range of it is better for everyone.
No one is saying that startups are for everyone. People just say that they're undervalued. The upside is ignored (probably because of scope insensitivity [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Scope_insensitivity]), and the risks are misunderstood.
Most folks work hard at any job, in this economy. Why not a startup, where you share equity?
There's a lot of FUD about startup life, but really its just work, except with ambitious peers and cool projects. Sure it might fail at any time, but so can any job (speaking as a guy laid off from Dell when Dell never laid people off).
I like this fable: we're surfing, swimming, diving off the coast. A big boat comes by, and the people lean over the rail and say "Hey! Get out of the water! There are sharks and fish and pointy coral in there! And you're getting all wet and hot! You will probably drown!"
You can laugh, and try to explain that is pretty easy to swim, and you're all looking out for each other, and sharks don't really attack people very often, but you will never ever convince those dry people on the boat that its ok, really, and actually pretty fun out there.
There are many paths other than "work as a corporate drone" or "go all in on a risky startup". There are a good number of resources out there which can help you figure out how to set up a small SaaS business online or become a consultant. For example, check out Patrick (patio11) McKenzie's blog, or the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast.
The thing is, if you read Hacker News, Tech Crunch, and the like, they give the impression that you need venture capital to be a success. This is due to editorial bias on the part of the site owners. Start looking farther afield and trying things on your own and you'll notice that the promotion of venture capital is quite self serving.
I honestly think that these days if you're young and are not an engineer or something similar that's got jobs chasing you, being an entrepreneur (not necessarily a startup) is the only option.
Also, people in general believe their choices are the best choices and will go to great lengths to tell everyone that their own choices were better. Just one of those gorgeous biases we've got.
There are more lawyers than there are lawyering jobs. All the lawyer people I know are complaining and many are closing their offices because they can't get enough clients.
Doctors can't get jobs because so many people are vying for the same jobs it's difficult to even get a specialty. Nobody will hire you without a specialty.
Retail ... yeah, you're competing with everyone from high school students to college grads for jobs that often pay like 5 euro an hour.
Construction ... well maybe if you move to China or some other booming place. Most places I've seen around Europe are full of shutdown construction sites that have been standing still for a long long time.
And when I said engineer, I meant all types of engineers. Not just software.
I think what you're confusing here is a shrinking economy with a push to become entrepreneurs. Being 'jobless' is not the same as wanting or having to become an entrepreneur. It's true that in times of economic shrinkage there will be more one-man or one-woman companies founded in lieu of employment but that is usually an indicator of a broken social fabric than some desire on the part of the newly minted entrepreneurs, the majority of which will fail in the first year. Think of it as a last ditch attempt to make ends meet, if you can't be employed then you can attempt to be your own boss for a bit but if you then still can't find the (non-existent) work then it is quickly game over.
Europe isn't the only place to be a doctor or construction worker, ya know?
Pretty much any doctor worth their salt can get a job in the US (we have a shortage of medical professionals) -- in fact, consider also RN's, hospitals have been putting out massive recruiting campaigns for RNs.
Construction is booming here as well, depending on the region of course, but there is more construction work going around these days than any time since the crash, and wages are going back into the six figures for many.
Yes, there are too many lawyers, but they get sucked up by companies in other roles anyhow.
So, I guess your perspective depends on your location, eh?
But I have a few friends who study medicine and they've all told me it's near impossible to get a job as a doctor because it's near impossible to get a specialty and nobody needs you without a specialty. All the while, the media has been blasting me with news of a humongous shortage of medical professionals - doctors in particular.
Partly the difficult in getting a specialty is caused by the shortage of doctors because there aren't enough to train everyone who wants to become a doctor.
I have no idea where you are located, but the English system involves a very linear path from graduation to junior doctors training in a variety of departments and a progression towards specialism.
You don't graduate and then go and compete for specialist jobs, it would be like my doing a degree in Business and expecting to be considered for senior management positions on graduation. So, I mean, are you saying that there are no jobs for Junior Doctors? That would be madness, because the first few years of work are really on the job learning without which there will be no new senior consultants.
Regarding the medical profession, the same goes for Norway. Granted, you have to make sure your degree conforms to Norway's requirements, and you have to pass a test showing a basic level of Norwegian proficiency (and, I believe, another test for medical terms), but they're definitely hurting for people here.
_Doctors can't get jobs because so many people are vying for the same jobs it's difficult to even get a specialty. Nobody will hire you without a specialty._
Source? There is a huge demand for primary care doctors right now ( source: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-06/national/41812... ), and anecdotally, I work for a company that runs primary care practices and we recently hired a recruiter because we are having trouble finding the handful of doctors a year we need to keep growing.
Yes I would. Entrepreneur is, imho, anyone who doesn't get a paycheck from somebody else. Freelancer, startup founder, small business owner, artist selling stuff on etsy -> entrepreneurs the lot of 'em.
The author also doesnt mention that "open desk" and round the cloack hackathons doesnt necessarily devlop the most creative or stable software. I've seen good stuff written at a more measured pace.
This is really true. The business risk may be very real, but the personal risk for many is relatively limited. For some people, going without a steady income is to truly be without a safety net and risk having to sleep in a shelter. For me, when I started my company, I went in knowing that if we ran out of money, I could get a nice dev job within a few weeks and not only bounce back, but bounce forward (or at least sideways). If things went really sour, I might even have to move back to my hometown for a couple months. Gasp!
In this world, agency is a privilege that's hard to measure. I feel like sometimes people underrate their own and mythologize their self-madeness, but overrate that of others and pathologize them as lazy or cowardly.