[notacoward]

Same here. I'll probably get slammed for saying this here, of all places, but if you manage to push out a product in six months then either you're brilliant or what you're doing just wasn't that hard. The thing is, every single person in this position assumes that they're in the first group, but it's not even possible for more than a few of them to be right. Even accounting for the nine out of ten startups that fail, there just aren't that many brilliant people. It's like Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. If everybody's brilliant, nobody is.

That means the vast majority of these people are deluding themselves and others. Not only does their expertise not carry over into other fields, but it wasn't expertise to begin with. Their swagger is unwarranted, and intensely annoying to those who'd rather build something new than swirl around in an infinite disrupt/reinvent loop.

There's just too much hype and churn in the industry today, not enough true innovation. Of course the old-timers who got us here get frustrated to see such opportunity wasted.

[georgemcbay]

I've met a couple of the relatively recent "tech luminaries" often waxed poetic about in terms of their technical genius and found their understanding of actual technology (as it relates to overall software development) to range from very superficial to non-existent.

OTOH they are wildly rich and I am a wage slave, so I guess the joke's on people who think the actual quality of the technology matters rather than the way it is marketed.

[notacoward]

You're absolutely correct that the actual quality of the technology is not the main determinant of success. Neither is how it's marketed. The biggest factor is the time and place in which both are done, and therefore how their product matches up against buyers or competitors. That's almost entirely beyond the "brilliant" entrepreneur's control. I don't begrudge them their success, but I also don't take it as proof of anything above base-level competence.

[taurath]

Define true innovation. There's been amazing advances in many industries. I think your perspective may be one that is looking a little too hard at the startup hype cycle and not enough at the whole of technology.

[taurath]

Define true innovation. There's been amazing advances in many industries. I think your perspective may be one that is looking a little too hard at the startup hype cycle and not enough at the whole of technology.

[taurath]

Define true innovation. There's been amazing advances in many industries. I think your perspective may be one that is looking a little too hard at the startup hype cycle and not enough at the whole of technology.