Evan Spiegel is clearly smart but it's weird to hail him as some visionary when someone else came up with the concept and someone else coded the app.
When an app takes off like that, is it even possible to fail running the company? You get funding, all types of input from experts and all you need to do is guide the rocket you are attached to.
It's kind of like riding a cat and trying to tell him where to go. He either ends up stopping to clean his bollocks or he brings you into the litter box.
As a metaphor, it will get you to outerspace but you may miss your target. You don't actually need to guide it, there's so much thrust/traction that you'd have to be super talented and purposely trying to sabotage it for it to fail.
That being said, Snapchat has made some incredibly good decisions, new products and so forth.
No app just takes off like that. Even so, you have to deal with the challenges associated with it.
I'm a huge cynic when it comes to Snapchat and in no way agree with it's valuation, but they've made some pretty big moves and Evan has shown to be more than competent.
In general, I like your posts and opinions: clearly you have experience and is honest with your jaded view -- something that the dreamy younger blood like me very much appreciate.
On the other hand, the increased frequency in personal attack to the various characters in SV, and unsubstantiated at that, is getting quite unreasonable. It's firmly what we would call "gratuitous negativity".
I hope you would get back to your better writings: constructive advices. It's always easy to trash something, offering the solution is the hard (and fun) part!.
I was in a company where half my dev team would say "Penis? Penis." all fucking day. One guy was a "Penis" automaton until I got him shut up in retaliation for watching my screen to see if I was working.
Then there was the "Hey we're a big startup! <airguitar>" startup I was in, with the "Homo?" Inquisition.
And it's not weird. Throughout history, people as human as we are painted rosy pictures of the creepy shit they saw from kings, CEOs, politicians... and the secular priests who serve them.
michaelochurch is a breath of fresh air; he's no more "jaded" than the businesspeople I speak with, who must take a cynical view of their equally sociopathic partners. I have no idea about how pervasive this particular relationship is that he describes; I've filed it away in the back of my mind and will revisit it if it explains anything I see. (And of course, one must be careful not to descend into homophobic condemnations.)
I didn't mean to say "jaded" in a negative way, in fact it's very much the opposite. I would have used "cynical", but I think it's quite a bit more negative, and "skeptical" isn't the correct word.
As for whether software industry is dysfunctional: most of us here on HN is working in the industry, and we're alright human being here. I'd be more careful with generalization.
And as for michaelochurch, I didn't say that he was wrong. I said that his posts were counterproductive: even if it's true, it's just too negative and getting tiresome after a while (you will notice it's the common theme in his comments, which unfortunately just garner him downvotes nowadays, regardless of the post's merit). I sincerely value his blog, back when he was more focus on the craft of programming.
I'm not making personal attacks. I'm describing a common motivation for high-profile funding decisions that are career-altering for a number of people.
My intention is not to attack but to defend what is left of a besieged and humiliated profession. I am fighting to defend the integrity of the true technologist against the charlatans, usurpers, and general bad actors.
Yes, you are. You're naming persons and attacking them without the least grounds for doing so (and in a particularly puerile way). That's not ok here.
There's another problem: the over-the-top diatribes you routinely post to HN. The grandiosity of their claims is matched only by their lack of evidence. That takes the signal/noise ratio past dismal.
Everybody lapses sometimes. We don't moderate accounts for that. But bringing a megaphone to every street corner and blasting the community with apocalyptic rhetoric is incompatible with substantive, civil discussion, which is what this site is for. Worse, the content of this rhetoric seems to be imaginary. It sounds authoritative, but on a closer look, there's simply nothing backing it up.
Your technical comments are fine, as are most of your miscellaneous comments, so you obviously know how to use this site well. But these demagogic comments are, in aggregate, an abuse of HN.
When you have evidence for the claims you're making, please say what it is from now on. When you don't, then please make different claims for which you do. Factual comments are ok, of course, as are statements of personal experience.
I am defending the honor of technology, of makers, of people who believe the world can be improved through positive-sum progress rather than continuing the negative-sum squabbling that often dominates human history, and that is all that is left if bad leaders are chosen. I am fighting because there is a good side and a bad side and I want the good side to win.
The decision to produce Evan Spiegel, to fund him and make his career and pull strings to make his startup succeed and give him press exposure, was a fuck-you to all the people who've spent years and decades in technology working hard and actually trying to build things worth caring about. There is a cultural war going on between the future and the past. Evan Spiegel was produced (and he is a product, not an entrepreneur) because of his rich daddy; he is a product of past, much like a tyrannosaur's forearms. But when the past blocks the future, when resources are being diverted away from progress to pay tribute to a set of entrenched players who deliver no present or future value, it's time to speak up and encourage the fight. The problem won't go extinct if we don't throw a meteor or few its way.
When people fund and support the careers of unqualified psychopaths, generating bad companies with horrible cultures, we can let it go or we can fight. One way to fight is with public ridicule. Attempting to discover peoples' motivations, when they act in bad faith, should not be out of consideration. When the suppositions are reasonable, as they were in my case, it is a valid tactic of discourse.
I never claimed with certainty that there was any specific type of relationship between these two people. I merely pointed to the most likely possibility given the information in the OP. It should be clear that I was, in fact, making a claim of suspicion (justified by what was in the OP) rather than certainty.
This war is bigger than the two of them, and it really doesn't matter what type of motivations the main actors have. It matters what people do. When people are working for the bad side, does it really matter why? Perhaps I should apologize, not because I may have been wrong (and I thought the admission of suspicion rather than certainty was clear) but because I brought forth a divisive topic that threatens to distract us from the real issues. I do not always fight perfectly, but you must admit that I do fight. The desire to defend what is good and oppose what is bad is one that I hold strongly, and I do not believe that I should be ashamed of it.
I'm risking feeding the trolls here, which dang has scolded me for in another thread, but...
Everybody views the world through tinted, inaccurate lenses. Including you, michaelochurch - perhaps especially you, since your view is pretty far off the mainstream. Personally, I'm glad that you share your perspective, even though I disagree with much of it, because it's only through having a dissonance of voices that we can get to some approximation of the truth.
But what you're asking for in this thread, with the accusations about Dick Costolo and Evan Spiegel and then the claim that a moderator of the site holds a biased, rose-tinted view, is for readers to consider your view of reality as reality itself. It is not. It's a perspective on reality, an interpretation, just like everyone else's post is. It's fine to leave out the qualifiers and just assert a view as fact as a rhetorical device - I've certainly been guilty of this a lot, and PG does it all the time. But most people, when an alternate viewpoint or interpretation is presented, will at least listen, consider their points, and possibly adapt their worldview.
It doesn't advance the discourse or our understanding of the truth to say "You're just biased", because all it invites are posts that say "No, you're biased." Duh. Everybody is biased. The point of critical thinking is to take in a bunch of different viewpoints, understand everyone's biases (including our own), and then work out what's actually going on.
FWIW, that narrative you hold for SnapChat doesn't actually match up with the facts. They first floated the idea in April 2011, and launched the product in June 2011. [1] It was not funded until May 2012, with the first meeting with VCs in March 2012. At the time of funding, they had about 100,000 users and served roughly 25 images/sec [2].
Now, I'm not personally a SnapChat user/employee/investor, and I think some of the other information that has come to light about Evan Spiegel and SnapChat's business practices is pretty reprehensible. But the narrative that actually fits the facts is a much more straightforward one: a driven entrepreneur builds a product with the help of his buddies, convinces a critical mass of people to use it, gets it growing fast, and then VC piles in hoping to get a piece of the next big thing. No sinister conspiracies.
Never attribute to malice that which could be equally attributed to incompetence
All that you describe is not unique to Technology or anything else. Anywhere there are power relationships there is the cronyism and nepotism that you describe. I wish I could say I am with you in this fight, but I think it's just a fundamental part of human nature - making countering it a Sisyphean task.
"as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
Not to defend his recent over-the-top diatribes, but I think his recent escalation of shouting is due to him feeling wronged by HN moderation. I mean, he literally said in a comment sometime ago that the HN comment rankban only made him more obstinate in letting everyone know about his frustrations with all that's wrong with "VC-istan".
Speculating about "some kind of creepy mancrush" is definitely personal and quite hostile. The rest of your post is just an irrelevant diatribe, though.
Not wanting to flame here, just curious (I have asked a number of times on HN and trying to learn); I'm not from the US and 'some kind of creepy mancrush' would definitely not be considered in any way 'hostile' around here; I wouldn't know of anyone in my circle in any context who would take that personal either. It does there? Seems people have way longer toes and are very prudish in silicon valley; yes I know that's a generalisation but it interests me because I have seen this so often on HN while I rarely see it in other places which are more diverse in their audience.
I guess the over usage might have cut down the connotation? It just doesn't 'feel' like anything that bad... For instance at parties or gatherings if there is some dude standing in a corner looking around girls call him creepy a lot; I don't really think that's a 'very bad sign'. Just a bit of weirdo... Also people call other people who go to gothic dress ups creepy; I think they would consider that a compliment in fact. But again, sounds rather that the over usage makes it less bad sounding, at least outside the US maybe. I still do think it's the US though, mostly because it's so outspoken there with that weird beeping away of 'curse words', saying 'oh my gosh' and making describing some rambling dude his opinion as hostile. Hostile to me has a very different connotation than being called creepy even if it's very sincerely meant.
The strange assertions aside, calling someone creepy (and meaning it) is hostile. The individual used this to mean the relationship between the two men was disgusting. Saying you think someone is disgusting, with as much intent and conviction as was applied here isn't like a joke, it's a serious opinion. I don't know how to express this. It wasn't a joke, what this user posted. If someone posted a long description of how they inanely perceived your life and your association with your colleagues and made true-looking allegations of 'creepy' non-sexual sexual relations I wonder if you wouldn't be offended and would want to clear up the misunderstanding.
> In one thread last April, Lynton asks Costolo for a favor: Can he help get his wife’s news website’s Twitter handle, @LASchoolReport, verified? Costolo replies the same day: “I will have this looked at today and get it taken care of. Stay tuned!”
>
> Twitter’s policy for verifying accounts has frustrated many, so this isn’t an outrageous request. But it appears even a line directly to the top doesn’t always work. LA School Report, which covers the Los Angeles education universe in impressive detail, remains unverified.
In one hand, this is a good thing that journalists are investigating leaks. This is a lot of data, and regular citizen can not take the time for analyzing it all. That's quite what we expect from a journalist doing a proper job.
On the other hand, not just any data does yield newsworthy information. I know it's sad to have spent that many time without finding anything of interest, but after reading this article, I have a strange feeling of voyeurism without having learn anything that would be deemed "of public interest".
It may be normal and a common practice, but none of that implies that such practices should be seen as "normal" or used at all. Ethics cannot be derived from argumentum ad antiquitatem or argumentum ad populum.
I'll make a slightly stronger argument though. You should do business with those you trust. There is no rigorous rational way to determine someone's trustworthiness, so you must get to know them and see how they respond to situations and ultimately rely on your intuition for making decisions.
It's just human nature and I seriously doubt it will ever change. Business is usually built on a relationship of trust, so of course if you know someone you will get better treatment than if you are a stranger.
A good example is a new startup giving an executive a free account to try to get their interest. According to you, it's unethical, but it actually helps small companies compete.
Can we all just agree that while individual technology choices may be decided according to some figure of merit, business is a messy multi-biased thing and move on?
Most business people don't claim to be uber-smart and visionary. They just try to do their jobs like everyone else. Do you think the CEO of McDonalds expects anyone to believe that he's some prodigy who's "transforming the world of hamburgers"?
Silicon Valley created its own pedestal of "meritocracy" so when we find out that it's no more meritocratic than any other business-- and, in fact, often less so-- the black eye is deserved.
When an app takes off like that, is it even possible to fail running the company? You get funding, all types of input from experts and all you need to do is guide the rocket you are attached to.