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by scrubs20 hours ago |
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upvoteby cobbzilla19 hours ago|
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> The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA.

If you have a lot of money it’s fun to LARP the startup life. The experience working for such a company is highly varied and completely depends on the personality of the founder. But even if it’s a healthy place, it’s usually a black hole from a career development POV.

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upvoteby jamesfinlayson16 hours ago|
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I know someone who is an accountant for very wealthy people and quite a few seem to have useless children whose failing businesses they bankroll.
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upvoteby GJim10 hours ago|
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> whose failing businesses they bankroll

Don't confuse a hobby business with a failing business.

Plenty of people with independent means run loss making businesses for fun and/or support wives/children doing just that.

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upvoteby cobbzilla10 hours ago|
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Semantics. If the hobby business never makes a profit and is capturing losses for tax benefits, that’s a failing business. It can be failing indefinitely as long as there’s money to support it, but you can’t call it a successful business.
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upvoteby KingMachiavelli2 hours ago|
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Doesn't running consistent losses eventually cause tax issues with the IRS? If the losses are offsetting profit elsewhere, I would assume the IRS would become very interested in challenging the validity of the hobby business?
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upvoteby GJim9 hours ago|
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You appear to be suggesting that fun hobbies which don't make money are a 'failure' rather than a success. Not everything is judged by how much money it makes.

Have you ever wondered why kids climb trees?

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upvoteby williamdclt9 hours ago|
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It's really not that deep: they're characterising the business, you're characterising the hobby. The owner having a good time doesn't make it a successful business. A failing business can be a successful hobby, sure, that's still a failing business.
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upvoteby barrkel9 hours ago|
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You see a lot of hobby shops in ultra-wealthy areas of major metropolises. Tiny art studios, interior decorators with a handful of items in stock, boutique fashion shops.
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upvoteby kijin14 hours ago|
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Startups are like sports cars nowadays. People think it makes you look cool if you own one.

It doesn't matter if it costs a lot of money to maintain. Yachts and sports cars do the same. That's actually like the whole point of it, after all.

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upvoteby itwaswatson16 hours ago|
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> robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better.

I have been on the other side of this, building a frontend that connected to an external service robot that we, with a 5 minute script, managed to successfully prove internally was just a if/then/else state machine.

We got paid to make it, so we didn't care, but we knew someone was losing money.

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upvoteby cobbzilla15 hours ago|
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fwiw, you’ve perfectly described the feeling of working for a “tax write-off” and how to recognize those vibes.

It could’ve been worse, it could’ve been a fraud! But it’s merely a business designed to lose money. It won’t land you in jail but it’s not a place anyone would advance a career.

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upvoteby Mistletoe15 hours ago|
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I can't wait for these AI companies to IPO and be harpooned.
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upvoteby NavinF13 hours ago|
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Why wait for IPO? Prediction markets already let non-US persons bet on startup stock prices while the startup is still private. Eg a few weeks ago you could have used a non-US VPN, shorted spacex, and lost all your money :)
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