yangtheman

Hey folks,

This is a list of information and resources for SF Bay Area fires. It's on a site I have been developing on and off for some time. I would appreciate any feedback you have.

“One common trait of the U.S., Korea and China is that people accept failure as part of the process,”

I don't think that's true about Korea, and it is the core reason for the lack of vibrant startups in Korea.

Proper exit procedure should have disabled all access from this ex-admin..., unless s/he had some sort of cron job or launched some process that would execute commands at certain time? I am very curious to know how it was done.

As a Korean American who also has worked at Samsung headquarters, I think it's more of bad news than good news, no matter how Joyent wants to spin it.

Its corporate culture only allows the most cunning, politically savvy person to stay alive and move up the rank, and thus most executives (all if I limit it to small sample of executives I've personally met) fit that model.

And shit literally flows downwards, where goals/promises set by them would be pushed downwards and engineers have to take the burden.

It doesn't help that Korean society is very hierarchal and based on Confucius principles, where you don't usually challenge older persons and/or someone higher in the rank. This is one example that describes serious problem - http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/asiana-airlines-crash-a-cockp....

For those of you who are intrigued and have time, I suggest watching Misaeng with English subtitles (https://www.viki.com/tv/20812c-incomplete-life). Samsung isn't as bad, but the same hierarchy, verbal abuse, social dynamics, and strict rules on paper format exist.

The best outcome would be if they leave Joyent's management and culture alone. But I doubt it.

I also have the first-hand experience of their applying the same "consumer electronics" mentality to completely different business which required high-touch sales.

There is no denying success of Samsung - multi-billion, international corporation. However, Samsung is only good at generating quality hardware products at mass scale. There have not been success in any sort of software and services. Perhaps they are trying to expand beyond their strengths, and I applaud that effort and they actually do need it, since it's only matter of time Chinese companies will catch up and produce as quality products as Samsung, as Samsung did to Sony. I hope it bears fruits. I hope they can allow Joyent to succeed and thrive, and learn from that.

I will see what happens next few years.

As a Korean American, I highly doubt that this will work. Of all the things, I think the most limiting factor will be talents. I've been working in Silicon Valley for a while, and I've witnessed many innovations being created here because of diverse talents. I've been amazed at creative solutions collective intelligence from various background and ethnicity have come up with. Silicon valley attracts brightest minds from everywhere in the world. Korea is a homogeneous country with very limited number of immigrants, and also from my experience, I've yet to met anyone whose thoughts and mindset blew me away. They are always inundated with shitty social/work cultures, they can't get out of their small bubble. It's truly tragic. Korean conglomerates and government are good at killing good talents and promote politicians.

Would it be conceivable that similar type of AI can deploy and manage unmanned military vehicles, e.g. unmanned drones and tanks, and monitor battle progress (assuming that the other side is managed by human)? It wouldn't necessarily be turn-based, but constantly evaluating its moves against changing environment outside its control and reach its objective? I think such future is conceivable and scary at the same time.

This article misses a lot of things.

First of all, it's not what SV can learn from them, it's US carriers and gov't who should learn from Korea.

Second, SV companies are doing just fine, creating products that are right for the market under given infrastructure. Should the market/infrastructure change, SV companies will adapt and create products/services fit for the market. I don't believe SV companies' products behind. They are just right for the markets they serve, as Korean products are right for Korean market.

I get that for some "big corp" jobs could be more rewarding, and I am sure some are. However, my experiences at "big corp" jobs have been nothing but disappointing. For example, I've worked for/with incompetent managers who are good at "gaming" the system to be where they are and totally suck at managing people, incompetent colleagues who create more problems than solving any and do not seem to want to learn new things or correct their mistakes.

Startup jobs are definitely more stressful, and co-founders have enormous impact on the company, but I would always take startup jobs, where I can work with and learn from smart people (as long as there is a good team chemistry and no one is an asshole), over "big corp" jobs.

I just saw this on 11PM news on TV. This sounds serious, since it seems like there is no cure at this point and they have no idea the cause or how this is being spread. This needs more coverage.

Am I the only one who is skeptical about this announcement? I am sure the amount of data Facebook has will be huge asset to any sort of AI development, but precisely because of the amount of data and the kinds of data they have, it's just scary what this could be used for...

AI that has personal information of 500M+ people, using it to manipulate people...(first to click on advertisements, and then much more). In the hands of government, I shudder to think what's possible. With NSA already snooping around, perhaps it's not all that distant.

Hey man, I've been there (two failed startups). Whatever you learned during that time should be valuable assets/skills in many startups. Hang in there. You gotta be there for your family.

I had the exact same reaction.

I love it. With all the horrible and bloated changes they have been making, I thought there would be an opportunity to create simpler version of or alternate of YouTube. I guess you are still using YouTube contents so they can block you if they wish.

I still think there is an opportunity to create an alternate video sharing site that's good enough.

Good job, though! I will be using your site instead of youtube as long as your site is live.

I am not an insider, but had worked at Samsung HQ several years ago. Knowing their tendency to look for lowest price in anything and committee-based consensus building, I am sure it took them a while and hard bargain to reach $30M.

IMHO, such practice only allows them room to acquire non-prime (past-prime) companies. And their culture is largely not compatible with startups in the US. I would be interested to see what happens to Boxee team in 6-months to year down the road.

Does this mean anything? I doubt that he had much influence on Yahoo's future. I think the responsibility falls squarely on Marissa. Maybe they didn't get along? Another boardroom drama to surface soon?

Actually it should have been "by 4chan and agreed by some redditors". There were many redditors who questioned whether it was the same guy or not.

Oh, man. I was in almost exact same situation last week!

I also quit, about a week later, and I am so much happier. I really had to think about whether this is something I want to do or this is the company where I really want to work. Now I am free to explore many different options, and plus, I can concentrate on finding what I want, rather than trying to complete the tasks at work and look at the same time. It helps that I was able to get small severance pay.

Kudos, though. It's certainly not easy to leave without anything lined up. It wasn't an easy decision for me, either, when you have families to feed. But, I am definitely happier with my decision.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything ~ Tyler Durden

Oh....boy. Reminds me of the layoff at a social gaming company at which I used to work... Major layoff, and even though I wasn't affected, still felt sad and depressed to see so many people I worked closely with would be gone.

It's really tricky for the company... I don't think moral ever came back, and there had been continued attrition after the layoff. :(

I agree on people seen as successful based on one prior successful project. I have seen it playing out a few times before. It didn't matter what the circumstances were (e.g. mostly luck) or how the story was spinned, once you can place a successful exit under your name, VC's seem to fall head over heels for you.

Private social network seems almost oxymoron. To create large social network, a company has to tap into user's vast social network and try to get the user's friends/contacts to join in as well. And then to increase engagement or stickiness, you have to keep reminding them to come back. Otherwise, the social network company might not grow as fast as founders/investors would like and also most likely affect revenue.... It's a tough place to be, really. I don't condone their action. At the minimum, they should've gotten user's permission first.

Oh, I meant they are similar in terms of limited natural resources and they both have to rely on intellectual capital on their citizens and exports for growth.

Korea is mostly homogeneous society and not very open to immigrants, and thus their growth is limited. So is Japan, and their growth also hit the wall as well.

I also agree on money. So true.

Israel and Korea share many things in common. Yet, Israel has become one of the hottest country for startups. The author attributes the success to leadership and technology training in military. I'd say the biggest reason is immigrants.

It's just like mutation and evolution. I truly believe growth in homogeneous society will be severely limited. When you mix different ideas and perspectives together, you get stronger outcome.

Good for them!

The easy thing to do is nothing. But continuing on the current path is a time-tested formula for complacency.

I wish I heard that from the new RIM CEO.

I didn't move to China, but Korea, working for a large conglomerate. I was there for two years. I wasn't particularly young, but in early 30's with two kids. There were several expat from the US.

IMHO, the move to the East is worse for Asian Americans than for Caucasians.

Why? Because they expect certain things from what they consider the same race than Caucasians. Over and over, I have seen Caucasians getting a lot of leeways and tolerance for their behaviors, as they look very different from Asian Americans. For Asian Americans, especially those Korean Americans who could speak the language in Korea, they expected the same behaviors as native Koreans. If you don't display what they expected socially, you get cold shoulders. It's even worse in business settings where everyone plays savvy office politics in ever subtle ways. If you can't read or play them, your career will not go anywhere. I've seen VP-level Korean American guys getting crushed, after moving to Korea to jumpstart their careers. I've heard the same from many Japanese Americans who moved back to Japan. I am not sure if it would be the same in China. But, I've also read about Chinese companies hiring Americans or Caucasians for nothing but to increase their credibility for being able to hire a Caucasian.

So if you are a Caucasian, yeah, it could be worth it. As a second or later generation Asian Americans, probably not so much.

What level of pay should accepted applicant expect... Market rate for junior level programmer in DC area? Is there anyway you can provide a ballpark figure (like $80K or something) for those who might think about changing his/her career?

I would strongly urge everyone to look at Dev Bootcamp very carefully. Someone from there posted on SF Ruby Meetup mailing list, asking for someone to help out with the training (for free) while the program charges pretty large amount of cash to students. The worse was how the person wrote the message - about how it would be giving back to community, etc. while they themselves would be making handsome money and/or profit.

Just be careful before you sign up.

I can't agree more about prior experiences of working at a tech startup. He was not a co-founder, but I happened to work for a single non-technical founder at his startup. He spoke all the right language - about building engineer-focused, hacker culture, but he really didn't understand and couldn't lead awesome engineers effectively.

Product manager, IMHO, is an owner of a product and therefore responsible for the success of the product. That means the role and responsibility of a product manager touch on many aspects of product development and delivery. I have been a product manager at a social gaming and a web company, so my answers have to do more with such space.

- Own analytics. Don't trust qualitative stuff, but trust quantitative stuff. Track important metrics and monitor performance. One of the metrics should be revenue generation.

- Do many experiments on subset or all users. This is our way of finding out what customers want. First is intuition, but verify it with experiments.

- Own and prioritize specs and stories (in agile dev sense). This is where the cross with business part comes in and kinda obvious. Spec/story priorities should align with business objectives.

- User acquisition and retention. This part touches on marketing part. How to get new users? How to retain users? Social media? Email campaigns? Contests? Sweepstakes? Partnership?

- Etc., etc., etc.

But, ultimately, PM is responsible for success of product(s) s/he manages, and thus do whatever is necessary to make it happen.

Did not get in!

Why buy-outs? If I were looking for cutting costs, I would just lay them off.