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dommertoday at 12:26 AM1 replyview on HN

If you can’t find a job, make a job. Sounds reasonable but fraught with risk.

Having been in the software industry for 30 years I feel the need to provide some balance and context to your advice. YMMV

Getting a startup to even survival level money takes incredible effort, skill, and time.

Outside of those, luck is by far the most important aspect. Which is out of your control.

You have to fight and beat dozens of biases and fallacies. Here is a small sample…

Survivorship bias — focusing on visible winners, ignoring the many failures Outcome bias — judging decisions by results rather than decision quality Availability bias — overweighting memorable success stories Publication bias — only successes get written about or promoted Narrative fallacy — inventing clean stories after the fact

Please ignore the one-shot-bro-influencers who have a fool proof recipe for making 10MMR with Ralph mode. If they are real they have hit luck not execution.

As hard as it is getting a job. The massive amount of work and time it will take. Building a network via proof of work [side projects] and hitting only your archetype with applications is still far more valuable for landing a role. With, and this is key, much higher levels of success than startups.


Replies

jamesfinlaysontoday at 5:12 AM

Yep - I worked for a start-up many years ago - it was run by someone with a good idea, enough money to sustain development, and it had paying customers but it was a long way from paying everyone's wages let alone paying the boss good money.