sudo Ask PG: please make me a sandwich.

Ask PG: please make me a sandwich.

Edit: In all seriousness, you can probably find answers to most of these in his existing essays.

I think I know what Warren Buffet was trying to say. There has been an equity premium in the capital markets for a long, long time. Stocks have tended to return more than most other asset classes even after adjusting for risk. That equity premium remained in place for so long because most investors didn't even realize that it was there; essentially they thought that stocks would be more risky than they really turned out to be.

Now that the equity premium is more widely recognized and understood, traders have mostly arbitraged it away. So if present trends continue for the next 92 years then stocks may not return much more than bonds, real estate, commodities, etc. (At least not after you adjust for the actual risk.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_premium_puzzle

1. A lot more experienced. Before YC, the only startups I knew about were the ones started by me and by friends. Now I know which of their qualities were essential to their success, and which were incidental.

2. This answer will sound useless, but it's the same reason anyone is good at anything. There's no single secret. There are about 20 different things we have to do, from recognizing talent to talking about product ideas to matching people up with VCs, and we try hard to do them all well.

3. By accident. When we first started YC, we didn't know what to do, so we started with a summer program. Most college students regard summer jobs as disposable anyway, so we figured no one would mind if the experiment was a disaster and all the companies failed. As it turned out, that batch did remarkably well.

4. This one I already did write about: http://ycombinator.com/about.html

5. That it's not as easy as it looks. A lot of people think investing is like betting on horses: you pick, they race, and if they win you get money. Actually it is a lot more active than that. And the earlier the stage, the more work it is. If you want to invest at this stage, you need to have the same qualities you'd need to be a successful founder.

In my years as an investment banker, most of the sleep deprivation that I was subjected to was the result of poor planning (mostly by other people) and a hyper-macho, superficial culture. Now as I'm trying to rebuild my health and psyche, I realize that maybe 20% of it was necessary to accomplish some important project. The rest could have been skipped without harming the financial results of the company, though my reputation would have suffered and I might have been fired long before I quit.

David, if your advocacy leads to even slightly more humane workplaces, you will deserve to be hailed as a saint by millions of people.

Isn't it the responsibility of the wife to bring in a steady income?

Doing a startup seems to me more like playing soccer than running a marathon. Though you need to pace yourself, there are moments when you want to work super hard. So while being out of breath is not a sufficient condition for winning, it probably is a necessary one.

Likewise for startups. Sleep deprivation is not a sufficient condition for winning, but empirically it seems to be a necessary one. Not long-term, obviously, but during certain peak times. Even at YC there are times when we have to work so hard that we sleep less. On interview weekends, for example.

So the reason people who work hard (not just in startups, but in all fields) treat sleep deprivation as a badge of honor is that it's a sign that one has the necessary commitment not to cave when there are spikes of work.

Can we "pls" leave the expression "pls" on Reddit and Digg?

Isn't this just like 20 years ago when everyone thought the Japanese were going to take over?

This might be better titled "Chronic sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor", but the point is well-made. Being sleep-deprived is like being drunk: you're not competent to realize how incompetent you've become.

Raises? It's called changing jobs.

I have become sick and tired of the carping and flaming you see from some folks whenever Joel publishes a rant, accusing him of douchebaggery and all sorts of sin. The usual behaviour is that he has one great insight, a bunch of entertaining ranting, and one egocentric point. And on the basis of this, the whole thing is junk and he is a has-been windbag.

I don't go along with that sort of vilification. If a post has one great insight, something I can learn from, I'm a happy man. I can chuckle at Joel complaining about competing for interns with Google as long as I'mn entertained by his prose and intrigued by his central thesis.

I would have loved this post on that basis.

Except.

WTF is with the dig at playing Ultimate? Joel, you have totally lost it this time. Ultimate is the ultimate nerd sport, and interns who play Ultimate are your best hires ever.

Ultimate involves complex plays involving team co-ordination. A skill that just might come in handy working on a software development team. The flight of the disc is the kind of thing the mathematical mind drools over--gyroscopic procession, ballistics, aerodynamics, everything comes in to play.

Ultimate players are healthy and I'll wager can crank code for long hours compared to those who eschew aerobic sports in favour of foosball.

And for those who are still single... Ultimate is a great place to meet people of every gender and orientation. Which leads to cohabitation, the purchase of homes, large mortgages, and a slavish devotion to working your ass off to earn a fat bonus.

Joel, I wanted to like this post, I really did. But you have got to stop making insanely wrong pronouncements about things that matter most.

Like which games interns ought to play ;-)

Twitter always struck me as a little lower on the complexity scale and a little higher on the throughput scale than where RoR's sweet spot lies.

Since their requirements seem like they're pretty static now, I would think writing a backend in C wouldn't be out of the question.