Hacking a company together is really hard. Like tech hacking, it requires intelligence, creativity, and persistence.
There's no reason we can't read about and respect both on this site.
He's not putting anything or anyone down, he's saying that this is hacking, and MBA posts of acronym soup aren't.
I think his implied conclusion is probably wrong-ish (both are arguably right for HN, even if I vastly prefer this), but he's right in that this is hacking.
entrepreneurship today in particular in tech often tries to capitalise on the latter rather than the former, at least most of the time. Adopting the aesthetics of hacker culture to further institutions that could not be more damaging to an open ecosystem is already more common than actual 'hacking'.
Business inherently relies on secrecy (proprietary stuff). Hackers try to make secret things open.
Sometimes you can reveal your "secret sauce" but patents/copyright/regulation will protect it from being stolen. So the "secret sauce" is still what separates you from the other businesses...
It makes sense in my head, but maybe I'm rambling... I'll try and write a blog post to explain my thoughts a bit better.
Can you think of a business that is entirely transparent?
Being a successful business doesn’t mean that you must be secretive about your business operations. I don’t think it requires an “upper hand” either. Those may be key to out-competing other businesses in some way, but that is different than being successful. (Capital culture makes us think of a “successful business” as one that makes insane amounts of money, rather than one that achieves a goal.)
Of course, all businesses realistically will have some secrets, but those may often be separate from the business operations. For example, it would probably be very difficult to be public about all of your HR details, or expose all of your internal phone numbers/emails/physical addresses (humans just like basic privacy).
But many local businesses can probably operate just fine without being very secretive. There was a place in my hometown I loved that served shakes, cheese sticks, and cheeseburgers. I don’t think he did anything special that needed to be kept secret. People just like a nice diner with a decent burger.
Won't be working on your Aviato car, I am sorry :)
In addition to running on a laptop, openpilot also runs on a phone for easy mounting in your car.
tl;dr is that people are now more motivated by the idea of being an entrepreneur than by having a great business concept.
I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd be way richer right now if I had just taken a job at some bigco. Or kept doing consulting.
I don't feel that what I'm doing right now (building a startup because I can) is fundamentally different from my demoscene past (coding computer graphics because I could). Sure, some startups make some people obscenely rich, but the vast majority don't :-) It's not too different from art or AI hobbying or gaming or game modding in that sense.
It is - Tikej's point isn't that it's not a skill - but rather that it's not the right place to share these. Think of the difference between a "Startup News" and "Hacker News". Hacker news used to be very deep on tech topics, now those deep topic have become more rare.
It is refreshing to be reminded of the myriad of ways computers can interact with the world! I recently refreshed my love for technology by getting into 3D printing, it's nice to have a tangible result for my efforts behind the keyboard. The machine is surprisingly rudimentary as well, and reminds me of old school CNC machines, so it's relaxing in the way driving a classic car can be. You can understand all the parts and their purpose intuitively, as they operate in the real world.
So glad to see people doing silly things that in fact require skill. This is why I come to hackernews.
Keep up great work with this wonderful attitude!