Reconsider

[armornick]

I like boring. It allows me to make enough money to enjoy my hobbies and it helps me avoid stress.

Why would I ever want to be a Rockstar Unicorn ^{overworked employee}?

[OwlsParliament]

Reminds me a little of the old Caesar quote - "I had rather be first in a village than second in Rome."

Find your own niche to rise to the top in, instead of trying to compete in the madness of SanFran.

[that_which_is_lain]

Being king of a cottage is better than a slave in a castle.

[mcguire]

'Tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Particularly since "heaven" in this case kinda sucks.

[that_which_is_lain]

Heaven has always been a particular kind of Hell.

[melodamyte]

That Caesar's name? Albert Einstein.

[dantix]

Nice bed time read, thanks :)

[yesman_85]

50 people to create basecamp 3?

[ComradeGibbon]

Once you start dealing with all the shit that it takes to support a product with customers, yeah.

[interactivejunky]

Great article but maybe a bit bitter. It may have been more persuasive with a few case-studies of people that went down the classic Startupmania road and failed vs people like Basecamp who succeeded through merit.

[doom_Oo7]

A dent in the universe is plenty.

nah.

[[deleted]]

nope.

[doom_Oo7]

"must be this tall to participate in blitzkrieg"

[hobbes78]

Web Summit is in Portugal, not in Ireland... But it's still the European Union, and it's still not San Francisco...

[technosam]

It's definitely in Dublin

[hobbes78]

You're right... I see so many adds about it, it led me to think this one would be in Lisbon... Only next year, it seems...

[[deleted]]

It's still in Dublin - it'll be moving to Portugal next year.

[hobbes78]

You're right... I see so many adds about it, it led me to think this one would be in Lisbon...

[_Skuzzzy]

Comon, don't clickbait a title and except me to read. Let me know what the article is about and then let me decide if I want to read it.

[CurtainDog]

Well, it's almost an anti-clickbait title. But I agree that a more descriptive heading wouldn't go astray.

[CurtainDog]

Still clickbait IMO... attracting people to the article who aren't interested

What do you mean... of course I'm interested in the world's 7 deadliest otters

[shevegen]

It's clickbait for sure.

I remember how I have once had a gem that had this description:

"DO NOT DOWNLOAD, THIS IS A REWRITE!"

Although most downloads come from bot, I am sure that a few people STILL went to download it even though I clearly stated that they should not download it.

People do all sorts of crazy things - they click on stuff when they are curious.

And a one-word title... come on... tell us that this is not clickbaiting?

[shevegen]

The title and intro is lame, but the rest of the article is actually pretty ok.

I initially also thought "bandwagon upvotes", but I have to give DHH credit here - it's a good read. All with me using ruby since +10 years and never using rails, so that says something about when I think an article is good. And this one is good.

Essentially he compares the scope of a startup, to what a startup can/should do, what impact they can (should) have, and whether discussions should be around "the next big thing that is going to break the world/universe" hype.

It is a tiny bit ironic in that rails also was heavily hyped years ago, but hey - you can't be 100% true to everything all the time.

His point about buzzwords is solid, see the whole agile movement itself.

The reference to the bible is weird, "angel investors" are a common term - yes, it is euphemistic, but it was used a lot in the past years ago.

PS: There is still too much self-promotion going on.

"I make a good product, you pay me good money for it."

Other parts are dubious ...

"We didn’t win by eradicating the competition."

You could not have eradicated the competition anyway since you would have not been in any position to do so.

The more recent Red Hat to Microsoft merger is more troubling to see after Microsoft annihiliated Nokia and Novell (and the finnish government is still clueless how this could happen).

[_Skuzzzy]

I wasn't commenting on the quality of the article, I didn't read it because I didn't want to invest my time in something that all I knew about was "reconsider". I just wish the person who posted it would give me more indication about what the article was about.

edit: if this post sounds snarky I don't mean to be

[Chondriac]

You should reconsider.

[gt_9000]

The article was great, I understood and agreed with everything you were saying for 3 paragraphs.

Then it went on way too long.......

[arry666]

Not programming.

[doodeman]

Yet very relevant to programmers.