Quotulatiousness

October 28, 2022

The real tech startup lifecycle

Filed under: Business, Humour, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Dave Burge (aka @Iowahawk on the Twits) beautifully encapsulates the lifecycle of most successful tech startups:

I like the thing where people assume everybody working at Twitter is a computer science PhD slinging 5000 lines of code daily with stacks of job offers for Silicon Valley headhunters, and not a small army of 27-year old cat lady hall monitors

Successful social media companies begin in a shed with 12 coders, and end up in a sumptuous glass tower with 1200 HR staffers, 2000 product managers, 5000 salespeople, 20 gourmet chefs, and 12 coders

True story, I was in SV a few weeks ago and visited a startup that’s gone from $4MM to $100+MM rev in 2 years. HQ currently cramped office with 30-40 coders in a strip mall, but moving to office tower soon. I’m like, man, you’ll eventually be missing this.

Why do successful tech companies have so many seemingly useless employees? For the same reason recording stars have entourages

Here’s the sociology: 5 coders form startup. Least embarrassing one becomes CEO. The other ones, CFO, COO, CMO, and best coder becomes CTO.

Company gets big; CFO, COO CMO hold a dick measuring contest to hire the biggest dept.

CTO still wants to be the only coder.

I suspect it really does takes 1000 or more developers to keep Twitter running; backend, DB, security, adtech/martech etc. But I’d guess a significant # of Twitter devs are basically translating what triggers the cat ladies into AI algorithms.

July 4, 2019

QotD: Updating traditional curses

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Ancient Gypsy curse: may you get what you wish for
Modern Gypsy curse: may you one day trend on Twitter

David “Iowahawk” Burge, Twitter, 2016-08-16.

August 12, 2018

QotD: Journalism

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.

David Burge (@iowahawkblog), Twitter, 2013-05-09.

March 6, 2018

Real estate reality may finally be changing minds in Silicon Valley

Filed under: Business, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve never lived in Silicon Valley, and my one vist there was over 25 years ago — but even then, I thought the real estate market was far higher than it should have been. The sale of a tiny house in Sunnyvale (for $2 million or $2,358 per square foot) is symbolic of real estate values all around the area, as the stories get told of new employees living in their cars because even on six-figure salaries, they can’t afford to buy or even rent near where they work. Iowahawk linked to a New York Times article which shows that some movers and shakers acknowledge that Silicon Valley has a serious problem:

December 16, 2017

What? There’s another Star Wars movie? Did the Death Star regenerate itself?

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

My level of excitement for new Star Wars movies probably peaked just before the release of The Revenge of the Return of the Bride of the Jedi, and now has fallen and can’t get up. I’m perhaps not alone, as David “Iowahawk” Burge kindly illustrates:

April 12, 2017

United Airlines implies that the beatings will continue until customer morale improves

Filed under: Business, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

One of several videos from other passengers on the flight:

Some reactions from around the net to a United Airlines initiative to treat their customers like unruly prison inmates:

Reason‘s Brian Doherty:

The world is rightly abuzz over an awful incident yesterday in which a man was beaten and dragged off a plane by police at Chicago’s O’Hare airport for the crime of wanting to use the seat he’s paid for on a United Airline flight getting ready to leave for Louisville.

The man claimed to be a doctor who had patients to see the next morning, explaining why he neither took an initial offer made to everyone on the plane to accept $400 and a hotel room for the night in exchange for voluntarily giving up his seat nor wanted to obey a straight-up order to leave, in an attempt on United’s part to clear four seats for its own employees on the full flight.

No one considered even the $800 that was offered after everyone had boarded enough for the inconvenience, so United picked four seats and just ordered those in them to vacate. But the one man in question was not interested in obeying. (Buzzfeed reports, based on tweets from other passengers, that the bloodied man did eventually return to the plane.)

While United’s customer service policies in this case are clearly heinous and absurd, let’s not forget to also cast blame on the police officers who actually committed the brutality on United’s behalf. NPR reports that the cops attacking the man “appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police.”

However violent and unreasonable the incident might appear to us mere ignorant peasants, the CEO assures his minions that beatings of this sort are totally within normal procedural guidelines:

The head of United Airlines said in an email to his employees Monday that the security guards who violently dragged a passenger from his seat were following “established procedures for dealing with situations like this,” according to a tweet by CNBC reporter Steve Kopack.

“As you will read, the situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused and it became necessary to contact the Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help. Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this,” wrote Oscar Munoz, CEO of United Airlines.

Munoz’s message to staff comes amid public scrutiny after a passenger refused to relinquish his seat on an overbooked plane and was violently dragged off the plane by three security officers.

Surfaced videos of the incident have since gone viral.

February 2, 2017

The best explanation of the downside of social media, in one tweet

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

November 21, 2010

Iowahawk: Comply with me

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:17

November 15, 2010

Iowahawk provides some suggested new slogans for the TSA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:12


If you aren’t following Iowahawk on Twitter, you’re missing a lot of funny stuff.

November 25, 2009

Tonight on Iowahawk Geographic

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

This is a fascinating show on a topic of great public and scientific interest:

Narrator

This is the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, home of one of the largest nesting populations of climate scientists in Europe.

Gentle ant’s-eye scene of idyllic campus lawn, strewn about with drunken mating undergraduates

Each year it attracts magnificent migratory flocks of graduate students, adjuncts and visiting faculty from across the northern hemisphere.

Shots of jumbo jets landing at Heathrow; herds of climate researchers busily milling at Duty Free shops, retrieving baggage, phoning for prearranged limo service

Within minutes of arriving on campus, the migratory researchers approach the entrance of the Climate Research Unit and perform the secret credential dance, fiercely displaying their prominent curriculum vitae. This signals to the security drone that they can be trusted with the sacred electronic lanyard badge that will grant them entrance to the hive’s inner sanctum.

During the upcoming research season, this hive alone will produce over 6 million metric tons of grant-sustaining climate data guano, but until recently little was known about the elusive genus of homo scientifica living inside. Where do they come from? What strange force draws them here year after year? In order to unravel the mystery, Iowahawk Geographic documentary filmmaker David Burge undertook a painstaking one-week project to finally capture the climate researchers in their native habitat.

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