(2024-09-16) Betteridge Founder Mode Hackers And Being Bored By Tech

Ian Betteridge on Founder Mode, hackers, and being bored by tech. ....the whole founder mode thing is a hot mess is that Paul Graham is entirely wrong about management and leadership

never actually run, or even been in a senior leadership role, in a large company.

If you are hiring “professional fakers” that means you are a poor manager

that takes experience, or training, or both. Founders tend to lack all of these things, so of course they don’t always hire great people. And even good leaders don’t have a 100% hit rate

Another tell on Graham’s lack of experience in this area: his lack of knowledge that companies other than Steve Jobs’ Apple run annual retreats for the 100 most influential people, regardless of level.

I think all this also relates to a post on Threads by Neil Cybart: One thing I have noticed is that some people in tech (writers, journalists, etc.) are becoming tired. Seems like it started around the pandemic. They have lost interest. However, they think the issue is Big Tech becoming boring instead of themselves

I too have felt bored by tech. Given that I have been fascinated by tech for almost the whole of my life, that has felt like a pretty old place to be, mentally.

But I don’t think it’s that people themselves are getting boring: it’s that the landscape and characters in tech coverage have become more one dimensional

The hype cycle driven by characters like Graham often feels like you are being bludgeoned around the head if you’re not “all in” on crypto, or the metaverse, or LLMs, or whatever.

Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz. As Dave Karpf rightly identifies, the hacker has vanished from the scene. 2024-09-14-KarpfPaulGrahamAndTheCultOfTheFounder

In allowing and encouraging the likes of Graham to define what tech looks like, we have made tech look boring, unless you are the kind of teenage who dreams of getting rich quick by starting a company, riding a hype cycle, and flipping it to some sucker for a few hundred million.

Perhaps what Neil is detecting isn’t boredom, but dismay.