(Back to where it was) The author unfairly compared Paul to a young musician's experience, said Paul speaks Bull, and that the YC is a waste of time. He also insults the reader. The author should apologize.
He does make one valid point - if you're spending all day contributing to this news section you're probably not working hard enough on your project.
Also, I don't believe he was comparing Paul to a 15-year-old musician, but rather screwed up and switched the name of his cousin from Steve to Paul. A freudian comparison perhaps, but not intentional. He failed to communicate his point effectively.
Some of us contribute to yCombinator because we have day jobs and can't work on our startup while on company time. And yet we have bosses that tell us to hold up because they aren't done with the requirements yet. Time is fungible; might as well use our bored-time at work on something semi-productive and free up the time at home for working on the startup.
Of course, you could argue that if one really wants their startup to succeed, they shouldn't have a day job. I'd probably even agree with you. But "when to quit" is a complicated question, particularly if you're gaining (or hopefully soon will be getting - damn boss!) valuable experience in addition to cash.
Man, I feel silly now. I have several times more than $15K saved up. At grad-school living expenses, perhaps 3 years of runway.
I'm not really sticking with the day job for financial reasons though. I want to see the product I've been working on ship. Get it into the hands of actual paying customers. Because I figure then I'll get to see a whole bunch of other problems that will likely impact the startup too. Much better to make the initial mistakes on someone else's dime.
Problem is, my day job seems to move at a glacial pace. So despite having a 6 month handicap and about 1/5 the number of man-hours available, my startup may launch first. If that happens, I'll probably quit the day job whether it's done or not, because it's just a drag on the startup.
That's still plenty respectable. Woz designed most of the Apple II in his apartment while working at Hewlett Packard. However, (if my memory serves me correctly) he left HP to put the finishing touches on the design before it launched.
So perhaps it might be best to leave when your product is about 80% to the point of launching, because then you can focus full time on actually getting it out the door, and on the aftermath. If you have a day job, it might never seem like it's ready to launch.
But that's just my hypothesis; I don't have any actual experience with that. :)
He said, "I read that thing that Paul wrote saying that anybody who contributes regularly is going to fare better. That's shit from a bull."
All I said was the above, and you started accusing me of editing my posts. Why? I thought you'd say, "OH, I see why you think he should apologize to Paul."
Dude, you're a liar. You've edited or deleted half of your posts after I replied to them. Maybe you'll pull the wool over the eyes of someone that stumbles into the thread now, but your initial comment said that the author should apologize for comparing Paul to the musician.
How DARE you call me a liar? You work in a PR firm, so you use WORDS. I use LOGIC.
The point of my thread was that the author was being a jerk to Paul and should apologize. When I posted the quote where it's clear the author is insulting Paul, you got all uppity about it.
"your initial comment said that the author should apologize for comparing Paul to the musician."
At what point did I deny that I "compared Paul to the musician?" I never claimed I never said that. I simply replied to you and posted his quote you might have missed where the author said "YC is a waste of time" and also says, Paul is a bull who speaks "shit". That's why I said the author should apologize.
The author obviously meant to say Steve instead of Paul, in the intro. I didn't confuse that part of the article like you arrogantly believed. The reason I compared the two is because the user shows disdain and hate for the YC, so much he even confused his friend and Paul's names, when the two had nothing to do with one another.
You work in public relations so you're probably very good at attacking people. You're a liar and exaggerate by trade.
Do you understand it now? Or are you attacking me just because you're a PR person trying to test your training?
With all the greasemonkey scripts making it to the front page lately, I thought I'd test out my own that dealt with comments. I tried to delete most them, Sorry.
You are correct, I work in PR. The reason you know this is because I've provided a reasonable level of transparency in my profile. Additonally, I use my real name as my user name becuase I want to be held accountable for what I say.
If I ever lied to a reporter it would end my career. I'm sorry if you felt like I was attacking you, I wasn't. I was debating the merit of your arguements, which is lost now because you continuously edit them.
Public relations has nothing to do with attacking people. The 150 people I work with would be highly offended if I told them that we lie by trade - it is simply not the case.
Do I exaggerate? Yes, but who doesn't? I'd wager the best YC applications contain a degree of hyperbole, because no one wants to get involved with something that isn't exciting.
Finally, words are the simplest way to express logic, so I'm glad we could find some common ground. If you go back and read my original comment you'll see I wasn't attacking you. I wasn't even disagreeing with you. I was simply adding my insight to your original post, which is lost now because you continue to edit or delete what you say. I'm not going to debate this any further with you, because I am starting to feel foolish being dragging into this.
So again, I am sorry if you felt attacked, that was not my intention.
Best wishes,
Clinton
PS - I've taken the liberty of copying and pasting your post below so you won't feel compelled to edit it.
0 points by voiceofreason 10 hours ago | link | parent
How DARE you call me a liar? You work in a PR firm, so you use WORDS. I use LOGIC.
The point of my thread was that the author was being a jerk to Paul and should apologize. When I posted the quote where it's clear the author is insulting Paul, you got all uppity about it.
"your initial comment said that the author should apologize for comparing Paul to the musician."
At what point did I deny that I "compared Paul to the musician?" I never claimed I never said that. I simply replied to you and posted his quote you might have missed where the author said "YC is a waste of time" and also says, Paul is a bull who speaks "shit". That's why I said the author should apologize.
The author obviously meant to say Steve instead of Paul, in the intro. I didn't confuse that part of the article like you arrogantly believed. The reason I compared the two is because the user shows disdain and hate for the YC, so much he even confused his friend and Paul's names, when the two had nothing to do with one another.
You work in public relations so you're probably very good at attacking people. You're a liar and exaggerate by trade.
Do you understand it now? Or are you attacking me just because you're a PR person trying to test your training?
