A lot of us are in it not just for the money. Sure enterprise companies can pay many times more, but who cares? Literally, who cares? You will never be "cool" by building the next oracle. And that's why most of us don't want to be the next oracle.
It's a different market with different customer mind sets. More importantly, "cool" is relative. Coke is family oriented, aka not cool. This allows pepsi to be "cool" by associating its brand with "hot" celebrities and trends. On the other hand, Facebook has nothing older to compare to. It's "cool" relative to myspace I suppose.
I see the evolution of social networking evolving from connecting with everyone in the world, aka public networking to only connect with the ones you actually care about, aka private networking. When Facebook was cool, it was cool to know that you can post a status update and have the "whole world" see it. With the rise of messaging services (snapchat, whatsapp, line and so on), we are moving to the stage where you only share with a very small group of closely connected individuals. A more intimate network.
Facebook, as usual, simply gives no regard to personal privacy. They will do whatever it takes to exploit your personal info, including your deepest and darkest thoughts, in order to make money. Mark Zuckerberg is a shameless person. Just look at how he copies every single competitor shamelessly. What can we except from a company with a leader like that? Shameless exploitation of course.
Application based comparisons are usually flawed, because the writer will never and cannot release enough info to reveal the real problem. Just because your bad-performing application runs faster on one platform doesn't necessarily mean that platform is superior to the old one. It simply means whatever problems you have in your bad-performing application manifests less in the new platform. In the end, fix your application!
Completely agree. They are not doing anything even remotely innovative. Added direct messaging means nothing when the simple direct messaging channel has already evolved beyond just a picture/video. A techchrunch article said they are like Apple, not doing it first, but doing it the best. That's complete BS as well. It doesn't look or feel any different or better than FB messenger, iMessage, whatsapp, snapchat or any other messaging apps for that matter.
On one hand, having a variety of languages makes the world diverse, more interesting and perhaps even encourages different ways of thinking. On the other hand, the high cost of communicating with multiple languages makes sharing thoughts and ideas harder, and perhaps even hinders our productivity and advancement as a whole. It's a tough call, but I vote for unification. In the name of advancement of humanity, we shall sacrifice diversity!
Why does it matter if it's "open" or not? Stop trying to break other people's stuff already. We all want things our own way, so why not respect other people's ways as well.
Seems like a long stretch. Who cares if the CEO is a nice guy? Steve Jobs is known as a terrible boss, but no one cares. The only thing matters to the mass consumers and the company's customers is the products the company produces.
Am I supposed to be impressed by this? "truly open and gesture based OS". I thought the open card has been played and dead already. And don't iOS and Android both have plenty of gestures? I didn't see anything new at all.
Luck by definition is based on chance, something one cannot fully control. A startup of course involves luck, simplify because no company can control all the factors involved in becoming a success. So yes, I completely agree that successful startups are lucky. However, it's not "just" lucky as your title suggests. Just like playing lottery or gambling, there are ways you can maximize your chances of winning. Buy more lottery tickets as your blog post says, is one way to maximize the chance. In the startup world, obtaining the right skills, choosing the right features to implement, making the right connections and a million and one others are all the things you can do to maximize your chances of building a successful startup. I think your post illustrates the right idea that there is luck and chance involved at building a successful startup. But isn't that the case for everything in life? In the end, the rule of thumb is, "do whatever you can, and the rest is luck".
The code challenge is usually just one part of the interview process to see if you can produce a quality product within a certain amount of time. It's not designed to tell every single thing you outlined in your post. It's meant to provide some signal before the actual on-site interview occurs. The on-site interview is expensive on the company's part, it is easier to filter out people who can't solve a simple full-stack solution. Companies who ask things like these are looking for people who understand both front and back ends. In short, just knowing either front or backend but not both, is not enough for the company.