That's a great use case where a quantifiable improvement would lend itself to a business case as an approximate ROI calculation could be made.
I will have to think of how to extend the functionality of the model to support this. Perhaps using the existing behaviour as "road segments", then having the "arrival sequence" of one segment originate from the cars exited from another segment.
As someone who's worked as a Software Developer in Toronto for the past 13+ years, I totally disagree with this assessment.
First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.
Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).
Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.
All of the above are from personal first hand experience. Of course I haven't worked for every single tech company in Toronto but I have worked for several (mainly early stage startups).
I'm talking about all financial institutions being non-profits. Financial institutions would not have a responsibility to shareholders to show a return on investment. Instead they would only have a responsibility to provide a needed service to society (i.e. the creation of and access to capital).
"The recovery operations were challenging," Musk told reporters from Washington, D.C.. The seas were heavy, he said, so the recovery team suspects the stage was destroyed. They were, however, able to find pieces that join the first and second stage.
If they were able to recover the stage from the ocean, it would probably take about a couple months to refurbish it for flight, Musk said.
1. Isn't a "startup" anymore (by Steven Blank's definition of the term).
2. That's been founded by engineers (you might a better cultural fit).
3. That still has a fairly small workforce (so that your contributions still feel significant enough for you).
4. That's profitable, and self-funded (no pressure from investors who don't understand what the business is trying to do, only understand that they need to see +10x returns)
How carefully have you been choosing your jobs? I don't think you're being too demanding. However, you are being unrealistic if you're not vetting the startups that you're applying to.
That's just two cents from a dev who's been working at startups for the past 10+ years.
> The cure seems worse than the disease, in my opinion.
Totally agree with you on that.
Given that the idea of usernames (originally called handles) predates the internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_band_radio), I seriously doubt the practice is going away anytime soon.
Just because you find a passion, doesn't mean you have to spend money on it. There are an insane amount of free learning resources online (in tech/dev, which I'm assuming what your pro background is). Similarly, I'm seeing an increasing number of bootstrapped startups (they just don't make as much noise as the funded ones).
My twenties were about realizing and coming to terms with the fact that there are people who are smarter, more clever, and more knowledgeable than me. My thirties are about figuring out how to work with these people as much as possible. I do feel that I'm late to the game on this. If I got over my ego earlier and/or had a more collaborative mindset I'd be in a better spot.
Keep looking for that passion. But don't do it alone. Once you find it, it'll be with a group of people "better" than you to help you figure out what to do with it. :)
Seems to be corroborated in tech by some nice examples:
Jimmy Wales: founded Wikipedia at 35 and Wikia at 38;
Marc Benioff: started Salesforce at 35;
Mark Pincus: started Zynga at 41;
Reid Hoffman: founded Linkedin at 36;
Robert Noyce: started Intel at 41 with a 39 year old Gordon Moore;
Irwin Jacobs was 52 and Andrew Viterbi was 50 when they founded Qualcomm;
Pradeep Sindhu: founded Juniper Networks at 42;
Tim Westergren: started Pandora at 35;
Robin Chase: founded Zipcar at 42;
Michael Arrington: started TechCrunch at 35;
Om Malik: started GigaOm at 39;
Reed Hastings: started Netflix at 37;
Craig Newmark: started craigslist at 42
... and the list goes on and on. check out this Quora post (source of the above) for more interesting examples: http://qr.ae/tG78W
It seems a lot of mid-sized companies like to call themselves "startups" because of the hip factor. Even though they fail to fit into the definition. Incidentally, here's a good Quora discussion on the definition: https://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/What-is-the-proper-de....
Anyways, I'm happy to have shared something helpful. Good luck!
Congrats! Though I'm curious to know what you mean by "real" startup. What's a fake one?
One of the most important questions to ask is how they're funded. Most startups fail, and funding is the most accurate proxy for stability. At the very least you'll know if it'll be around long enough for you to learn something while working there.
Also, if you're getting stock options, I suggest you read this article (tells you what questions to ask so that you understand what they're worth):
That's a great use case where a quantifiable improvement would lend itself to a business case as an approximate ROI calculation could be made.
I will have to think of how to extend the functionality of the model to support this. Perhaps using the existing behaviour as "road segments", then having the "arrival sequence" of one segment originate from the cars exited from another segment.
Thanks for your comment!