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While the typical enterprise Java programmer looks for an excuse to obliterate a simple ETL process with a MetaModelFactory, the typical functional programmer tries to solve almost everything with “pure” (referentially transparent) functions. Of course, the actual world is stateful and most of us are, contrary to the stereotype of functional programmers, quite mature about acknowledging that. Working with this “radioactive” stuff called “state” is our job. We’re not trying to shy away from it. We’re trying to do it right, and that means keeping it simple. The $200/hour Java engineer says, “Hey, I bet I could use this problem as an excuse to build a MetaModelVisitorSingletonFactory, bring my inheritance-hierarchy-record into the double-digits, and use Hibernate and Hadoop because if I get those on my CV, I can double my rate.” The Haskell engineer thinks hard for a couple hours, probably gets some shit during that time for not seeming to write a lot of code, but just keeps thinking… and then realizes, “that’s just a Functor“, fmaps out a solution, and the problem is solved.

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Startups often involve, for engineers, very long hours, rapidly changing requirements, and tight deadlines, which means the quality of the code they write is generally very poor in comparison to what they’d be able to produce in saner conditions. It’s not that they’re bad at their jobs, but that it’s almost impossible to produce quality software under those kinds of deadlines. So code rots quickly in a typical startup environment, especially if requirements and deadlines are being set by a non-technical manager. Three years and 50 employees later, what they’ve built is now a horrific, ad-hoc, legacy system hacked by at least ten people and built under intense deadline pressure, and even the original architects don’t understand it. It may have been a heroic effort to build such a powerful system in so little time, but from an outside perspective, it becomes an embarrassment. It doesn’t make the case for a high-level position.

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Almost all of the cultural illnesses of Silicon Valley can be traced to the fact that most startup founders are shitty people. Why are open-plan offices, despite their unacceptable health load, in vogue? Low founder quality. Why is there so much sexism and ageism in the VC-funded world? Low founder quality. Why are there hundreds of IUsedThisToilet apps but few companies doing fundamental research? Because the people being selected as founders aren’t capable of solving real problems, which tend to be way outside of their intellectual frequency bands. Silicon Valley is shitty because it’s creating shitty companies, and it creates shitty companies because VCs are selecting shitty founders.

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No country for old men

Paul Graham explicitly put an upper age bound of 38 on startup creation. Why so, and what does this really mean? Graham claims that it’s about the ability to work long hours. First of all, sustained long hours aren’t productive for anyone, young or old. Second and more importantly, I’ve met plenty of people over 50 who are just as capable of working hard (and, usually, more efficiently) as their younger peers. What’s different, in the older workers, is that they don’t make sacrifices for pointless reasons, such as working 12-hour days to improve a manager’s optics. In other words, they’re harder to control.

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