webdirections
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2015–2020
39:23 · 22K views · Nov 21, 2013
Maciej Ceglowski's talk at Web Directions argues that small teams and lone programmers can build sustainable businesses without chasing Silicon Valley's grow-or-die model. He offers alternative, more achievable definitions of success.
HN regards it as an inspiring, funny case for modest, bootstrapped success over venture-funded risk.
5 comments from Hacker News
That’s a shame, because the article led me to listen to this talk: this video Which I thought was amazing and inspiring.
I agree. In general, I found this presentation to ramble far more and make weird connections than some of his other ones, which I remember liking. Presentations and talks such as Web Design: The first 100 years [1] (even if it was a while back and I don't remember it all that clearly), and Barely succeed! It's easier! [2] (which I saw within the last couple of days) are quite good (if memory serves). 1: [LINK] 2: this video
Reminds me a lot of this talk from the Pinboard guy: this video Or this talk from the Bandcamp guy about financial sustainability: [LINK]
There's a point in this talk this video where I realized he is a brilliant comedian, but also pretty far left, and a lot of his funny criticisms just boil down to criticizing for not being as far left as he is or wants you to be. So I don't think his mind is being poisoned -- it's already poisoned, from the point of view of someone not as far left. ;) I think a lot of tech people lean libertarian, which is a strange double-think ground of left and right views, because the role of a technologist has inherently anti-left and anti-right components. Technology is upstream of culture, upstream of society, to work on it implies defying authority whether in the form of a single sovereign or public opinion. While much of the world is still the same, much has been remade according to man's desire, through technology, and there is still much more to be remade. And often not a collective mankind, but an individual, often male, or a small group of individuals, often male. That kind of influence is inherently anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, but anti-authoritarian as it is highly individualistic. Yet its benefits can be made private (until someone else figures out how to do the same, anyway) or open to all according to the whim of the creator, because it's fundamentally just knowledge that once derived can be shared endlessly. The comments about techies not going out of their domain to try and solve things is just nonsense, as cross domain work happens all the time. Applied technology is o
I gave a talk called "Barely Succeed - it's easier!" where I tried to make the case. There's a video version here [ this video ], unfortunately I haven't transcribed it yet.