The Arrogance of Innocence (More on MSNBC's Bogus "Silicon Summit 2001")
Posted Tue Mar 13 00:32:36 2001 by steveg |
By Steve Gilliard
At yesterday's MSNBC summit, it seems that Bill Lessard stunned
people by suggesting that fired dotcom workers were angry at their
fate. It clearly seemed news to the gathered dignitaries, despite the
legal action facing several of their companies.
We'll discuss the summit later on, but I wanted to discuss the
reaction to his comments in detail. I was surprised by them both our
site and Fucked Company. Several people accused him of being bitter and
having taken the risk of working for a dotcom.
Let me explain: of our regular writers, only two have ANY dotcom
experience and one was employed by several over a year and a half. Bill
has NEVER worked for a dotcom. In fact, the first NetSlaves book has
nothing to do with the dotcom world, but the IT world of the early
1990's.
Most of what we know about dotcom life comes from our readers. We
were always skeptics about the life these companies led. We're in our
mid-30's or older and the idea of 12 hour days left us cold. We also
know a lot about risk. We do our own biz dev and make our own deals. We
have a much closer relationship to the economics of the dotcom world
than most of our critics. So when we talk about the business end of
this world, we are living it. These are not armchair opinions.
I would suggest that some of our readers have mistaken being an
entrepreneur for being an employee. Working for a company does not make
you a risk taker. Just because your employer wishes to speculate on
growing markets or new clients doesn't mean that you get to work for
free. Risk is not a burden on the employee. The employee is free to
take any job he or she chooses. But once they do, the employer is bound
to pay them on a regular basis.
Employers are also bound to pay all taxes, keep all contracts and
inform employees when the company is going to fail. It is also a common
practice that they should be paid severance, even though it is not in
the law in most cases.
What you have to understand is that the law is explicitly clear on
this. Just because company propaganda, options and talk of "owning" the
business may fill the air at your job, you are an employee. When your
boss gives you options, he's giving you a fraction of what he gets.
Your role under law is very different than the CEO's. Even corporate
officers are not in the same position the CEO is in, but they are in a
much better position than you.
Let's discuss risk for a minute. Starting a business is only risky
if you invest in it directly. For most people in the dotcom world, they
spent nothing except time raising money. Most sites were not going
concerns before they raised the capital and hired staff. There are
sites which did start before investors took interest and are still
going without any major investment. This is one of them.
We have taken far more risk in keeping this site going than most of
you would be familiar or comfortable with. What dotcom bosses did was
talk up the propaganda of entrepreneurship without being entrepreneurs.
They took VC cash, and in many cases paid themselves and their friends
and family millions in cash. Look at the managers in some of these
companies. Many have direct ties to the CEO. many of these companies
were little better than ponzi schemes where the VC's and CEO's were
going to cash out quickly with insider selling while employees would
have to wait for years for the stock to vest.
I've talked to real entrepreneurs. who have invested much of their
savings and time in their businesses, who have worked for years to
launch their sites or who started their sites on a shoestring and grew
them over years. There is a vast and deep difference between Apple and
Microsoft and Amazon and Yahoo. Microsoft and Apple grew slowly over
years. Both Gates and Jobs worked in garages, Jobs literally, Gates
sacrificed his Harvard education, Jobs and Wozniak worked for years
with no real expectation of income. Gates and Allen took a real risk
when they established Microsoft. If they had failed, Gates would have
had to beg for re-admission to Harvard. Jobs would have wound up
working for HP or another large company in the Valley. If you look at
these companies in 1978, they were still taking risk that is alien to
dotcoms. They actually had something to lose.
You do not have to like either Gates or Jobs, but they risked their
careers and futures to work on computers, something they loved. There
is simply no comparison to what they did and getting 20 million from
some VC a month after graduating Stanford B School. If you think a
dotcom CEO has taken risk, you're deluding yourself. They may lose
their money, and their company, but they haven't usually lost their
careers. They haven't really risked anything to begin with. They leave
school, in some cases, undergraduate school, and can get the kind of
financing hardworking adults will never see or even get close to. Even
now, some companies are closing financing rounds for dubious projects.
We are also aware, and highly critical of the fact that some dotcom
employees got paid well for showing up and doing little else. We
strongly believe dotcoms need to be lean and efficient. Empire building
is a bad thing. But the reality is that there are many dotcom employees
who worked long days, were underpaid, even unpaid, with the expectation
of making up income in options. They showed up to work, did their jobs,
objected to the waste companies engaged in. Many people tried to change
their workplace for the better and lost their jobs. These were honest,
hardworking people for the most part, who found their trust abused and
their effort misused.
The idea that life at a dotcom is cruising is a joke. In many
cases, people have lost their health working at a dotcom. The stress
can be crippling, on your body, your friendships, your relationships.
Working long hours with no outside life is only tolerable for short
periods by the young. Dotcoms became cults for the bosses in many
cases. For many people, it was the worst single experience of their
lives. The kind that turns people bitter.
At the end of the day, a job is a job. An employer is supposed to
do their best to make sure you keep that job. They do not pass risk
downwards. Yes, some companies have more intrinsic risk than others.
But risk is not blowing millions of investors money and lying about it
to shareholders. It is not refusing to pay taxes or even salary on a
timely basis. Much of what dotcom workers complain about has nothing to
do with working a new company in a new market. It is the traditional
complaints about wages and hours, complaints which are the kind of
basic, old-fashioned worker rights violations more associated with
sweatshops than the modern office.
I can't speak for other people, but most adults have rent to pay,
food to buy, in short, they need to support themselves. You do not just
quit a job you dislike. It doesn't work that way. Maybe a few
programmers, who's skills are in demand everywhere, can do that. But
the vast support network in IT companies are not made up of such
people. Get a new job is a hollow cry when everyone is looking for one
for months, not weeks.
Bill has had seven jobs in seven years, but several of those were
internal promotions. All of his employers were major corporations, with
the last being a Swiss bank. His employment history is not one of a
flake, unless the Swiss have very different hiring practices than one
would think. He basically traded in corporate life to write books. Not
work at dotcoms.
But his larger point was lost in the crush of TV. He has an MA from
SUNY Binghampton, worked for large companies through downsizings, just
15 years ago, he could have expected to work for large companies his
entire career. He has no reason to expect that now, nor should you.
It isn't just dotcoms laying people off. How can anyone say that
working for Disney, Fox, Cisco, Dell were bad decisions? These are
stable companies with no history of massive layoffs. Can you say doing
IT for these companies was a bad decision?
Bad fortune and the realities of the world limit your options. You
cannot just get another job unless you have money in the bank. You
cannot just pick up and leave your life. There are limits to the world
you live in. It is a nice fantasy. In the real world, people like
stability. I know people who would have killed to have seven jobs in
seven years, not seven jobs in 18 months. Unlike the people on MSNBC's
stage, you better come to grips with that now, before it comes to grips
with you.
|
Name:
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 19 20:40:20 2001
Comment:
After being in the work force a few years I know that I have become
more selective about the kind of job that U would like to have.
I'm guessing that many of the people who were burned by the whole
dot com shakeout were realtivley young and coming to their firts job
out of college.
I feel for them but in the future they will be able to tell when a job is no good for them.
|
Name: tenacitus
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 19 20:27:54 2001
Comment:
This article like many others is very good and I will use many of the
things that you mention when I start my own business oneday, hopefully
in the next few years.
Also is the show going to br reaired by any chance?
|
Name: Jon
Email: oneawesomeperson@yahoo.com
Date: Fri Mar 16 16:09:36 2001
Comment: Bill didn't stun any one.... didn't stun me at least.
I'm hearing a lot of complaining about how many defunct companies
so and so has been with. If you feel you need to work for a decent tech
company, then CREATE A DECENT TECH COMPANY to work for! Simple as
that... but I guess some people are leaders (however bad they may be)
and some people are followers. |
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Thu Mar 15 01:22:29 2001
Comment: Ebitch,
Hey, I went to NYU. Not hard to spell.
Also, while I think there will be SOME ugliness at the end of the
dotcom era, rampaging Mongols with submachineguns and summary
executions are not what I think will happen.:-)
And yes, many people thought their fecal matter emitted no odor.
|
Name: bill
Email: bill@netslaves.com
Date: Wed Mar 14 20:03:42 2001
Comment: Harry,
>>>Brokaw had to effectively tell him to shut up because
he wasn't making a point. People outside the auditorium made many
comments about his inability to form a sentence.
Two things:
1) I was sick as hell that day. I literally got out of bed to make the event.
2) I had no idea anyone was going to draw me into an argument. I thought I was going to ask my little question and slink away.
So, yes, I could've done a better job of making my point. Oh, well.
|
Name: Steve Baldwin
Email: Steve_Baldwin@hotmail.com
Date: Wed Mar 14 12:58:11 2001
Comment:
>I didn't write the book, Steve Baldwin did. I probably won't write
one until this fall. Two Steves, two very different people.:-)
Well, you've written more than a book's worth of material for this
site... - most books run to less than a MB of ASCII - your byte count
is probably 6 MB by now :) |
Name: ebitch
Email: ebitch@netslaves.com
Date: Wed Mar 14 12:48:41 2001
Comment: binghamton is not one of the hamptons. i didn't know bill was an alum!
|
Name: MasterPo
Email:
Date: Wed Mar 14 11:53:44 2001
Comment:
Devil's Advocate:
An investor doesn't really have to have a nitty-gritty
understanding of the technology the entrepreneur is employing. As a
private investor once told me "You have the idea and the
entrepreneurial drive while I have the funding. Sounds like a good
match!"
I totally agree that these VC should have pushed for better
business planning and experience before doling out the cash. But if we
hold all new ventures under a microscope and have an automatic aire of
doubt then the economy and technology will never advance.
While Gates, Jobs etc may have been able to start their companies
on a shoe string in a garage it isn't unrealistic for some to try the
VC route. The massive pool of venture cpaital just wasn't there for
smaller tech companies back in the 70's.
IOW, all this may result in a whip-lash to the other extreme - not
being willing to fund small tech companies. And that can hurt the
economy and the start of the art much more than some VC's who pissed
away their money on a pipe dream.
|
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@usa.net
Date: Wed Mar 14 10:31:31 2001
Comment: Steve,
Berlin '45, Saigon '75 and Batista's fleeing Cuba also saw summary
executions, martial law, and quite a bit of mass hysteria, random
gunplay... think the L.A. riots after the Rodney King criminal trial
verdict.
I hope you were just shooting (pardoon the pun) for effect. You don't actually think it will be that bad, do you?
|
Name: daria morgendorffer
Email:
Date: Wed Mar 14 10:11:36 2001
Comment: oops I meant Bill. Sorry to name you incorrectly Steve.
|
Name: daria morgendorffer
Email:
Date: Wed Mar 14 10:09:15 2001
Comment:
No offense Steve but I was slated to ask my question to the audience
after you because it was relevant to the segment that started the show.
Because of the way that first segment turned out, with Tom Brokaw
cutting you off and time and all...I never got to ask my question.
Which I think would have gotten to the heart of the matter in terms of
what the future would be heading into.
My question to the panelists(worked on with myself and the producer during the course of the week prior to the event) was:
" With so many dotcoms and other new media companies going under,
do the panelists feel that that market analysts are evaluating emerging
technology companies differently, and if so, how?
Obviously the answer is YES. But I wanted someone to specifically
respond and squirm their way through it---because actually the source
of this godawful bubble was TOO MUCH CASH and randomly generated
valuation standards---
As for the bullshit terminology. START-UP my ass. These were all
SMALL BUSINESSES. Start up is just a nice way to make a white collar
person feel better because they quit their job and have a computer
attached to what they are doing. There ain't nothing different between
running a dry cleaning place, shoeshine and a dot.com. NOTHING--except
rounds of VC funding and a viable business model. At least the
shoeshine guy has a real skill and service that pays. |
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Wed Mar 14 02:19:24 2001
Comment: Xdroop,
Most dotcom workers didn't gamble. No one at Disney was gambling or
expecting to get rich quick. Yes, some people did take risky jobs with
risky companies, but those were the minority. A lot of people went
right into major companies.
But there is a difference between working for widgitco.com and
hoping they succeed and working for widgitco.com and not getting paid
while working in an unheated loft in the dead of winter with no toilet.
That's what pisses me off, not failing at business, but ignoring the
fucking law.
Yes, many of these companies needed to be far more conservative
with hiring as well. The hiring at these companies was ridiculous. They
were throwing bodies at solutions which needed brains.
Of course little of it should have happened the way it didn't.
What is truly amazing is not that there isn't need for these
workers, but that there is a dead zone in terms of hiring. As the last
few months of the crash plays out things will get real ugly.
Think berlin 1945, Saigon 1975, Batista making his way out of Cuba, Somoza leaving Nicaragua (rent Under Fire, awesome movie).
We have not seen the worst yet. trust me on this.
|
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Wed Mar 14 02:08:43 2001
Comment:
I didn't write the book, Steve Baldwin did. I probably won't write one
until this fall. Two Steves, two very different people.:-) |
Name: Eric
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 23:44:55 2001
Comment:
In the larger picture, a lot of VC money was wasted on nonsensical
business plans. Rather than being invested in potentially productive
outcomes, it was thrown away investing in silly concepts run by 25 year
old CEOs who had no clue. The danger now is that we've lost the
opportunity cost value. Rather than investing in useful endeavors, that
money was thrown away - and potentially useful outcomes are now lost or
delayed for some time to come. That's the real expense - the lost
opportunities - of this total nonsense that consumed the world the past
two years.
I called the ITAA today and asked for comment regarding the quick
switch from "massive worker shortage" to "massive job layoffs". In
their view, "skilled IT workers are not getting laid off". Yeah, right.
Take a look at www.salon.com - programmers in S.F. are getting fired
and they can't find replacement jobs. Wired says that H-1B workers are
even getting fired now - and by law, they have just 10 days to leave
the country.
My guess is that Congressman will soon figure out that dead dot
coms don't vote anymore. Ask your Congressional rep today - "In the
midst of massive tech job layoffs, do you still support hiring
temporary foreign workers to fill U.S. tech jobs?" Nasty question but
its fair.
We've just gone through "The Great Technology Hoax".
|
Name: tricia
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 21:36:44 2001
Comment: i didn't know that Steve Gilliard wrote the book with Bill - I didn't know you were a man of so many talents!!!
|
Name: xdroop
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 21:28:23 2001
Comment:
Sorry, Steve-o, I still don't get it. Maybe I'm clinically thick maybe
it's all the snow we are getting up here in Canada maybe you just ain't
making any sense.
For a lot of these doomed dot com concerns, there never was a
business plan. There never was revenue. Hell -- for many of them, the
only 'product' was "Our IPO". You know this. You taught me.
So by extention, one could convincingly argue that a lot of these jobs that were briefly filled over the last two years should never have existed in the first place.
And now we are supposed to weep when they vanish back into the
ether they never should have emerged from, having failed to make all
those good boys and girls Instant Millionares?
No one put a gun to these people's heads and said "you, quit your
old-economy job and work too many hours for not enough money on the
slight chance you will become mind-bogglingly rich." They gambled. They
misread the odds. (I hope they misread the odds -- anyone fool enough
to take those odds deserves what they got.) They lost. Life sucks,
Steve-o, get a helmet.
Sorry, I don't get it.
|
Name: eJobless
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 20:37:41 2001
Comment: Steve,
I enjoyed your comments as well as your book. You have given me a
level of insight that I wouldn't have had but for the information you
have provided.
I interviewed with a major anti-virus software maker recently and
couldn't help notice all the empty offices as he led me to his. No
sounds of activity anywhere and it was only 2pm. Yet he said the
company was doing well...but we know different don't we Steve. Thanks
again! |
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 20:02:59 2001
Comment: There was a point where Ballmer was sitting there and shaking his head quietly.
Because Microsoft was once four people in a room. Ballmer stayed at
Harvard to get his degree and had to be convinced by Gates to take the
MS job. This was in the 70's and he risked his entire career on his
friend.
People forget that the stakes were really, really high for these
people. Explaining that you started a failed computer company in 1982
would have not gotten you a job at HP.
Then, they located the company in Albequerque and then Seattle, both highly risky moves.
Regardless of how you feel about Gates and Microsoft, this was
real, substantial risk without a real safety net. Walking down Sand
Hill Road is the difference between jumping from a C-130 over Grenada
and doing a tandem jump over Long Island. You may die in both but only
is trying to kill you on the way down. |
Name: Henry Stevens
Email: Hank_stevens@hotmail.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 19:09:05 2001
Comment:
The point of the comments on this site and on Fucked Company aren't
disagreeing with this article. This article neatly and eloquently
explains what Bill was trying to say.
The point of the comments is that Bill fumbled the opportunity to
express this. And it wasn't just a little stumble--he sounded like a
blithering idiot, a naive dot-commer who was bummed that he and his
friends didn't have a place to play foosball.
I was at SS. Brokaw had to effectively tell him to shut up because
he wasn't making a point. People outside the auditorium made many
comments about his inability to form a sentence.
Sorry you were so surprised. Maybe you should take a look at the
tape again. His comments bear little resemblance to the argument that
you've articulated above. |
Name: MasterPo
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 16:52:50 2001
Comment:
Awsome article!!
|
Name: C.F. Kane
Email: MPTlosers@netscape.net
Date: Tue Mar 13 15:53:44 2001
Comment: Bill Lessard didn't stun anybody -- he embarrassed himself with his "But I desEEEEERVE a joooob!" whining.
What Ted Waitt seemed as he was about to say was, "Well, if you are
so damn smart, how come you signed on with a dog of a company???"
Come on, Lessard! Spare us all the whining. No one OWES you anything.
|
Name: Steve_Baldwin
Email: Steve_Baldwin@hotmail.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 12:43:45 2001
Comment: Hey Steve G.,
Just so you know, my dot-com history includes pathfinder.com
(dead), zdnet.com (alive but now embraced/extended by CNet), the PC
Magazine CD-ROM web site (long gone), an incredibly underfunded e-zine
called mpxreview.com, ghost sites (another major money loser) and in a
pre-dot-com environment, the failed Interchange Online Network (bought
and killed by ATT). So I've been involved in mal-formed projects since
'93.
I know - that and a buck fifty gets you on the 4 Train...
|
Name: strelnikov
Email: strelnikov@interfree.it
Date: Tue Mar 13 12:15:53 2001
Comment: Steve, I like your articles but....
why do you write so much ???
It's only a suggestion: break your articles using paragraphs..
Strelnikov
An Italian Net Slave
|
Name: Bill Volk
Email: bvolk@youworkit.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 11:23:02 2001
Comment:
I liked ... no loved ... the comparison of Jobs/Gates to the crop of
pusedo-entrepreneurs who nailed funding with no business or risk.
Bill
|
Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 11:10:06 2001
Comment:
In good times, net slaves suffer, because there's too much work, not
enough experience on the part of their "leaders", and much of their
productive labor is spent constantly "digging of holes that are later
filled in" as management's directives spin around like a weather vane
caught in a fast-moving storm. People are caught in an "always-on"
mobilization that can last for months. What keeps them going - stock
options or some other easy promise - is obviously a phony "carrot"
placed in front of them so that they work like dogs.
When times turn tough, you're either thrown out into the street to
fend for yourself, or if you stay on, you suddenly realize that you
still have a shitload of work, but you're the only one left to do it -
the "excess" has been "streamlined" away. So it's the same meal served
on a different plate.
I find it laughable that about half of the people on stage
obviously didn't know enough about the Net to configure their dial-up
networking. These are the "glorious leaders of the Internet
revolution"? Gimmee a break.
|
Name: spladow
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 10:51:56 2001
Comment:
Great article. It provides the necessary gap filler between perception
and reality. Most people get the impression that dot-commies had these
great jobs that they loved. At least, that was the impression dot
commies were giving us three years ago. I guess they all had to wake up
to the reality of work in America: Nothing is guaranteed, the owners of
most businesses are just out to make as much cash as quickly as
possible, and if they can convice or force you to work for free, they
will. This may be the first reality check for Generation Whatever. It
sucks, but at least you're still young enough to go back to college or
move back home without looking to loserly. |
Name: Stephen Ertischek
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 13 10:28:49 2001
Comment: Steve, how the hell do you WRITE SO MUCH??
|
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 07:51:29 2001
Comment: Henry,
http://www.netslaves.com/comments/984343355.shtml
Which places everything in context. There is no point in rehashing
it since it would only be of interest to the people who had followed
the previous story. |
Name: Henry Weiss
Email: hweiss@writebetta.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 02:48:02 2001
Comment:
Steve wrote: "We'll discuss the summit later on, but I wanted to
discuss the reaction to his comments in detail. I was surprised by them
both our site and Fucked Company. Several people accused him of being
bitter and having taken the risk of working for a dotcom."
Hi. Could you please explain what you are talking about for those
who weren't there and didn't see it on TV? I.e., you don't establish in
what context Bill was speaking -- was he an invited guest, or did he
speak from the audience during a Q A session?
Also, "I was surprised by them both our site and Fucked Company." is not actually a sentence. What did you intend to say here?
Who were the people who accused Bill of things? Anyone we might
have heard of? There seems to be a crucial lack of detail in this
article for anyone outside your inner circle. I'm interested, but
you're going to have to be a little more clear in your writing to
communicate what the hell you're talking about... Your piece barely
establishes a context for your remarks, and comes across as a hurried
apologia in defense of remarks you haven't bothered to share with us...
|
Name: Bill
Email: bill@netslaves.com
Date: Tue Mar 13 00:44:31 2001
Comment:
Actually, I have worked for two dotcoms: AirMedia (a wireless version
of PointCast) and theglobe.com (very briefly, but I was there!0 |
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