创业与商业paulgraham.com编辑精选
如何创造财富
How to Make Wealth
2010 — 2013，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Paul Graham 的经典随笔（后收入《黑客与画家》）：想变富，最好的办法是创造财富而不是分蛋糕，而创业公司是压缩工作年限、以可测量方式放大个人产出的途径。他提出「一个年薪 8 万美元的优秀黑客，若没有公司流程拖累，一年能做出价值 300 万美元的工作」这类著名（也备受争议）的论断，并认为金钱只是专业分工的副产品。
为什么经久不衰：它把「创业」从运气叙事拉回到「创造价值 + 可测量性」的经济学框架，二十多年后仍是讨论程序员职业选择与创业动机的常用起点。
HN 评论精选
盖茨的成功源于产品与平台战略而非一次侥幸，且真正的成功者往往不以钱为目标。
我不认同盖茨是靠 IBM 在 DOS 上的「失误」发家的说法。Windows 发布时微软几乎得从头再来一遍，他们既有好产品也有对的商业模式——与 OEM 横向整合，并意识到软件的价值在平台。然后他又用 Office 重做了一遍。盖茨打造出世界上一些最赚钱、最高效的业务部门，而且不止一次。他只是第一次利用了 IBM 的天真，那只是事后才显得像失误。补充一点：我认为「有钱」被高估了，我们这个行业最有影响力、最成功的人不在乎钱，这并非巧合。
nikcub查看英文原文
I don't buy the argument that Gates became rich because of IBM's "blunder" with DOS. When Windows was released Microsoft almost had to start over again. They had both a good product and the right business model by horizontally integrating with ODM's and realizing that the value in software is in platform. Then he went and did it again with Microsoft Office. Bill Gates created some of the most profitable and efficient business units that the world has ever seen, and he did it more than once. It just happens that he took advantage of IBM's naivety the first time, but that was only a blunder with hindsight. To add, I think being rich is overrated, and that it isn't a coincidence that the biggest influencers and successes in our industry don't care about money.
多年后回看，这类文章只是励志叙事；编程已成为商品，文中对程序员生产力的强调已过时。
我年轻时喜欢这些文章，因为它们很励志，把程序员当成特别的雪花，向我们兜售创业世界浪漫刺激的图景。如今年纪大了、经验多了，我觉得这些文章琐碎、无聊甚至不成立，再也从中得不到什么「可用」的东西。创造财富相对容易，但我已不在意（除了当爱好），我在意的是赚钱，那难得多。文中关于程序员生产力的论述首先不成立，更重要的是如今已不重要：无论在创业公司还是大公司，编程都成了商品——不便宜，年薪十万级的商品，而且你完全能找到更便宜的人。
nadam查看英文原文
I liked these essays when I was young, because these were so encouraging. It treated us programmers as special snow flakes, and advertised us the romantic super exciting world of startups. Now as I got older and more experienced I find these essays trivial, boring or simply not true. I realized I no longer gain anything 'usable' for my life from such essays. (I find less and less interesting most essays from Joel and others also. I am more and more interested in actual business opportunities and connections, and less and less interested in general essays about enterpreneurship and programming.) Creating wealth is relatively easy, but I don't care about it anymore (except as a hobby), I care about creating money, which is much harder. All the stuff about programmer productivity in this essay is first not true but more importantly not really important anymore in my opinion. At most startups and big companies programming is a commodity. By 2011 we programers are good enough, programming became matrue enough that it is really a commodity now. Not a cheap commodity, but a commodity: a $100.000 per year commodity. I argue that in 2011 (maybe not in 2004) you can find really good people for $100.000 per year if you know how to find these people. You can find much cheaper in Eastern Europe (where I live) if you are not so snob that you think programmers in the West are so special. So unless you work on something very deeply technical or technicall revolutionary (so you are not John Carmack working on the fastest rendering engine on the planet or you are not the engineer behind Gogle's superfast javascript engine) your value as a programmer is someting like $100.000 or something. There is no '36x multiplier because of programmer productivity.' I think if the market is quasy efficient that means if your startup would be about programming then the expected value of your earnings would be sometinng like this value ($100.000) in your startup. What kind of multipliers there really are: - There can be a multiplier because of your idea, your product, your marketing, and your connections. But not programming (in case of not technically deep startups. Technically deep startups are quite rare.) - There is a factor which is related to how popular it is to create a startup. If it is super popular because of marketing essays like this, then it is possible that there are too much startups of constant sized markets, so that your expected value of earning could be even less than $100.000. At the time of this essay, when starting-up was not that popular we could not really speak of saturated markets, so that your expected value of earning was probably more than $100.000. The more people start-up the less attractive it will be to start-up. So the more successful PG's essays will be the less true they will be.
批评文中贬低营销、管理等非编程环节的价值，认为好管理者是乘数而非拖累。
「如果一个还算不错的黑客在大公司值 8 万美元一年，那么一个聪明黑客拼命工作、没有公司繁文缛节拖累，一年应该能做出价值 300 万美元的工作。」哇，事后看这话太以黑客为中心、太精英主义了。它假设公司其他部分不创造价值，我不这么认为。营销、销售等等可能正是那 8 万美元薪水的支撑，所有环节合起来才产生乘数效应。相比之下，Joel Spolsky 说管理者的作用是挡掉杂事、让黑客专注于手头问题——那里确实创造了价值，好的管理者能放大好黑客的价值。
drblast查看英文原文
"If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 a year at a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year." Wow, in hindsight this seems way too hacker-centric and elitist. The assumption is that all that other corporate stuff creates no value. I don't think that's true. I think that marketing, sales, etc., can be what enables the $80,000 salary and the combination of everything can be an overall multiplier. Otherwise, the proposition that a marketing firm can help you increase sales would not be true. Contrast with Joel Spolsky's article about how managers are there to abstract away everything but the hacking problem at hand. There is value created there, and a good manager can multiply the value of a good hacker.
反驳「创业是可靠致富途径」，指出创业是失败率极高的高风险赌博。
读到第一段我就停了：「如果你想变富，你会怎么做？我认为最好的办法是创办或加入一家创业公司。几百年来这都是可靠的致富途径。」得了吧。创业是长线赌注、是赌博，绝不是可靠的赌注。大多数创业公司都失败，极少数才大获成功——这是摇滚明星式的致富模型，试的人多，成的少。中世纪的「风投支持的通商航行」算「可靠的致富途径」吗？有海盗、有风暴触礁、有坏血病、有目的地不可预知的状况……本质上就是高风险高回报。
newt查看英文原文
I stopped after the first paragraph: If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup. That's been a reliable way to get rich for hundreds of years. Come on. Startups are long shots, a gamble, definitely not a reliable bet. Most startups fail ( http://hubpages.com/hub/why-startups-fail ) and very few are massive successes. It's the rock-star model of getting rich - many try, few succeed. Was a "venture-backed trading voyages of the Middle Ages" a "reliable way to get rich" ? There were pirates, the danger of sinking the ship in storms or on rocks, scurvy, unpredictable conditions at the other end of the voyage etc... basically it's high risk, high reward.
历次讨论
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