This is why I like HN so much---the entire culture is aimed at getting rich by startup, which is a mercilessly meritocratic process. It's extremely focused on whatcanyoudo?
An hour spent hacking to make something useful or cool is never a wasted hour. But wouldn't it suck to realize that you spent years in grad school without even learning anything?
In any case, this sort of news---the rise of cheating---is both good news and bad news for founders. The good is that your competitors are probably hiring these people. Especially so for folks like AirBnB who are competing with hotel chains, etc.
The bad, of course, is that when hiring, you might run into people like this. But if your hiring process>your competitor's process, then this is very much a net gain for you.
...the entire culture is aimed at getting rich by startup, which is a mercilessly meritocratic process.
I think the entire culture is aimed at a much broader motivation than that. It is aimed at a culture of intense intellectual curiosity, which makes the community self-selecting in meritocratic way.
This carries into startups as well, because they are as much about what you can learn as what you can do. Presumably, most startups are exploring at least some uncharted territory. How curious you are about that territory will suggest how much you can learn from it, and what you can learn from it will certainly have an effect on how well you execute.
As a result, startups end up as one of the primary focusses of the culture, but I think this as much a byproduct as it is an end to itself.
An hour spent hacking to make something useful or cool is never a wasted hour. But wouldn't it suck to realize that you spent years in grad school without even learning anything?
In any case, this sort of news---the rise of cheating---is both good news and bad news for founders. The good is that your competitors are probably hiring these people. Especially so for folks like AirBnB who are competing with hotel chains, etc.
The bad, of course, is that when hiring, you might run into people like this. But if your hiring process>your competitor's process, then this is very much a net gain for you.