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gudamor comments on Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015 - Less Wrong
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I don't know of Sam Altman, so maybe this criticism is wrong, but the quote: "If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are usually identifiable to a smart young person." Absent any guides on how to identify breakout trajectory companies, this advice seems unhelpful. It feels like: "Didn't work for you? You must not have been a smart young person or you would have picked the right company."
Paired with the paragraph below on not letting salary be a factor, I am left with the suspicion that Sam runs what he believes to be a company with a 'breakout trajectory' and pays noncompetitive salaries.
Now to find a way to test that suspicion.
Sam Altman is the president of Y Combinator.
I think the way to look for a company on a breakout trajectory is to find a company that is growing fast and getting a lot of buzz but has not become established and is not thoroughly proven yet. Even better might be to find a company that's growing fast but not getting a lot of buzz, but that's probably trickier.
As the president of YC, he doesn't really hire anyone, but he does fund lots of companies, and his advice could be interpreted as: work for a YC company.
The more precise cynical interpretation would be "work for a promising early stage YC company". Note that he also could have told you to work for a late stage one or apply to YC in order to start one. But it's probably true that working at a promising early-stage YC company is what would most benefit YC on the margin. (Although if what benefits YC most on the margin is what generates the most value, then generating more value for YC also seems like a good way to generate enough value that you capture a significant chunk.)
I have read something like this on a rationalist blog somewhere. Basically it was a type of advice like "you want to win the race? well, just run fast! just put one foot in front of the other quicker than others do, d'uh!"
Maybe we need a name for this.