Adafruit vs. $parkfun

They remind me of Red Hat & VA Research, long long ago, in a galaxy far far away. They're revered corporations, by the community. Their employees think they've all hit paydirt & they're always going to be there. They're not officially rivals, but when the sh*t hit the fan with good buddies Red Hat & VA Research, heads still rolled.

Unlike Red Hat & VA Research, I don't think any of the rank & file employees have any stock options. They definitely don't have the benefits we had. The motto for generation Y is your reward is doing something influential that benefits the community, not making money. It was very different in the old days, when we were there to get rich. Our generation was still heavily influenced by the baby boomers.

Both CEOs work their asses off. They look like it in their videos. Nate rarely goes on camera, but Limor goes on several times a week, for hours after already putting in full days. She must be sick of widget boards, but still manages to muster some enthusiasm while rattling off some teardowns & emails. Her new England accent still sounds a lot like, "Ghostbusters whaddya want!" by then.

It's definitely true that in toys & widget boards, you can't make money in design & fabrication. All the money is in the retail part. That might not be true for the highest end hobby grade solutions, because Horizon Hobby still has some money coming in from engineering. So most of the work Sparkfun/Adafruit does is running a store. Retail work has just experienced a dramatic increase in knowledge that requires a lot more higher education to get into instead of high school.

The thing is, the Sparkfun/Adafruit generation is getting old, just as the VA Research/Red Hat generation once did. They're now nearing 35 & still having to come up with the same enthusiasm for the same old beginner shields they had as 25 year olds who just discovered the wonders of the microcontroller. Are these guys still going to be soldering arduino boards to battery terminals & marveling at their own code flashing an LED as 40 year olds?

When the sh*t hits the fan, there is once again going to appear a large gap between what the employees valued & what Nate & Limor valued. It's going to be the same gap that our generation faced, but the current generation has been told to eschew money, while our generation was all along told to hoard it. The current generation is going to be shocked to discover that their bosses didn't work like crazy because they wanted to help the community, as they were told to do. Are they going to suddenly become upwardly chasing money hoarders like many of us did? Are they going to try to make the government take their CEO's money? Or are they just going to reprise the same roles at the next generation of Sparkfuns & Adafruits?