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Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#111

Post by derefr »

twright0 wrote: post #98
alexandercrohde wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for comparison, I lived in SF for about 4 years. I saved a huge amount of money. I lived with 3 roommates to save money, I sold my car, you won't get stabbed anywhere in SF (so live in the sketchy area it'll get nicer each year). My rent was $1,200 a month, a lucky find. Now don't get me wrong I hated living there, no girls, homelessness everywhere smelled like garbage, and a self-obsession that pretended to be…

> you won't get stabbed anywhere in SF (so live in the sketchy area it'll get nicer each year) This is flatly untrue and bad advice - there are absolutely areas of San Francisco where you run the risk of being the victim of physical violence. Some people will be comfortable living in that kind of environment but many won't, and suggesting that all of San Francisco is uniformly safe is irresponsible.

Is there really? For a long time I've lived in an area (East Hastings in Vancouver) that people say is similarly "sketchy", but from what I can see, it's not dangerous to passersby—it's instead that there's a lower class involved in drugs and sex work, and they sometimes attack each other (i.e. people they know, who they have a grudge against.) They don't go around attacking random strangers.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#112

Post by hkmurakami »

nichochar wrote: post #42

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of mone…

The "scumbags" you describe are the ones that exhibit a strong "need for power" as described by McClelland. Engineers tend to have stronger "need for achievement", eschewing the power grab.

But organizations today and perhaps in the past have always rewarded those who attain the power. Perversely, if you want a place where achievement (ie doing the work, building things) is rewarded properly, you need someone with that mindset to suck it up and win the power game.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#113

Post by urda »

gxs wrote: post #54
ryandrake wrote: post #7

> Often times there are hard barriers preventing people from starting a company. In these cases my best advice is to move to a tech hub (preferably the Bay Area) and work for a tech company until you can save the money I had to laugh there. Moving to the Bay Area will reduce your ability to save money, not increase it. I was probably saving 40-50% of my salary when I worked in Nowhereville, Florida. With the housing…

This is an insult to the thousands of people who make it in the bay area on barista wages. Just fucking wow. You can save in the bay area, live with roommates and pay comfortably . You don't even have to do that forever, just long enough to move up a bit in your job and save for a downpayment if buying a home is your goal. Not to mention if your spouse works and makes similar money then you can live a really high qua…

> This is an insult to the thousands of people who make it in the bay area on barista wages.

No this is the reality of living in the Bay Area. People who are living on barista wages are getting screwed by it. It's an insult to them that this is the reality today.

> Just fucking wow.

Alright calm down, you're on HN not reddit. You can express your viewpoint without being dramatic and vulgar.

> You can save in the bay area, live with roommates and pay A tech worker shouldn't have to be loading up on roommates to get sub 2k rent (which is still crazy high compared to the rest of the country) but in the Bay area they have to. Why? It's insane that's how it is.

> At a salary of 100k you should be able to save 1500-2k per month comfortably.

Again looks great on paper, but you bet California tax is going to eat most of your paycheck in one go. Not to mention that many are having to carry student debt, personal debt, or have other financial obligations.

> and save for a downpayment if buying a home is your goal.

Let's be absolutely clear on this: there is currently little to no path to home ownership in the bay area for the majority living there. This isn't drama, this isn't made up, this is fact.

> If you think you're entitled to owning a big house, 2 cars, with money left over for dining out everyday and to pad your savings for a 5M retirement fund, you're going to have a bad time.

If you think that those living in the Bay Area still subscribe to this "dream", you're completely disconnected from SF.

> you're going to have a bad time.

Again, not reddit. You can express serious viewpoints here without memes and jokes.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#114

Post by JimboOmega »

My experience has been that jumping from employee to any level of executive is the absolute hardest step, at least for me.

I think once you are a team lead and have some number of direct reports, you can then start jumping your way up that ladder. But going from 0 to 5 direct reports has often seemed impossible. I'd be open to tips on how to do it.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#115

Post by koolba »

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #95
koolba wrote: post #51

Regardless of which path you'd like to go down, learn some basic financial planning, frugality, and learn to live like a miser. It'll pay dividends, both figuratively and literally. Regarding the executive path, or more generally any management role, learn early on if it's for you. If you're the type that gets caught up in human interest stories, considers it inhumane to fire low performers, or generally believes in…

For someone who recently graduated and quite clueless about financial planning, do you have some resources to get started?

The usual generic financial advice I give is:

- Maximize every retirement vehicle offered to you (max 401k, HSA, etc).

- Pretend that any money you sock away for retirement doesn't exist. This is best done with automated withdrawals so you never even consider it money in your checking account.

- Learn to cook. This doesn't actually save much money at the individual level but is huge for families.

- Set up separate accounts for expenses and savings. Most payroll setups allow you to automatically divert funds to multiple accounts. This lets you automatically put $X in your expense account and $TOTAL - $X in the savings account. Again, the idea is to never consider that money spendable. It goes into a lock box.

- Shoot for a 50+% after tax savings rate. It sounds nuts but it's actually easier than you think. The key is to not bump up your expenses as your income increases. You might not be there when you first start out but if you're increasing earnings 5-10% per year you'll get there quite quickly (particularly in tech).

- Never buy a new car. They're for chumps.

- Never lease a new car. That's for the biggest chumps.

- Once you've built up an 8 to 12 month nest egg of reserve cash, start allocating the rest in a diversified portfolio. Pick securities from the trading company that don't have transaction costs (large discount brokers usually have in house mirrors of popular ETFs for this).

Stick on this path and you'll eventually be sitting on a decent nest egg. Plus if you've reined in your expenses, if you decide to go the founder route you'll have plenty of runway to pursue your ideas.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#116

Post by bproven »

mmm94720 wrote: post #34
hellbreaker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep on hearing about that.. so what's savings rate people should expect in SF?

Let me describe a typical mid-career Silicon Valley salaried tech worker scenario. YMMV of course. Base comp 200K Bonus, stock, 401k match 50K Total gross comp 250K Expenses: Taxes 40% (30% fed, 10% state) 100K Rental housing 40K ($3300/month) Food 15K Transportation 15K Discretionary spending 20K Total expenses 190K As a result, you can comfortably save $60K per year. Of course, kids and housing options will add gre…

Although maybe I'm wrong - I really question that 250K is "typical" pay even in the bay area. I'd say the truth is that is about 1/2 that (maybe slightly more). If you are the cream of the crop (top 10%ish? in top/senior positions) maybe that is reality - for the majority I don't see it after living here for the last 6 months.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#117

Post by losteverything »

A good read. What about very stable high paying non-tech jobs in very techicnal companies? That is the advice i looked for.

Sales/marketing, finance, investor relations, training/ hr, event planning, etc

For me back 25 years ago, the thought of being in my 40s & 50s learning the latest version was tiring.

CEOs back then came from finance or marketing.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#118

Post by falsedan »

nkrisc wrote: post #97
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever live in a studio if you want to save money?

Um, what's cheaper than a studio? Anything with one or more bedrooms is going to be more expensive. Perhaps you're not familiar with American apartment terminology or I'm missing something? A studio apartment is as cheap as you can get normally.

Room/housemates, an N-bedroom's rent/N is always less than a 1-bedroom (for N > 1)

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#119

Post by autotune »

melq wrote: post #109
autotune wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roommate rant: I started out with trying the roommate situation for $1500 a month or less usually; all I ask out of roommates are that we all stick to a schedule for chores and peace and quiet at night. Every single roommate situation either had somebody who couldn't abide by the 10 PM quiet rule (we're talking watching tv at all hours of the night, having sex with their girlfriend until the AM, or having a very audi…

You mean people aren't champing at the bit to spend $1500/month and adhere to your 10pm bedtime!?

More like why I pay what I pay now for my own sanity and peace and quiet rather than saving more than I could be but having to deal with immature nonsense.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#120

Post by majormajor »

ryandrake wrote: post #73
JohnDotAwesome wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really typical in SV tech to get that much matching on 401k and/or get a bonus? Seems extraordinarily high. Maybe that bonus, stock, 401k match is sort of an unknown that one may or may not receive (in which case, you'd be comfortably saving $10k/year). At any rate, if those bonuses are real, maybe I need to move out of Texas.

No, they are extraordinarily high. Those comp figures are what I like to call "HN normal". My theory is that HN readers/posters tend to be smarter than the average bear -> they and their peers tend to get better than usual pay -> they begin to believe these extraordinarily large comps are "normal" for tech workers. You'll actually see people here with a straight face claiming $400K is a totally usual "all-in" package…

I've seen numbers like that from a company that says their salary range target is "70th percentile of peer companies." Dunno how they defined peer company, but I need to find that one-out-of-three peers that pay even more.
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