Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by santaclaus » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

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.

> Um, what's cheaper than a studio?

Having roommates! Rent a victorian with a few roommates in West Oakland. One train stop to San Francisco, way less than 3k a month.

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

#122

Post by guiomie » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

bpchaps wrote: post #99

gxs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A SF barista makes 18k/yr. Can they make it on that? Sure. But when a third of your salary is on food - based on your quote - it's not going to be comfortable and saving is a stretch to say the least. Especially with student loans and such.

"A SF barista makes 18k/yr" ... where did you come up with this number? Sounds quite unrealistic...

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

#123

Post by cbr » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

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.

    what's cheaper than a studio?

Splitting a several-bedroom apartment several ways.

For example, where I live [1] a studio is $1,700 but one room in a 3br is $1,100.

[1] http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices

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

#124

Post by martin1975 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

Woofles wrote: post #63

introvertsexist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably for sanity & security & sleep. Fuck you; this attitude to rent is the worst part about the bay area. If you want to save money, please avoid the bay at all costs.

Or consider that the bay is more than SF. I recently moved to Oakland and I'm paying around $1k/mo on rent compared to $2k/mo or more living in the city while not really giving up any of the benefits of living in the area.

How's your commute time?

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

#125

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

ivanjovanovic wrote: post #93

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…

I overall agree with your sentiment. I would though not agree fully about where you assume value is created. Usually, developers / middle managers do not create value. Mostly they are implementing ideas of others and in these ideas is most of value concentrated. I would say they deliver value but don't create most of it.

It's a good philosophical question: A company creates a great product. What person actually created the value? The product visionary who thought of the idea? The developer who implemented it? The manager who approved the budget allowing the work to happen in the first place?

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

#126

Post by Qworg » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

rpeden wrote: post #75

cachemiss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are bootstrapping, and you are starting a company in an area that does not need the top tier of engineers (which is most of them, regardless of how they talk about hiring the best), I'd consider starting someplace low cost. I think college towns in the midwest / rust belt are untapped resources, or areas that used to have strong technically focused companies that moved away. I've personally seen founders boots…

Just an irrelevant side note - what do envision when you think of 'Uber for cats'? - A cat sharing service? - A 'cat on demand' service that allows you to reap the benefits of cat ownership without having to worry about acquisition and maintenance costs? - A taxi service for cats? I could envision paying for all of those, under the right circumstances. So such a company would likely have at least a few dollars of rea…

Not the GP, but...

Obviously cat sharing, but you'll have to find a way to take a margin from what was nominally a goodwill activity.

Maybe you pay cat owners in cathours (pronounced cath-ours), and have a marketplace where people can buy and sell cathours. Even better, make Catcoin (CC), set up an ICO, and get to work.

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

#127

Post by notfromhere » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #81

cachemiss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are bootstrapping, and you are starting a company in an area that does not need the top tier of engineers (which is most of them, regardless of how they talk about hiring the best), I'd consider starting someplace low cost. I think college towns in the midwest / rust belt are untapped resources, or areas that used to have strong technically focused companies that moved away. I've personally seen founders boots…

I share you bullishness about "untapped" cities, but: > ...starting a company in an area that does not need the top tier of engineers... As far as quality of talent, the "top tier of engineers" aren't all in SF, Seattle, or NYC. There are plenty of "top tier" engineers in all kinds of places. If you mean the "top tier" in pay rates are in those cities, that probably true. But those cities also have a ridiculous cost…

Except Champaign has top-tier engineers

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

#128

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #66

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…

80k* %50 = 40k vs. 160k * %35 = 56k Bay area in a nutshell. You can have higher savings rates too, I do around %40 and I could save even more. Working at a startup does make it harder, usually it's better to work at FANG. You also learn a lot and realize the difference between 'facebook does this dev practice because it's huge so it has to vs. it's the better practice'

>Bay area in a nutshell. You can have higher savings rates too

Your example is a higher savings amount, not rate.

In your example, I may still prefer the 80K one. Why?

Assume taxes are a third of your salary in both places.

In the 80K job, you save 40K, and your living expenses are 13.3K

In the 160K job, you save 56K and your living expenses are 50.7K

In Nowhereville, you are saving 3 times your annual cost of living. In SV, you are saving just a little more than 1x.

The result? Even though you save more in SV, you will not be able to retire quicker.

(My claim of 1/3 in taxes in both places is likely inaccurate, but the essence of the calculation doesn't change).

A higher saving amount does not mean earlier retirement (unless you move to a cheap city to retire).

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

#129

Post by shimon » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #22

> • Often don’t get a voice in major decisions – even when you “know the right answer” I'm not sure if the use of quotes here is intended to imply one doesn't actually know the right answer, but only feels that way. It's a particularly important point, I feel in my career I've met so many managers insecure in themselves that they would never consider listening to an idea from a report, not unless you can convince the…

There are a lot of insecure managers who don't want to be challenged on the merits of their decisions. There are also lots of individual contributors on teams who are strident in their beliefs even though they might be informed only from a narrow perspective.

If you're a manager, you can address this by inviting thoughtful debate and sharing information. But if you're a non-manager employee, you can't always rely on managers (even when they're good and capable) to have _time_ to deeply consider your ideas and share relevant info. Therefore, sometimes you have to accept that major decisions get made without your input.

Ideally you have managers you trust even when they make decisions you don't understand. In practice, getting that requires a willingness to move and enough social acumen that you're likely moving into management yourself.

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

#130

Post by Bahamut » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #47

mmm94720 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here we go again with the "typical" tech worker making 250K. According to Glassdoor [1] and Payscale [2] the median/average base pay for SW engineers in the SF is about 1/2 of that. 1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en... 2: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Senior_Software_Eng...

Glassdoor skews low due to having more historical data. It should be noted that a lot of people also work in the Valley & live in SF since companies there pay more in general (although rent in the Valley has been rising the past few years in general, especially in Palo Alto and Mountain View).

Of course it's a terrible commute, but some people prefer that - it should also be noted that the comment you responded to was talking about the Valley, not SF. Software engineering jobs in SF proper is a raw deal IMO excepting that you get to live in SF & be closer to the offerings of SF (or you can commute into SF, but might as well be commuting to an area with better pay IMO). Engineering quality is probably roughly the same across the Bay Area though.