Consultant.
Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
171–180 of 632 posts
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#172You can easily be all three in the course of a single lifetime. It's not a choice between those three.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#173Employee (individual contributor / middle manager) Pro: More work and fewer meetings LOL, IF ONLY! Another example that people in silicon valley (and yc in particular) have no idea what goes on in the real world. (HN reply in one window, with skype and webex open in 2 other windows, my 5th and 6th meetings today. I've been on HN for 10 years with over 5,000 contributions, almost all while in meetings, ignoring talkin…
Meaningful. There's the key word.
And no. Me neither. :)
[EDIT] That said, meetings effective are a manager's, CEO's, and founder's job. So in comparison to them, we have do have fewer meetings.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#174> • 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…
What you're saying is true, you can't rely on your manager to always have time to listen to what you're saying.
But at the same time that doesn't mean what you're saying isn't something the manager should have made time to listen to.
Of course it's easy for me to criticize management when a lot of the startups I've worked at have gone out of business and a lot of the features I've been asked to build get canceled.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Based on my purely anecdotal experience, engineers that would be easy no-hires in Chicago get scooped up into senior roles I left a Chicago Loop job 3 years ago for a fully remote startup, moved to Tampa, moved from that fully remote startup to a Tampa-based org, and Chicago recruiters get in touch 2-3 times a week offering full relo expenses. There literally is an insane amount of demand and people with very littl…
Greetings from across the bay in St Pete
Hello! :wave: If you're going to be at the St Pete Night Market tonight, happy to buy you a beverage (my email is in my HN profile)!
EDIT: I know I'm not allowed to complain about downvotes, but I'm doing it; why would someone downvote this comment? The poster I'm replying to is near me IRL, and I am just trying to be friendly and connect in person (and they have no contact info on their profile). No need to downvote or upvote.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#176Employee (individual contributor / middle manager) Pro: More work and fewer meetings LOL, IF ONLY! Another example that people in silicon valley (and yc in particular) have no idea what goes on in the real world. (HN reply in one window, with skype and webex open in 2 other windows, my 5th and 6th meetings today. I've been on HN for 10 years with over 5,000 contributions, almost all while in meetings, ignoring talkin…
Individual contributors where I work have significantly fewer meetings than people who choose the leadership route.
What makes my company less real world than yours?
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxi that takes your pets to the Vet, waits with them, facetimes you to the Vet during the exam.
I... I would consider paying for that. Vet waiting times are usually better than human doctors, but not by much.
a bunch of stranger-animals in a room together can be hilarious fun though.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
certainly i'm not saying that prior wealth does not play a major factor or isn't strongly correlated, but it is not a prerequisite by any stretch, which was my interpretation of the comment.
I have the same background as you. Crimea, not Moscow. Americans will never understand. Our parents stood in breadlines. We are making six figures in America. It's not about wealth. It's about a culture that respects hard work, education, and opportunity.
> It's about a culture that respects hard work, education, and opportunity.
100%
i was maybe 5 and remember very vividly standing in those same breadlines with them. about once a year we got to eat bananas, it was amazing. in america there's a walmart next door to a target next door to a whole foods or trader joes, and across the street there's a meijer next to jewel and a macys plus 3 footwear stores - all filled with stuff that never leaves the shelves. and that's just within this 3 mile radius! i don't want to describe it as amazing because it is incredibly wasteful, but holy hell!
meanwhile, a large portion of the US population [that struggles to come to grips with basic economic principles] is paralyzed with fear of immigrants "stealing" jobs - usually jobs that don't even require a GED. a minimum-wage job is not a career and not meant to support a family; you're meant to grow out of it.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Out of curiosity, what areas would you say this to be true? Not denying there are dangerous areas, but I've only lived in SF for 2 years and haven't lived in many neighborhoods (1 year near the SoMissPo underpass and another near UCSF mission bay). The only one that comes off as dangerous at night to me would be the tenderloin or perhaps mid-market (although the latter is quickly becoming more and more expensive).
Tenderloin, the Mission (yes really), every neighborhood around the former Candlestick like Bayview/HP (which the startup crowd forgets is SF because they never go there). I grew up in a rough part of Detroit and am comfortable in all of them, but they are objectively dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
#180> 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…
Yea the adage that you should move to the bay area to start a startup feels increasingly outdated. I couldn't have gone full time on my (now VC-backed startup) back when we were bootstrapping and living on $2k a month from early customer credit card swipes (one of the absolute best feelings in the world) if we had living costs like that in SF/bay area. Once we did find traction and raise we still didn't move. Times a…
If you don't mind, what's your location?