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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

#221

Post by stevenwoo »

sagarm wrote: post #103
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…

IMO a cleaning service makes living with roommates a much better experience, and given that the costs are split N-ways adds relatively little to the cost.

I agree but you've may never have had someone who could make a mess right after the cleaners and then it's up to you to clean up after them if you don't want to wallow in it for a week.

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

#223

Post by adamzerner »

> Executive (Senior Manager at a Large Company)

> A higher likelihood of having a huge impact (given that most startups fail).

I think it's important to note that regarding money, starting a company does have a very high _expected value_. It's just that it's high risk-high reward, which makes it a bad fit for people with lower risk tolerances. But if your goal is to have as big an impact on the world as possible, risk doesn't matter too much.

https://80000hours.org/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-good...

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

#225

Post by austincheney »

> The last thing I’ll say is it takes time to be good at each role. When you’re in college there is this idea that you should take your 20s to discover yourself and the find the work that is most enjoyable to you. The problem is that if it takes 5-10 years to truly get good at something and you spend 10 years discovering what you want to get good at…it’s going to take a long time for you to feel like a highly skilled productive person (and to recieve the rewards that come with this). It’s not that you shouldn’t explore, it’s that you need to understand the costs of that exploration and plan accordingly.

---

This is an understatement that I see many new or junior developers completely missing. You don't magically become a rockstar. Working with rockstars is helpful, but it won't make you a rockstar. Company name/brand is irrelevant to becoming a rockstar. It is all about practice solving hard problems, which takes lots of time and concentration. This is the only factor that separates the amazing developers from everybody else, and honestly most people don't have the discipline or personality to get there.

Actually, now that I think about, becoming an awesome developer is similar to the advice for becoming a successful founder. You, counter-intuitively, have to spend a lot of time doing things that don't scale. A good example is ignoring all those frameworks and abstractions so that you can really learn how the code actually works. If you expect tools to do your job for you or grow reliance upon some temporary artifact you aren't as strong or self-reliant developer.

In order to be a great executive you have to be a great employee. The military flavor of this is that you have to learn to follow before you can learn to lead. You have to know what your people are going through and be willing to step in and assist your people if the situation calls for it.

At some point a founder has to transition from founder to executive if their company is to grow or they are to keep their job. Promoting, building, and marketing a new production or solution is great, but at some point other people will do that for you. You must be able to lead these people, build confidence in the team, and provide proper direction. You have to be a leader.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by jholman »

rpeden wrote: post #217
aswanson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he can come up with a better pivot of it.

- Use CRISPR to create hypoallergenic cats - Create a mobile cat service in a high end Winnebago or Gulfstream business jet; stock with hypoallergenic cats from step 1 - Use mobile cat service to fly/drive in to festivals and corporate events; create pop-up cat lounges where visitors can have a drink and pet a cat - ?? - Profit

> - Use CRISPR to create hypoallergenic cats

Shut up and take my money.

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

#228

Post by s73ver_ »

humanrebar wrote: post #140
cachemiss wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you are doing. If you are trying to build something like a database kernel, you want people who have done it before, very specialized. There aren't lots of them outside of the tech hotspots. I don't necessarily mean there aren't smart people outside of the hotspots, but there isn't the specialized skillsets that get built from working at the Microsofts / Googles etc. edit: In the number that you ne…

> There aren't lots of them outside of the tech hotspots. Maybe. But how many people live in those places because that's where the well-paid jobs are?

Probably a good amount of them. But if you want to hire them, and you don't want to be there, you have to think pretty hard about how you're going to lure them away. Just saying, "The cost of living here is lower!" is a start, but it takes a lot more than that.

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

#229

Post by s73ver_ »

humanrebar wrote: post #185
cachemiss wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them I'd wager. Issue is, and it was for me, is that moving out of an area where I can walk down the street and get another great job to an area where the only great job is the one that this hypothetical company is offering just wasn't worth the risk. I have a wife and kids, and so do most specialized senior engineers.

> I have a wife and kids... Sure, so minimal commute times and affordability of family homes in areas with good schools should be very appealing to many of the specialized senior engineers. Moving the family is a pain, sure, but that just means the pitch needs to include why it's worth it for the family. And it means that senior engineers move cities less often. It doesn't mean they move less altogether. Idle thought…

But what if it turns out the family hates it or the job is terrible and soul crushing? Now I'm kinda stuck there for 4 years.

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

#230

Post by technofire »

cachemiss wrote: post #24
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…

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…

> you should at least try and do some time in SV / Seattle etc.

I'm curious to know what your current thoughts are behind this. As someone who intentionally has steered clear of both those areas in order to try to optimize financially I sometimes wonder whether I'm missing out on something. Obviously one can learn more from better engineers, but don't the brightest ideas from the brightest engineers wind up being written about online and/or presented at conferences at user groups and broadcast across the Internet? Or does having the opportunity to put time into a name-brand tech company for a while really increase lifelong salary or career prospects sufficiently to recover the money thrown away on rent there? Or is there really sufficient value in serendipitous collaboration/socialization to justify moving to one of these places? Is there some other question I've overlooked?

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