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

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

#231

Post by kobeya » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #169

mahyarm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

Pre or post-tax, and at what standard of living? Weather aside, you can get significantly better housing/schools/daycare/whatever for that 80k elsewhere than you can for 160k in the Bay Area. If you're young and single this is probably a non-factor, but for people >30 it can be significant.

If you're young and single or dual income, no kids, the bay area is a fantastic place to make high income and save tons of money. Lots of people in r/financialindependence are tech workers in the valley.

If you're starting your own company and want VC investment, I can think of no better place to be than silicon valley, assuming you make use of the social events, meetups, attend YC demo days, rainbow mansion, etc. The personal networking will lead to more and better deals.

But if you have kids, a spouse that doesn't pull in the astronomical salaries, or are trying to bootstrap a company, stay far, far away.

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

#232

Post by dv35z » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

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?

This is my condensed, actionable notes & advice: http://ro.vu/notes/finance/2014/how-to-build-and-maintain-we...

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

#233

Post by kobeya » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #85

mahyarm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

Or you know, you don't have to be average and can do 300k * 60% consulting or doing some other slightly more ambitious method while still not living in the bay area.

Outside of a few very highly specialized fields, I don't know anyone who does that successfully who didn't first get their start and build their network in the valley.

EDIT: To be clear, I do know people that have "done their time" then left and pulled in really nice consulting rates working remotely from rural / flyover america or overseas, albeit often with a lot of travel to customer sites.

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

#234

Post by lliamander » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

When considering these different paths, it's also worth considering the kind of temperament one needs to have to be successful in each role.

Founders, from what I understand[1], tend to be high on the Big 5 Personality trait "openness", which has to do with creativity. Executives (and employees to an extent as well) who are successful tend to be high in trait "conscientiousness" which has to do with being hard working and orderly.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P830JMVeKLo

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

#235

Post by speby » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #125

ivanjovanovic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're implicitly making a common mistake confusing value creation and value capture.

Yes, it is true that developers writing the software for Google's search engine and Gmail and other products, particularly the early developers who were writing core functionality before it even existed yet, are creating value. But are/were they capturing the full value created? In general, no. To the extent they "captured value" only came in the form of salary/benefits/etc. So they captured some, to be sure.

In highly successful companies who create hugely successful products that create tons of value, the actual capture of that value is absolutely not shared equally. This is in part because the risk was not shared equally.

Just as in successful companies, unsuccessful companies that ship a product that does not do well or fails completely, the developers who created it still captured a salary along the way. The investors and others who put in money or time and energy for little or not pay (in exchange for equity) were the ones with the most risk.

Bottom line... everyone involved in company-building and product-building create value along the way but value capture is generally concentrated for very good reasons.

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

#236

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:00 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...

You are half right, and half wrong.

The average startups are not paying engineers anywhere close to 250k.

But I can assure you that every one of the big 5 tech companies pays those numbers (as do the "hot" unicorns that are on a similar "tier" as Google, ect) .

The moral of the story is, don't work for a startup. Go big or go home. Sell out and work for one of the companies with the actual money.

Because at those companies, those numbers are real.

And the thing that people need to realize is that those "top" companies have a whole lot of people working for them. The numbers don't back up the common argument that is made about how "you have to be in the very top 1 percent of engineers to work at Google, FB, or Amazon".

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

#237

Post by w1ntermute » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #19

metalliqaz wrote: post #5

Missing from the strategies for the first two (really all three): come from wealthy background.

not really. my family moved to the states from moscow when i was 7. we spent all our money that we got from selling a crappy apt on the move itself. we lived on food stamps, had to learn english, my parents (both with technical university degrees) went to community college and worked low wage jobs to pay the rent, bills and tuition. we had a super old used ford that was rusting everywhere a vehicle can rust and the d…

In this context, wealth doesn’t necessarily have to start out as financial wealth. You came from an educated family, so even if your parents were materially poor, they created an environment that ensured you would be on an upward trajectory compared to them. This is a common story among educated immigrants from poor countries.

But then there are those who are both materially and educationally impoverished - those whose families struggled despite having been in the US for generations. Not sure it makes sense to conflate them with people like you.

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

#238

Post by kobeya » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #211

barrkel wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll still need to retire in a cheap city in Nowhereville. Why not live in SV when you're young and retire to Nowhereville, vs living in Nowhereville all your life?

Alternatively, if you can get a remote job, live in Cambodia or the Phillipines or somewhere else with an extremely low cost of living while getting paid 0.5x SV salary, and end up with 95% savings. Then you can retire anywhere .

0.5 salary (generous for someone remote working in a different timezone without a large personal network, imho) with 95% savings is the same as 48% savings with 1x salary, not to mention greater growth potential. You're example doesn't seem all that different from working in the valley a few years, then cashing out to retire in SE Asia.

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

#239

Post by forgotmysn » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

brndnmtthws wrote: post #89

forgotmysn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a fallacy, at least in the bay. start-up salaries are lower because you're working for a start-up, and rents are exorbitantly high everywhere. even with roommates living in the living room, no car, and making your own meals will you be able to save money in the bay area.

After ~8 years living in the Bay Area (mostly Oakland & SF), I'm obliged to strongly disagree with you.

I've lived here for ~20. I was raised here. I've never paid less than 40% of my income on rent, and I've only worked in tech.

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

#240

Post by JamesBarney » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:02 PM UTC

MatthewMcDonald wrote: post #196

spamizbad wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Even though there are many top-tier engineers in those hotspots, just how gettable are they if you're hiring in SV/Seattle/NYC? Based on my purely anecdotal experience, engineers that would be easy no-hires in Chicago get scooped up into senior roles in the valley because everyone there is so desperate to hire anyone who can fizzbuzz. It's the best area to be in if you're one of the best... and also if you're o…

> Top-flight talent exists but they're all "Unobtanium" for anything that isn't a unicorn, IPO'd, or founded by one of their friends I disagree; top talent is very obtainable, provided that you have: * decent compensation * great culture * interesting problems to solve * a great hiring process We've grown our engineering team from 12 to 29 since opening up shop in Kansas City this February, and I could not be happier…

I don't think the poster would consider Kansas City a "hotspot". I think he's referring to San Francisco/Silicon Valley, and New York.