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

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

#441

Post by kamakazizuru » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:19 PM UTC

s73ver_ wrote: post #273

speby wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" on…

They're concentrated for reasons. It's highly debatable whether those reasons are "good". We all take risk. I could find myself working for a company that doesn't make it, or just decides to fire me at a moment's notice. Losing my job and not being able to find another one means I might not be able to feed and house my family. That's real risk. On the other hand, most investors are pretty well off, and can weather a…

"they have more so its ok for them to lose some" - is a flawed logic. The reasons are "good" because they incentivize behaviour. An investor is willing to put a chunk of his money into the startup because he can expect a good return, why else would he take risk on people? An employee is not inherently risking to "lose" anything by taking a job, they risk not gaining something for a while if the job goes, but that's different from proactively putting skin in the game.

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

#442

Post by jjsjdhh88 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:22 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #252

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 have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of ot…

"...most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide..."

Am reading "Deep Work" right now. In it he touches on this while explaining how hard it is to measure, and how no reliable attempts have turned up by those who try. This applies to C*O level on down, no one is sure how to measure this.

So when you write:

"The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing."

I call BS. There is no measure out there that can accurately gauge the specific contributions of an individual or a team within an org, in knowledge-centric work these days.

There are outliers. A team will luck into a bigger than expected sales deal. Or engineering stumble into a way to provide the same performance with less servers.

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

#443

Post by curun1r » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:23 PM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #397

sidlls wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of ot…

You are both correct and incorrect. As others mentioned, product/sales/marketing/etc can all be replaced just as easily as developers. However, and I think this -may- be your point, the work generated by those groups is understood by upper management as a key to success, whereas upper management likely does not understand that having the best tech is also a key to success (and, honestly, it's one that can many times…

> the work generated by those groups is understood by upper management as a key to success

I think you could have left off the "as a key to success" part. Software engineering, as a discipline, is very hard to quantify and hard to understand. Every metric that anyone proposes for measuring the output and quality of work of a developer has largely been shown to be possible to game and not representative of good work. We wax poetically about an extremely productive day in which we got rid of 200 lines of code...no sales person would consider losing a customer to be a success, so you can see how that would sound confusing to a non-engineer. And the interview process is largely lampooned for asking questions that have very little applicability to the actual work being done and, yet, no one can agree on what questions a good candidate should be able to answer. Even engineers can have vastly different stances on what constitutes good work.

There's an old saying, "that which cannot be measured cannot be managed." A sales team can easily be stack ranked and their dollar value to the company measured to the penny. A marketing team can be judged by engagement numbers, inbound leads and other quantifiable results that are easy for an executive to understand. A product team's output is somewhat harder to quantify, but executives usually do take the time to understand their product and customers, so they can relate and have opinions on the work produced by the product team. Meanwhile, the engineers spend they day looking at text in another language, having conversations and arguments about bizarre made-up words like Hadoop, Riak and Mesos. They often have trouble communicating technical concerns to non-technical members of the team, including management. And seemingly simple changes in product direction are met with large time estimates and mutters of "redesigning the schema" or "scalability."

So executives decide to focus on optimizing and rewarding the departments that they can understand and engineering gets seen as a black box assigned to someone somewhat technical who's often only good at spin/messaging and not really a great technical leader. It's pretty undeniable that engineers create value. Even executives realize that. But the marginal value of one engineer over another is extremely difficult to know, even for people in engineering. So it's much easier to just assign them to tiers (SSE, Senior SSE, Staff SSE, Lead SSE, Architect, etc) and then treat them as fungible quantities.

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

#444

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #111

twright0 wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#445

Post by natural219 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

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…

Paul Graham literally built YCombinator's legacy off the backs of tearing down "pointy-haired bosses" and offering an alternative path to MBA executive leadership, which is the surest sign your industry has stopped innovating and has been fully converted into a cash cow for financial institutions.

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

#446

Post by JimboOmega » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:27 PM UTC

mratzloff wrote: post #348

JimboOmega wrote: post #114

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.

It's something you're doing that's limiting you. Find a mentor or career coach. Someone with plenty of management experience. They'll help you discover what that is and how you can fix it.

Given the prevalence of the methods discussed in the OP, that's kind of hard to do; e.g. I work for the CTO who is the co-founder, but doesn't have a strong management background.

Recommend a place to start?

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

#447

Post by emerged » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:29 PM UTC

reuven wrote: post #91

How about freelancing? I've been doing that since 1995 -- and my income and happiness have never been higher. Pros: - Work on what you like, with the people you like - Potentially very high salary, definitely more than you would get as an employee - Want to work on side projects (e.g., software, books, and courses)? Go for it, and benefit from multiple income streams. Cons: - You're running a business. That requires…

I've done freelancing and have worked remotely as an employee. Though the former brought in more money (which is heavily dampened by the increased tax and loss of various benefits), I so loathe the administrative hassles that I'd gladly take half the overall pay in order to avoid it.

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

#448

Post by jjsjdhh88 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:29 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #316

s73ver_ wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas don't create value. Ideas represent the potential for value.

The deliberate process of developing ideas, otherwise known as "product development," has value.

I've not worked anywhere where product development was the only group to come up with an idea that made it into the final product.

My last gig was terribly silo'd as far as responsibilities go. But people go to lunch and happy hour together. Product dev would call out anyone that contributed, even though their team got the kudos because of process (despite the teams being cool, I left because management was shite).

These things bleed into each other constantly.

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

#449

Post by nlh » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:30 PM UTC

PeraltaJ wrote: post #251

Can't help but this Comma in "Founder, Executive, or Employee " after " Executive" bugs me...

Welcome to the wonder world of the Oxford Comma...a source of debate perhaps rivaled only by the great Emacs vs Vim wars...

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-...

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

#450

Post by leeoniya » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 11:31 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #412

kartan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned. I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all companies. It is li…

> Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned Like software engineering. And like writing software, some people are better at it / enjoy it more than others. Software engineers and good salespeople are very well compensated because they're hard to replace. > I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all com…

onboarding an engineer - even a great one - is notoriously expensive, because they need to understand the product in extreme detail that a salesperson never will - not even close.

there are many good engineers, but they are very difficult to replace. in addition, more engineers does not always translate to faster delivery, so there is a natural limit to how many should exist to build out a specific product.

there are also many good salespeople and they can be trained in much less time and there can be many more of them.