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

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

#471

Post by dahart »

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…

> If you're the type that ... generally believes in a sense of fairness to the world then forget about it

I thought this when I was younger, and so I stuck with being an employee for a long time and didn't aspire to learn management/executive skills. But in doing that I was exposed to the many reasons and mechanisms that "Productivity can be blocked by bad management" - one of the cons of being an employee mentioned in the article.

Now I see that being a good manager or executive takes skills and that doing it well has huge benefits to productivity and sanity for everyone in the org and not just myself. I think a lot of managers and executives suck at their jobs, but I am now more interested in learning those skills and exploring that path and I wish I hadn't ruled it out so quickly earlier.

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

#472

Post by mercutio2 »

eru wrote: post #404
zip1234 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it is clear what fee-based means in the article. There are some that get a commission based on the products that they sell. In other words, the mutual fund that they use they might get a cut of. A fee-only adviser is one who takes a certain percentage each year. This is the kind that you want as it is in their best interest to grow your account and they won't move your money unnecessarily just to generat…

I thought fee-based means you just pay them a fixed fee you agree on up front? (And their interests are aligned insofar as they want repeat customers and you to tell your friends to use them?)

You are thinking of fee-only, which sounds very similar, but is vastly different from fee-based. Fee only is what you want.

As it happens, Scott Adams appears to have meant the exact opposite of how he’s been quoted! Scott specifically meant to warn people off financial advisers who charge a percentage of assets.

Fee-based as a label appears to exist purely to confuse unsophisticated consumers, by sounding so similar to the (good) fee-only label.

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

#473

Post by [deleted] »

mehrdada wrote: post #467
rwallace wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about the value of good engineering, but I think you underestimate the value of good marketing. > Sales and marketing, almost always give linear multiples at best. Counterexample: Apple's famous 1984 ad.

I knew something like that would come up, hence my use of "almost". But I actually disagree with your example. I was expecting something like Dollar Shave Club to be used as a counterexample, where the entire value is arguably produced by marketing. While I don't have metrics (and it is hard to even define a good metric to distinguish the leverage produced by marketing vs. excellent product development when they exis…

[deleted]

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

#474

Post by shimon »

mercutio2 wrote: post #472
eru wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought fee-based means you just pay them a fixed fee you agree on up front? (And their interests are aligned insofar as they want repeat customers and you to tell your friends to use them?)

You are thinking of fee-only, which sounds very similar, but is vastly different from fee-based. Fee only is what you want. As it happens, Scott Adams appears to have meant the exact opposite of how he’s been quoted! Scott specifically meant to warn people off financial advisers who charge a percentage of assets. Fee-based as a label appears to exist purely to confuse unsophisticated consumers, by sounding so similar…

Good point. The intention (in my post and presumably the ones I referenced) is that the financial advisor should be paid only a fixed fee by her client and not be biased like a commissioned salesperson.

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

#475

Post by mercutio2 »

mdorazio wrote: post #419
mahyarm wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true on the having kids part. But you typically have 7 years of your life before you reach 30. Probably contributes to the logan's run effect you see in SV tech companies ;) What I've seen from colleagues with kids is the spouse also works some sort of 6 figure job and they either commute a lot or bought a house before it got extra crazy. Like one who bought a $600-700k TIC around the Haight ~4 years ago. Or the…

Good points on how families in the Bay Area are setup today or established themselves a few years ago. To be fair, though, you have 37 years of employment after you reach 30... It's kind of scary to think about the Bay Area being a good place to establish yourself for only 15% of your career. Logan's Run effect indeed.

Good developers can make way, way more than 160k total comp without much effort in the Bay Area. Not at startups, so if you want to earn lots of money, don’t join a startup.

You have to be good, and work hard, but I know lots and lots and lots of tech workers who are single earners with kids and a house they didn’t buy before the boom.

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

#476

Post by mercutio2 »

bpchaps wrote: post #142
guiomie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here's how - https://imgur.com/a/S00fk

The minimum wage in SF is currently $14/hour. Quoting a salary rate for part time work doesn’t really make sense.

Baristas who work 40 hour weeks will make (minimum) $28k, and SF provides subsidized or free health insurance on top of that.

That’s still not enough to live on, but let’s not exaggerate.

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

#477

Post by eradicatethots »

jedberg wrote: post #271

The advice I always give to a new college grad is try and get a job at one of the big tech companies. The work and the mission may not be exciting, but there is huge room for growth and often the large companies have programs especially designed for career growth for new college grads. But don’t get stuck. The job will comfortable. After a few years it’s time to move on. Maybe you’ve found a few folks to cofound with…

It sounds very stressful to work at a major company

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

#478

Post by JumpCrisscross »

leeoniya wrote: post #450
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> there are many good engineers, but they are very difficult to replace

These engineers tend to find themselves well compensated. They aren’t representative of most coders in the Valley. Similarly with salespeople, you have lots of meagrely-compensated glorified customer service people and then people with difficult-to-replace relationships.

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

#479

Post by pers0n »

You forgot outsourcer/contractor. The company I work for has no one that can code iOS or Android apps, we outsource everything on Odesk and mark up the price, of course the quality is crap too. But since we can delete Google reviews and push down Yelp reviews and disable reviews on Facebook, everything is fine :/

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

#480

Post by herewego »

mwseibel wrote: post #43
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…

Thanks for the note - I’m going to think about this.

These paths are not mutually exclusive, which should probably be noted in the article as well. I know many who have done some combination of them, myself included.
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