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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

#501

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

Iv wrote: post #496
btilly wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a twist on this to think about. Careers are made or broken on whether you get to be an idea person or an implementer. If you're an idea person you get the lion's share of the credit for anything that goes right, and can always blame your failures on the implementor. Plus ideas are easier to come up with than implementations. If you're an implementor you work hard, and then don't get much of the credit. But wi…

I think it all boils down to playing the blame game. It takes time to do so and implementing an idea takes a lot of time. Having an idea is the easiest thing ever. I can have five ideas before lunch with time to spate on blaming the people who will actually implement them for the past failures of my "great ideas with poor implementation" But engineers/implementers who get into politics have a huge advantage: they can…

But it really depends on how healthy your corporate culture is. I would say that in 90% of the companies, "technically correct" is just not good enough.

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

#502

Post by goatherders »

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…

No, there aren't many good sales people. No, they can't be trained in much less time. And no, there aren't necessarily more of them.

This is probably the most "I'm a technical founder and I have something to say!" thread I've seen here in a while.

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

#503

Post by mahyarm »

mercutio2 wrote: post #475
mdorazio wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, but people would of started coming out of the woodwork and giving me even more exceptions to the rule and how it's unrealistic, so I did the startup lower bound.

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

#504

Post by clairity »

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…

seibel's definition of executives included this tidbit: "politics are usually as important, if not more so", and that seems to be the sticky bit.

the premise underlying your lament is that we should distribute compensation based on direct contribution to the product. but we simply don't distribute value that way. first of all, how would we accurately, objectively and differentially assign contribution for the success of a business to the contributing members? i'd guesstimate that an average US company might distribute value this way: owners 45%, executives 20%, employees 35%. you seem to be alluding to a distribution close to executives & owners 0%, employees 100%. are either of those correct? what would be the fair way to do it? you'd have to answer that before you can figure out how to get there.

and as distasteful as it may be, the way we seem to assign value _is_ political. we assign it based on an ability to take credit and argue for a larger share. we assign it for cultural values, like bravado and charisma. we don't really assign it for economic contribution, like commission for direct sales or compensation for risk, no matter how much that appeals to our rational economic minds. the distribution of value is exactly based on the political skill which you lament.

how do we change that? well, that's like asking how do we upend the currently accepted social hierarchy. and that's a big question.

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

#505

Post by goatherders »

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…

Good grief. The entire premise was that owning a Mac made you different, unique. People bought the thing because they identified with THAT not because of specs. How do I know this? Because everyone remembers the commercial and how it made them feel and almost no one remembers the machine and what it did comparative to other options at the time.

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

#506

Post by goatherders »

hajile wrote: post #468
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…

> Most companies, particularly most start-ups, suck at sales. "Great engineers, shit sales" is a more common failure mode in Silicon Valley than "sold something couldn't be built." Also, "good at sales" isn't a one dimensional metric. There are different sales processes, some of which some people (and consequently companies) are better at than others. Bad, derivative products hocked by hopelessly deluded people playi…

Lots of good products fail because of bad sales and marketing. These very forums are a graveyard of "how do I find users?" threads.

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

#507

Post by VexXtreme »

crdb wrote: post #494
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…

> If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Anecdote as counter-example: a previous employer was approached by a vendor which offered a solution developed by "former NASA specialists" (I think it was to manage inventory). The total cost of deploying it w…

> So, the sales organisation managed to "create" $400k of "value"

Yes, it's called "fraud".

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

#508

Post by ouid »

crdoconnor wrote: post #388
ouid wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, without radically changing the economic system, your compensation will be, at most, the cost of replacing you, and the gap between your compensation and that figure depends on the information gap, and the chutzpah with which you negotiate. I'd wager that if developers renegotiated their contracts at the point where they were most irreplaceable on projects they would be able to extract a lot more money.

>I'd wager that if developers renegotiated their contracts at the point where they were most irreplaceable on projects I'd wager that most executives would rather pay 5 people to do the job of 2 or even simply bury their head in the sand and not admit to themselves that replacing you is going to be more costly than let you have that kind of leverage.

Threaten to quit and see if you don't get executives offering you more money.

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

#509

Post by abpavel »

goatherders wrote: post #499
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 actually find "founder" is the route most scumbags take. Most of the ones I encounter take credit for other people's work and contribute little value. They also do a great job spending other people's money. Next would be Employees. Jeez, those guys are the worst. Always thinking the ship will sink without them. If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path. Get off your high hor…

>> If only the executives would listen to them the company would be on the right path.

Founder is an employee, whose executives wouldn't listen to them.

I can see how it could be easier for you to "tune out", but from the Wozniak's mouse to Nokia smartphone presentations, your smirk is actually exactly correct: Employees make or break the firm. The ship will sink without them. Executives do not sufficiently listen to their employees.

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

#510

Post by dclowd9901 »

crdb wrote: post #494
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…

> If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Anecdote as counter-example: a previous employer was approached by a vendor which offered a solution developed by "former NASA specialists" (I think it was to manage inventory). The total cost of deploying it w…

I think this is more an anecdote to the example than counter example.
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