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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

#581

Post by pjungwir »

Radim wrote: post #105
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…

Plenty of successful freelancers make good money just by themselves (or maybe 1-2 junior people). Great point. The underappreciated thing is how much stress bringing a few other people to your freelancing brings. Suddenly, you realize that all these things that are obvious to you (when you "flow" working alone) need explanations and coordination and planning and checking and ... You may find yourself at a substantial…

If you freelance, there are three ways to earn more: work more, charge more, or hire. A few years ago I made a spreadsheet to model charging more vs hiring some people. The problem with hiring is that you have to spend a lot of time on unbillable work, and also suddenly you have to sell enough projects to keep 3-4 people busy. The risks are higher and you might need to hire 3 others just to break even. I decided that I would focus on just charging more. :-)

But I've also started a small partnership with two other excellent developers, and that has been working very well. I don't have to manage anyone, but I have help when I need it. And as a firm we avoid some of the "market for lemons" freelancer stigma, so we can charge more. Also with 3 of us the chasm to eventually hiring others is maybe easier to leap. I think this is a great way to go!

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

#583

Post by volkk »

ivanjovanovic wrote: post #566
volkk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that depend on your definition of creating value? Im biased because I'm a developer perhaps, but I think that these ideas would all be theoretical concepts if these developers weren't actively building them. Perhaps I have a pessimistic view of the industry, but I've worked at 4-5 startups now (4-5 because one I'm on the fence about calling a startup) and I've come to find that the most value was always "crea…

It sure depends. The way I think is that it starts with an idea, ability to preserve the idea, develop it and maintain its essence through iterations with others. Still it is the idea that is making the difference at the start and working around that idea that makes difference at the end. I was developer, and I was middle manager and I understand the sentiment fully. There are many aspects of reality that higher leve…

> There are many aspects of reality that higher level management has to deal with which are not usually what they want reality to be but in practice you can not change it.

The issue I see here is that there are plenty of companies that are very successful and have a small hierarchy and very little hoops to jump through.

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

#584

Post by lostcolony »

curun1r wrote: post #443
lostcolony wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Upvoted. Thanks for this perspective. I've had similar observations and thoughts, but haven't sat down to find words for it.

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

#585

Post by rwallace »

evgen wrote: post #531
goatherders wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have conflated cause and effect here so much it is hard to untangle just where you diverged from reality, but the 1984 ad was not as important as you think. It ran once. Once. It became important as an icon later, but "everyone" doesn't remember how the commercial made them feel because most of them didn't see it. The Mac was, at the time, such a marvel of hardware and software engineering and so radically differ…

The original Mac was actually not a very useful product; 128K of memory was enough to get a taste of the graphic user interface, but not enough to do much in the way of useful work. There was a flurry of initial sales to early adopters on the basis of the marketing, the potential, then it fell off. Sales only picked up again when the memory was increased to 512K. That tends to get forgotten nowadays because of what happened afterwards, but it's not at all the case that the original Mac sold itself based on its capabilities as a product.

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

#586

Post by btilly »

enjo wrote: post #517
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…

Is any of that true? Are ideas really that easy? Also these people aren't being paid for ideas. They're being paid for vision and the ability to guide that vision through to completion. I've met FAR more competent implementers in my life than I have product owners. You seem (and others) seem to be arguing that there is some sort of market inefficiency here, but I don't see that. And I say that as an implementer.

There is a discipline of actually doing the work that rewards competence. If you take a competent implementor, give them the title of "architect", and have them tell everyone else how their programs should be designed, the natural tendency is downhill in competency. I've met brilliant architects. I've never met an architect who impressed me that didn't code a lot.

But still, even among implementors there are frequently disagreements on the design that should be followed. And you see the same pattern. The person who wins the disagreement tends to get a lion's share of the credit for improvements, and often gets to skip blame if it fails.

If you win several of these in a row you may get offered a raise and title of architect.

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

#587

Post by btilly »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #501
Iv wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, the first and last line of defense for most tech people is to retreat into technical detail and present an apparently irrefutable argument that nobody understands. It is impossible from the outside to tell whether this is just the tech person being defensive and they are full of BS, or whether the tech person is right. So people eventually default to assuming BS.

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

#588

Post by thesash »

alien_at_work wrote: post #568
thesash wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a pretty good reason to move from group 3 to group 1. If your goal is to be part of group 3, but are unable to find an organization with a healthy culture, then there may be an opportunity to build your own.

Then you end up with the "grassroots politician" problem: you go in to fix a problem but realize the money is just too good (now that you're the one getting it) to change the system.

Are you motivated by money in this situation?

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

#589

Post by s73ver_ »

kamakazizuru wrote: post #441
s73ver_ wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I'm not saying it's ok for them to lose some, I'm saying that they're not taking on the risk that everyone claims they are. And yes, an employee very much is risking to lose something. If they get fired or the startup goes under, now they face a very real situation where they might not be able to feed or house their family. I highly doubt that these investors are even close to that point.

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

#590

Post by bitexploder »

xmonkee wrote: post #310
bitexploder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the bar for "wealthy background" and "founder". My parents clawed there way to what I would call middle class (most of the time). I am not a founder of a software product firm, but am a founder of a successful consulting firm. We are 4 years into it now. On the executive front, yes, you are more likely to reach that level of position having a "wealthy background" but there are plenty who don't. Your odds of b…

>am a founder of a successful consulting firm I really want to take this path at some point. I don't feel like I fit into either of these categories very well and the idea of having my own consulting firm has always appealed to me. I don't know where to start. Can you share some knowledge or tell me where I can contact you? If you're in the Bay Area I'd love to buy you a coffee and pick your brains.

I could write a book about this. I am pretty easy to find. Send an email to info at carve|systems dot com (no pipe) and ask for bitexploder and we can take it from there.
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