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

blog.ycombinator.com

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

#621

Post by CoreXtreme »

ouid wrote: post #508
crdoconnor wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Most aren't in position of sending threats in the way of their executives.

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

#622

Post by mgkimsal »

eru wrote: post #618
mgkimsal wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a tax standpoint, as an independent contractor, my premiums are 100% deductible. But I don't get any sort of 'group rate' discount.

But for regular employees there's a different tax treatment when they pay for their own health insurance, isn't it? (Not an American myself.)

I have to assume their is, if you're purchasing directly for yourself, but are also considered a full-time employee of an employer that doesn't offer it to you.

Hrm... found this, to explain it...

http://www.healthedeals.com/articles/are-health-insurance-pr...

" if you’re self-employed and claiming the self-employed health insurance deduction on Form 1040, you don’t have to exceed the 10 percent mark. That’s because you’re writing the premiums off as an adjustment to your income rather than as a deduction."

This is what I do.

The standard approach many folks take is to "take a deduction" (which occurs at a different point in the tax calculating) - and for that, you can only deduct any amount that exceeds 10% of your "adjusted gross income". In my case, I'm adjusting the gross income by deducting the insurance expense there. That may only be something I can do because I'm not an employee of anyone? I do this every year and it's still confusing as heck to me.

But the original point stands - anyone that is purchasing health insurance should be able to not pay any tax on the premiums. Or... no one should be able to(employee, employer, freelance). Level playing field theory and all that jazz...

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

#623

Post by Chiba-City »

shostack wrote: post #602
Chiba-City wrote: post #385

I founded a company that helped many other 90-00's founders along with some legacy industries in crisis. I am a reader so I read many business books. But I missed two specific dynamics I wish I had known earlier. First, executives will routinely attempt to take the founders' roles. Industries vary widely, but they are roughly "showy spenders" and not savers. Many have no experience in new ventures. They have ridden h…

> "Be very careful to make "executive" expectations brutally clear and consequences for any and all hubris terminal." Any examples of how to "do it right?"

I wish I had a clear answer. We have to be nice enough to people, but we have a world of needy charlatans transacting for themselves with little concerns for outcomes, responsibilities and reputations.

Here are some ideas.

IBM's head of federal sales said make hires show their past tax forms. Her point was to remove any "cleverness" over negotiating salaries and outcome responsibilities. Negotiate serious matters "naked." Watch details like commute times, time consuming rituals or debt levels.

Reading and writing are paramount requisites of organizing. I would recommend seeking at minimum faithful business press readers who are not day traders.

Seek executives who show up for smart dialog at the office. Teams have to share the world and not just their own company. Smart people are team players who seek correction or validation.

Seek executives who apply methods they can describe. Beware the latest buzzword fads.

Places like SV, NYC Or BO have deep benches of worldly smarties. That worldly wiseness is important in a startup seeking relevance to very real supply chains in constant motion. Many job seekers at all levels are very narrow specialists who have "rounded themselves" adapting to roles deep inside very incestuous companies or industries. Those folks are motivated by popular delusions of "riches" or "wonders" hiding elsewhere.

Attrition is normal. But recruiting is costly and executive attrition is super costly for the teams and companies left behind.

Industries are all different. But enduring purpose, role and focus are good character attributes to seek in startup hires. That's not highly prized in our fast-transacting careless world.

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

#624

Post by seppin »

JamesBarney wrote: post #391
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…

Just like how you say the work engineers do is not magic. That literally 1000s of other people can do it. That's also true of marketing, sales, and product development. Takes sales for instance, sales is knowing your clients needs, and knowing how your product fits into those needs and then having a shit load of conversations about how your product fits clients needs. There isn't any magic. You can contact more peopl…

> You can contact more people, and you can convince a few percent more people to buy your product.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how sales works.

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

#625

Post by smileysteve »

dkns wrote: post #374
smileysteve wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Learn to cook. This doesn't actually save much money at the individual level but is huge for families. I'd say it can save a ton of money at the individual level and is likely much healthier, and often time as well (probably biased because I can passively cook because I understand the science of cooking) My example meal that is paleo friendly is grilled chicken breast and frozen vegetables; my dinners cost ~ $3/d…

Any recommended reading on passive cooking? Sounds like something that would be really useful for me.

Hmm. I haven't read anything about it;

Some tools come in handy

- George Foreman cooks both sides and shuts off at a temperature. A little experience teaches you when a chicken breast is juicy or drill

- Oven cook timers (i mostly use the oven for fish/potato trays) are one of the most underrated and underused "automated" things that we've had for 50 years.

- Typically hard to mess up covered or steamed vegetables or potatoes; they have a "natural" alarm; is the water overflowing or do you smell at all (the water is low). Use enough water that'll it'll evaporate as you turn the burner down.

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

#626

Post by lliamander »

nostrademons wrote: post #420
lliamander wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are line level engineers less successful? In short, the Gervais Principle[1]: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." What to do about it? These things: * recognize that as software professionals we own the means of production *…

Note that engineers who do this become Sociopaths (in the MacLeod sense) - suddenly they are running a business, hiring employees, and taking every advantage they can, because if they don't, they're Clueless. The rest of the Ribbonfarm essay series expounded on this a bit more thoroughly - many of those Sociopaths are actually Losers until the right opportunity presents itself. There isn't actually a way out, on a sy…

> Note that engineers who do this become Sociopaths (in the MacLeod sense)

Which is actually what Dietrich is advocating, with a careful caveat: these developer partnerships only hire other Sociopaths (or Opportunists, as Dietrich calls them) insofar as it is possible, and generally avoid growing large enough to need a gooey Clueless middle.

The MacLeod system describes organizations of all sizes, but only reaches its full flowering in large enterprises.

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

#627

Post by graphememes »

simplify wrote: post #599
graphememes wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that what you did is even worse of a crime then. You didn't buy into it, you sold it. Still selling it, unwilling to try other things, not very visionary in my opinion. Also, not all cars have four wheels, not all cars are gasoline powered, mechanic evolution is quite infantile whereas static business operations are not. I would argue that also the industrial business ops are still infantile as well. Just m…

Even worse of a crime? Could you be more hyperbolic? unabst did try "other things". Did you read the thread?

Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have responded.

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

#628

Post by plicense »

tommikaikkonen wrote: post #521
plicense wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to the realization in my short career that 90% of my time will be spent on activities that produce 10% impact and 10% of my time will go towards activities that have 90% impact. But the 10% time producing 90% impact stems from the fact that I spent the other 90% doing mundane work and understanding the environment/product/whatever problem am working towards solving. As an example, my company uses Django and…

What was the optimization?

Our version of shell_plus was trying to handle aliased models that were defined in settings.py.

In order to do this, it was maintaining a map of {appName: [list of imports]}.

When constructing this map, for some reason, it n^2 the imports - i.e., if an app "foo" had models "Bar", "Foo", "FooBar", then the import strings were, "from foo import Bar; from foo import Bar, Foo; from foo import Bar, Foo, FooBar" instead of "from foo import Bar, Foo, FooBar". Some apps had 50+ models, so instead of 1 import line for these 50 models, it was executing 2500 import lines. I fixed this so that it executed only one import line instead n^2 import lines.

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

#629

Post by OpenDrapery »

alien_at_work wrote: post #571
emerged wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know where you live but consulting agencies usually also offer payrolling: they manage all the admin/tax/pension stuff and charge less than 10%. Some even charge a flat rate (I paid about 120% of a single day's wage, but I've heard of people paying 80% or so).

I'd be interested to know where you've seen this. The consulting agencies I've seen will typically bill $90 - $100 an hour, and then give you $50 an hour. This comes with 2 weeks PTO and 5 holidays. The rest of the time you better be billable. Sick days are not factored in.

Also, the health insurance is bundled in to the compensation package, and if you don't need it, they're not going to increase your salary.

When you say "charge less than 10%", do you mean to say that if they bill the client $100/hr, that you will get $90/hr ?

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

#630

Post by kamakazizuru »

s73ver_ wrote: post #589
kamakazizuru wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"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." this is true for all jobs, my point is, unless you are working for free, you arent giving up something that you will lose. Time yes, but thats why you need to make sure you get paid what you think your time is worth.
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