101–110 of 242 posts
There are many of us willing to leave money on the table in order to get quality of life, but there are basically zero companies whose job ads explicitly make that trade. Finding such companies is thus a frustrating and inefficient process.
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I'm a 44 year old senior engineer, and the one thing I've noticed is that bad managers are almost universal in technology. I've had about 20 managers in my career and I can count only 2-3 that I would consider great managers, the rest ranged from mediocre to incredibly incompetent. This, to me, is the #1 reason I gain much more satisfaction from doing consulting work on the side: I'm my own manager, and I can make de…
Why do think is the reason that most managers in technology are bad? I tend to think of management as abstraction. A mid-level manager provides an abstraction of the work for high-level management and at the same time is provided an abstraction of the work by the low-level managers or engineers. Assuming that my understanding is right, are these abstractions leaky? is the lack of technical knowledge the reason why ma…
Also, judging from own anecdotal experience, there is a strong tendency (at least in Norway, where I’ve spent most of my career) to promote someone from the engineering pool to management; the reasoning being that as you are a decent engineer, you’ll probably become a decent engineering manager.
Well, chances are you aren’t. At least not until you’ve made a lot of management gaffes. (Cough; I made the switch from decent, in some narrow fields excellent engineer to a decidedly mediocre -for the time being- manager this spring...)
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How have you arrived at that conclusion? A few million = 3-5 million. Even at the low end that involves having 150k spare a year, plus a house and retirement fund? You're having a laugh.
Why is that laughable? 150k spare a year, diligently invested 20 years with an overall real return rate of 5% (which should be relatively achievable with index funds, otherwise our capitalist machine is in serious trouble and it won't matter too much what my portfolio does) compound to $5.2M. And that's a real return rate so it should be protected against inflation (add a ~3% if you want to do pre-inflation calculati…
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What does a rut look like, like what is the last recent tech rut folks use. And what is an example of tech that non-rut folks have that rut folks don't have?
Great question. IMHO the ruts we are trying to avoid are sticking only to a previously used solution because of the fear of trying new things. Of course that needs to be balanced with the risks/costs of trying new things too. As a mentioned previously we’ve found a lot of senior sw candidates who have 20+ years experience working on a huge legacy technology in a huge beaurocratic organization. Some of those people ha…
'The Prince' has a whole chapter about wheter employing mercenary soldiers can be considered a good thing. And he gets into the conclusion that mercenaries must be the last kind of resource you want to employ in an army, and that is better to avoid them.
To stitch this with what we are talking about here, in my experience, people that get stuck in a given technology are more conservative types, who do just enough to fit in a given position, and make it as solid as possible, so to garantee their paychecks by the end of the month, and to be perceived as a perfect fit for that position, and consolidate the job for years to come. Its on-pair with mercenary because, theres no cause or love for the tecnology, for what we can achieve with it, but those values get corrupted when they clash with a solid and continuous source of income.
More inovative people are more bold, and take more risks, but a lot of companies wont like them, and they wont be perceived as a good fit for the company (in their speech of course they do, but not in real life).
I guess the first, is more of the profile you are saying you are trying to avoid. And i think thats good, because this profile tend to have a more parasitic relationship with the company. If your company moves faster, maybe they wont make a good fit in that sort of environment.
Also its good to avoid people that have a tendency to game things. There a lot of people in this world, that dont care much about anything else and just do enough to understand the game of a given system and score enough to win in that sort of game consolidating its own position. (For instance, that puzzle based hiring interview iss being gamed right now, and companies are not hiring what they think they do right now.. humans will adapt to the games til they mean nothing anymore)
A good fit for a Astronaut for instance, is that kid that was dreaming about the space, and will do everything to make this dream come true. When theres a real problem, or something that requires real passion to be done, that 'kid' will make the difference.
Nothing can work as a suplementary replacement for real passion.
(From someone that has real passion, and cant understand how people can live without it)
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How have you arrived at that conclusion? A few million = 3-5 million. Even at the low end that involves having 150k spare a year, plus a house and retirement fund? You're having a laugh.
Why is that laughable? 150k spare a year, diligently invested 20 years with an overall real return rate of 5% (which should be relatively achievable with index funds, otherwise our capitalist machine is in serious trouble and it won't matter too much what my portfolio does) compound to $5.2M. And that's a real return rate so it should be protected against inflation (add a ~3% if you want to do pre-inflation calculati…
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Why is that laughable? 150k spare a year, diligently invested 20 years with an overall real return rate of 5% (which should be relatively achievable with index funds, otherwise our capitalist machine is in serious trouble and it won't matter too much what my portfolio does) compound to $5.2M. And that's a real return rate so it should be protected against inflation (add a ~3% if you want to do pre-inflation calculati…
You are indeed lucky to find a partner who fees the exact same way as you about saving and having kids. Is the 150k joint savings or your individual savings per year?
It’s a high number but if you take advantage of all the tax deferred accounts available and are an average performer at a good company, it’s incredibly easy in the bay to get a $250-300k job, at which point the $150k becomes very achievable if you live frugally (in my case it’s a bit less than $150k, but I also don’t think I’ll need 5M to retire, that’s way too much considering my life style and the fact that I’ll probably just go back to my home country in rural Europe to retire close to my family).
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Why is that laughable? 150k spare a year, diligently invested 20 years with an overall real return rate of 5% (which should be relatively achievable with index funds, otherwise our capitalist machine is in serious trouble and it won't matter too much what my portfolio does) compound to $5.2M. And that's a real return rate so it should be protected against inflation (add a ~3% if you want to do pre-inflation calculati…
So in the bay area you can make 350k/y (saving, living, taxes) average for 20 years starting as a 25 year old?
I don't know what the history will be over the next 20 years if you start now, but for the entire 8 years of my career so far (started at 24), my pre-tax compensation has been roughly 260k/y averaged (I'm at 350k now and started at ~120k), which has allowed me to comfortably save 120k+ a year.
My career has been a mix of a couple startups (one with decent exit, but nothing life changing, say 1.5 years worth of salary as financial outcome of the vested equity) and a big solid growing company (no FAANG though).
Why not retire and contribute to open source? You can set your own schedule and speak to whomever you want or no one at all. It amazes me that people in their 40s are working as software developers. Did everyone gamble their money away? 20 years in software developement is easily a few million in the bank + retirement account + home. Why not retire?
How have you arrived at that conclusion? A few million = 3-5 million. Even at the low end that involves having 150k spare a year, plus a house and retirement fund? You're having a laugh.
You are forgetting interest, capital gains and appreciation.
Considering he has no children, $3-5 million is easily doable. Also, I was including house + retirement fund in the $3-5 million.
I wasn't having a laugh. I was just telling him that early retirement is a possibility. It's insane to worry to be worried about "career advice" in your 40s as a software dev.