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Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

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Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#91

Post by slavoingilizov »

idoby wrote: post #82
slavoingilizov wrote: post #77

OK. I'll try to play devil's advocate here. Disclaimer: I think of myself as an engineer. I do believe your frustration comes from observing actual issues and you're right to express your disappointment. However, I can see a lot of cynicism in your tone, and I feel there's a huge amount of judgement on those "cons" without trying to peek behind the curtain on what makes them behave like that. To provide a different v…

It's not either/or. Good luck building the next FB/Google/MS/Amazon/Apple without exceptional tech and exceptional tech people. All of those companies had breakthrough tech combined with breakthrough business ideas. Assuming that everything is just about UX, PM and bizdev nets you the kind of mediocrity the OP is talking about. Sometimes what looks like over-engineering to the mediocre actually enables breaking new g…

I agree. I'm not suggesting tech isn't important at all. I'm just trying to provide a counter point to the OP, whose argument sounds very one-sided.

You can't build the next FB and Amazon without great tech. But they are not in the tech industry. Tech is the key ingredient (out of many)

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#92

Post by sscarduzio »

mindentropy wrote: post #70
sscarduzio wrote: post #15

Defintely start your own company. You spent enough time in the industry to know what problems are worth solving. Take a very specific problem and solve it better than any generic solutions available. Be the king of your narrow niche market, and when you're successful maybe broaden it. My favourite stories of engineers bootstrapping their own business with no investors, no employees, no MBA: Sidekiq https://www.indieh…

What are the chances of having your startup in areas other than web and mobile application development ecosystem? Do you think starting a company working on compilers, operating systems etc will even work without huge resources and connections?

Yes I think so! The pattern is this: big organisations produce generic solutions to cater 80% of the needs of the 100M people. Your task is to create very specific, expensive solutions for ~500 people.

Not a compilers expert, but I will try to invent a fantasy example:

GCC/clang are ok for compiling generic programs, everyone is more or less happy with them.

One day you read on a HN that SpaceX satellites have to ship with 4 redundant CPUs. Every CPU costs $100K and consume a lot of power, but they are needed to correct errors introduced by cosmic rays.

You decide to create a compiler that creates programs with error correction automatically embedded. Using your compiler, SpaceX saves $100K and can have 20% smaller solar panels because they can ship it with 3 CPUs instead of 4.

1. How much $ do you think you can sell a single license? 2. How many customers will you actually need to be profitable? 3. How much of your time do you need to create a minimal prototype that you can DM to that SpaceX employee and get him/her in a valuable mutual-help feedback loop? 4. How much better can this compiler become in 1 year of refinement?

Chances are you can make as much you currently make in a year with your first 2 customers.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#93

Post by burntoutfire »

purerandomness wrote: post #40

There's a wide community of people feeling just like you, assembling in "Maker communities", as they call it. Good entry points are the IndieHackers podcast, and conferences like MicroConf (watch their conference talk recordings here, especially Patrick McKenzie's aka patio11 [0]) The basic idea is to create a sustainable job you love for yourself, the people that depend on you, and many others. The antithesis of "Ou…

> Netscape documentary "Project Code Rush"

What is immediately striking about this documentary is how unhealthy everyone there is looking. Just a ton of serious obesity, unhealthy skin in relatively young people.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#95

Post by emilycanarelli »

I'm not sure if this would interest you, but what you're looking for in terms of culture is exactly what we have at the company I work for, Assured Information Security. The company was founded by four engineers who at first were working around a pool table until they got off the ground. That hacker mindset and employee-focused culture is still present today. This story might interest you! https://www.ainfosec.com/about/pirate-flag/. Regardless, I hope you find what you're looking for!

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#96

Post by ianai »

thom wrote: post #33
ritchiea wrote: post #12

First I would take a step back and try to view the situation with less judgment. It's easy to look at the past and mythologize it and imagine it as perfect. Maybe there are more MBAs and executives and thought leaders today but the past you're romanticizing would have its own frustrations and road blocks. The other thing it sounds like you're doing is looking around for a great opportunity rather than zeroing in on a…

Not to deny the obvious frustration of the poster, but it's sad to see such wise and calm advice currently being downvoted.

It’s not helpful advice. He’s essentially finger wagging instead of offering positive input.

Corporate America really is bad enough to warrant correction. If anything, I’d probably suggest learning about people to the OP of the thread. Find out how to spot personality types quickly and how best to work with them - including avoiding the toxic ones. But also temper it with not over analyzing-analysis can become its own damnation.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#97

Post by idoby »

slavoingilizov wrote: post #91
idoby wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either/or. Good luck building the next FB/Google/MS/Amazon/Apple without exceptional tech and exceptional tech people. All of those companies had breakthrough tech combined with breakthrough business ideas. Assuming that everything is just about UX, PM and bizdev nets you the kind of mediocrity the OP is talking about. Sometimes what looks like over-engineering to the mediocre actually enables breaking new g…

I agree. I'm not suggesting tech isn't important at all. I'm just trying to provide a counter point to the OP, whose argument sounds very one-sided. You can't build the next FB and Amazon without great tech. But they are not in the tech industry. Tech is the key ingredient (out of many)

They're not in the tech industry, but they are tech companies. Tech companies are companies who believe that in tech innovation is not only possible, but necessary to drive exceptional business success. Those are indeed few and far between.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#98

Post by ritchiea »

ianai wrote: post #96
thom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to deny the obvious frustration of the poster, but it's sad to see such wise and calm advice currently being downvoted.

It’s not helpful advice. He’s essentially finger wagging instead of offering positive input. Corporate America really is bad enough to warrant correction. If anything, I’d probably suggest learning about people to the OP of the thread. Find out how to spot personality types quickly and how best to work with them - including avoiding the toxic ones. But also temper it with not over analyzing-analysis can become its ow…

I empathize with how bad corporate America is, I struggle with it all the time. I didn't intend my comments to sound like finger wagging. A lot of it is turning to advice that legitimately helped me. When I felt most like "the whole system is rotten" or "I don't feel like I have the status I hoped for" it helped me when people close to me reminded me to think carefully about what I'm actually looking for. The advice might not help you but it comes from a good place and is not intended as finger wagging.

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#99

Post by awinder »

Have you considered going in the other direction and working for a public company? I had similar feelings to components of this, and you might find it interesting / refreshing to see how companies work when leadership is primarily geared around returning for-real, actually-generated cash to investors. If you end up at companies that are in the middle and have been around for a while, the CEO's job is absolutely to get to a liquidity event. And you'd be right to realize that impacts the total environment of what is being built & how it's being built, it's not a con IMO though, it's a bad situation.

Getting a bootstrapped company into something that yields enough cash for a salary isn't something that happens all the time, and it's going to require you to have some significant cash reserves. So if you can't do that right now, think about maybe making changes that build towards that future and focus on that, rather than the vagaries of what executives are doing & why they're doing it ;-).

Re: Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo

#100

Post by mywittyname »

kube-system wrote: post #73
idoby wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's W2?

There are two worker classifications in the US which refer to the tax forms they get: "W2": An employee. A regular job. "1099": Independent contractor, freelancer.

To expand on this, the differences come down to taxation. There are taxes in the use called FICA that are half-paid for by the employer for W2 workers and not covered for 1099 employees. Also 1099 workers are able to deduct business-related expenses from their income ta.
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