Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

"I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services?"

This sounds good in theory, however, there are only so many businesses that actually are in need of 'a programmer in the 99th percentile of language X'. You can find a lot more that are looking for 'a programmer that helps me make more money'.

The problem is that there's a big gap between 'being sufficient in language X' and being in the 99th percentile. If you are in the 90th percentile of language X developers, there's not much people looking for you (they need the 99th percentile guy).

"For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment.

So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner?" As far as I understood the article, the point would be to look how you could communicate about the job so it would be attached to the Profit Center. Let me give it a (probably bad) try: _"I make sure company X saves 10K on manual backup verifications, which are in place to make sure they don't lose millions when a backup is required."_

A normal CEO would probably only hire you for $AMOUNT_OF_MONEY if he believes it would save him >$AMOUNT_OF_MONEY on e.g. manual labor.

"You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is." The trick in 'transferring' to the Profit Center is part communication about your job (to your manager, CEO, clients, etc.) and the other part asking the question _"How does what I'm doing right now makes my boss money?"_ because if it doesn't make him money some how, you're probably messing around.

That said, it's really hard to connect 'bugfixes on other people's applications' to the Profit Center.

Perhaps I've misunderstood the authors intentions? The parts about young people in start-ups, and how it becomes a downward spiral if you aren't in the lucky 10% is such a negative view it hurts. Specifically the "odds" of succeeding and the relative unimportance of the connections you make during that time because [paraphrased] "most of the connections you make in the start-up world are with other start-ups who are likely to fail as well". This is just such a losing mindset to have. If the only thing you are concerned about is not failing then you have no chance to do anything of importance. The choice is yours.

I apologize if I've missed the point here as I know there were a lot of other parts in the article about adding value to your career and understanding how corporate structures work. I do believe those are great things to understand but the tone of the whole thing really struck a nerve.

Right after my undergrad, I worked in the industry for 5 years and then went to Grad school. Since completing the grad school it has been 10 more years in the industry.

My industry experience has been great so far and I love what I do. I consider my Grad school experience as an enlightening and enjoyable period of my life.

Not everyone has a bad grad school experience. No need to beat down the academic experience. A lot of people gain from it. A career in academia is not the same as being a student.

It seems to me that both are being looked down upon here.

Wasn't this precisely the insight of the founders of Infosys in the late 80s? Together, the Indian outsourcing giants, Infosys, TCS and Wipro have amassed huge armies of "programmers" to meet these needs. I stay away from CRUD stuff, because 1. I don't expect to be very successful competing with armies. 2. I don't like being a part of a huge army.

I went with my co-worker to talk with a client a few weeks ago. Even though we do the exact same thing, we introduced ourselves differently.

I said I was a programmer, and the response was "oh, that's nice"

He said he was an Engineer, and the response was "Oh, that's so impressive"

Also the fact that here in Japan the average salary for "Software Engineer" is almost twice that for "Programmer" and you can see why you would want to shy away from that nomenclature.