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What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

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Re: What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

#21

Post by sys42590 »

gonehome wrote: post #9
sys42590 wrote: post #2

I don't think that Product Manager is exclusively a trophy job, if at all. It takes quite some skill to manage a product properly, maintain healthy product boundaries, create a sensible roadmap, combat feature creep, etc. A product manager's skill set can make or break a product.

I think PMs get a bad rap mostly because it can be less obvious when someone is bad. If you're a bad programmer and produce nothing, it'll (usually) quickly be discovered (though not always) even if you're good at talking. It's also easy to spot check in the interview before you hire them. If you're a bad PM, but good at talking - it's easier to pass the interview and it can be harder to know they're bad and fire the…

A bad PM that's good at talking will usually lead to a non-consistent product strategy (due to promising too much to different stakeholders), and subsequently to death march projects to fulfill all the non realistic promises made.

If you're long enough in the tech industry you've seen such people and learned to identify them with good certainty after one or two meetings.

Re: What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

#23

Post by codingdave »

> Ask any recent college graduate and they’ll tell you the most coveted jobs in each field and across all of them. They’ll also tell you how competitive it is to get one. These tend to be common targets for trophy jobs.

This really gets at the heart of my reaction to this article - this feels like a description of how people who have no real idea of what life is like in an industry think people feel might feel about well-known titles within it. I'm not seeing much connection between this article and the reality of working in tech.

Re: What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

#26

Post by v37p »

JohnFen wrote: post #8

That definition of "trophy job" is one that I can agree with. However, I can't think of any tech job that I'd consider a "trophy job" by that definition. Am I weird?

For me it would be the title of Fellow, especially at any of the big tech companies. I see more prestige in being a fellow than any other title.

Re: What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

#27

Post by germinalphrase »

chronc379 wrote: post #15

Quants at prop trading or buy-side HFT (not banks). There’s a lot of substance in those jobs (denominator), but the status is insanely high (numerator). Smart. Quants are generally “smart” with diverse software, hardware, and math knowledge. Scarcity. In the United States, the entire industry might hire 1,000 to 2,000 new grad quants per year. And most importantly, a realistic path to $1M+ TC by 5 YOE, and $10M+ TC i…

“ And most importantly, a realistic path to $1M+ TC by 5 YOE, and $10M+ TC is not uncommon for 15-20 YOE.”

That’s wild, if true.

Re: What are the “trophy jobs” in tech?

#28

Post by rcurry »

mkl95 wrote: post #19

CTO / VP of engineering at small VC-backed companies that employ less than 50 engineers. My current CTO spends most of his time spamming ChatGPT-related stuff, and discussing "key objectives" he replaces every few months, thus having next to no accountability. It was the same at my previous job.

Oh lord, I ended up working at a place that had one of those. He would always carry this huge stack of old-school fan folded green and white dot matrix printer paper to prove his bona fides and would spend every meeting furiously scribbling circles and boxes on it and then throwing it away after. His catch phrase (in like 2013) was “I could probably whip together an AI solution for this but I’m too busy, you guys just let me know when you have some regular solution for me to review.”
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