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Employee 1: Yahoo

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Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#101

Post by itchyouch »

ryandrake wrote: post #58
overcast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and the reason I am sitting here in Upstate New York, making way more(cost of living) adjusted than I would there. Though it can be argued you're paying the experience tax working for big names there. But it doesn't interest me.

I've worked both in and out of Silicon Valley and you can't beat SV in terms of "opportunity risk". Most places outside of the area are one-horse towns when it comes to tech: If you lose your job there's nothing else there, you're picking up your family and moving to another city at least, maybe another state. I lived on the east coast for years, and I'd happily move back in a heartbeat, but I'd be a nervous wreck ev…

The northeast, NY/NJ/PA/DE/DC/MD area has a vibrant economy aplenty. Within a 3 hour radius, there's virtually an unlimited amount of jobs across a ton of industries.

The places that scare me are places like Chicago & Atlanta. Outside of Chicago, there's virtually nothing. Outside of Atlanta, it's the same, which usually means moving across the country for something.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#102

Post by itchyouch »

Swizec wrote: post #29
overcast wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my thirties now, after spending my twenties in pursuit of wealth. I can tell you unequivocally, as cliche as it is, accumulating money/wealth is not rewarding. Of course one needs a certain amount to be comfortable, but obtaining more has absolutely not made me a happier person. Relationships, interesting purposeful work, and travel has been what I have found to be the most rewarding. Basically experiences over th…

> Relationships, interesting purposeful work, and travel has been what I have found to be the most rewarding. Basically experiences over things. And how big does your fuck you fund and/or financial stability in general have to be to be able to say No to uninteresting unpurposeful work? And how much do you need to both pay for travel and to be able to afford the time to travel? Wealth accumulation is freedom accumulat…

There's a continuum.

Paycheck to Paycheck - getting fired mean, being unable to pay for housing & food.

3 months savings - bills can be paid at once, a lay off puts pressure on one to really jump on the job search.

1 years savings - termination doesn't scare one, but thinking about taking a 1 year sabbatical, while nice, also means that torwards the end of the sabbatical, one must hope /plan apply for jobs after some period of 6-11 months or so. Strict budgeting is paramount.

5 years savings - termination and paying bills has no day-to-day thoughts. One can ponder of maybe dumping that savings into a startup, but if the startup doesn't pan out, one may be in one of the aforementioned states.

10 years savings - one can consider never working again if they reduce their draw down rate to last indefinitely.

20+ years savings - One could try a startup, lose 10 years of savings, and really not worry about anything.

I think people wouldn't necessarily have a problem working indefinitely, if they could participate in a lifestyle business where hours are flexible, workdays are shorter, weekends are longer, commutes are minimized or optional, vacations are plentiful and the pay is above average. For a lot of programmers at large institutions, this is pretty possible if one can find the right boss and company with policies that allow for this. how long these kinds of cushy positions will last is the question.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#103

Post by itchyouch »

jacquesm wrote: post #98
Meegul wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with what a C64 is, but I have never seen one in my life. The majority of my fellow undergrad students know next to nothing about the history of computing. But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now. Provided, a little historical context can help us make some better decisions, but you don't see people coding in…

> But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now. I used to agree with you, but I've come a full 180 on this. I now believe that 'functioning software engineers' need a thorough understanding of what has already been done in the past to avoid endless re-invention of that past (but usually worse). The amount of resources that is…

Kind of like the, what ever programmer should know about memory paper.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#104

Post by mikekchar »

Dr_tldr wrote: post #96
mwfunk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success hides failure...every company does some things right and some things wrong, but when things are going well it can be very hard to get anyone to acknowledge the wrong things. People can always point to the profits and use that as evidence for staying the course, even on internal issues that don't directly relate to P&L. IMO this is what ultimately kills successful companies- once they've conquered their market…

Interestingly, this problem of decadence and decay scales to countries, royal dynasties, empires, etc. We don't yet have any companies so large that their period of decline has been able to last for centuries, but it's theoretically possible. I don't think Oracle and IBM will be around in 2050, but I wouldn't have thought they'd be around now in 2005, so my perception is probably off.

Hard to say if there are companies whose decline lasted over a century, but there are definitely some who are close. Consider the East India Company which was established in 1600 and lasted until the late 1800s. In my native Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company was granted a charter in 1670 and at one point owned half the country. It has been struggling for very nearly 100 years and I think you could say that it has been on a downturn for at least 150 years.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#105

Post by krzyk »

ryandrake wrote: post #30
overcast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that he was emphasizing the bosses bosses bosses boss. Many levels of nonsense, leading to politics. Managers do need to exist, and I agree they have a purpose, but often times, even in the company I work for currently. There is more management than there is workers.

Well somebody has to manage the managers! The whole flat org with minimal managers "ideal" has been tried lots of places and always failed. I think even Google tried it at some point. Let me tell you a few things that happen when your org gets flatter: 1. Decisions get bottlenecked Typically, the "flat org" thing gets tried without empowering the rank-and-file to make big decisions. So decisions that would normally g…

Regarding 3 point.

I really really hate having weekly meetings with my manager (or any other manager that I had) I don't see a point, it is stressful and takes me away from my job.

More over I don't know any other developer that likes those 1 on 1 meetings with their manager.

I would love a manager that doesn't have time for them, if I would want something from him I would go to his desk and say to him, why meet?

And don't get me even started on the career development, the biggest bull*t is the whole carreer development process and how I have to write what I will do this year, what I did etc.

Are you by any chance a manager, because you sound like one :)

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#106

Post by krzyk »

douche wrote: post #39
coldtea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent chunk of people on HN were born way past after Apollo's, Commodore's and Data-General's heyday. And even for SUN, a 20 year programmer today was only 14 or so when the company was sold to Oracle and probably didn't follow the tech industry.

Good spaghetti monster, if you don't recognize Sun or C64, you really need to study the history of your industry a little better. I am not that old, that I remember Java before it was mostly abandoned by Oracle.

Java abandoned by Oracle?

I have a feeling that it was abandoned by Sun, thanks to Oracle we have Java 7, 8 and we will have 9 next year.

They have the money, which Sun lacked so there are resources to develop Java as a language.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#107

Post by tajen »

krzyk wrote: post #106
douche wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good spaghetti monster, if you don't recognize Sun or C64, you really need to study the history of your industry a little better. I am not that old, that I remember Java before it was mostly abandoned by Oracle.

Java abandoned by Oracle? I have a feeling that it was abandoned by Sun, thanks to Oracle we have Java 7, 8 and we will have 9 next year. They have the money, which Sun lacked so there are resources to develop Java as a language.

Java 5: 2004. Java 6: 2006. Acquisition: 2009-2010. Java 7: 2011. Yu're kind of right, but I had always interpreted that the acquisition had delayed every decision-making and effectively halted any release of Java, until they got the approval of the acquirer about the contents and scope of the release.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#108

Post by zippergz »

ryandrake wrote: post #88
superuser2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$110k is an opening offer to a new grad these days. A few years in, you'd be at least $140-$150k. These are not outlier rockstars; they are standard pay bands at big tech companies. (And to be clear I'm talking salary, stock would be a few tens of thousands on top of that). I'm not sure how attainable $200k is, but $105k for a mid-career adult is quite low. Perhaps that is the case at actual startups, definitely not…

Unfortunately the publicly-available reports that exist on Bay Area Software Engineer salaries disagree with you. I don't claim to be an expert on this--just someone who can search Google. $111,885 average [1] $110,554 average [2] $103,000 average [3] I know this is HN, where everyone makes $150K and has $1M in savings and a supermodel girlfriend, but in the real world I think things are a little different. 1: http:/…

The big tech companies are VERY standardized in their compensation for new grads. I guarantee you that at the one I know in the most detail, the base salary for a new grad is a bit over $100k. Add bonus and stock, and it's pretty easy to get to around 150k within a year or two. Not base, but total cash compensation. This is certainly not AVERAGE, but those companies hire thousands of engineers, so it's not exactly "unicorn" status either. This is not an estimate, or extrapolated from a couple of data points - this is actual knowledge of the compensation structure I'm speaking from.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#109

Post by zippergz »

bluedino wrote: post #7

>> Come out to Silicon Valley and get a regular 9 to 5 at a place like at SGI [Silicon Graphics], and then you can moonlight with us. And we’ll see where it goes. That sounds so absurd. Today that would be like, "hey come out here and get a job at Instagram, and them after-hours we'll work on our own thing"

Of course, if you get a job at any of the big names, they'll make you sign papers saying they own everything you invent that's related to anything they do (which is just about everything in tech for the top companies). I don't know how enforceable that is, but it does have a bit of a chilling effect.

Re: Employee 1: Yahoo

#110

Post by cmdkeen »

brianpan wrote: post #34
hitekker wrote: post #5

Excellent article; I thought the section copy-pasted below to be a rather non-trivial, unintuitive, and meaningful lesson: > Craig : How was it to ride that wave, especially when the bottom fell out in 2000? > Tim : When things are going well and you’re in a growth industry, you don’t have to deal with many difficult issues. It’s the old cliche, winning solves everything. > Craig : For sure. > Tim : It’s really true.…

I don't know if it's apropos to talk sports, but in a very real way this is what happened to the Warriors. They had an historic, record-breaking season that allowed them all sorts of bad habits. In the Finals when they are on the verge of reaching their goal, those bad habits showed and contributed to their falling short. Coach Steve Kerr talked about recognizing those mistakes during the season but it is hard to cor…

The England rugby team do a lot of work with the military and other organisations to look at how to develop leadership. After a win they spend a long time analysing how they played and what they, individually and collectively, could have done better. After a loss they have a much shorter washup. It might sound counter-intuitive but it is much easier to get people to say "if I had done this we could have scored even more points" after a win than admitting that they could have won except for something they did wrong.
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