101–110 of 186 posts
You don't get to be 4bln $ companys CEO doing management job 9 to 5 any more that you are going to be Marcus Persson or John Carmack doing programming job 9-5. Sky is the limit only for people who have right combination of skill and luck.
Don't forget hard work and persistence! :)
I respond really negatively to the notion of 'dead end.' Programming isn't a dead end job any more than welding is a dead end job or painting. But it is a trade . What is more, managing is a different job than programming. Not a lot of programmers really internalize that until they try out being a manager. Architecture, and technical leadership in general, is still another job. It takes the ability to internalize mas…
If there is an economic cap on the value of a developer, it doesn't derive from how much code they produce. Value differentials for programmers derive from knowing the right code , not typing up any code that suffices, and I think pay reflects that. 1 KLOC of the right code can easily be better than 10 KLOC of the wrong code, even if the 1 KLOC is buggy and the 10 KLOC has no bugs. I think programmers are valuable in…
This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a…
Am I wrong? To become a "millionaire" (using it as a synonym for wildly financially successful) doctor or lawyer, you generally make the majority of your money through either an invention or marketing skills. What career isn't a "dead end" applying this logic? Real estate, maybe?
This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a…
You can become a millionaire CEO if you are intelligent with at least a 10-20% success rate. Get 5 years work experience, ace the GMAT, go to a top 5 MBA, do consulting at 250-500k/year for 10 years for a company like Bain or McKinsey, then get hired as CFO of one of the companies you work for, 5 years later get promoted to CEO. Even if you don't make CEO, you can get to several multiples of an engineer's salary with…
What's better, I can do that _while_ actually living in the Bay Area. Just because I can and I like moving back and forth between here and home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and no. It might be an unpopular opinion (and I'm a programmer myself) but 80% of programmers are relatively easily replaceable, particularly in large organisations. There are indispensable unique unicorns out there, but they tend to be well compensated. When a project is managed by one manager and coded by five developers, you could easily lose replace two of those developers with little impact. If you lost the…
I don't think they are useless, but I also do not think that the majority are particularly skilled. In many cases, it seems like teams succeed despite their managers interference. A lot of managers are more like secretaries and I think they should be compensated as such. There are exceptions of course, but the unequal pay has nothing to do with skill as far as I'm concerned.
Which is where I fundamentally disagree with you. Optimised database indexes (for example) can be valuable to a company. But if the company lacked a developer who could optimise them, they could get by - they'd just have to get more/faster servers.
You can't throw money at organisational and communication skills in the same way. In fact, doing so usually makes it worse. If you don't have managers that know the company, can interact with other stakeholders and otherwise just manage people, you're screwed.
If you think that kind of stuff is secretarial work then I could just as easily counter by saying that development is basically just glorified word processing. And should be compensated as such.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agreed. In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year, only including cash compensation. To expect to grow by 20% per year on average for a decade given this starting condition is just not realistic. Honestly, to be in the top 95% of incomes at the entry level and then to complain that you're in a dead-end job . . . it just smacks of a lack of aw…
>> "In the Bay Area, there are many companies where the most junior engineering tier earns more than $100k a year" It's important not to forget cost of living in that area is abnormally high.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right. Programming is a blue collar trade.
That is a bit of a reach to call it blue collar. I have blue collar friends from high school who envy what programmers do and make and I do what I can to try and persuade/teach them to learn to code and make a better life for themselves.
I would bet money that in less than five years, a lot of software people will be unemployed -- again. (If I win, good. If not, good. :-) )
This is silly. First, very few people become millionaire CEOs. If thats your standard for success, then every path likely leads to failure because no path reliably leads to that kind of success. Some paths are more likely than others, but none are very likely for the average person. Part of the reason for flat-ish career trajectory is that programmers earn more at the start than most. Some professions have more of a…
High finance (banking, PE, hedge funds) are basically the only career I know of where you begin at a relatively high salary, and have potentially unlimited career growth (in terms of salary and earning power), where at the highest end, you aren't doing substantially different work than you did at the beginning (this is simplistic, obviously. You work at a higher level, and begin to employ people to do the work you di…
I even have a Master's of Management, which I enjoyed.
But I love being a senior analyst. I want to be a senior analyst forever. It's enthralling to me. I decline management job offers. It's not worth a few extra bucks for me.
I'm putting my savings toward a tech angel fund for when I'm too old to program. I'm working on side projects that might blow up big time one day. There are other options besides management.