I think programmers should plan to retire by 40. Subsequently
live on passive income
become a entrepreneur
become govt employeeSilicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
111–120 of 122 posts
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't agree with your general point those are things with have always been true. For the last 10 year period I can't exactly blame the venture partners for SarBox ending the IPO exit (as another article has noted, in the last ten years there have been fewer > $100 million exits than there are VC firms). Add in the dot.com crash which started a bit before SarBox and the Great Recession and it's no surprise the…
I can't judge the impact of SarbOx. My guess is that the IPO market remains open for a solid company -- good market position, plenty of revenue and earnings, good record of earnings. But there have not been very many such companies built, even private where SarbOx doesn't apply. My take is that we need to do better at building solid companies. I'm trying. I know some people I'd like to have on my Board, but I don't s…
SarBox is considered to be the last nail in the coffin, not the sole cause of seems to be the effective end of the US IPO. The numbers speak for themselves, although of course a return of more than a couple of handfuls or so of IPOs per year would change that (less than that when you just count tech firms).
I've heard it costs something more like $2.6 million, but it's going to be company specific and the cost might have come down as people and accounting firms got experience. However the pure $$$ cost is only a portion of its total expense, it's also a time and attention sink and it significantly increases the liability (including as I recall criminal) exposure of some of the company's officers. Plus it costs a LOT of time (a year or more), money and attention upfront to get your company SarBox compliant for an IPO, and too much of it is insane stuff that does nothing to improve your real business.
If you remember your chemistry, look at it as raising the activation energy needed for a reaction.
Agreed this should be "the best of times", but you're still talking about fairly small scale and limited domain areas. As I keep harping on, where's the next FPGA like thing going to come from? The only really big "new thing" hardware based startups I know about are Tesla and Space X and they were funded by a single angel. Who got his money from co-founding PayPal, which was a perfect fit for eBay to acquire, which is a prior to SarBox public company.
I don't really know about Twitter (but it's tiny in terms of people and revenue, all out of whack with its impact), but Facebook has clearly made a decision to stay private for whatever reasons. It could go public, investigating why they've decided not to might be worthwhile.
The cash on the sidelines is a good and big question. Some say it's not so much at net, i.e. companies are keeping it to make sure they can service their debt (unfortunately debt is massively tax advantaged compared to stock based capital), others say (and this is clearly related to the first point) that it's being held in reserve for the Dark Times To Come. Or at least fear of such.
There have been too damn many 2,500 page pieces of unread monster legislation passed with no end necessarily in sight (let's say that confidence in what the Republicans might try to accomplish when they get one or both houses of the Congress back is not exactly high) ... in times of colossal uncertainty keeping reserves can mean the difference between your company's survival and death.
E.g. will the insane file a 1099 for any corporate recipient of $600 or more per year insanity be repealed? If you're a small business (Etc.
At the furthest extreme, compare to 1937 when "capital went on strike"....
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#113Is anyone willing to think about the opposite hypothesis? Maybe programming really is a young person's game. You don't see a lot of startups full of old programmers dominating their fields. You don't see a lot of old programmers creating awesome open source projects. Not even from those who retired and have plenty of time on their hands. Many of the programmers who created great things 30 years ago are in positions t…
Das U-Boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_U-Boot was created by experienced engineers (I don't know about Magnus Damm, but Dan Malek is still in the engineering world - Sr. Scientist at Mentor Graphics). Wolfgang Denk took over the original U-Boot code and has been driving it forward for over 10 years now.
http://www.denx.de/wiki/view/U-Bootdoc/History
I've met Wolfgang and would estimate he is a few years older than me, which would put him in his 50s. He still is much sharper than the youngsters on the email list. :-P
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I, bought in 1980 or '81. My first program was written in Basic on a timeshare system (dialup modem with a DEC terminal) in 1978 or '79.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#114To the extent that this reflects material reality, it suggests that there is an arbitrage opportunity for anyone who can get a babyfaced twenty-something to front for a team of 30+ year veterans with deep domain expertise and 10x productivity. All you have to do is have the consultant bios note their WoW habits and 7 weeks of professional experience with Merb and Cucumber testing.
Ah, yes, “Potemkin Consulting”.
Not the best metaphor since it's not hiding that there's nothing behind the facade, rather there's something superficially unacceptable behind it. Trojan Horse is not quite right (the experienced veterans are not going to leap out from behind the facade and ravage the hiring company :-) but something in that direction would be much better.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#115Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…
> "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. Management, architecture and design, on the other hand, are areas of software development where you need multiple complementary skills; technical ability, good communication, understanding of your customers and industry area, an ability to influence others, etc. People like that can…
> The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity.
I strongly disagree. The point of a commodity, in the economic sense I assume you meant, is that one item is just as good as another. You pay a certain amount of $$$, and you get a certain amount of Stuff.
IME, one piece of code implementing a particular requirement is very much not the same as another. Assuming otherwise is the kind of naivety that leads managers to make the sort of mistakes we've been discussing.
> I see the issue more as a failure by the good experienced coders to differentiate themselves in the marketplace than a conspiracy against old people. [...] Tell me why you're worth more.
If you believe code is a commodity, you don't want to hear and won't believe the answer anyway.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#116To the extent that this reflects material reality, it suggests that there is an arbitrage opportunity for anyone who can get a babyfaced twenty-something to front for a team of 30+ year veterans with deep domain expertise and 10x productivity. All you have to do is have the consultant bios note their WoW habits and 7 weeks of professional experience with Merb and Cucumber testing.
LOL - thank you, you just gave me a great idea ...
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#117I re-summarized my thoughts on this topic at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644559. I think people should look at performance through the lens of fluid intelligence and crystalized intelligence.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#118Management error #1: "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" As long as management insist on perceiving themselves as superior to other people, and assuming that technical competence somehow implies management competence, there will always be a drain on the good technical guys. The reward and recognition structure strongly encourages them to change discipline. However, can anyone cite me a singl…
this is something I'm currently experimenting with at my company. My theory is that most of the management role can be done by empowered secretaries. Keep track of shit. Kick our chairs, make sure we are actually working on what needs to be worked on and not distracted by shiny. Talk to people and make them feel better when there is social bullshit.
Now, traditionally, middle management has also made high-level technical decisions, which I think is just stupid. you should have technical people make those decisions, and /if required/ have the management types help interface with other stakeholders. Quite often the best people to make technical decisions don't have very good 'soft' management skills, and the people with the soft skills don't have the technical qualifications. (I mean, some people have both, but those people become very expensive, very quickly.)
Middle management does valuable work; the thing is, I think that the soft skills required to be a good middle manager are more common than the skills required to be a good front-line programmer, so really the management role should be done by someone who is paid less.
The question is, how do I carry this off? I mean, part of the managers toolbox is that they can get your ass fired... traditionally, management getting paid more has been part of the power dynamic that makes the programmer quit slacking off when management is nearby.
Some would say that a softer approach is better, anyhow; I mean, like it or not, you pretty much have to treat your programmers well; they have options.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design" The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. Management, architecture and design, on the other hand, are areas of software development where you need multiple complementary skills; technical ability, good communication, understanding of your customers and industry area, an ability to influence others, etc. People like that can…
> The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. I strongly disagree. The point of a commodity, in the economic sense I assume you meant, is that one item is just as good as another. You pay a certain amount of $$$, and you get a certain amount of Stuff. IME, one piece of code implementing a particular requirement is very much not the same as another. Assuming otherwise is the kind of naivet…
I love that you're fighting the good fight, but to these people who run things, code is in fact a commodity and so is the person producing it. From the owner's perspective you buy coders low, you maximize their output and sell it high, accumulate the difference, and repeat. If you're a more liberal owner, you buy them free lunches and build up a "culture", let them wear sandals, send them to conferences, tell them they're not little units to be counted, but at the end of the day these pretty lies are just costs -- costs, which may or may not yield profit over the long run.
As a coder, and somebody who loves the craft and identifies strongly with it, I "disagree" with this relationship ( as much as that is possible, since nobody asked me to vote on it or anything ) and I think it is dehumanizing. But wishing it away or romanticizing what we do, avoiding the fact that we are commodities just like every other worker in a corporate enterprise is just a terrible strategy for overcoming it.
I like what the guys at http://www.bettermeans.com are doing with the open enterprise governance model. I don't want human activity to continue the process of commodification, and this is a big step taken to change course.
Re: Silicon Valley's Dark Secret: It's all about Age
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The ability to convert detailed specs into code is a fungible commodity. I strongly disagree. The point of a commodity, in the economic sense I assume you meant, is that one item is just as good as another. You pay a certain amount of $$$, and you get a certain amount of Stuff. IME, one piece of code implementing a particular requirement is very much not the same as another. Assuming otherwise is the kind of naivet…
I love that you're fighting the good fight, but to these people who run things, code is in fact a commodity and so is the person producing it. From the owner's perspective you buy coders low, you maximize their output and sell it high, accumulate the difference, and repeat. If you're a more liberal owner, you buy them free lunches and build up a "culture", let them wear sandals, send them to conferences, tell them th…
Oh, I understand the problem; it was "management error #2", I think. And I understand that discussing it here will have little real impact on the managers concerned. I got off that train personally and no longer work as anyone's employee.
I hope that my contributions to discussions like this will encourage others to do the same, and that maybe, if those people one day have employees of their own, they will be a little smarter than the managers of today and the industry will be better for it.
In the meantime, I don't see why we should place any faith in the established practices of managers who, as an industry, run more projects that fail than projects that succeed. Can you name any other industry where it would be considered acceptable by the market if over 50% of the products bought failed, even if the costs ran to millions? I sure can't, it's just that the management idiocy is so widespread in IT that the market seems resigned to the inevitability that whatever they pay for will be crap that doesn't work properly.