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Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

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Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#121

Post by virtualwhys »

terenceong wrote: post #114
dustingetz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i totally understand and respect your position and that's definitely a strategy that can work. The other end of the spectrum is, you could contract someone like Tony Morris[1] at $250 an hour for 20 hours a week, and he will build your product faster than a team of untrained engineers, or more likely, build a product that untrained engineers aren't capable of building, with a defect rate close to zero. Not every stra…

i might be missing something but is tony morris someone who is famous for being really good at programming or something? i googled him and couldn't find anything concrete, and yet you and the guy you replied to seems to already know who this guy is and have some kind of assumption about his abilities. i'm sincerely asking.

Tony Morris is more infamous than famous.

In Haskell he's nobody special; however, in Scala he's known as one of originators of Scalaz, and has made contributions to the development of the Scala language itself. TM is very strong in category theory and has no problem speaking categorically about the correctness of his views.

He's a polarizing figure in the Scala community and seems to enjoy pissing people off (again, the code of conduct banners seen on Scala Google groups can be by and large attributed to TM, which is an accomplishment, thus the infamous claim).

In TM's defense, as a teacher he does force the reader to stretch beyond their current (limited) understanding. If he came across as less of an a$$hole then he'd probably have a larger role in Scala and the programming world as a whole.

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#122

Post by bubbleRefuge »

nostrademons wrote: post #116
johnjlocke wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that all the money you earn goes to paying the rent on your $2000 studio apartment.

I think you underestimate the amount of money that Bay Area developers make. $2k/month is $24K/year, which is a relatively small fraction of your after-tax income when you're making $150K/year. One thing people don't take into account when figuring out cost-of-living adjustments: while expenses like rent, taxes, and meals out are typically a percentage of income, expenses like durable consumer goods and savings are m…

300K for a senior engineer? Maybe a few people at Google. I've heard of some 200K jobs at Apple for low level systems programming people that are hard to find.

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#123

Post by beatpanda »

venus wrote: post #112
beatpanda wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For everybody wondering where '16 years' comes from, Google 'Global warming's terrifying new math' by Bill McKibben, so that you can shift from attacking my credibility to his.

I read that article (again - I read it when it was first published) and it doesn't mention the number 16 anywhere. Look, I am broadly sympathetic to your point of view (I think). I agree we need to take drastic measures to control CO2. I think that fracking and methane hydrate are going to be fucking disasters if we don't start actively sequestering CO2. Actually, I think the methane thing seals the deal - the reduct…

Page 2, middle of the second paragraph:

>In fact, study after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year – and at that rate, we'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today's preschoolers will be graduating from high school.

The article was written in July of 2012. At the time of writing the estimated global carbon budget (the amount of carbon we can burn without increasing global temperature more than 2 degrees celsius) was 565 gigatons.

Carbon emissions in 2011 were estimated at 31.6 gigatons, a 3.2% increase over 2010, according to the article, and assuming a 3% growth rate in carbon emissions, we'll hit the limit in 16 years.

For the record, according to the journal Nature Climate Change (via the BBC, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20556703), total carbon emissions were higher in 2011 than reported in McKibben's article, given that we reached an estimated 35.6 gigatons in 2012, reported to be an increase of 2.6% over the previous year.

So, yeah, it's in the article, I'm sorry you have a hard time giving such an important piece of information a close reading, but there you go.

>I hope you learned your lesson

Indeed.

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#124

Post by loumf »

porker wrote: post #106
pg wrote: post #54

"Yet, there is no enduring formula for creativity and rebellion." This is a fine sounding statement, but it's false. We've been accumulating and refining techniques for having new ideas for centuries, at least. Leonardo da Vinci mentioned several in his writings.

Is there a list of these techniques anywhere?

I like this one: http://www2.wlv.ac.uk/sad-subjects/cgd/DM2109/technique_for_...

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#125

Post by io »

pg wrote: post #54

"Yet, there is no enduring formula for creativity and rebellion." This is a fine sounding statement, but it's false. We've been accumulating and refining techniques for having new ideas for centuries, at least. Leonardo da Vinci mentioned several in his writings.

Well, sure. There are formulas and techniques for creativity and rebellion in the same way there are formulas and techniques for winning a 100 meter sprint. But formulas and techniques don't turn an overweight, middle-aged guy into a world class sprinter.

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#126

Post by oblique63 »

btilly wrote: post #117
oblique63 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's true, it still seems a bit orthogonal to the point, because the argument being made is essentially about efficiency, not necessarily effectiveness. If we think about all the people that have had such experience changing epiphanies, then take the subset of those who might actually be able to communicate these valuable experiences across in a programming interview, suddenly your selection pool becomes rath…

The point that was made was that smart people with potential are cheaper to hire and easy to train. My point is that smart people with potential and training are great, but aren't actually as good as smart people with potential and experience. The trick is, of course, that smart people with both potential and experience tend to be easy to identify..and very expensive.

Well yes, but the fact that they are expensive is a byproduct of their rarity (which results in us talking about cheaper engineers), and that can be symptomatic of a system with an efficiency problem. The argument then is about confirming that it is.

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#127

Post by makerops »

I started, and invested my own money (6 figures, that I earned) in a b&m business in my 20s, lost a lot of time, money, and experienced a lot of bullshit... but I learned a lot. That preamble is because, while I have no experience with your typical SV startup, I have put my own time and money at risk.

By joining a startup you are pretty much guaranteed a salary, an office to go to, and you have to weigh the risks of lower salary vs options, but so what? That's no more risk then someone working a corporate 9-5 and chooses to actively manage their portfolio, which really is minimal risk imo (wrong?). As an outside observer it seems to be in the financiers interest to perpetuate the sexiness of startups to "market" their investments. Can someone that is more into the startup culture clear this up for me? What risk is there in joining a startup as an employee other than what I have described?

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#128

Post by btilly »

oblique63 wrote: post #126
btilly wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point that was made was that smart people with potential are cheaper to hire and easy to train. My point is that smart people with potential and training are great, but aren't actually as good as smart people with potential and experience. The trick is, of course, that smart people with both potential and experience tend to be easy to identify..and very expensive.

Well yes, but the fact that they are expensive is a byproduct of their rarity (which results in us talking about cheaper engineers), and that can be symptomatic of a system with an efficiency problem. The argument then is about confirming that it is.

Expensive, yes. But expensive compared to value produced?

Every decent programmer has stories of a time they put in 10 hours of work to save a highly paid person 20 hours/month for the rest of time. I say stories because there are many such. On my resume I list a number of cases where I added X millions/year to the bottom line of small-medium companies. It is not a complete list. What value should an efficient market put on a programmer who does that repeatedly?

For those willing to work as an employee in the Los Angeles area, the value the market places is significantly under $200k/year. Now you tell me, is that expensive relative to value?

Re: Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup

#129

Post by sliverstorm »

nostrademons wrote: post #120
sliverstorm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when does your average kid fresh out of college make $150k/year in the Bay?

Fresh-out-of-school salaries at Google/Facebook/Twitter are in the low six figures (2 years ago I think they were around $105K), get promoted to senior dev after 2-3 years and $150K/year is very doable. It's probably lower at J-random-startup that nobody has ever heard of, but most VC-funded startups will pay market rates.

We are comparing to acting hopefuls. Is the crem-de-la-crem of the programming world- the ones that get top salaries at Google/Facebook/Twitter- really the right people to compare?
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