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Power is uninteresting for some folks. Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming from is very nice.
Some of it is deep coding problems, but there's a fair bit of FAANG that's just protobuf/avro engineering and GRPC/thrift/restli midtier apps.
Ask an engineer to build something and they will think of the twenty features which will make a compelling product, and the great ones will work day and night to deliver them. A great startup CEO will identify the three features that get the first customer, then roadmap the remaining features in conjunction with sales, marketing, and hiring.
Great CEOs know how to build teams and solve hard problems, usually from years of experience and failures. It's hardly ever as simple as reading a book or overcoming some mental hurdles.
This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.
This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.
No one gives a crap about your title apart from HR and your ego.
This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.
Helping Medium creators make a living while keeping the simple / ad-free experience of Medium is an interesting arbitrage opportunity until you prove it out and Medium integrates it into their core product offering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming Depends on your risk tolerance. You will most likely not be able to profit greatly off of your deep coding problems if you do them for a company with highly stratified reporting chains. Profits will get passed around to the idiots above you in the chain of command, leaving you with peanuts; probably some small bonus or raise.…
> you're not getting paid, but you will most likely reap all of the rewards for any big wins you have As someone that mostly enjoys optimizing distributed systems and debugging them. I can assure you that, I can’t build a product out of this skill set. There’s consulting, but then I have to continually sell myself, which I don’t enjoy. Working for a large company, I have of plenty of these problems to solve and I get…
I have the skills to create my own product. Without customers, it is not a job. I realize that he corrects his terminology later on in the article, but he does not address that disconnect.
It's circular. Where's the value?
This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.
When I ran a one man contract outfit is sign myself off as weird titles such as Grand Hegemon and Eternal Leader occasionally on emails to see if anyone noticed. Nope! No one gives a crap about your title apart from HR and your ego.