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We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

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Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#31

Post by raverbashing »

jfim wrote: post #21
cheschire wrote: post #2

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.

> Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems 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.

Yes

But sometimes there are interesting problems

And the paycheck still comes on time

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#32

Post by nineteen999 »

lochlan wrote: post #9

Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup when I can enjoy comfort and success working at a FANG company? Startups _sound_ great, but death marching myself without compensation is a stressful proposition. Sure, I have a handful of ideas that seem reasonable and dreams of startup success—and maybe I'll explore them in early retirement.

Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup OR the culture at a FANG company, when I can thankfully avoid both and still be compensated really well and enjoy my work.

It's not like there's only two options.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#33

Post by hirako2000 »

thespoonbends wrote: post #29

Why do so many of these "start your own business" nomads types have businesses that revolve around getting more people to start businesses? The author's business appears to be about monetising blogs. It's circular. Where's the value?

There is no value, but it pays the blogger. In a way they prove the point, only that it applies to themselves or the followers who would do exactly the same.

The same can be observed in some educationnal subjects, some teachers make money teaching students how to become teachers of the same thing, with no concrete value other than filling jobs. The money often come from state funds :)

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#34

Post by barumi »

exdsq wrote: post #30
qz2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a title is too disingenuous it’d actually put me off the company... your examples are great, but a director of engineering for a department of one is just strange.

I agree, such pompous and self aggrandizing titles convey the idea that the person behind it has a tendency to try to defraud others by portraying himself as an authority that he is not. It's like introducing ourselves to others as head chef because we made ourselves a sandwich.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#35

Post by hirako2000 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #20
hirako2000 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English isn't my mother tong, what's building a Moneyball? Writing whatever people are willing to read in the promise to make it big, without having to do anything big yourself?

Moneyball is the name of the product he's building :).

Cool name, I'm inspired to build a Moneymagnet.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#36

Post by jshen »

Dannymetconan wrote: post #17
anonytrary wrote: post #11

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.…

In a lot of places though you can have a good life, work 9-5, be well paid and not have to worry about all the headache that occurs from running a business. You might not end up a millionaire but you'll generally be better paid then a lot of people in your age / social bracket. A lot of people just don't want to make the sacrifices to run their own business!

If you’re a developer, and you work for a big company that gives stock options, you will almost certainly become a millionaire after 15-20 years if you don’t mismanage it.

You’re far better off, on average, this way than if you work for startups. You’re also more likely to become a millionaire this way than starting a company, but your less likely to make hundreds of millions.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#37

Post by barumi »

hirako2000 wrote: post #14
mattmanser wrote: post #6

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.

Yes, but he took the jump. Are you saying he used to be standing on prestigious ground but landed in mud after his backflip?

Taking jumps means nothing. And his choice of absurd and self aggrandizing titles lead me to doubt he ever stood on prestigious ground, at least acknowledged by others.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#38

Post by rl1987 »

inopinatus wrote: post #19

The irony of saying "don't be a serf! build your own products!" whilst depending on the Medium platform is either delicious, or painful. Not sure which.

Just like your codebase is bound to have dependencies, so will your company. If he's not depending on Medium, he would be depending on Google for ranking, hosting company for hosting his blog, Mailchimp for sending out email marketing campaigns and so on. The difference is doing the work according your own decisions versus dealing with decisions made by other people higher up in the company according to some agendas that may not align with your needs.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#39

Post by ramshorns »

matsemann wrote: post #15

I think it's weird that his solution to being "unhappy and overworked" in a small startup is to make a new one and suggest that everyone else do the same.

A more interesting conclusion could have been that engineers should use their power to walk away to instead organize together and demand better from their employers.

Re: We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

#40

Post by rellekio »

mattmanser wrote: post #6

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.

In general it comes down to marketing budget, networking, and luck. Both start up, self found, or otherwise.

That or having a good idea that isn't just marketing. No matter what organization your in there is internal marketing and external in terms of what we produce. I say that as sometimes despite what we advertise as ground breaking is just a web form plugged into a dockerfile.

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