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Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

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Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#451

Post by charlesdm »

MatthewMcDonald wrote: post #393
charlesdm wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just also dependent on pay? Let's take a ridiculous example, but if someone were to offer me, say, $1m (a year) to work on a specific key niche project (i.e. something that fits within my skill set and where I could add tremendous value) then I would happily move wherever around the world. Pay more -> you'll probably get a (significantly) higher amount of qualified applicants?

For a while; money isn't everything, and once they have enough of it, people will leave to chase whatever they're really interested in. https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14599186/google-waymo-sel...

Everyone leaves after a while. I don't see paying someone too much as an issue, to be honest.

That said, the people Google was after probably didn't (really) want to work at Google, and needed convincing. Plenty of people prefer working on their own projects and couldn't care less about being employed by Google, but will forgo that for a "sure thing" payday (and there is nothing wrong with that). Business transaction like any other.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#452

Post by eldavido »

ryandrake wrote: post #125
ivanjovanovic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I overall agree with your sentiment. I would though not agree fully about where you assume value is created. Usually, developers / middle managers do not create value. Mostly they are implementing ideas of others and in these ideas is most of value concentrated. I would say they deliver value but don't create most of it.

It's a good philosophical question: A company creates a great product. What person actually created the value? The product visionary who thought of the idea? The developer who implemented it? The manager who approved the budget allowing the work to happen in the first place?

This is a foolish question, but that's the point. There is simply no objective way to analyze this.

It all comes down to which group the people signing the checks value. I often say "pay is a social construct" and this is what I mean -- there's no objective basis for any of it. I think devs are paid better in the Bay Area than elsewhere just because we're assumed to be more important here relative to other parts of the US/world.

There is no objective reality here, just a bunch of beliefs.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#453

Post by divideby0829 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #412
kartan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned. I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all companies. It is li…

> Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned Like software engineering. And like writing software, some people are better at it / enjoy it more than others. Software engineers and good salespeople are very well compensated because they're hard to replace. > I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all com…

I think it's disingenuous to say that it's a more common failure mode just because you see more of those failures. More realistically, if an organization has a good sales ability but no product, with some rare exceptions where people are hoodwinked etc., they just don't get to step up to the plate, i.e. They are not given the chance to fail because nothing happens and they don't get funded.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#454

Post by laythea »

gbarc888 wrote: post #293
nichochar wrote: post #42

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of mone…

I agree with you. The third group is also the first people to get laid off and thrown away when there is an economic downturn.

No, that would be contractors :)

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#455

Post by rwallace »

mehrdada wrote: post #426
slg wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Without sales and marketing, you will also have a hard time. It is collaboration what brings success. The distinction is that product development, sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that enginee…

> sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that engineering seldom does (I cannot distinguish product development from engineering as cleanly as you do, but on sales and marketing...) Can't disagree more. At least with the definitions I have in my head, this sentence is logically inconsistent with such definitions. Engineering is the way you get non-linear leverages. Sales and marketing, almost always give…

I agree with you about the value of good engineering, but I think you underestimate the value of good marketing.

> Sales and marketing, almost always give linear multiples at best.

Counterexample: Apple's famous 1984 ad.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#456

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

biohax2015 wrote: post #355
yahna wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Okay, slash your engineering staff and double the sales people and lets see how you do. How is any of that not done by thousands of other people as well? Especially sales.

Sales is more difficult than engineering. There, I said it.

For a certain type of person, sales is much easier - if not completely natural. For others, the same could be said about technical pursuits.

I don't think it's possible to make general statements that one is harder than the other, because it depends very heavily on the person involved.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#457

Post by sshumaker »

nichochar wrote: post #42

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of mone…

Plenty of scumbags take the founder route too. :) And I've met many engineers in my career who would fit the jerk description as well.

Having operated in all three roles, all are incredibly valuable. Great leaders enable their teams to be more than the sum of their individual members (employees). But I would opine that the leadership roles come with significantly more risk, which is at least partially responsible for the money / prestige.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#458

Post by sidlls »

madeofpalk wrote: post #413
sidlls wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of ot…

> That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated This is possibly the most HN thing I've ever read. Bay Area developers are under-compensated?

Relative to the value we add? Absolutely. The under-compensation is even worse elsewhere.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#459

Post by Kalium »

sidlls wrote: post #252
nichochar wrote: post #42

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of mone…

I have a different (admittedly controversial) take, having been on the "tech ladder" for some time now (as a Senior SWE and Lead Engineer): most individual contributors overestimate how much value they actually provide, especially in the Bay Area. That isn't to say we're not under-appreciated and under-compensated (we are both). But realistically much of the time work we do is easily done by literally thousands of ot…

Attribution is critical. A salesperson who lands a big deal can claim it's their exclusive work. An engineer who is one of a dozen people working on a feature that customers like does not have a similarly clear number they can point to as value added.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#460

Post by rothbardrand »

I've worked for startups for 30+ years. I've seen this industry from before the dotcom era into the cryptocurrency era (and I work in crypto now.)

Here's my perspective-

-- Experience is undervalued by people who don't have it. It is critical for a startup. You don't all have to be experienced, but get someone who has experience. One of the real killers of startups is bad management, and one of the causes of bad management is management by instinct, especially terrible is "type a" CEOs (to pick a stereotype for succinctness sake only) whose management history was being president of a frat in college, telling software engineers how to build product, but he knows nothing about software.

-- Experience as an executive who didn't start out as an individual contributor is not experience. If you cannot do your subordinates jobs, you cannot manage them effectively, unless you have a subordinate who can do the jobs (like a lead) who you manage.

-- Your CEO needs to be proficient in the unique value of the company. EG: If you are a sales organization you need to have a CEO who is a proficient sales person. Apple needed a proficient CEO when it was an engineering / product organization (and Steve Jobs was that- not as a good an engineer as Woz but he knew electronics and software development) ... but now Tim Cook is a proficient supply chain master and that's what Apple needs to thrive now. As a startup your CEO needs to be able to build the product. Or he will make bad decisions.

-- Founders give investors way too much power. They seem to think that investors are an old boys club that decides who wins and loses. In the valley for BS startups that's maybe true- you can get BS money until you make it. But if you're not a Golden Child then you need to get traction and revenue, and you always, always, want to be in the drivers seat for investment. You never want to need it.

I've seen so many VC and even lately angel deals with terrible terms that I'm convinced the reason being a founder is not as remunerative as it should be is founders signing bad deals desperate to keep the company going.

Always keep your burn rate low.

When I was making minimum wage in college I was ecstatic because I could afford to go see a movie in the theater every week. That was "luxury" for me. As my income grew, I kept my definition of "luxury" well below my income. This produced savings. Those savings helped greatly in lean times.

Run your business that way. You may be able to grow to 100 people now, but don't, grow to 70 or whatever, so you have more cushion.

If your hiring is ahead of your traction you're probably not hiring the right people anyway.

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