621–630 of 634 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that total partner compensation is usually $1MM/year+ (on the low-end), those developer are HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE outliers (or are mostly comp'ed in stock options, and we know how that goes)
At the big 4 firm I was at, I can say positively that total partner compensation did not start out anywhere close to 1 million/year
The epiphany:
A VP I respect a lot was is still a crazy tinkerer with a strong technical background. He once made an automated dog watering bowl - it was stupid and brilliant and gained him a special kind of respect among engineers (myself included). I felt especially good because he asked me for advice on how to code bits of it[0].
This was the example I needed to realize I can still be a developer and a leader who writes code - achem - tinkers - for fun, bragging rights etc. I love telling my engineers that I hacked together some stupid thing (twillio api irc bot haha) while being careful not to pretend its the kind of pro-work they do day in and day out.
[0] I'm not sure if he realized it - but that was an act of motivational leadership. The vp asking his 2-level-down report for some pretty detailed advice - then coming back to show the results. It may seem obvious to some, but this was a major epiphany for me, and I've since seen this quality in all of my favorite bosses & mentors.
I made a the choice to go into leadership. (note I still avoiding the word "manager" as that makes me feel like a PHB ..but I'm getting over it). The epiphany: A VP I respect a lot was is still a crazy tinkerer with a strong technical background. He once made an automated dog watering bowl - it was stupid and brilliant and gained him a special kind of respect among engineers (myself included). I felt especially good…
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> But tech is not a meritocracy. Some people say it is, others say it isn't. Neither use a lot of data in their arguments.
Some people say it is, until you ask them if tech interviewing is sane. We can't even find a tech interview process that correlates well with performance and that's just who we let in the door before they even get to rise up as their value merits. Then you add questions of if who is chosen for promotion is sane, if what products a company chooses to focus on is sane, if what products the market chooses to make popula…
The second part of your comment is less relevant, as I think most "tech" people would say that e.g. promotions (management), product development (marketing) and the general market dynamics are highly "non-tech". But in many of these areas, people do try to choose the best - at least as far as marketing is concerned, companies dislike wasting money and choose to promote those people/products that they expect will produce the most profit. Companies' "profit", of course, doesn't correspond to a person's "merit" ("profitcracy"?), but the basic mechanism is the same.
Sounds like the typical success anxiety everyone suffers from today. You could have been everything, successful, rich, famous, but you chose what you wanted and that's ok, it's for the best, that's true success, don't run after the carrot. Every programmer I meet dream of being CEO, having their own company, making more money. Yet over 90% of them don't enjoy any of their current profit. Literally, with my programmer…
Sounds like the typical success anxiety everyone suffers from today. You could have been everything, successful, rich, famous, but you chose what you wanted and that's ok, it's for the best, that's true success, don't run after the carrot. Every programmer I meet dream of being CEO, having their own company, making more money. Yet over 90% of them don't enjoy any of their current profit. Literally, with my programmer…
Do you own a personal jet or a personal yacht? Bill Gates does (or definitely can).
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Working harder doesn't always mean working more hours. After 8 hours sitting at a desk programming, sometimes I realize how lucky I am to not have to hand-load semis all day in a blistering hot distribution center. And then sometimes, after a particularly grueling programming session working on the same bug for 8 hours, I yearn for a day of work where I can shut my brain off and chuck some boxes. 'Harder' is subjecti…
I have programmed, and I have worked in factories, such as a door factory. Programming is 100% beyond a doubt harder. My brain is mush at the end of a good day of programming. Making doors? Physically tired but mentally fine.. and I find the physical side was easier to recover from. So I get the door making -> programming is "harder" and I make about 10x the money.. but I would not say it was 10x harder, maybe 1.3x h…
So have I, and I come to the opposite conclusion. Does my anecdote trump yours?
Sounds like the typical success anxiety everyone suffers from today. You could have been everything, successful, rich, famous, but you chose what you wanted and that's ok, it's for the best, that's true success, don't run after the carrot. Every programmer I meet dream of being CEO, having their own company, making more money. Yet over 90% of them don't enjoy any of their current profit. Literally, with my programmer…
Just work on something myself, my own way, without 'deadlines' and other unnecessarily worldly requirements, projects as side-effects of doing what you feel. I really really am into coding just as a way of writing philosophy, and just as philosophical ideas are never 'done' and 'released' and books just written as a product of musing, so are code pieces.
When authors are celebrated for the beauty of their work by people that understand them: imagine a music festival where people go literally just to see the artist perform live. When programming becomes almost a performance art, and we are able to embody the omnipotent creator ideal of these little universes we create on our computer; that's the dream.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ljsEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT31&o...
Certainly looks like it had potential. Of course he was going up against microsoft at that time. Certainly wouldn't have been easy.