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Unicorn Jobs

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Re: Unicorn Jobs

#81

Post by AnonJ »

michaelochurch wrote: post #44

OP is writing rubbish. I've worked in enough companies and done enough consulting and advising to have some thoughts about this. First, stop obsessing over binary distinctions that don't exist like "unicorn job". It's like "being rich". You won't get there by obsessing about it. There are shades of gray on this one. Second, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If Guido only spends 50% of his time on Py…

>binary distinctions that don't exist

>you'll make better stuff if you're part of the world

>companies whose passions match your own

>that your project is useful to someone else

Exactly. OP shouldn't treat his own dull internship experiences as the whole picture about companies. His way of thinking is not productive/conducive at all IMO.

Though I don't totally agree with the "political" part.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#82

Post by _random_ »

gamegoblin wrote: post #21
was_hellbanned wrote: post #14

The rather unethical alternative is to find a job in a fairly incompetent group at a company that's not extremely tech focused, then spend most of your time working on whatever you want to. I've had jobs (and spoken to many people with similar jobs) where I could accomplish all my tasks within a couple hours of actual, focused effort, leaving the rest of the work week for personal projects, side business, etc.

I met a guy who worked in the tech department of a large department store chain. He was one of a couple hundred programmers in a large cubicle farm. It was a pretty dead simple setup, each programmer got an assignment (generally COBOL maintenance, and new stuff was in C#, I think) that was due in 2 weeks. Rinse and repeat. Just like highschool or something. Anyway, he'd finish his "assignment" on day 1 and spend the…

What is good money in midwest (excluding contracting and finance)?

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#83

Post by gamegoblin »

_random_ wrote: post #82
gamegoblin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a guy who worked in the tech department of a large department store chain. He was one of a couple hundred programmers in a large cubicle farm. It was a pretty dead simple setup, each programmer got an assignment (generally COBOL maintenance, and new stuff was in C#, I think) that was due in 2 weeks. Rinse and repeat. Just like highschool or something. Anyway, he'd finish his "assignment" on day 1 and spend the…

What is good money in midwest (excluding contracting and finance)?

Where I live, a student coming out of school with a CS degree could expect 55K or so, moving up to maybe 80K after years of experience. That being said, I pay $450/mo for a 1000 sq ft apartment, and gas is There are an abundance of tech jobs at large non-tech companies here. WalMart, for example, is headquarted here. So you get a lot of programmers who don't do much, if any, hobby code and programming is just a job. They get their 4 year degree, sign on with Walmart, work, get married, have a family, etc. Not a very eventful place at all as far as tech goes. I was once on a flight from Texas to Arkansas and sat next to a rails dev from the bay. I was so excited to sit next to a techie and have a chat, and then it occurred to me what a lack of tech community we have around here. This was a big deal for me to meet another dev but to him it was just an average flight.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#84

Post by PaulHoule »

smoyer wrote: post #35

I think the question is completely wrong ... the question you should be asking is "how do I turn my current job into a unicorn job?". I've done this for almost 30 years and, with the exception of the times I was forced into management roles, I've loved engineering. The key is that you have to be doing something your employer feels provides value, and ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're ent…

Some workplaces suck.

I worked in a place where the reward for having "good communication skills" was that they did everything the way the guy who had temper tantrums bad enough we had to call the ambulance once wanted.

Some places go from crisis to crisis; yeah, hypothetically you can take a vacation if the project is on track but it was two years late when you joined.

There are places where it makes sense to improve your current job, but it's not realistic. Remember that things like the Obamacare screwup and the Target data breach aren't exceptions, they're business as usual, and if you're part of that kind of culture you are doomed no matter what you do.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#85

Post by jgh »

chops wrote: post #31

Whenever I give a talk about Erlang-related stuff, I almost inevitably get asked "do you do this for fun or for your job?" And I can genuinely answer "both, really". While I'm the project lead for one of the more popular Erlang web frameworks ( http://nitrogenproject.com ), my main focus is on my sports league management system[1] ( http://bracketpal.com ), which runs on Nitrogen. As a result, I can justify spending…

Nice site. I ran a similar site for a few years in the mid-2000s, but focused more on the large-scale minor leagues (i.e. kids leagues, whatever they're called in the USA). Judging from your landing page you guys are more focused on the small beer-type leagues and stuff - is that a more profitable thing than trying to get the big leagues with 100+ teams on board? I never attempted to go for the little guys.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#86

Post by tway9999 »

pgbovine wrote: post #39
tway9999 wrote: post #33

I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want. Also why people work part time and spend their off time painting or playing music. Be poor but have time to work on what you care about. Edit: Grammar

I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want. Some of my college classmates went down this route, and while the numbers can theoretically work out (these are uber-smart math/science/engineering folks), I've never seen a single person exit successfully from this game and th…

I definitely understand that. Personally, they are both tough choices. One is essentially a race to the top and the other a race to the bottom. That might be the trouble in looking for rare things(unicorns). You often need to go to extremes to find them, and extremes are usually quite uncomfortable.

Speaking of what I've done myself, I've found a combination of the two seem more likely to succeed. By limiting my resource requirements(cheap rent etc), which I may have focused on too much on the past, and increasing my skills(and pay rate), which I spend more energy on these days, I can spend a continually reducing portion of my time on the things I don't want to do.

Thanks for the interesting article btw.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#87

Post by code_duck »

azakai wrote: post #11
code_duck wrote: post #8

I was lucky to start a small startup which functioned like a 'unicorn' job. It allowed me to work exactly on what I was interested in for 4 years, while making more money than I had been. The only drawback was the amount of time managing advertising. So, don't leave out 'start a business!'. Surprised to not see that possibility mentioned in the article... This is HN, after all. You don't need an employer to have a jo…

It is mentioned in the article, near the end: > One trite suggestion is, Why don't you just start your own company? From talking with friends who have done so, I can confidently say that entrepreneurship is not a unicorn job. You spend the majority of your work days on logistics, errands, coordination, and other overhead that's not at all related to furthering your core dream – but those steps are ultimately necessar…

I see. I'd suggest that one would need to be as selective and fortunate in finding Unicorn self employment as outside employment that fits the bill.

Also, whether one feels a position/endeavor meets unicorn status depends on personal tastes. For me, working for myself is just as important as what I'm doing and compensation. I also value being in charge of and learning the full stack, from sysadmin work to database and server side work to client side programming. It would be very rare to find such diverse work and responsibilities working for the sort of employer author considers his ideal.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#88

Post by Swannie »

michaelochurch wrote: post #44

OP is writing rubbish. I've worked in enough companies and done enough consulting and advising to have some thoughts about this. First, stop obsessing over binary distinctions that don't exist like "unicorn job". It's like "being rich". You won't get there by obsessing about it. There are shades of gray on this one. Second, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If Guido only spends 50% of his time on Py…

Nailed it.

The only other thing that I would want to add: consulting can be a path towards this too, as you get to pitch the work you'd like to do for the client. (That is, real consulting, not contracting on a technology).

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#89

Post by auvrw »

overgard wrote: post #52
was_hellbanned wrote: post #14

The rather unethical alternative is to find a job in a fairly incompetent group at a company that's not extremely tech focused, then spend most of your time working on whatever you want to. I've had jobs (and spoken to many people with similar jobs) where I could accomplish all my tasks within a couple hours of actual, focused effort, leaving the rest of the work week for personal projects, side business, etc.

I don't know if it's that unethical -- I think there are a lot of jobs where if you made a graph of the worload it would look rather spiky -- IE, sometimes you're very busy, but with long idle times in between. Those downtimes are a good opportunity to work on pet projects or learn a new skill for career development. I think most good employers will recognize that if you're otherwise good at what you were hired for.

upvote, because while i don't know if it's ethical or not either, that's my situation, although i didn't recognize it as such when i first started.

i've used the "variable workload," justification before (at the suggestion of a manager, in fact), but i think an even better justification is that i've taken a major salary cut compared to my previous cubical-oriented, corporate job. also, i try to spend the extra time developing skills that, while not necessary this week or month, might be useful later.

there was a post a day or two ago about "money is freedom," and while i guess that's true, freedom from money can also be freedom.. or something. i dunno, my reasoning is probably flawed, but i feel like i'm learning a lot, eating well, and pretty alright with my job at the moment. a lot of the original post seems like post-PhD(tum) angst to me.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#90

Post by auvrw »

AYBABTME wrote: post #72
PaulHoule wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weirdest thing is that I've worked at places where I couldn't get other people to move fast enough to stay busy. That is, if I tried to work at 80% utilization I'd always be arguing with people to get them to pick up the pace. Once I decided to work at 40% utilization I found I got along better with people. My boss bitched me out once for "not being fully committed" but he quit the next month, so things went on f…

What I did in a previous situation like that went: Phase 1: Get angry at people being slow. Phase 2: Write tool to make slow people incapable of being slow. Phase 3: Profit. Phase 2 keeps you busy in while the slow people are slow, so you don't get as angry. Then in phase 3, the slow people become irrelevant so they don't frustrate you anymore. Plus you get recognition for improving the efficiency of the office.

oh, right. this is also really good advice. after learning how to write a yacc grammar, it's really easy to trick "non-technical" people into doing their own programming with with domain-specific languages. JBehave also looks useful for this purpose.
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