Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unicorn Jobs

pgbovine.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–99 of 99 posts

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#91

Post by cschneid »

_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)?

Not really midwest, but I'm in Colorado - it's not hard to find $100k+ jobs for experienced programmers, and buy a nice house for $250k. It's an amazing confluence of cheap to live, but high pay work.

Plus mountains.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#92

Post by xenonite »

marquis wrote: post #47
graeme wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree here. Anything specific that helped you delegate more? I'm getting started on that, but still feel I'm not getting nearly as much done as I could, and I'm a bottleneck for my outsourcers.

Delegation means knowing exactly what results you want, and if your staff aren't skilled enough being able to lay it out down to the line with direct tasks with clear finish lines for each task. We do a lot of training, so when working with junior developers you want to break it down, break it down, and be able to think laterally in case they can't achieve exactly what you want - there are always other ways to get th…

May I ask how many people work for you?

The kind of delegation you use sounds a lot like micro managing, which scales to teams of 20 at most.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#93

Post by Aloha »

I have one of these Unicorn Jobs.

I'm paid 40 hours a week, most weeks to warm the couch. I get time to work on my own projects.

But, alas, I'm a contractor and some point in the not too far future this ride will end. knocks on wood Hopefully its not soon however.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#94

Post by SkyMarshal »

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.

What was the tool and could you turn it into a SaaS?

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#95

Post by izolate »

seivan wrote: post #37

I thought this post would be about jobs for 'unicorns' designer + developers positions conjoined. That's what I want. A job where I won't be dictated by designers who can't implement their bullshit photoshop mockups. I'm not an entrepreneur, but I like to create things. I am OK with a paycheck (where eating out on McDonalds is a luxury) with no equity, hell that's my current situation - sans creative freedom. Right n…

I have your unicorn job. They exist. I'm on the development team in a small startup, and since I'm the only one with proficient design skills, I have a ton of creative freedom.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#97

Post by loomio »

derefr wrote: post #56
pgbovine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

totally! if you love building businesses, managing organizations and logistics, and figuring out monetization and growth, then starting a company might be your unicorn job.

My unicorn job would be getting a steady salary to start business es (multiple)--riding the highs and the lows, without risking my own money. Maybe I should join a VC firm?

Or become a mentor at an incubator/accelerator?

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#98

Post by marquis »

xenonite wrote: post #92
marquis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delegation means knowing exactly what results you want, and if your staff aren't skilled enough being able to lay it out down to the line with direct tasks with clear finish lines for each task. We do a lot of training, so when working with junior developers you want to break it down, break it down, and be able to think laterally in case they can't achieve exactly what you want - there are always other ways to get th…

May I ask how many people work for you? The kind of delegation you use sounds a lot like micro managing, which scales to teams of 20 at most.

We only use this method for new and junior developers, for maybe 2-3 months depending on how quick they are to get up to speed and we trust that every day is spent on something constructive.

Re: Unicorn Jobs

#99

Post by AYBABTME »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #94
AYBABTME wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What was the tool and could you turn it into a SaaS?

Excel with VBA, I was an infantry officer at the time. I made VBA tools for every station in the tactical ops center.

Given the nature of the work, I don't see how I could turn that into a business. Also the software was completely amateur; I went to study software when I found out I liked better coding than being an infantryman, as a consequence of this.

Post reply on HN