12 ms·

Climbing the wrong hill (2009)

248 points by brianbaquiran 10y ago

nikanj 10y ago
There's the very real possibility that in 10 years, you'll be broke with a failed startup. Articles like this often act as if risk didn't exist, and then claim that everyone should quit their steady jobs for a moonshot dream career, be that in arts, acting or startups.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  I'm firmly on the side of the corporate career, but this is a BS argument for it. The outcomes aren't binary. Even if you don't "make it" as a writer / actor / cartoonist, it doesn't automatically mean you're broke and waiting tables well into your forties. You can find yourself part of a well-paid production crew or as a grip or something that you're better suited for that the industry actually needs. Similarly, if you're doing startups, failure doesn't go on your permanent record and you can try again. These career fields are about choosing your priorities in life, that's how you choose one path or the other.
- ams6110 10y ago
  OTOH the time to do a "risky" startup job is when you're young and have no real responsibilities other than yourself. Being broke in your late 20s is recoverable especially if you've gained expertise in current tech; being broke at 40 with a family is a much harder challenge.
- kough 10y ago
  Huh, I wonder if cdixon has any incentive to interest people in starting their own startups...
  - austenallred 10y ago
    Well he got rich starting one, so...
    - PakG1 10y ago
      I think you're missing the point that he's now a full-fledged investor and is now more biased than before. https://a16z.com/author/chris-dixon/ https://a16z.com/author/chris-dixon/
      - austenallred 10y ago
        I'm aware. My point was that I don't consider it deception for someone to try and convince people to get rich the same way he or she got rich. Assuming he only does it because he's an investor is assuming the worst. He can probably only invest in a half dozen companies per year, so encouraging everyone he meets to start companies would be a very indirect Nd unnecessary way of filling the top of that funnel.
- vpb 10y ago
  Yeah, I'm here. Ten years on the road and a lot of failed dreams. Some days I feel like finding a high beam and buying some rope. Anyway, it's been a fun 10 years - people should be aware of the risks, but it's fun to try.
  - pm 10y ago
    I've failed at a lot of things too. I'm not doing exactly what I want to right now in terms of tech, but I'm making up for it in other ways, e.g., playing music. I look back at all the mistakes that have been made though, and I can't really fault anyone else but myself for the trajectory I've taken. It's up to me to learn and find a better way.
- wslh 10y ago
  Yes, I think it is great and I am proud that YC is having a good reality check that is maturing every year. Just watch the Startup School videos, mainly the Slack founder talk. It is also good to think about alternatives to the typical startup vs corporate dilemma. For example, securing a job and working on side projects until there is a signal they can be something more.
- austenallred 10y ago
  Honestly I think that risk is overstated. I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did. And the company I'm at now I joined long after product-market fit. I was still ahead in my career of people who were in the same place but didn't start a company. And I paid myself slightly less but still well enough to get by, so the only painful part was the transition between jobs. If you're a talented engineer you'll be just fine. I've probably had a job offer per week since then, too. Now I've Saved up enough money, and I'll make another go. If I fail? Back to the same pretty-damn-good default position.
  - naasking 10y ago
    > I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did. Your anecdotes are not an indication that the risk is overstated. Who knows what factors decreased the risk for you, and while you attribute it to 'engineering talent', it's far more likely to be something like more skill at using the network of connections you've established (most jobs are still filled this way). Whatever that factor is, it isn't necessarily a common skill.
    - austenallred 10y ago
      Find me a talented engineer in the Bay Area who started a company and now can't find a job. We have $5,000 referral bonuses and severe engineering shortages so I'd love to refer him or her.
      - peterwwillis 10y ago
        I have known several, and rent was so high they eventually moved away.
      - alpos 10y ago
        Consider offering remote positions. Even if those positions are only used as a way to open new people to the possibility of moving to SF. If your shortages are severe, why limit your talent pool to the smallest, most competitive market?
- dkural 10y ago
  You'll then get a job within 2-3 months at a higher salary than what your startup paid you ... plus you'll have a brand new network in your startups industry, with competitors that respect what you've done & gone through.
  - davidcbc 10y ago
    > You'll then get a job within 2-3 months at a higher salary than what your startup paid you Assuming you live in SV or NYC
TempleOS 10y ago
I have a space alien. Frasier is a chimp You are the stupidest fuck in the history of the universe
cybernytrix 10y ago
If one were to use a similar analogy as the author -- a startup is like a huge hill but a mirage. Once you're off of whatever you are smoking, you realize it's just a mole hill.
CalChris 10y ago
Startups, that's plural, add some randomness to this hill climbing. Most startups fail and then you get pulled off of a local maximum. But your next startup should not be exactly random. Like the VCs who invest, you should learn something from failure and you should have the lay of the land. If you don't, if it's a random walk again, then perhaps you don't belong in startups or in VC.
marginalcodex 10y ago
I've sent this blog to dozens of people. While it's not universal, it offers an important concept applicable to many facets of life. Here's another take on the same concept: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27033 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27033
uiri 10y ago
What people say that they want and what people actually want are frequently two very different things. When it comes to finding product-market fit, this is obvious. There is an old quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." It is better to look at people's actions and behaviour rather than their words when judging what they actually want. The people whom cdixon talks to that say they want to be '"working at or founding a startup"' are lying. They are lying to themselves first and foremost and only secondarily to cdixon. Their actions speak much louder than those words. Those actions say that they want to safety and security of the job that they don't enjoy rather than the risk and uncertainty of a startup.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  Although I agree with the message, just being pedantic Henry Ford never actually said that.
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  > Those actions say that they want to safety and security of the job that they don't enjoy rather than the risk and uncertainty of a startup. I think it's quite possible to have both. Have a full time job, work on a side project, and if it becomes successful enough to quit your full time job, then do so. Startup without the uncertainty! Granted, now you've pushed the odds of your startup failing from 95% to perhaps 98% (since you're not devoting all of your time to it), but what do a few percentage points matter at that level anyway? Replacing a 5% chance of winning the lottery with a 2% chance doesn't mean you should no longer play (especially since you've eliminated the stress of potentially starving).
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Say, for example, that my "side-project" was a HIPAA-compliant SAAS-software tool for doctors that they relied on every day (24x7). It needed to be deployed across multiple availability zones, and the team needed to be "on-call" for whatever didn't work, whenever it didn't work? How would that, for example, square with doing it in parallel with a 9-5? Or, are you talking about doing a project that people don't really really need? I have to imagine the failure rate of pushing a product that people don't need would be high, and the ability to support a product that they do need would not be compatible with the side-project concept. Am I wrong in thinking this?
mathattack 10y ago
Going temporarily downhill is very hard for most. I know dozens of bankers who want to move to tech, but can't handle the cash paycut.
- justinator 10y ago
  No risk, no reward. I'm not going to convince a banker that - but maybe that's why there are bankers and that's why there are people who race sailboats solo around the world.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Who knows, maybe they'll end up better off.
dheera 10y ago
This is exactly why I disagree with the 24/7 work style that some startups have. I use a large fraction of my spare time (i.e. nights and weekends) to randomly drop myself on other hills.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Totally this. I'm ready to work 24/7 when I feel I'm on the right hill :).
  - dheera 10y ago
    When you feel you're on the right hill, you might still be on the wrong hill. You can climb Mt. Fuji and feel like you're on top of the world. But you're really not.
    - madamelic 10y ago
      Why not just live day-to-day on whether you are happy rather than critiquing whether you are on "the right hill".
      - dheera 10y ago
        And what do you do when you are not happy? Go uphill (and it may be the wrong hill) or drop yourself randomly on new hills every day? Both are suboptimal. You should do a bit of both. Like go uphill 80% of the time and test random points 20% of the time.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        That's the "exploration vs. exploitation" problem. C.f. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit.
geomark 10y ago
He says "Then, a few years later, they finally quit their job, but only after having spent years in an industry they didn’t enjoy, and that didn’t really advance them toward their long term ambitions." It seems to me there's a glaring oversight in his statement, which is that they could very well have gained some valuable domain expertise that will serve them well if they later decide to found or work at a startup. I mean, VC's so often mention the importance of domain expertise and the way you usually get that is working at an established company first before you f(l)ounder around at a startup.
cool_shit 10y ago
Leave it to a computer scientist to leave out the quantum tunneling metaphor. Well, here it is: skips current hill "I know somebody."
learn_more 10y ago
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
shouldbworking 10y ago
This is related to the human tendency to overestimate the danger of unpredictable risks. The danger of a major financial disaster for a healthy and educated young person in a developed country is much lower than it seems. I know many such people that traveled across the country, some with no money or possessions to their name. None of them were broke for more than a few months, and within 6 most of them lived a similar lifestyle to the one they left behind. The danger is much greater if you're unhealthy, uneducated, or have other liabilities, but that doesn't apply to a good portion of the HN crowd. What a lot of people don't think about is that a true disaster will knock you out even if you have a steady job, insurance, and education. I know several people whose lives were forever changed by a lawsuit, medical bills, and health problems. These risks are barely affected by anything you can control, so in most ways it's best to just go on as if they don't exist.
sandworm101 10y ago
>>“What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably “working at or founding a tech startup” Funny. I deal with startups all the time. When I ask startup employees where they want to be in 10 years they invariably say "Working for Google" or some version of "Working for someone more stable than this bag of cats". When I speak to startup founders, honestly and in private, the answer is some version of "On the other side of either and IPO/buyout". The employees look for stability, thier bosses cash. The grass is always greener. I once worked in film/TV and everyone wants to hear the stories. They all think it was so much fun. It was hell. That glorious job is never what you think. Except fighter pilot. Every one of the dozen or so I've met live and embrace the stereotypes.
- frahs 10y ago
  I think the reality is more subtle than this. I'm currently working at a large company with a lot of job security. In 5-10 years, I would like to see myself working at a startup. But only for maybe 5 years max, and then I'd like to return back to a position with more security. I think most people want to try the startup thing for only a few years.
- dunkelheit 10y ago
  Well, the question is posed by a powerful VC to a "prospective employee". This is the equivalent of "what do you want to do when you grow up, Timmy?". Also bear in mind that the post was written in 2009. My feeling is that startups have lost a lot of allure since then and are now increasingly viewed as sweatshops where grunts work for illusory payout whereas a job at megacorp with great pay and low stress is considered a sane choice.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  I think the more general principle is that by default all social systems strive towards stability and predictability, even the most chaotic and ground breaking startups. Occasionally we - individuals, teams, organizations - try to fool ourselves into thinking otherwise but the truly anti-fragile and chaos embracing social systems are incredibly rare and very far apart.
- deleted 10y ago
real-hacker 10y ago
Most people intuitively know this. But sometimes it takes 10 years or even decades to climb a hill, and the probability of picking a random spot in a valley or on a plateau is high. People are just risk-averse. And I think most winners win not because of this strategy, but because they can climb hills much faster than others, thus have a higher rate to try new spots.
rdiddly 10y ago
Seems to me a local maximum that definitely exists is not too shabby compared to a higher hill that has a 90% chance of going dead flat on you.
vaidhy 10y ago
I honestly do not understand this metaphor at all. There are reasons why some of the algorithms are better implemented in a computer. Is there some magic that will allow me to clone myself to try multiple paths in parallel? Maybe I can speed up time so that I can climb the hills fast? As a human, I have limited time and that places a huge constraint on what is feasible. Ignoring that and trying to draw parallels to algorithmic domain seems to miss out on crucial constraints.
- madamelic 10y ago
  I think the deeper meaning is that rather than trying to predict what path will be most optimal, you should be taking whatever step seems most optimal without trying to predict the future.
jankotek 10y ago
> works at a large investment bank. He has decided he hates Wall Street and wants to work at a tech startup (good!). He recently gave notice to his bosses, who responded by putting on a dog and pony show to convince him to stay Wrong choices. Better to stay a few years, then start your own company or consulting business. And in my experience large corporations, are often more progressive than most startups (work from home, technical equipment, software stack, conferences....).
- js8 10y ago
  Was about to write something similar. Working for bigco can give you experience with technology, understanding of the market and contacts that you are unlikely to have coming fresh from school.
peterwwillis 10y ago
First of all, if you know what you want to be doing in 10 years, and you are under 30, you are likely wrong. A lot of people change their plans in their 20s, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. If you are over 30 and look 10 years ahead, it's 40 - body breaking down, retirement planning is well underway, some form of collateral, possibly a family, etc. If you're gambling on startups then, you better be damn sure it doesn't crush all the other stuff you're juggling. Dixon's advice is misguided. He's trying to say "Don't fear starting over", which is good advice, because you will probably start over some time in your life without intending to, and it will be fine. But he's trying to make startups sound like a good idea, or "try random things" a better one. I would not treat life like a CS problem - I would treat it like an Operations change management action. List the departments of your life that are affected by the change. List the change(s), the work needed to implement it, the expected results, a test to evaluate, and a rollback procedure. In this way you can make a risky change and understand fully what it involves, and have some plan for how to revert if things go awry. Definitely try new things, but when it comes to changes that have potentially bad side-effects, use due diligence.
atemerev 10y ago
I wonder how the author is 100% sure that working in a startup is always better than working at Wall Street. I tried both ways, and there are ups and downs on both sides, but I liked it just a tiny bit more in big finance (though not in big banks). Other people's mileages may also vary.
pipio21 10y ago
As founder of several companies myself I always recommend people NOT to start startups. I will help or mentor them if they are really interested. Really interested people will do it anyway. It looks today like everybody and their dog have to make a company, but first you need to have a very strong conviction that the world needs something that you provide. Starting a company is going to be very hard at first, specially when you are trained by school that effort always rewards you with results and you need a very strong force behind you to be able to face the difficulties. The great shock is for great students that are used to have good grades or have a great job but in real startup life they struggle. In a company they will succeed but on their own they will depress and enter a death spiral. It is hard for them, for their partners, for their parents, even for their mentors. You need a totally different set of skills than in a normal job, like the ability to manage yourself, manage risks, made decisions,make investments, choose your people, understand markets, creativity or selling yourself in front of others.
Jare 10y ago
I went through pretty much the situation he describes: had developed videogames since I was 15, but while at university I joined the bank entity of a huge corp. I knew I wanted to do games, graphics and related stuff for the rest of my life, so after 9 months I had cold feet, got the show, accepted the offer and stayed three more years. One of the best decisions of my life. I learned tons of stuff that I wouldn't have learned going straight back into games. Not about COBOL or accounting, but about leadership, management and understanding the balance between business and technical needs.
kutkloon7 10y ago
I don't particularly like this kind of blog posts, for multiple reasons. First, they tell people what to do. Second, the argument is backed up by a false analogy. The whole reason that hill climbing works, is that computers are fast. If it takes 5+ years to 'climb a hill', starting at some random point costs a lot more. Actually, it is not even clear how 'starting over at a random point' translates to real life. Third: The point (I would say is "Try something else once in a while" - and I mostly agree with this) could be captured in a single line. The blog post is basically the blog-equivalent of a motivational picture.
- heisenbit 10y ago
  A fourth point: The landscape in tech is changing. Career in tech also requires one to deal with hills that are caving in.
Zelmor 10y ago
>everyone should work on their own startup, fuck the profession you studied for years and that is stable, well earning and can teach you a lot about business! This mentality is why the quality of HN went to shit.
morgante 10y ago
It's important to realize that working for someone else can be the best way to prepare yourself for a startup. Sometimes the best way to climb the higher hill is first to climb the short one and then work your way up the saddle. Starting a startup is a lot easier when you're (relatively) financially secure. There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of my startup (when I didn't have any revenue coming in) if I hadn't saved up a decent amount of cash from working elsewhere (not to mention that working for others gives you important skills). The important bit is to think about this systematically: if you're going to take a job to accumulate financial and human capital, have a plan for how long you'll work there and how much capital you need to accumulate. Being able to found a startup on your own terms (without having to desperately find angels) is very freeing and I definitely prefer it this way. My current startup is doing much better than my last one because this time I'm not worrying about investors at all.
- madamelic 10y ago
  >There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of my startup How much do you think is a 'good' amount to have saved up? I have a little over 6 months saved up but all the articles I read are like "You need 18 - 24 months. Minimum." which I think is complete BS, especially for a tech founder with an MVP (this isn't to say non-tech can't do it, it was more that tech people can find freelance work) Thoughts?
  - YPCrumble 10y ago
    There are a lot of variables in play so a perfect answer isn't possible, however, calling 18-24 months BS is almost certainly wrong. 18-24 months sounds like the ideal answer. Note that you can spend $8k/month or you can spend $2k/month, depending on where and how you want to live while you're founding your startup. The nominal dollar amount could be a huge range. You could also reduce the dollar amount of savings you need by the revenue in your MVP - if you're making $1k/month on a software startup you'll probably be able to net that against your monthly spend, even if most of that $1k/month is currently going towards fixed costs. The difference between an MVP that generates revenue and one that does not is enormous.
GoToRO 10y ago
Except in a startup you can discover that the high hill is a deep valley. Doesn't mean anything really. Only you can decide if you want to take that risk or not. I stopped pushing people one way or the other simply because only they can know what is best for them. Another option is to work in a big company. After a few years there will be nothing new for you so you can bootstrap something while still having money for... food :)
AznHisoka 10y ago
Why will working at a startup prepare you to start your own? Wouldn't it be better working as an employee in the industry you want to start a business in?
- madamelic 10y ago
  You'll see how a startup works, funding rounds, how to set things up, etc. In a big company, you are insulated against that and you only do your specific role. Startups require employees to have a much higher, cross-company view.
intrasight 10y ago
That's why humans are not very good at finding non-local maxima, and why a lot has to do with the luck of where on the terrain you are randomly dropped for your initial climb.
daxfohl 10y ago
Or just try something outside of tech completely. You have time to explore. Yeah you'll likely end up with more money having worked at a big firm your whole life, several of my peers are more advanced in their careers than I am now, but it's not like you end up in the poor house either. I spent five years away from tech, seven in a startup, three freelancing from home before finally going back to big corp, and no regrets.
VLM 10y ago
How bad is the ageism with respect to career length? For example the average professional NFL player running back career length is a bit over 3 seasons. On the other hand the average lifespan in the USA is lower than real 1st world countries, at 78, but still not too bad. So in the introduction the implication is throwing away a year of career is utterly tragic WRT "starting over" now in terms of career damage is throwing away one year like throwing away an 1/3 of their pro football running back length career or like throwing away 1/78th of their lifespan which is a rounding error? Another way of looking at the world, is if ageism is so rampant that the dude will be permanently unemployable in the field by 30 such that throwing away one year is a substantial measurable loss, you have to consider it from a long term perspective in that a lifespan of 78 and unemployability starting at 30 means you'll live, unemployable, for nearly a half century after your career ends, half a century of wondering what would have happened if you had made that jump to try the startup. I mean, lets say due to ageism your career does end at 30, at age 55 will anything be different in your 55 year old life if you had stayed put rather than trying? So you may as well try. You're gonna live a long time. For various macro economic reasons your career will only be a couple years. That implies you should never live to work and should only work to live. In that situation it would be foolish not to take a risk. Extreme ageism is like terminal illness. If you know your career will be dead in five years no matter what you do for reasons way outside your control, you can complain and feel bad, or make the most of what little time you have and risk it. You're done in five years anyway no matter what, so you may as well go for it while you can.
- daxfohl 10y ago
  I was very concerned about it last year, starting into the corporate job hunt at age 41, where I'd quit my last regular tech job at age 28, doing freelancing, startups (just coding, not as founder or anything), some long-term travel and misc piddling in the interim. I had no problem at all. Got on site interviews at three of the "big four", some big industrials, some smaller companies, and a couple better-than-I-expected job offers. Maybe I got lucky or maybe it's typical, but that's my one point of reference. The org I'm in, I'd say I'm slightly older than the others at my level, but not a ton. And it seems pretty fluid, I think within 2-3 years I'll "catch up" to the level I'd have been at if I'd not taken all that time off.
ISL 10y ago
As a counter-point, PG had this to say about startups: "The surprising thing here is that you can safely hill climb. If you guys are programmers... What percentage of the people here are programmers? Ok, a lot of programmers, so you all know what hill climbing is. You just do this simplest growth algorithm, you just go wherever it leads up from here. And you don't plan for the future, you don't try and think about the global picture, you just think what's going to grow this week. The surprising insight there is that that is safe to do in a startup, that you can hill climb your way into something big. It turns out the space of startup ideas--I didn't know this, this is something I learned empirically--but it turns out that there are not dangerous local maxima. You can safely hill climb without really thinking that much ahead, and you will grow. You won't even know what you'll grow into, right? Just week by week you see. And this works for a lot of things besides starting companies too. This would work for writing. You know, you just like work on whatever interests you and every week you try and do something more interesting, and eventually you'll look back and say "Holy cow, look, we started out way down there." You know? So who would it not work for? It's very dangerous but there are some startups where you have to go off and build something for some number of months before you can start this sort of cycle of interacting with users. Like if you want to build a new database company, you can't just like write a version 1 in a week." It's a passage that comes to mind from time to time. I've found that it can apply outside of the startup world, too. Interesting and easy directions in research often give insights that make harder problems easier, too. Source: http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-with-nathan-blecharczyk/ http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-wi...
dsjoerg 10y ago
Needs (2009) tag in title please.
shkkmo 10y ago
> People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear. I particularly like this advice.
BeetleB 10y ago
Kind of in a similar bind. I work for a big company, and am paid decently well. I'm respected, but I have impostor syndrome. I really am doing nothing other than basic business logic coding. We have good tests, but no unit tests. We're not doing what I would consider as optimal programming practices, and I have not been able to convince them to change. Yet when I look around in my city for jobs, most are lower paid than I am. Do I take the lower pay temporarily? I worry if I stay in my current job then in another 5 years, if I lose my job, no one will hire me. I've kind of decided to make a goal for this year: Gain enough influence in my role to change some of the mindsets (e.g. convince them to introduce unit tests). If I succeed, I will have learned valuable influencing skills. If I don't, I should just find another job.
- daxfohl 10y ago
  If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road. I had those concerns going into my own job search last year (plus at 40+, ageism) but found none of them were valid. All companies care about is whether you can code, and your ability to deliver. Still, sure, push for unit tests. Be careful though because everyone has a different idea of what a good unit test pattern is. You might paint yourself into a corner where you have to have 100% code coverage measured by some tool or mgmt sneers. Or dev time goes up temporarily and everyone blames you for it. Know the end game you're pushing for. Unit testing is a means, not an ends.
  - BeetleB 10y ago
    >If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road. While I'm at a big company, the company is not highly regarded in the software world, which is my concern. And I don't have anything to show for it other than: Coding on a 1MLoc code base, with mostly business logic. Occasionally I run across cases where knowing something is O(N^2) matters, but only occasionally. I think a part of me just feels I should do slightly more challenging work, where either knowing algorithms well will help, or having some greater domain knowledge will help (e.g. Operating Systems, Parallel programming, graphics algorithms, embedded systems). As it is, I'm doing nothing that sets me apart. I suppose that's why I want to go more into the "influencing" realm. I suspect employers will care more for my ability to change important architectural decisions for a team of 30+ people - without having the authority to do so (I'm not the manager and cannot dictate to people). As for unit tests: I'm not too religious on it. I think it has value, but my experiences doing it in C++ also taught me that there are too many ways "to do it wrong" (i.e. make the code horrible) and only a few that will do it right. If I'm to convince the team to go that route, I need a way to ensure they "do it right" and not just do it any way they feel they should. My management feels the team in general doesn't have the ability to distinguish between the two and are pushing back. The victory for me wouldn't be that the code base will have unit tests. The criterion I'm setting for myself is: 1. Can I influence enough people to make this change? 2. Can I do it in a way that is not chaotic? I'm merely picking "unit tests" as the way to achieve those two.
tpetricek 10y ago
What if the space you are searching is not a landscape with hills, but a maze? I'm not saying it is, but the metaphor that makes the post so strong is not particularly well-grounded. Maybe we programmers tend to think about life as hill-climbing precisely because that's metaphor we often think about when solving programming problems...
mcguire 10y ago
"Do you want to be a startup founder?" is a trick question. Most people hear "Do you want to be Zuckerberg or Musk?" Most questioners mean "Do you want a chance to be Zuckerberg?" But the real question is neither of those. "Over the years, I’ve run into many prospective employees in similar situations. When I ask them a very obvious question: “What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably “working at or founding a tech startup” – yet most of them decide to remain on their present path and not join a startup." "In 10 years, I want to be working extremely hard for extremely long hours, for low pay and a miniscule chance of real reward. I want to be a share-cropper on a venture capitalist's farm. I want to have a trail of failures behind me. I want to be doing the same thing over and over, because a MVP is a MVP is a MVP. I want to be ready to pivot at any instant, because shoveling everything into the crapper is better than spending an extra minute looking at another, greener pasture." On the other hand, "I want to be working on the most interesting problems I can find" is crappy, too.
untangle 10y ago
This article seems based on a false analogy. Real (geologic) hills can be measured. Their dimensions and slopes are objective quantities. There is no debate about their shape. Mr. Dixon's hills (objective functions) are the stuff of wants, dreams, and deep conjecture. Their shapes are highly subjective and highly dimensional. So much so that the 3d-terrain construct adds little to the topic – whether a gradient, simulated annealing, or any other analytic approach is employed. To me, the article is a whimsical piece of entertainment and is not useful for even notional career planning.

248 points by brianbaquiran 10y ago

There's the very real possibility that in 10 years, you'll be broke with a failed startup. Articles like this often act as if risk didn't exist, and then claim that everyone should quit their steady jobs for a moonshot dream career, be that in arts, acting or startups.

vinceguidry 10y ago
I'm firmly on the side of the corporate career, but this is a BS argument for it. The outcomes aren't binary. Even if you don't "make it" as a writer / actor / cartoonist, it doesn't automatically mean you're broke and waiting tables well into your forties. You can find yourself part of a well-paid production crew or as a grip or something that you're better suited for that the industry actually needs. Similarly, if you're doing startups, failure doesn't go on your permanent record and you can try again. These career fields are about choosing your priorities in life, that's how you choose one path or the other.
ams6110 10y ago
OTOH the time to do a "risky" startup job is when you're young and have no real responsibilities other than yourself. Being broke in your late 20s is recoverable especially if you've gained expertise in current tech; being broke at 40 with a family is a much harder challenge.
kough 10y ago
Huh, I wonder if cdixon has any incentive to interest people in starting their own startups...
- austenallred 10y ago
  Well he got rich starting one, so...
  - PakG1 10y ago
    I think you're missing the point that he's now a full-fledged investor and is now more biased than before. https://a16z.com/author/chris-dixon/ https://a16z.com/author/chris-dixon/
    - austenallred 10y ago
      I'm aware. My point was that I don't consider it deception for someone to try and convince people to get rich the same way he or she got rich. Assuming he only does it because he's an investor is assuming the worst. He can probably only invest in a half dozen companies per year, so encouraging everyone he meets to start companies would be a very indirect Nd unnecessary way of filling the top of that funnel.
vpb 10y ago
Yeah, I'm here. Ten years on the road and a lot of failed dreams. Some days I feel like finding a high beam and buying some rope. Anyway, it's been a fun 10 years - people should be aware of the risks, but it's fun to try.
- pm 10y ago
  I've failed at a lot of things too. I'm not doing exactly what I want to right now in terms of tech, but I'm making up for it in other ways, e.g., playing music. I look back at all the mistakes that have been made though, and I can't really fault anyone else but myself for the trajectory I've taken. It's up to me to learn and find a better way.
wslh 10y ago
Yes, I think it is great and I am proud that YC is having a good reality check that is maturing every year. Just watch the Startup School videos, mainly the Slack founder talk. It is also good to think about alternatives to the typical startup vs corporate dilemma. For example, securing a job and working on side projects until there is a signal they can be something more.
austenallred 10y ago
Honestly I think that risk is overstated. I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did. And the company I'm at now I joined long after product-market fit. I was still ahead in my career of people who were in the same place but didn't start a company. And I paid myself slightly less but still well enough to get by, so the only painful part was the transition between jobs. If you're a talented engineer you'll be just fine. I've probably had a job offer per week since then, too. Now I've Saved up enough money, and I'll make another go. If I fail? Back to the same pretty-damn-good default position.
- naasking 10y ago
  > I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did. Your anecdotes are not an indication that the risk is overstated. Who knows what factors decreased the risk for you, and while you attribute it to 'engineering talent', it's far more likely to be something like more skill at using the network of connections you've established (most jobs are still filled this way). Whatever that factor is, it isn't necessarily a common skill.
  - austenallred 10y ago
    Find me a talented engineer in the Bay Area who started a company and now can't find a job. We have $5,000 referral bonuses and severe engineering shortages so I'd love to refer him or her.
    - peterwwillis 10y ago
      I have known several, and rent was so high they eventually moved away.
    - alpos 10y ago
      Consider offering remote positions. Even if those positions are only used as a way to open new people to the possibility of moving to SF. If your shortages are severe, why limit your talent pool to the smallest, most competitive market?
dkural 10y ago
You'll then get a job within 2-3 months at a higher salary than what your startup paid you ... plus you'll have a brand new network in your startups industry, with competitors that respect what you've done & gone through.
- davidcbc 10y ago
  > You'll then get a job within 2-3 months at a higher salary than what your startup paid you Assuming you live in SV or NYC

TempleOS 10y ago

I have a space alien. Frasier is a chimp You are the stupidest fuck in the history of the universe

cybernytrix 10y ago

If one were to use a similar analogy as the author -- a startup is like a huge hill but a mirage. Once you're off of whatever you are smoking, you realize it's just a mole hill.

CalChris 10y ago

Startups, that's plural, add some randomness to this hill climbing. Most startups fail and then you get pulled off of a local maximum. But your next startup should not be exactly random. Like the VCs who invest, you should learn something from failure and you should have the lay of the land. If you don't, if it's a random walk again, then perhaps you don't belong in startups or in VC.

marginalcodex 10y ago

I've sent this blog to dozens of people. While it's not universal, it offers an important concept applicable to many facets of life. Here's another take on the same concept: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27033 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27033

uiri 10y ago

What people say that they want and what people actually want are frequently two very different things. When it comes to finding product-market fit, this is obvious. There is an old quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." It is better to look at people's actions and behaviour rather than their words when judging what they actually want. The people whom cdixon talks to that say they want to be '"working at or founding a startup"' are lying. They are lying to themselves first and foremost and only secondarily to cdixon. Their actions speak much louder than those words. Those actions say that they want to safety and security of the job that they don't enjoy rather than the risk and uncertainty of a startup.

MegaButts 10y ago
Although I agree with the message, just being pedantic Henry Ford never actually said that.
Xcelerate 10y ago
> Those actions say that they want to safety and security of the job that they don't enjoy rather than the risk and uncertainty of a startup. I think it's quite possible to have both. Have a full time job, work on a side project, and if it becomes successful enough to quit your full time job, then do so. Startup without the uncertainty! Granted, now you've pushed the odds of your startup failing from 95% to perhaps 98% (since you're not devoting all of your time to it), but what do a few percentage points matter at that level anyway? Replacing a 5% chance of winning the lottery with a 2% chance doesn't mean you should no longer play (especially since you've eliminated the stress of potentially starving).
- ci5er 10y ago
  Say, for example, that my "side-project" was a HIPAA-compliant SAAS-software tool for doctors that they relied on every day (24x7). It needed to be deployed across multiple availability zones, and the team needed to be "on-call" for whatever didn't work, whenever it didn't work? How would that, for example, square with doing it in parallel with a 9-5? Or, are you talking about doing a project that people don't really really need? I have to imagine the failure rate of pushing a product that people don't need would be high, and the ability to support a product that they do need would not be compatible with the side-project concept. Am I wrong in thinking this?

mathattack 10y ago

Going temporarily downhill is very hard for most. I know dozens of bankers who want to move to tech, but can't handle the cash paycut.

justinator 10y ago
No risk, no reward. I'm not going to convince a banker that - but maybe that's why there are bankers and that's why there are people who race sailboats solo around the world.
draw_down 10y ago
Who knows, maybe they'll end up better off.

dheera 10y ago

This is exactly why I disagree with the 24/7 work style that some startups have. I use a large fraction of my spare time (i.e. nights and weekends) to randomly drop myself on other hills.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Totally this. I'm ready to work 24/7 when I feel I'm on the right hill :).
- dheera 10y ago
  When you feel you're on the right hill, you might still be on the wrong hill. You can climb Mt. Fuji and feel like you're on top of the world. But you're really not.
  - madamelic 10y ago
    Why not just live day-to-day on whether you are happy rather than critiquing whether you are on "the right hill".
    - dheera 10y ago
      And what do you do when you are not happy? Go uphill (and it may be the wrong hill) or drop yourself randomly on new hills every day? Both are suboptimal. You should do a bit of both. Like go uphill 80% of the time and test random points 20% of the time.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        That's the "exploration vs. exploitation" problem. C.f. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit.

geomark 10y ago

He says "Then, a few years later, they finally quit their job, but only after having spent years in an industry they didn’t enjoy, and that didn’t really advance them toward their long term ambitions." It seems to me there's a glaring oversight in his statement, which is that they could very well have gained some valuable domain expertise that will serve them well if they later decide to found or work at a startup. I mean, VC's so often mention the importance of domain expertise and the way you usually get that is working at an established company first before you f(l)ounder around at a startup.

cool_shit 10y ago

Leave it to a computer scientist to leave out the quantum tunneling metaphor. Well, here it is: skips current hill "I know somebody."

learn_more 10y ago

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

shouldbworking 10y ago

This is related to the human tendency to overestimate the danger of unpredictable risks. The danger of a major financial disaster for a healthy and educated young person in a developed country is much lower than it seems. I know many such people that traveled across the country, some with no money or possessions to their name. None of them were broke for more than a few months, and within 6 most of them lived a similar lifestyle to the one they left behind. The danger is much greater if you're unhealthy, uneducated, or have other liabilities, but that doesn't apply to a good portion of the HN crowd. What a lot of people don't think about is that a true disaster will knock you out even if you have a steady job, insurance, and education. I know several people whose lives were forever changed by a lawsuit, medical bills, and health problems. These risks are barely affected by anything you can control, so in most ways it's best to just go on as if they don't exist.

sandworm101 10y ago

>>“What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably “working at or founding a tech startup” Funny. I deal with startups all the time. When I ask startup employees where they want to be in 10 years they invariably say "Working for Google" or some version of "Working for someone more stable than this bag of cats". When I speak to startup founders, honestly and in private, the answer is some version of "On the other side of either and IPO/buyout". The employees look for stability, thier bosses cash. The grass is always greener. I once worked in film/TV and everyone wants to hear the stories. They all think it was so much fun. It was hell. That glorious job is never what you think. Except fighter pilot. Every one of the dozen or so I've met live and embrace the stereotypes.

frahs 10y ago
I think the reality is more subtle than this. I'm currently working at a large company with a lot of job security. In 5-10 years, I would like to see myself working at a startup. But only for maybe 5 years max, and then I'd like to return back to a position with more security. I think most people want to try the startup thing for only a few years.
dunkelheit 10y ago
Well, the question is posed by a powerful VC to a "prospective employee". This is the equivalent of "what do you want to do when you grow up, Timmy?". Also bear in mind that the post was written in 2009. My feeling is that startups have lost a lot of allure since then and are now increasingly viewed as sweatshops where grunts work for illusory payout whereas a job at megacorp with great pay and low stress is considered a sane choice.
arkitaip 10y ago
I think the more general principle is that by default all social systems strive towards stability and predictability, even the most chaotic and ground breaking startups. Occasionally we - individuals, teams, organizations - try to fool ourselves into thinking otherwise but the truly anti-fragile and chaos embracing social systems are incredibly rare and very far apart.
deleted 10y ago

real-hacker 10y ago

Most people intuitively know this. But sometimes it takes 10 years or even decades to climb a hill, and the probability of picking a random spot in a valley or on a plateau is high. People are just risk-averse. And I think most winners win not because of this strategy, but because they can climb hills much faster than others, thus have a higher rate to try new spots.

rdiddly 10y ago

Seems to me a local maximum that definitely exists is not too shabby compared to a higher hill that has a 90% chance of going dead flat on you.

vaidhy 10y ago

I honestly do not understand this metaphor at all. There are reasons why some of the algorithms are better implemented in a computer. Is there some magic that will allow me to clone myself to try multiple paths in parallel? Maybe I can speed up time so that I can climb the hills fast? As a human, I have limited time and that places a huge constraint on what is feasible. Ignoring that and trying to draw parallels to algorithmic domain seems to miss out on crucial constraints.

madamelic 10y ago
I think the deeper meaning is that rather than trying to predict what path will be most optimal, you should be taking whatever step seems most optimal without trying to predict the future.

jankotek 10y ago

> works at a large investment bank. He has decided he hates Wall Street and wants to work at a tech startup (good!). He recently gave notice to his bosses, who responded by putting on a dog and pony show to convince him to stay Wrong choices. Better to stay a few years, then start your own company or consulting business. And in my experience large corporations, are often more progressive than most startups (work from home, technical equipment, software stack, conferences....).

js8 10y ago
Was about to write something similar. Working for bigco can give you experience with technology, understanding of the market and contacts that you are unlikely to have coming fresh from school.

peterwwillis 10y ago

First of all, if you know what you want to be doing in 10 years, and you are under 30, you are likely wrong. A lot of people change their plans in their 20s, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. If you are over 30 and look 10 years ahead, it's 40 - body breaking down, retirement planning is well underway, some form of collateral, possibly a family, etc. If you're gambling on startups then, you better be damn sure it doesn't crush all the other stuff you're juggling. Dixon's advice is misguided. He's trying to say "Don't fear starting over", which is good advice, because you will probably start over some time in your life without intending to, and it will be fine. But he's trying to make startups sound like a good idea, or "try random things" a better one. I would not treat life like a CS problem - I would treat it like an Operations change management action. List the departments of your life that are affected by the change. List the change(s), the work needed to implement it, the expected results, a test to evaluate, and a rollback procedure. In this way you can make a risky change and understand fully what it involves, and have some plan for how to revert if things go awry. Definitely try new things, but when it comes to changes that have potentially bad side-effects, use due diligence.

atemerev 10y ago

I wonder how the author is 100% sure that working in a startup is always better than working at Wall Street. I tried both ways, and there are ups and downs on both sides, but I liked it just a tiny bit more in big finance (though not in big banks). Other people's mileages may also vary.

pipio21 10y ago

As founder of several companies myself I always recommend people NOT to start startups. I will help or mentor them if they are really interested. Really interested people will do it anyway. It looks today like everybody and their dog have to make a company, but first you need to have a very strong conviction that the world needs something that you provide. Starting a company is going to be very hard at first, specially when you are trained by school that effort always rewards you with results and you need a very strong force behind you to be able to face the difficulties. The great shock is for great students that are used to have good grades or have a great job but in real startup life they struggle. In a company they will succeed but on their own they will depress and enter a death spiral. It is hard for them, for their partners, for their parents, even for their mentors. You need a totally different set of skills than in a normal job, like the ability to manage yourself, manage risks, made decisions,make investments, choose your people, understand markets, creativity or selling yourself in front of others.

Jare 10y ago

I went through pretty much the situation he describes: had developed videogames since I was 15, but while at university I joined the bank entity of a huge corp. I knew I wanted to do games, graphics and related stuff for the rest of my life, so after 9 months I had cold feet, got the show, accepted the offer and stayed three more years. One of the best decisions of my life. I learned tons of stuff that I wouldn't have learned going straight back into games. Not about COBOL or accounting, but about leadership, management and understanding the balance between business and technical needs.

kutkloon7 10y ago

I don't particularly like this kind of blog posts, for multiple reasons. First, they tell people what to do. Second, the argument is backed up by a false analogy. The whole reason that hill climbing works, is that computers are fast. If it takes 5+ years to 'climb a hill', starting at some random point costs a lot more. Actually, it is not even clear how 'starting over at a random point' translates to real life. Third: The point (I would say is "Try something else once in a while" - and I mostly agree with this) could be captured in a single line. The blog post is basically the blog-equivalent of a motivational picture.

heisenbit 10y ago
A fourth point: The landscape in tech is changing. Career in tech also requires one to deal with hills that are caving in.

Zelmor 10y ago

>everyone should work on their own startup, fuck the profession you studied for years and that is stable, well earning and can teach you a lot about business! This mentality is why the quality of HN went to shit.

morgante 10y ago

It's important to realize that working for someone else can be the best way to prepare yourself for a startup. Sometimes the best way to climb the higher hill is first to climb the short one and then work your way up the saddle. Starting a startup is a lot easier when you're (relatively) financially secure. There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of my startup (when I didn't have any revenue coming in) if I hadn't saved up a decent amount of cash from working elsewhere (not to mention that working for others gives you important skills). The important bit is to think about this systematically: if you're going to take a job to accumulate financial and human capital, have a plan for how long you'll work there and how much capital you need to accumulate. Being able to found a startup on your own terms (without having to desperately find angels) is very freeing and I definitely prefer it this way. My current startup is doing much better than my last one because this time I'm not worrying about investors at all.

madamelic 10y ago
>There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of my startup How much do you think is a 'good' amount to have saved up? I have a little over 6 months saved up but all the articles I read are like "You need 18 - 24 months. Minimum." which I think is complete BS, especially for a tech founder with an MVP (this isn't to say non-tech can't do it, it was more that tech people can find freelance work) Thoughts?
- YPCrumble 10y ago
  There are a lot of variables in play so a perfect answer isn't possible, however, calling 18-24 months BS is almost certainly wrong. 18-24 months sounds like the ideal answer. Note that you can spend $8k/month or you can spend $2k/month, depending on where and how you want to live while you're founding your startup. The nominal dollar amount could be a huge range. You could also reduce the dollar amount of savings you need by the revenue in your MVP - if you're making $1k/month on a software startup you'll probably be able to net that against your monthly spend, even if most of that $1k/month is currently going towards fixed costs. The difference between an MVP that generates revenue and one that does not is enormous.

GoToRO 10y ago

Except in a startup you can discover that the high hill is a deep valley. Doesn't mean anything really. Only you can decide if you want to take that risk or not. I stopped pushing people one way or the other simply because only they can know what is best for them. Another option is to work in a big company. After a few years there will be nothing new for you so you can bootstrap something while still having money for... food :)

AznHisoka 10y ago

Why will working at a startup prepare you to start your own? Wouldn't it be better working as an employee in the industry you want to start a business in?

madamelic 10y ago
You'll see how a startup works, funding rounds, how to set things up, etc. In a big company, you are insulated against that and you only do your specific role. Startups require employees to have a much higher, cross-company view.

intrasight 10y ago

That's why humans are not very good at finding non-local maxima, and why a lot has to do with the luck of where on the terrain you are randomly dropped for your initial climb.

daxfohl 10y ago

Or just try something outside of tech completely. You have time to explore. Yeah you'll likely end up with more money having worked at a big firm your whole life, several of my peers are more advanced in their careers than I am now, but it's not like you end up in the poor house either. I spent five years away from tech, seven in a startup, three freelancing from home before finally going back to big corp, and no regrets.

VLM 10y ago

How bad is the ageism with respect to career length? For example the average professional NFL player running back career length is a bit over 3 seasons. On the other hand the average lifespan in the USA is lower than real 1st world countries, at 78, but still not too bad. So in the introduction the implication is throwing away a year of career is utterly tragic WRT "starting over" now in terms of career damage is throwing away one year like throwing away an 1/3 of their pro football running back length career or like throwing away 1/78th of their lifespan which is a rounding error? Another way of looking at the world, is if ageism is so rampant that the dude will be permanently unemployable in the field by 30 such that throwing away one year is a substantial measurable loss, you have to consider it from a long term perspective in that a lifespan of 78 and unemployability starting at 30 means you'll live, unemployable, for nearly a half century after your career ends, half a century of wondering what would have happened if you had made that jump to try the startup. I mean, lets say due to ageism your career does end at 30, at age 55 will anything be different in your 55 year old life if you had stayed put rather than trying? So you may as well try. You're gonna live a long time. For various macro economic reasons your career will only be a couple years. That implies you should never live to work and should only work to live. In that situation it would be foolish not to take a risk. Extreme ageism is like terminal illness. If you know your career will be dead in five years no matter what you do for reasons way outside your control, you can complain and feel bad, or make the most of what little time you have and risk it. You're done in five years anyway no matter what, so you may as well go for it while you can.

daxfohl 10y ago
I was very concerned about it last year, starting into the corporate job hunt at age 41, where I'd quit my last regular tech job at age 28, doing freelancing, startups (just coding, not as founder or anything), some long-term travel and misc piddling in the interim. I had no problem at all. Got on site interviews at three of the "big four", some big industrials, some smaller companies, and a couple better-than-I-expected job offers. Maybe I got lucky or maybe it's typical, but that's my one point of reference. The org I'm in, I'd say I'm slightly older than the others at my level, but not a ton. And it seems pretty fluid, I think within 2-3 years I'll "catch up" to the level I'd have been at if I'd not taken all that time off.

ISL 10y ago

As a counter-point, PG had this to say about startups: "The surprising thing here is that you can safely hill climb. If you guys are programmers... What percentage of the people here are programmers? Ok, a lot of programmers, so you all know what hill climbing is. You just do this simplest growth algorithm, you just go wherever it leads up from here. And you don't plan for the future, you don't try and think about the global picture, you just think what's going to grow this week. The surprising insight there is that that is safe to do in a startup, that you can hill climb your way into something big. It turns out the space of startup ideas--I didn't know this, this is something I learned empirically--but it turns out that there are not dangerous local maxima. You can safely hill climb without really thinking that much ahead, and you will grow. You won't even know what you'll grow into, right? Just week by week you see. And this works for a lot of things besides starting companies too. This would work for writing. You know, you just like work on whatever interests you and every week you try and do something more interesting, and eventually you'll look back and say "Holy cow, look, we started out way down there." You know? So who would it not work for? It's very dangerous but there are some startups where you have to go off and build something for some number of months before you can start this sort of cycle of interacting with users. Like if you want to build a new database company, you can't just like write a version 1 in a week." It's a passage that comes to mind from time to time. I've found that it can apply outside of the startup world, too. Interesting and easy directions in research often give insights that make harder problems easier, too. Source: http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-with-nathan-blecharczyk/ http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-wi...

dsjoerg 10y ago

Needs (2009) tag in title please.

shkkmo 10y ago

> People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear. I particularly like this advice.

BeetleB 10y ago

Kind of in a similar bind. I work for a big company, and am paid decently well. I'm respected, but I have impostor syndrome. I really am doing nothing other than basic business logic coding. We have good tests, but no unit tests. We're not doing what I would consider as optimal programming practices, and I have not been able to convince them to change. Yet when I look around in my city for jobs, most are lower paid than I am. Do I take the lower pay temporarily? I worry if I stay in my current job then in another 5 years, if I lose my job, no one will hire me. I've kind of decided to make a goal for this year: Gain enough influence in my role to change some of the mindsets (e.g. convince them to introduce unit tests). If I succeed, I will have learned valuable influencing skills. If I don't, I should just find another job.

daxfohl 10y ago
If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road. I had those concerns going into my own job search last year (plus at 40+, ageism) but found none of them were valid. All companies care about is whether you can code, and your ability to deliver. Still, sure, push for unit tests. Be careful though because everyone has a different idea of what a good unit test pattern is. You might paint yourself into a corner where you have to have 100% code coverage measured by some tool or mgmt sneers. Or dev time goes up temporarily and everyone blames you for it. Know the end game you're pushing for. Unit testing is a means, not an ends.
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road. While I'm at a big company, the company is not highly regarded in the software world, which is my concern. And I don't have anything to show for it other than: Coding on a 1MLoc code base, with mostly business logic. Occasionally I run across cases where knowing something is O(N^2) matters, but only occasionally. I think a part of me just feels I should do slightly more challenging work, where either knowing algorithms well will help, or having some greater domain knowledge will help (e.g. Operating Systems, Parallel programming, graphics algorithms, embedded systems). As it is, I'm doing nothing that sets me apart. I suppose that's why I want to go more into the "influencing" realm. I suspect employers will care more for my ability to change important architectural decisions for a team of 30+ people - without having the authority to do so (I'm not the manager and cannot dictate to people). As for unit tests: I'm not too religious on it. I think it has value, but my experiences doing it in C++ also taught me that there are too many ways "to do it wrong" (i.e. make the code horrible) and only a few that will do it right. If I'm to convince the team to go that route, I need a way to ensure they "do it right" and not just do it any way they feel they should. My management feels the team in general doesn't have the ability to distinguish between the two and are pushing back. The victory for me wouldn't be that the code base will have unit tests. The criterion I'm setting for myself is: 1. Can I influence enough people to make this change? 2. Can I do it in a way that is not chaotic? I'm merely picking "unit tests" as the way to achieve those two.

tpetricek 10y ago

What if the space you are searching is not a landscape with hills, but a maze? I'm not saying it is, but the metaphor that makes the post so strong is not particularly well-grounded. Maybe we programmers tend to think about life as hill-climbing precisely because that's metaphor we often think about when solving programming problems...

mcguire 10y ago

"Do you want to be a startup founder?" is a trick question. Most people hear "Do you want to be Zuckerberg or Musk?" Most questioners mean "Do you want a chance to be Zuckerberg?" But the real question is neither of those. "Over the years, I’ve run into many prospective employees in similar situations. When I ask them a very obvious question: “What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably “working at or founding a tech startup” – yet most of them decide to remain on their present path and not join a startup." "In 10 years, I want to be working extremely hard for extremely long hours, for low pay and a miniscule chance of real reward. I want to be a share-cropper on a venture capitalist's farm. I want to have a trail of failures behind me. I want to be doing the same thing over and over, because a MVP is a MVP is a MVP. I want to be ready to pivot at any instant, because shoveling everything into the crapper is better than spending an extra minute looking at another, greener pasture." On the other hand, "I want to be working on the most interesting problems I can find" is crappy, too.

untangle 10y ago

This article seems based on a false analogy. Real (geologic) hills can be measured. Their dimensions and slopes are objective quantities. There is no debate about their shape. Mr. Dixon's hills (objective functions) are the stuff of wants, dreams, and deep conjecture. Their shapes are highly subjective and highly dimensional. So much so that the 3d-terrain construct adds little to the topic – whether a gradient, simulated annealing, or any other analytic approach is employed. To me, the article is a whimsical piece of entertainment and is not useful for even notional career planning.