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I saw people quoting Charlie Munger. Munger has done extensive study on the topic of incentives. If you want to know why Silicon Valley is so discriminating tow

I saw people quoting Charlie Munger. Munger has done extensive study on the topic of incentives. If you want to know why Silicon Valley is so discriminating towards experienced people you should ask what their incentives are. Startups are incentivized to hire the cheapest, youngest, most naive engineers possible, work them as hard as possible then flip them. If you are old you are no longer cheap or naive. If you aren’t naive, you are unlikely to work 80 hours a week. You can no longer be flipped. Silicon Valley startups want Ivy League type executives. Why? Because the investors trust them more. Humans give money to people who resemble themselves. Ivy League VC give money to Ivy League executives. Joining a startup has a very low probability of making you rich. In fact, they are specifically designed not to make you rich as an engineer. To make matters worse, you have to spend 3-5 years of life you will never get back trying to get the lottery payout. You getting rich as a non founder at a startup means the executives and venture capitalists miscalculated something. Why would they pay you a cent more than they need to? There are plenty of people in the valley who will now work for just their base salary and nothing more. Why should they give you a single dime more than this? If you are a typical high functioning aspergers engineer, you are better off using your skills to become a quant or a trader in the finance industry. Teach yourself. The tools have advanced to a point where anyone can access huge amounts of leverage. I was an engineer for a long time and I realized that all sides of this is a losing game. All I want is to be left alone and financially independent. Big companies are just as bad, except they don’t pretend there is a chance you will get rich.

pdimitar 8y ago
Pardon the esoteric language, but I feel almost as if this was written by my future self. > I was an engineer for a long time and I realized that all sides of this is a losing game. All I want is to be left alone and financially independent. ^ This pierced my heart very painfully. Describes my current mindset perfectly. I realized the full extent of how screwed we the engineers are in the job market just a year or so ago. We can bring millions in value but are paid much less than people who basically only bark orders (good managers do much more... but are so incredibly rare). The whole economy of today's world seems to be in favor of certain traits and most of them are luck or incidental -- race, family, area of birth, and most of all: network/friends! I've known people dumb as bricks who couldn't solve a problem if the solution was biting them on the nose yet they knew a few influential people and right now are making ~$90k a month for wearing suits and showing up to meaningless meetings 4 times a month. --- It's not easy starting to come to grips with the extremely rigged nature of the world's economy and NOT be bitter or self-loathing. Not hating myself for being stupid before and not looking objectively at the world is taking 99% of my free energy but I'll keep fighting that battle until I forgive myself and start looking forward to the future. Meditation and exercise do help. Sorry for the personal aside. Your message resonated with me. I am currently 38 years old and just finished an extremely tough and terrible period during which I couldn't get a job even though I aced most interviews up until the last phase when the mythical "poor cultural fit" door got slammed in my face. This happened about 20 times over 6 months. Now, even though I found the perfect company and team whom I very much like, I am left with a ton of existential questions which I don't have the answer to. What advice could you give me? (I'll look into the quantative analyst in more depth for sure.)

pdimitar 8y ago

Pardon the esoteric language, but I feel almost as if this was written by my future self. > I was an engineer for a long time and I realized that all sides of this is a losing game. All I want is to be left alone and financially independent. ^ This pierced my heart very painfully. Describes my current mindset perfectly. I realized the full extent of how screwed we the engineers are in the job market just a year or so ago. We can bring millions in value but are paid much less than people who basically only bark orders (good managers do much more... but are so incredibly rare). The whole economy of today's world seems to be in favor of certain traits and most of them are luck or incidental -- race, family, area of birth, and most of all: network/friends! I've known people dumb as bricks who couldn't solve a problem if the solution was biting them on the nose yet they knew a few influential people and right now are making ~$90k a month for wearing suits and showing up to meaningless meetings 4 times a month. --- It's not easy starting to come to grips with the extremely rigged nature of the world's economy and NOT be bitter or self-loathing. Not hating myself for being stupid before and not looking objectively at the world is taking 99% of my free energy but I'll keep fighting that battle until I forgive myself and start looking forward to the future. Meditation and exercise do help. Sorry for the personal aside. Your message resonated with me. I am currently 38 years old and just finished an extremely tough and terrible period during which I couldn't get a job even though I aced most interviews up until the last phase when the mythical "poor cultural fit" door got slammed in my face. This happened about 20 times over 6 months. Now, even though I found the perfect company and team whom I very much like, I am left with a ton of existential questions which I don't have the answer to. What advice could you give me? (I'll look into the quantative analyst in more depth for sure.)