5 ms·

We throw away our power as engineers working for other people

36 points by f_kai 6y ago

mdoms 6y ago
Privilege.
cheschire 6y ago
Power is uninteresting for some folks. Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming from is very nice.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  > freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming Depends on your risk tolerance. You will most likely not be able to profit greatly off of your deep coding problems if you do them for a company with highly stratified reporting chains. Profits will get passed around to the idiots above you in the chain of command, leaving you with peanuts; probably some small bonus or raise. In my experience, engineers aren't rewarded greatly at a company unless they fit a certain bill or serve a certain HR/political purpose, unbeknownst to you. Such implicit biases are however, impossible to hide as they can be measured directly. If upper management doesn't like your attitude, behavior, your looks, your race, your gender, or anything else, they can and will stop giving you opportunities. Sometimes they will treat you poorly so you leave, sometimes they'll keep you around until you do something to get fired. The latter is certainly likely if they treat you poorly. This is not only unethical, but is a normalized practice in HR. Now, consider the case of solving deep coding problems on your own -- you're not getting paid, but you will most likely reap all of the rewards for any big wins you have, and your life isn't at the whim of internal politics that you are unaware of.
  - Dannymetconan 6y ago
    In a lot of places though you can have a good life, work 9-5, be well paid and not have to worry about all the headache that occurs from running a business. You might not end up a millionaire but you'll generally be better paid then a lot of people in your age / social bracket. A lot of people just don't want to make the sacrifices to run their own business!
    - jshen 6y ago
      If you’re a developer, and you work for a big company that gives stock options, you will almost certainly become a millionaire after 15-20 years if you don’t mismanage it. You’re far better off, on average, this way than if you work for startups. You’re also more likely to become a millionaire this way than starting a company, but your less likely to make hundreds of millions.
      - Dannymetconan 6y ago
        Totally agree and your chances of actually make the 100s must be minutely small
  - hilbertseries 6y ago
    > you're not getting paid, but you will most likely reap all of the rewards for any big wins you have As someone that mostly enjoys optimizing distributed systems and debugging them. I can assure you that, I can’t build a product out of this skill set. There’s consulting, but then I have to continually sell myself, which I don’t enjoy. Working for a large company, I have of plenty of these problems to solve and I get paid pretty well.
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      You could create an info product.
- jfim 6y ago
  > Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems Some of it is deep coding problems, but there's a fair bit of FAANG that's just protobuf/avro engineering and GRPC/thrift/restli midtier apps.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Yes But sometimes there are interesting problems And the paycheck still comes on time
fwip 6y ago
I don't see much in this post that doesn't apply to most jobs.
legerdemain 6y ago
This is the sort of thing people in their 20s tend to write.
darksaints 6y ago
Stop writing for medium. As a blogger, you are writing for influence, not for money. You throw that away the moment a reader sees the message: To keep reading this story, create a free account. Seriously, take an hour of your time and learn how to use Hugo, buy a cheap domain name, and set up your blog for hosting directly from a CDN. Stop being that person that helps medium make money off of other people's content.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  His startup/business/project is based around Medium, so I doubt he's going to ditch it. "Editor of Better Programming (medium.com/better-programming). Building Moneyball to help you make more money on Medium (sign up for the beta @ usemoneyball.com)"
  - hirako2000 6y ago
    English isn't my mother tong, what's building a Moneyball? Writing whatever people are willing to read in the promise to make it big, without having to do anything big yourself?
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      Moneyball is the name of the product he's building :).
      - hirako2000 6y ago
        Cool name, I'm inspired to build a Moneymagnet.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
mattmanser 6y ago
This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.
- hirako2000 6y ago
  Yes, but he took the jump. Are you saying he used to be standing on prestigious ground but landed in mud after his backflip?
  - barumi 6y ago
    Taking jumps means nothing. And his choice of absurd and self aggrandizing titles lead me to doubt he ever stood on prestigious ground, at least acknowledged by others.
- vanillacupcake 6y ago
  Helping Medium creators make a living while keeping the simple / ad-free experience of Medium is an interesting arbitrage opportunity until you prove it out and Medium integrates it into their core product offering.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    I think it's more likely that the product gets acquired than Medium builds it out themselves.
- qz2 6y ago
  When I ran a one man contract outfit is sign myself off as weird titles such as Grand Hegemon and Eternal Leader occasionally on emails to see if anyone noticed. Nope! No one gives a crap about your title apart from HR and your ego.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    If a title is too disingenuous it’d actually put me off the company... your examples are great, but a director of engineering for a department of one is just strange.
Kaze404 6y ago
I read this article expecting it to get somewhere useful but when I realized it was just propaganda it was already too late. Seriously, the people who want to make a career in software and the people who want to be entrepreneurs don't need any convincing. What is even the point of this?
lochlan 6y ago
Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup when I can enjoy comfort and success working at a FANG company? Startups _sound_ great, but death marching myself without compensation is a stressful proposition. Sure, I have a handful of ideas that seem reasonable and dreams of startup success—and maybe I'll explore them in early retirement.
- nineteen999 6y ago
  Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup OR the culture at a FANG company, when I can thankfully avoid both and still be compensated really well and enjoy my work. It's not like there's only two options.
  - lochlan 6y ago
    What exactly are you risking (or incurring) with regards to FANG culture? From my perspective it's all upside.
    - nineteen999 6y ago
      It's not for everyone, just the same as working for startups. I prefer working with a small team, and having less external teams to deal with, and shorter pipelines. We run a service with true five nines availability requirements so wherever we can reduce unnecessary complexity its allows us to focus the complexity in the right places where it is needed.
matsemann 6y ago
I think it's weird that his solution to being "unhappy and overworked" in a small startup is to make a new one and suggest that everyone else do the same.
- ramshorns 6y ago
  A more interesting conclusion could have been that engineers should use their power to walk away to instead organize together and demand better from their employers.
vanillacupcake 6y ago
My life so far. Early 20s: I can do anything and should start a company. Late 20s: imposter syndrome. 30s: wow, there is still so much I don't know. 40s: life is over and haven't accomplished anything, 50s: post menopause and confident as hell (now is time to start a company). Haven't gotten past 32 yet(lol) but many women are most confident in their mid 50s+ according to the science around hormones and how they impact our mood and self perception. I think there's a lot I can learn personally from a fast and loose 28 year old male perception against my own perception. Probably the combo of the two is the perfect human.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  > I think there's a lot I can learn personally from a fast and loose 28 year old male perception against my own perception. Sure, if you want to be an insufferable net-negative for humanity. I'll grant that there's individual profit in it though. When you succeed, let us all remember that it was Zack SHAPIRO who inspired you to break free from the ordeal of civility.
inopinatus 6y ago
The irony of saying "don't be a serf! build your own products!" whilst depending on the Medium platform is either delicious, or painful. Not sure which.
- rl1987 6y ago
  Just like your codebase is bound to have dependencies, so will your company. If he's not depending on Medium, he would be depending on Google for ranking, hosting company for hosting his blog, Mailchimp for sending out email marketing campaigns and so on. The difference is doing the work according your own decisions versus dealing with decisions made by other people higher up in the company according to some agendas that may not align with your needs.
  - inopinatus 6y ago
    If that equivalence were true, there wouldn't be any irony to mention. Technical elements are replaceable parts, unless some abysmally bad decisions have been made. Hopefully you/your firm does not need Mailchimp's continuing permission to exist. Any of the many competing similar providers will do. In contrast the company in question has the tagline, "Make more money on Medium". Their existence is predicated on an external indulgence, and those are foundations of sand.
formalsystems 6y ago
I agree with the sentiment of working for oneself, some people are just wired with that kind of independence. However I wouldn't go so far as to say startup founders are just at another level of motivation - the successful ones that I know and have worked for are at another level of maturity in their thinking and approach to product development. Ask an engineer to build something and they will think of the twenty features which will make a compelling product, and the great ones will work day and night to deliver them. A great startup CEO will identify the three features that get the first customer, then roadmap the remaining features in conjunction with sales, marketing, and hiring. Great CEOs know how to build teams and solve hard problems, usually from years of experience and failures. It's hardly ever as simple as reading a book or overcoming some mental hurdles.
eddhead 6y ago
Clients/Customers are other people
MattGaiser 6y ago
> can walk away from their work with the skills needed to create their own job immediately. I have the skills to create my own product. Without customers, it is not a job. I realize that he corrects his terminology later on in the article, but he does not address that disconnect.
thespoonbends 6y ago
Why do so many of these "start your own business" nomads types have businesses that revolve around getting more people to start businesses? The author's business appears to be about monetising blogs. It's circular. Where's the value?
- hirako2000 6y ago
  There is no value, but it pays the blogger. In a way they prove the point, only that it applies to themselves or the followers who would do exactly the same. The same can be observed in some educationnal subjects, some teachers make money teaching students how to become teachers of the same thing, with no concrete value other than filling jobs. The money often come from state funds :)
  - lerpapoo 6y ago
    lol savage
- jamil7 6y ago
  It’s like all of that indiehackers site’s businesses. I guess it’s the selling shovels in a goldrush strategy?
- m463 6y ago
  But that is a self-selected population. There a plenty of folks actually starting a business, and you either didn't click on their blog articles, or they didn't write a blog.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    This doesn't seem to be teaching anyone how to start a business. It just convinces you that you should.
codegeek 6y ago
"With Great Power, comes great responsibility" - Spiderman's uncle ? Just because we have power as engineers, doesn't mean everyone is actually willing to go the extra distance to do their own thing etc. And I am as hardcore as you can get when it comes to controlling your own destiny. It comes at a significant cost and to be blunt, not everyone wants to do that. A lot of engineers are happy to have a good paying job that provides work-life balance, great benefits and most importantly: not worrying about the lives of a bunch of people (Read:employees). I would not work a job, hopefully unless I literally cannot food on the table anymore. But I very well know that a lot of engineers who can be creators are happy to create things for others, work a job that they are satisfied with and call it a day. Nothing wrong with that at all if that's what floats your boat.
lerpapoo 6y ago
there is building "for people" and then there is building "FOR THE PEOPLE", you decide.
exdsq 6y ago
“At this point in my career I can write code for just about anyone. I don’t say that to brag, I say that just to lay out my options.” I find this semi-guru semi-brag style of writing so infuriating. I’m sure he’s a great iOS developer but come on man... I wish more people wrote with the goal of genuinely helping others rather than just trying to promote their own brand.
mindfulplay 6y ago
How does one write so many words to communicate so little of value? And the message? Quit some VC funded thing and start a blog? The world is a strange place... Hedge fund sellouts now have finally found an alternative.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
redis_mlc 6y ago
"Right after I turned 28, I sat down with my wife for a deep think about what I really wanted. I was the Director of Engineering at a recent-graduate YC company, we were about to close our Series A, and I was unhappy, over-worked, and I knew it was time for something different." Satire? The show "Silicon Valley"? lol.
kthejoker2 6y ago
This is a quarter life crisis disguised as a business venture. I'm all about creative expression as therapy, but please don't confuse it with a worldview you wish me to subscribe to.
keb_ 6y ago
> You have 2 free stories left this month. Sign up and get an extra one for free. I'm dumbfounded users do this on Medium. And to think I wasted a free story on a feel good, self-congratulatory, 4 minute blog post that says little more than "Just Do It." Amusingly enough, the author's main product is a service to "make more money on Medium," and yet the landing page provides no information about the service, just a huge "Request Access" button.

36 points by f_kai 6y ago

Privilege.

Power is uninteresting for some folks. Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming from is very nice.

anonytrary 6y ago
> freedom to focus on deep coding problems without fear of where the next paycheck is coming Depends on your risk tolerance. You will most likely not be able to profit greatly off of your deep coding problems if you do them for a company with highly stratified reporting chains. Profits will get passed around to the idiots above you in the chain of command, leaving you with peanuts; probably some small bonus or raise. In my experience, engineers aren't rewarded greatly at a company unless they fit a certain bill or serve a certain HR/political purpose, unbeknownst to you. Such implicit biases are however, impossible to hide as they can be measured directly. If upper management doesn't like your attitude, behavior, your looks, your race, your gender, or anything else, they can and will stop giving you opportunities. Sometimes they will treat you poorly so you leave, sometimes they'll keep you around until you do something to get fired. The latter is certainly likely if they treat you poorly. This is not only unethical, but is a normalized practice in HR. Now, consider the case of solving deep coding problems on your own -- you're not getting paid, but you will most likely reap all of the rewards for any big wins you have, and your life isn't at the whim of internal politics that you are unaware of.
- Dannymetconan 6y ago
  In a lot of places though you can have a good life, work 9-5, be well paid and not have to worry about all the headache that occurs from running a business. You might not end up a millionaire but you'll generally be better paid then a lot of people in your age / social bracket. A lot of people just don't want to make the sacrifices to run their own business!
  - jshen 6y ago
    If you’re a developer, and you work for a big company that gives stock options, you will almost certainly become a millionaire after 15-20 years if you don’t mismanage it. You’re far better off, on average, this way than if you work for startups. You’re also more likely to become a millionaire this way than starting a company, but your less likely to make hundreds of millions.
    - Dannymetconan 6y ago
      Totally agree and your chances of actually make the 100s must be minutely small
- hilbertseries 6y ago
  > you're not getting paid, but you will most likely reap all of the rewards for any big wins you have As someone that mostly enjoys optimizing distributed systems and debugging them. I can assure you that, I can’t build a product out of this skill set. There’s consulting, but then I have to continually sell myself, which I don’t enjoy. Working for a large company, I have of plenty of these problems to solve and I get paid pretty well.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    You could create an info product.
jfim 6y ago
> Working for Big Co. and having the freedom to focus on deep coding problems Some of it is deep coding problems, but there's a fair bit of FAANG that's just protobuf/avro engineering and GRPC/thrift/restli midtier apps.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yes But sometimes there are interesting problems And the paycheck still comes on time

fwip 6y ago

I don't see much in this post that doesn't apply to most jobs.

legerdemain 6y ago

This is the sort of thing people in their 20s tend to write.

darksaints 6y ago

Stop writing for medium. As a blogger, you are writing for influence, not for money. You throw that away the moment a reader sees the message: To keep reading this story, create a free account. Seriously, take an hour of your time and learn how to use Hugo, buy a cheap domain name, and set up your blog for hosting directly from a CDN. Stop being that person that helps medium make money off of other people's content.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
His startup/business/project is based around Medium, so I doubt he's going to ditch it. "Editor of Better Programming (medium.com/better-programming). Building Moneyball to help you make more money on Medium (sign up for the beta @ usemoneyball.com)"
- hirako2000 6y ago
  English isn't my mother tong, what's building a Moneyball? Writing whatever people are willing to read in the promise to make it big, without having to do anything big yourself?
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    Moneyball is the name of the product he's building :).
    - hirako2000 6y ago
      Cool name, I'm inspired to build a Moneymagnet.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mattmanser 6y ago

This guy's in for a shock when he's built it and they do not come... I like how utterly brazen his job titles are, he was the 'Director of Engineering' of a team of him, and is now the 'Co-founder and Editor' of his own blog.

hirako2000 6y ago
Yes, but he took the jump. Are you saying he used to be standing on prestigious ground but landed in mud after his backflip?
- barumi 6y ago
  Taking jumps means nothing. And his choice of absurd and self aggrandizing titles lead me to doubt he ever stood on prestigious ground, at least acknowledged by others.
vanillacupcake 6y ago
Helping Medium creators make a living while keeping the simple / ad-free experience of Medium is an interesting arbitrage opportunity until you prove it out and Medium integrates it into their core product offering.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I think it's more likely that the product gets acquired than Medium builds it out themselves.
qz2 6y ago
When I ran a one man contract outfit is sign myself off as weird titles such as Grand Hegemon and Eternal Leader occasionally on emails to see if anyone noticed. Nope! No one gives a crap about your title apart from HR and your ego.
- exdsq 6y ago
  If a title is too disingenuous it’d actually put me off the company... your examples are great, but a director of engineering for a department of one is just strange.

Kaze404 6y ago

I read this article expecting it to get somewhere useful but when I realized it was just propaganda it was already too late. Seriously, the people who want to make a career in software and the people who want to be entrepreneurs don't need any convincing. What is even the point of this?

lochlan 6y ago

Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup when I can enjoy comfort and success working at a FANG company? Startups _sound_ great, but death marching myself without compensation is a stressful proposition. Sure, I have a handful of ideas that seem reasonable and dreams of startup success—and maybe I'll explore them in early retirement.

nineteen999 6y ago
Why should I incur the risk and time investment of founding a startup OR the culture at a FANG company, when I can thankfully avoid both and still be compensated really well and enjoy my work. It's not like there's only two options.
- lochlan 6y ago
  What exactly are you risking (or incurring) with regards to FANG culture? From my perspective it's all upside.
  - nineteen999 6y ago
    It's not for everyone, just the same as working for startups. I prefer working with a small team, and having less external teams to deal with, and shorter pipelines. We run a service with true five nines availability requirements so wherever we can reduce unnecessary complexity its allows us to focus the complexity in the right places where it is needed.

matsemann 6y ago

I think it's weird that his solution to being "unhappy and overworked" in a small startup is to make a new one and suggest that everyone else do the same.

ramshorns 6y ago
A more interesting conclusion could have been that engineers should use their power to walk away to instead organize together and demand better from their employers.

vanillacupcake 6y ago

My life so far. Early 20s: I can do anything and should start a company. Late 20s: imposter syndrome. 30s: wow, there is still so much I don't know. 40s: life is over and haven't accomplished anything, 50s: post menopause and confident as hell (now is time to start a company). Haven't gotten past 32 yet(lol) but many women are most confident in their mid 50s+ according to the science around hormones and how they impact our mood and self perception. I think there's a lot I can learn personally from a fast and loose 28 year old male perception against my own perception. Probably the combo of the two is the perfect human.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
> I think there's a lot I can learn personally from a fast and loose 28 year old male perception against my own perception. Sure, if you want to be an insufferable net-negative for humanity. I'll grant that there's individual profit in it though. When you succeed, let us all remember that it was Zack SHAPIRO who inspired you to break free from the ordeal of civility.

inopinatus 6y ago

The irony of saying "don't be a serf! build your own products!" whilst depending on the Medium platform is either delicious, or painful. Not sure which.

rl1987 6y ago
Just like your codebase is bound to have dependencies, so will your company. If he's not depending on Medium, he would be depending on Google for ranking, hosting company for hosting his blog, Mailchimp for sending out email marketing campaigns and so on. The difference is doing the work according your own decisions versus dealing with decisions made by other people higher up in the company according to some agendas that may not align with your needs.
- inopinatus 6y ago
  If that equivalence were true, there wouldn't be any irony to mention. Technical elements are replaceable parts, unless some abysmally bad decisions have been made. Hopefully you/your firm does not need Mailchimp's continuing permission to exist. Any of the many competing similar providers will do. In contrast the company in question has the tagline, "Make more money on Medium". Their existence is predicated on an external indulgence, and those are foundations of sand.

formalsystems 6y ago

I agree with the sentiment of working for oneself, some people are just wired with that kind of independence. However I wouldn't go so far as to say startup founders are just at another level of motivation - the successful ones that I know and have worked for are at another level of maturity in their thinking and approach to product development. Ask an engineer to build something and they will think of the twenty features which will make a compelling product, and the great ones will work day and night to deliver them. A great startup CEO will identify the three features that get the first customer, then roadmap the remaining features in conjunction with sales, marketing, and hiring. Great CEOs know how to build teams and solve hard problems, usually from years of experience and failures. It's hardly ever as simple as reading a book or overcoming some mental hurdles.

eddhead 6y ago

Clients/Customers are other people

MattGaiser 6y ago

> can walk away from their work with the skills needed to create their own job immediately. I have the skills to create my own product. Without customers, it is not a job. I realize that he corrects his terminology later on in the article, but he does not address that disconnect.

thespoonbends 6y ago

Why do so many of these "start your own business" nomads types have businesses that revolve around getting more people to start businesses? The author's business appears to be about monetising blogs. It's circular. Where's the value?

hirako2000 6y ago
There is no value, but it pays the blogger. In a way they prove the point, only that it applies to themselves or the followers who would do exactly the same. The same can be observed in some educationnal subjects, some teachers make money teaching students how to become teachers of the same thing, with no concrete value other than filling jobs. The money often come from state funds :)
- lerpapoo 6y ago
  lol savage
jamil7 6y ago
It’s like all of that indiehackers site’s businesses. I guess it’s the selling shovels in a goldrush strategy?
m463 6y ago
But that is a self-selected population. There a plenty of folks actually starting a business, and you either didn't click on their blog articles, or they didn't write a blog.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  This doesn't seem to be teaching anyone how to start a business. It just convinces you that you should.

codegeek 6y ago

"With Great Power, comes great responsibility" - Spiderman's uncle ? Just because we have power as engineers, doesn't mean everyone is actually willing to go the extra distance to do their own thing etc. And I am as hardcore as you can get when it comes to controlling your own destiny. It comes at a significant cost and to be blunt, not everyone wants to do that. A lot of engineers are happy to have a good paying job that provides work-life balance, great benefits and most importantly: not worrying about the lives of a bunch of people (Read:employees). I would not work a job, hopefully unless I literally cannot food on the table anymore. But I very well know that a lot of engineers who can be creators are happy to create things for others, work a job that they are satisfied with and call it a day. Nothing wrong with that at all if that's what floats your boat.

lerpapoo 6y ago

there is building "for people" and then there is building "FOR THE PEOPLE", you decide.

exdsq 6y ago

“At this point in my career I can write code for just about anyone. I don’t say that to brag, I say that just to lay out my options.” I find this semi-guru semi-brag style of writing so infuriating. I’m sure he’s a great iOS developer but come on man... I wish more people wrote with the goal of genuinely helping others rather than just trying to promote their own brand.

mindfulplay 6y ago

How does one write so many words to communicate so little of value? And the message? Quit some VC funded thing and start a blog? The world is a strange place... Hedge fund sellouts now have finally found an alternative.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

redis_mlc 6y ago

"Right after I turned 28, I sat down with my wife for a deep think about what I really wanted. I was the Director of Engineering at a recent-graduate YC company, we were about to close our Series A, and I was unhappy, over-worked, and I knew it was time for something different." Satire? The show "Silicon Valley"? lol.

kthejoker2 6y ago

This is a quarter life crisis disguised as a business venture. I'm all about creative expression as therapy, but please don't confuse it with a worldview you wish me to subscribe to.

keb_ 6y ago

> You have 2 free stories left this month. Sign up and get an extra one for free. I'm dumbfounded users do this on Medium. And to think I wasted a free story on a feel good, self-congratulatory, 4 minute blog post that says little more than "Just Do It." Amusingly enough, the author's main product is a service to "make more money on Medium," and yet the landing page provides no information about the service, just a huge "Request Access" button.