5 ms·

I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of emplo

I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment. There is a whole community however that sees wealth acquisition as the point of employment. Even if it's "merely" joining the ranks of the top 5% this is lauded as success by many. Lawyers, doctors, consultants, stock traders, all the high paying professions have people who subscribe to this philosophy. "I want to provide the best life possible for my family" might be the primary goal. Lower status/pay professions might describe this as what a "job" is as opposed to a "career". Something you do for money. Many hackers want to both provide the best possible life for their families and participate in a grand adventure of changing the world by creating something people want. I am infected with this mentality. But this might be considered a delusion of grandeur by many, or egotism. It's hard to empathize with a group who doesn't share a drive you see as essential for good character, but that lack of empathy is what is drawing people's scorn here.

dd36 6y ago
Same. I can live in a hut in Guatemala if I feel challenged and am enjoying my work. Wealth is fun but so long as my family and I are good, it’s not a motivating factor. Solving problems is.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  "so long as my family and I are good" - wealth goes a long way to ensure exactly that.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.
    - bradlys 6y ago
      Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Interesting. I thought software developers were paid better than most other professions almost everywhere. Out of interest, is this because you live somewhere with low wages, or because you live somewhere with high living costs?
        DC1350 6y ago
        Most good jobs are in places where it's not possible to buy a house as a single engineer, which is a pretty basic standard of life that even low income people expect all over the country. If you don't optimize for money then your options are to either give up and move away, or accept poor living conditions like hour long commutes or having roommates as a grown adult.
      - ska 6y ago
        Unless you set a really unusual bar for "subpar lifestyle for a professional" this is a very atypical situation. If you think of "professional" jobs only, developers typically have better than average compensation for around the least barrier to entry. The lack of need for credentials tends to translate to significantly less debt (more so US & maybe Canada specific) and earlier career trajectory entry too. This may be regional, but certainly seems to hold for US, Canada, much of EU in my limited experience.
        DC1350 6y ago
        Most Canadian developers don't get paid enough to live in the tech hub cities.
        ska 6y ago
        And yet, they are tech hubs? How does this differ from devs in Montana be California ? More to the point, are other professions doing notably better in those “tech hubs” relative to software developers ? In my experience, no, which suggests your comment really boils down to “there are some high COL places where even professional couples struggle to afford a house” no?
    - PNWChris 6y ago
      I generally agree with you here, the sun is shining and we software engineers can make some hay! But...I have words of caution. I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. My dad is a Stanford grad mechanical engineer who worked for a Big 3 auto manufacturer, my wife's parents work in auto, and many of my friends families directly or indirectly worked in automotive. Everything about that seemed secure and stable until our entire world got rekt in 2008. It took forever for the average automotive worker and their family to recover from that recession, and I've come out of it incredibly cynical about employment and the US economic system. When it matters most, DC will bail themselves and their cronies out first, and will drag their feet and cry deficits when it gets time to help you. I care about doing great work, but my highest priority is to "secure the bag" as the kids say and ensure a stable life for myself and my family. I keep a big cash savings, save and invest aggressively for retirement, and make no assumptions about my employability in a hypothetical time of crisis. I have a feeling a lot of mid-late-20s and early 30s SWEs share my experience, it's no accident I chose such a lucrative field (though I do love my work!). Watch out for yourself, don't discount the possibility that software eng is just living in a repeat of the irrationally exuberant 1990s automotive industry. Side note/PS: It's not all about money: you've got to be politically active, invest in community, and advocate for the kind of world you believe we should live in! Just don't forget to secure yourself financially and make no assumptions if you can afford not to, then you can confidentially support yourself and others in times of crisis.
      - Viliam1234 6y ago
        There is also a risk of health problems. If at some moment my spine decides it is no more acceptable for me to spend so much time sitting by the computer, or my eyes decide it is no more acceptable to spend so much time looking at the screen... I won't be able to work as a full-time software developer anymore. I want to make sure that when that happens, my family will be economically okay during the following years.
        reducesuffering 6y ago
        Insurance can play most of the role for that right now.
  - dd36 6y ago
    Yes but there is a threshold. Good to me doesn’t mean everyone drives a Tesla. It means freedom to do what we want and not be prisoners to what we own or want to own.
    - noisy_boy 6y ago
      True - it doesn't mean that everyone drives a Tesla to me either. To me, it means that if I need to shell out some serious cash to fix an expensive kidney problem, I am able to do it (levels of insurance coverage aren't same everywhere). Because if I can't, then there isn't any freedom to do what I want because I'll be dead.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Working in a corporation where I’m already adequately challenged by the work, is there any other goal to strive for except promotion and compensation increase? Once you are at the level where your compensation covers everything you want, it’s more of a game to increase it than necessity. It also makes me feel better since a lot of people I don’t respect earn a lot more than I do, so increasing relative compensation is righting something in the world :P
  - Arainach 6y ago
    >Once you are at the level where your compensation covers everything you want, it’s more of a game to increase it than necessity. This is also why many people choose to plateau at a certain point. In the Google/Facebook scheme, that's often L5 - I've talked with a number of employees who debate whether they even want the responsibility that comes with an L6 promo and are quite convinced they wouldn't want L7+ Their mindset would probably be foreign to the author of this article, but I can see it and it lines up with what you said - at a certain point, if comp is high enough, I'd prefer to be well paid AND have free time. I've worked with some truly incredible L7+ engineers, but they correlate strongly with people who never turn off and seemingly never stop working, and that's simply not something that appeals to me in life.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  The problems that I am passionate about are large at scale and really require large amounts of capital and not within my expertise. So I need wealth (money).
  - dd36 6y ago
    That's what investors are for. Even Elon uses investors.
Raidion 6y ago
Yea, this seems like a 'scissor' issue where you're going to see the two ends being "I want a project where I care about it and I want to make an impact and personal sacrifices are worth it to make that impact" and "I will never truly be passionate about this, this is an economic transaction where I exchange life for money, and I'm going to try to get the best deal I can." If you're talking about building a team, having people with similar goals is always important. This guy wants a team with the "we're gonna change the world" view. You're not going to do well on a team like that if you're just looking to maximize the salary/effort ratio. I think one of the reason people get annoyed at stuff like this is that a lot of people been sold a "we're gonna change the world" vision that turns out to just be some recruiter or manager's excitement and end up parsing TPS reports for below average salary. True change the world opportunities rarely come via a recruiter or job board.
freewilly1040 6y ago
It’s not the drive that is unshared, it’s the incentives. He seems to vaguely understand that his employee’s incentives at Google are different from his own, and seems resent them for it even though his pay is probably an order of magnitude higher than theirs. When he talks about perfect alignment between employees and investors in the start up world, he is believing his own sales pitch. In reality the same divide exists there too.
CodeMage 6y ago
> I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment. Call me cynical and jaded, but I don't believe "building something valuable" is the point of employment. "Building something valuable" is the point of my vocation. I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. Over the course of more than 20 years of my professional career, the vast majority of the employers I've had have done their best to disabuse me of that notion. The way I see it, the point of employment is to ensure you have the money and the benefits you need to live comfortably. If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. If they don't, do what you're passionate about in your free time. > Many hackers want to both provide the best possible life for their families and participate in a grand adventure of changing the world by creating something people want. If you can get that, it's awesome. But if you can't, then you have to choose. And I know what I'm choosing.
- lelele 6y ago
  > I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. > If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. That is the meaning of "should", isn't it? And even if they don't align 100%, you can always strive for a maximum.
  - CodeMage 6y ago
    > That is the meaning of "should", isn't it? Not really. It's a difference between "should have" and "nice to have". If you go in with the expectation that your job and your vocation should align, then you're setting yourself up for a negative experience. Maybe not immediately, but definitely down the road, because that alignment won't last forever. I prefer to go in with the idea that it's a desirable, but entirely optional bonus. I guess it depends on how "risk averse" you are in this context. It's kinda like salary negotiations. I prefer to put most of the weight on the base salary. Equity and bonuses are nice, but if the base salary isn't enough to live comfortably, then you're setting yourself up for a big risk: you're one management decision away from coming up short. Yes, I know that most US employers can fire you at will in theory, but in practice getting laid off doesn't happen as often as the myriad of stuff that can adversely affect your bonus or equity. Different people have different outlooks. Mine puts the "job-passion balance" in the same category as "bonus" and "equity". It comes from my own, personal experience. YMMV.
nonameiguess 6y ago
This guy is deluded about the meaning of his product. I was a Waze user. It saved me a few minutes here and there getting to work, and that was worth the $0 it cost me. If he ever forced an employee to miss even a single kid's soccer game to save me two minutes getting to work, though, I no longer feel that is worth it. I spent most of the past five years working on projects for the US geointelligence enterprise where if we failed to meet a deadline, a satellite might not launch. Before that, I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. I am perfectly willing to make tremendous sacrifices when it is actually worth it, but it is amazing to see how deluded Silicon Valley types are about the actual importance of what they're doing. Not everything changes the world. Most products are trifling conveniences, nice to haves, and if you miss a deadline here or there, nobody cares. Or at least they really shouldn't care.
- tasuki 6y ago
  > I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. Was that worth it? Do you consider that superior to working on trifling conveniences?
  - nonameiguess 6y ago
    Not really, but I was young and stupid. Whether it ends up being worth it depends on how it works out for you. I ended up with significant and permanent spine injuries and I'm lucky as hell I landed in a knowledge industry where I can work from bed, otherwise I might not be able to work at all. It'd be nice to not spend the last 50 years of my life with a partially non-functional body, though.
    - menomatter 6y ago
      Thank you for your service

dd36 6y ago

Same. I can live in a hut in Guatemala if I feel challenged and am enjoying my work. Wealth is fun but so long as my family and I are good, it’s not a motivating factor. Solving problems is.

noisy_boy 6y ago
"so long as my family and I are good" - wealth goes a long way to ensure exactly that.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Sure, but if you're a software developer with a few years experience then pretty much any job is going to cover that.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Interesting. I thought software developers were paid better than most other professions almost everywhere. Out of interest, is this because you live somewhere with low wages, or because you live somewhere with high living costs?
      - DC1350 6y ago
        Most good jobs are in places where it's not possible to buy a house as a single engineer, which is a pretty basic standard of life that even low income people expect all over the country. If you don't optimize for money then your options are to either give up and move away, or accept poor living conditions like hour long commutes or having roommates as a grown adult.
    - ska 6y ago
      Unless you set a really unusual bar for "subpar lifestyle for a professional" this is a very atypical situation. If you think of "professional" jobs only, developers typically have better than average compensation for around the least barrier to entry. The lack of need for credentials tends to translate to significantly less debt (more so US & maybe Canada specific) and earlier career trajectory entry too. This may be regional, but certainly seems to hold for US, Canada, much of EU in my limited experience.
      - DC1350 6y ago
        Most Canadian developers don't get paid enough to live in the tech hub cities.
        ska 6y ago
        And yet, they are tech hubs? How does this differ from devs in Montana be California ? More to the point, are other professions doing notably better in those “tech hubs” relative to software developers ? In my experience, no, which suggests your comment really boils down to “there are some high COL places where even professional couples struggle to afford a house” no?
  - PNWChris 6y ago
    I generally agree with you here, the sun is shining and we software engineers can make some hay! But...I have words of caution. I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. My dad is a Stanford grad mechanical engineer who worked for a Big 3 auto manufacturer, my wife's parents work in auto, and many of my friends families directly or indirectly worked in automotive. Everything about that seemed secure and stable until our entire world got rekt in 2008. It took forever for the average automotive worker and their family to recover from that recession, and I've come out of it incredibly cynical about employment and the US economic system. When it matters most, DC will bail themselves and their cronies out first, and will drag their feet and cry deficits when it gets time to help you. I care about doing great work, but my highest priority is to "secure the bag" as the kids say and ensure a stable life for myself and my family. I keep a big cash savings, save and invest aggressively for retirement, and make no assumptions about my employability in a hypothetical time of crisis. I have a feeling a lot of mid-late-20s and early 30s SWEs share my experience, it's no accident I chose such a lucrative field (though I do love my work!). Watch out for yourself, don't discount the possibility that software eng is just living in a repeat of the irrationally exuberant 1990s automotive industry. Side note/PS: It's not all about money: you've got to be politically active, invest in community, and advocate for the kind of world you believe we should live in! Just don't forget to secure yourself financially and make no assumptions if you can afford not to, then you can confidentially support yourself and others in times of crisis.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      There is also a risk of health problems. If at some moment my spine decides it is no more acceptable for me to spend so much time sitting by the computer, or my eyes decide it is no more acceptable to spend so much time looking at the screen... I won't be able to work as a full-time software developer anymore. I want to make sure that when that happens, my family will be economically okay during the following years.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        Insurance can play most of the role for that right now.
- dd36 6y ago
  Yes but there is a threshold. Good to me doesn’t mean everyone drives a Tesla. It means freedom to do what we want and not be prisoners to what we own or want to own.
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    True - it doesn't mean that everyone drives a Tesla to me either. To me, it means that if I need to shell out some serious cash to fix an expensive kidney problem, I am able to do it (levels of insurance coverage aren't same everywhere). Because if I can't, then there isn't any freedom to do what I want because I'll be dead.
Aeolun 6y ago
Working in a corporation where I’m already adequately challenged by the work, is there any other goal to strive for except promotion and compensation increase? Once you are at the level where your compensation covers everything you want, it’s more of a game to increase it than necessity. It also makes me feel better since a lot of people I don’t respect earn a lot more than I do, so increasing relative compensation is righting something in the world :P
- Arainach 6y ago
  >Once you are at the level where your compensation covers everything you want, it’s more of a game to increase it than necessity. This is also why many people choose to plateau at a certain point. In the Google/Facebook scheme, that's often L5 - I've talked with a number of employees who debate whether they even want the responsibility that comes with an L6 promo and are quite convinced they wouldn't want L7+ Their mindset would probably be foreign to the author of this article, but I can see it and it lines up with what you said - at a certain point, if comp is high enough, I'd prefer to be well paid AND have free time. I've worked with some truly incredible L7+ engineers, but they correlate strongly with people who never turn off and seemingly never stop working, and that's simply not something that appeals to me in life.
kyawzazaw 6y ago
The problems that I am passionate about are large at scale and really require large amounts of capital and not within my expertise. So I need wealth (money).
- dd36 6y ago
  That's what investors are for. Even Elon uses investors.

Raidion 6y ago

Yea, this seems like a 'scissor' issue where you're going to see the two ends being "I want a project where I care about it and I want to make an impact and personal sacrifices are worth it to make that impact" and "I will never truly be passionate about this, this is an economic transaction where I exchange life for money, and I'm going to try to get the best deal I can." If you're talking about building a team, having people with similar goals is always important. This guy wants a team with the "we're gonna change the world" view. You're not going to do well on a team like that if you're just looking to maximize the salary/effort ratio. I think one of the reason people get annoyed at stuff like this is that a lot of people been sold a "we're gonna change the world" vision that turns out to just be some recruiter or manager's excitement and end up parsing TPS reports for below average salary. True change the world opportunities rarely come via a recruiter or job board.

freewilly1040 6y ago

It’s not the drive that is unshared, it’s the incentives. He seems to vaguely understand that his employee’s incentives at Google are different from his own, and seems resent them for it even though his pay is probably an order of magnitude higher than theirs. When he talks about perfect alignment between employees and investors in the start up world, he is believing his own sales pitch. In reality the same divide exists there too.

CodeMage 6y ago

> I think his derision of entitled ladder-climbing employees is valid from the perspective of someone who sees "building something valuable" as the point of employment. Call me cynical and jaded, but I don't believe "building something valuable" is the point of employment. "Building something valuable" is the point of my vocation. I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. Over the course of more than 20 years of my professional career, the vast majority of the employers I've had have done their best to disabuse me of that notion. The way I see it, the point of employment is to ensure you have the money and the benefits you need to live comfortably. If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. If they don't, do what you're passionate about in your free time. > Many hackers want to both provide the best possible life for their families and participate in a grand adventure of changing the world by creating something people want. If you can get that, it's awesome. But if you can't, then you have to choose. And I know what I'm choosing.

lelele 6y ago
> I used to believe that the employment and vocation should align. > If your employment and your vocation align, it's a nice bonus. That is the meaning of "should", isn't it? And even if they don't align 100%, you can always strive for a maximum.
- CodeMage 6y ago
  > That is the meaning of "should", isn't it? Not really. It's a difference between "should have" and "nice to have". If you go in with the expectation that your job and your vocation should align, then you're setting yourself up for a negative experience. Maybe not immediately, but definitely down the road, because that alignment won't last forever. I prefer to go in with the idea that it's a desirable, but entirely optional bonus. I guess it depends on how "risk averse" you are in this context. It's kinda like salary negotiations. I prefer to put most of the weight on the base salary. Equity and bonuses are nice, but if the base salary isn't enough to live comfortably, then you're setting yourself up for a big risk: you're one management decision away from coming up short. Yes, I know that most US employers can fire you at will in theory, but in practice getting laid off doesn't happen as often as the myriad of stuff that can adversely affect your bonus or equity. Different people have different outlooks. Mine puts the "job-passion balance" in the same category as "bonus" and "equity". It comes from my own, personal experience. YMMV.

nonameiguess 6y ago

This guy is deluded about the meaning of his product. I was a Waze user. It saved me a few minutes here and there getting to work, and that was worth the $0 it cost me. If he ever forced an employee to miss even a single kid's soccer game to save me two minutes getting to work, though, I no longer feel that is worth it. I spent most of the past five years working on projects for the US geointelligence enterprise where if we failed to meet a deadline, a satellite might not launch. Before that, I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. I am perfectly willing to make tremendous sacrifices when it is actually worth it, but it is amazing to see how deluded Silicon Valley types are about the actual importance of what they're doing. Not everything changes the world. Most products are trifling conveniences, nice to haves, and if you miss a deadline here or there, nobody cares. Or at least they really shouldn't care.

tasuki 6y ago
> I was in the Army for 8 years fighting wars. Was that worth it? Do you consider that superior to working on trifling conveniences?
- nonameiguess 6y ago
  Not really, but I was young and stupid. Whether it ends up being worth it depends on how it works out for you. I ended up with significant and permanent spine injuries and I'm lucky as hell I landed in a knowledge industry where I can work from bed, otherwise I might not be able to work at all. It'd be nice to not spend the last 50 years of my life with a partially non-functional body, though.
  - menomatter 6y ago
    Thank you for your service