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I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. Fo

by cactus2093 6y ago

I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out a way to make a good living by minimizing their work hours, or not having an employer, or whatever makes them happiest. And maybe I am projecting based on my own journey a little bit, but it sounds like the place he was at in his own life 5-10 years ago and his bad experiences some pretty toxic Japanese megacorps, probably made him overly pessimistic on the prospects of a 9-5 tech job in general. But the opportunities that arose over the past decade, and appear to still exist for the foreseeable future, at large public or nearly public tech cos are just incredible in terms of the level of return employees can get for relatively low risk. And I think most young people starting out still don’t fully realize this. The numbers you see on levels.fyi are very real, and on top of that these stocks have been doubling every few years. You can pretty reliably, say, work hard for 20 years and then retire at age 40 with 10 million dollars in savings. For the vast majority of people, there’s just no way a side hustle can compete with that. Any theoretical arguments about labor vs capital don’t really make sense for the top paid 1% of labor.

alisonkisk 6y ago
All those lifestyle side projects are why he's an ebg manager at Stripe now.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Idk, it seems like all the blogging about those projects and the building of that into a tech influencer persona are why he’s a manager at stripe. And that’s, by definition, not something everyone can do. And it’s certainly not the most direct or easiest way to get into that job.
  - finnh 6y ago
    Exactly. "Tech influencer" worked for patio11 much more than "creator of Bingo Card Creator"
- quesera 6y ago
  I'm going to venture a guess that: Patrick is smart, gets things done, writes very well, and attracted an audience -- and that is why he was a natural hire for his role at Stripe. And for what it's worth, Paul Graham is all of those things, and that is why he was able to start YC. "Smart and gets things done" are table stakes. The key differentiators are "writes well and attracts an audience" so that your influence exceeds your personal energies. ...if that's the kind of life you want of course. There's lots of SQL optimization work that needs doing too, and some people find that much more satisfying.
pavlov 6y ago
If you're young, ask yourself: is your time better spent on playing the interview game trying to get into a FAANG exactly like one million other people? Or doing something that feels more uniquely yours but can't guarantee retirement at 40? The first path has only one road to success. If you keep trying but don't pass the bar, you may be depressed because the challenge here is a purely external one — you need to constantly meet rigid expectations set by faceless others. The second path has many hidden roads to success, and the challenge is an internal one — you need to discover something about yourself that could eventually unlock value to others too. I took the latter path and still ended up at a FAANG in my late thirties without a CS degree. It's been a more rewarding life than if I had postponed all my dreams by twenty years.
jasonkester 6y ago
You’re definitely right that the path to, say, $300,000 total comp is more straightforward if you go the route of working toward a career at a top Bay Area firm. But the route to a SaaS business that brings in something like $100,000 profit and can essentially run on autopilot most of the time is not a tremendous amount more work that all that leetcoding and FAANGing, over the 10 odd years you’ll need to put in to either one to make it happen. Given that, which end lifestyle would you choose for yourself? Personally, while I’m pretty happy with the road less taken, I did take a quick 5 year break from it to grab that brass ring, pay off a house and put my future kids through college, before returning to the slacking entrepreneur lifestyle. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the author is in a similar phase at the moment.

alisonkisk 6y ago

All those lifestyle side projects are why he's an ebg manager at Stripe now.

cactus2093 6y ago
Idk, it seems like all the blogging about those projects and the building of that into a tech influencer persona are why he’s a manager at stripe. And that’s, by definition, not something everyone can do. And it’s certainly not the most direct or easiest way to get into that job.
- finnh 6y ago
  Exactly. "Tech influencer" worked for patio11 much more than "creator of Bingo Card Creator"
quesera 6y ago
I'm going to venture a guess that: Patrick is smart, gets things done, writes very well, and attracted an audience -- and that is why he was a natural hire for his role at Stripe. And for what it's worth, Paul Graham is all of those things, and that is why he was able to start YC. "Smart and gets things done" are table stakes. The key differentiators are "writes well and attracts an audience" so that your influence exceeds your personal energies. ...if that's the kind of life you want of course. There's lots of SQL optimization work that needs doing too, and some people find that much more satisfying.

pavlov 6y ago

If you're young, ask yourself: is your time better spent on playing the interview game trying to get into a FAANG exactly like one million other people? Or doing something that feels more uniquely yours but can't guarantee retirement at 40? The first path has only one road to success. If you keep trying but don't pass the bar, you may be depressed because the challenge here is a purely external one — you need to constantly meet rigid expectations set by faceless others. The second path has many hidden roads to success, and the challenge is an internal one — you need to discover something about yourself that could eventually unlock value to others too. I took the latter path and still ended up at a FAANG in my late thirties without a CS degree. It's been a more rewarding life than if I had postponed all my dreams by twenty years.

jasonkester 6y ago

You’re definitely right that the path to, say, $300,000 total comp is more straightforward if you go the route of working toward a career at a top Bay Area firm. But the route to a SaaS business that brings in something like $100,000 profit and can essentially run on autopilot most of the time is not a tremendous amount more work that all that leetcoding and FAANGing, over the 10 odd years you’ll need to put in to either one to make it happen. Given that, which end lifestyle would you choose for yourself? Personally, while I’m pretty happy with the road less taken, I did take a quick 5 year break from it to grab that brass ring, pay off a house and put my future kids through college, before returning to the slacking entrepreneur lifestyle. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the author is in a similar phase at the moment.