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Their GitHub profile has more than 3 projects - you might have only looked at the pinned ones. But overall, I somewhat agree with Francesco. I used to work at

Their GitHub profile has more than 3 projects - you might have only looked at the pinned ones. But overall, I somewhat agree with Francesco. I used to work at a large corporation where majority of the work was minor config changes and rolling out deployments for handsome pay (somewhat KTLO work). I left because I wasn't growing my career. As companies get bigger the money gets bigger as well but the interesting work gets much smaller. At the end of the day, once you have a solid product in place you need a lot more people to just keep it running vs. work on some very interesting technical work. I think applied research is the best way to go for very interesting technical work but I think the bar is pretty high for that.

dragosmocrii 5y ago
But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I understand that one would like to switch from a boring but well paid job, in order to grow their career, but I feel this is for people who need to be told what to do. If you're not that type of person, you have so many opportunities for growth: study a new technology, join an open source project, identify a way to optimize/improve a process at your current boring job and convince management to do it... If you have the initiative, you can create the opportunities that you seek. But if you truly are bored of your current job, the people you work with, etc etc then yeah, there's no point staying even if the pay is great (reminds me of Tony Hsieh's Vesting in Peace moment he described in his book, or his job at Oracle) [Disclaimer: by using "you" I am not addressing you personally]
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? Depends on the environment I suppose. If its a classic but-in-seat, locked down, corporate environment, you're probably still constrained for a similar amount of time.
- salil999 5y ago
  > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort required. The example I can give is what I described above: config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with such technologies then there are many barriers in place which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month to deploy our software world-wide. You are correct about financial security. At least for me, I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start something on my own or make a big career change. I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an example for me would sound like "design me a system that does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will design a good system with respect to time for delivery and feature request compatibility.
Pet_Ant 5y ago
KTLO = "keep the lights on" Basically just barebones maintenance to keep a product running.

dragosmocrii 5y ago

But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I understand that one would like to switch from a boring but well paid job, in order to grow their career, but I feel this is for people who need to be told what to do. If you're not that type of person, you have so many opportunities for growth: study a new technology, join an open source project, identify a way to optimize/improve a process at your current boring job and convince management to do it... If you have the initiative, you can create the opportunities that you seek. But if you truly are bored of your current job, the people you work with, etc etc then yeah, there's no point staying even if the pay is great (reminds me of Tony Hsieh's Vesting in Peace moment he described in his book, or his job at Oracle) [Disclaimer: by using "you" I am not addressing you personally]

the_only_law 5y ago
> But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? Depends on the environment I suppose. If its a classic but-in-seat, locked down, corporate environment, you're probably still constrained for a similar amount of time.
salil999 5y ago
> But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort required. The example I can give is what I described above: config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with such technologies then there are many barriers in place which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month to deploy our software world-wide. You are correct about financial security. At least for me, I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start something on my own or make a big career change. I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an example for me would sound like "design me a system that does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will design a good system with respect to time for delivery and feature request compatibility.

Pet_Ant 5y ago

KTLO = "keep the lights on" Basically just barebones maintenance to keep a product running.