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I live in Eastern Europe. I have worked at the local branch of several multinational companies. When I applied to a job, I solved the interview problems and the
by nadam 15y ago
I live in Eastern Europe. I have worked at the local branch of several multinational companies. When I applied to a job, I solved the interview problems and then I was offered a slightly more than average salary the same way as my colleauges. None of the interview questions were deep enough to mirror how I think about really hard problems. The only way I can really measure myself is to work on problems like the Netflix prize, build my hobbyprojects (and I participated in math competitions when I was a child), etc.., but these are not related to my day-job. I earn $36000 a year currently.
I once started a topic on HN where I have written this: please give me a very hard 'test' task (which can be solved in one or two days, but very tricky), and if I can solve it I would be interested in remote work for more than $36000 a year. (Which is slightly above market in Hungary) But no one answered.
About your 3 points: I agree that having these in one person is a good combination. However people are rarely exceptional in all 3 points. Some guys are exceptional algorithmizers, others have really good intuition for enginering, creating an amazing design (for code), yet others have exceptional memory so that they can dive into huge bloated shitty code, and yet others deal well with monotony (when you have to do unchallanging tasks, or deal with other people's shitty code). Some people are fast like hell, others can grow beautiful thoughts if you give them days to think about a problem. But I agree that a bit of all of this is needed mostly. Also being strong in one territory you can emulate other strengths. If the tasks are not on your limit, you can emulate fastness with smartness, and emulate smartness with being fast. But when the problems are hard enough that you are at your 'limit', this emulation no longer works.
- ekidd 15y agoOne of the most amazing programmers I've ever worked with was Vadim Zeitlin, a core contributor to the wxWidgets project and resident of Paris. We hired him to port Quake 2 to run on top of the wxWidgets, and it took him 3.5 days. His work helped save a multi-million dollar project. Now, his daily rate wasn't cheap, but we were delighted to pay it. If you want to earn more than average, here are some suggestions: 1) Contribute heavily to an open source project, preferably one used by people with lots of money. This demonstrates your talent and drive more clearly than a few interview questions. 2) Learn how to market your skills and how to negotiate. For the former, study patio11's career. For the latter, try reading "Getting to Yes" from the Harvard Negotiation Project.
- nadam 15y agoThanks. I am creating a component-based GUI lib right now which is written in pure Javascript and which is all painted on a HTML5 Canvas. (it is intended as a Flash/Flex killer) (5200 lines is ready currently) I've implemented all the styling, dynamic layout and painting from scratch. I will open source it, so even if it will not be successful as a startup, I hope at least it will be good to convince clients/employers that I can design/program nontrivial things.
- diolpah 15y agoI am a bit confused by this post. You have a multi-million dollar project that runs on a port of Quake 2?
- pkteison 15y agoI think that employers generally don't pay employees significantly above market salaries. Certainly not double, even if they're worth 5x or 10x another employee. Their HR departments won't let them. To do significantly better, you need to be starting a business or contracting. And if it's contracting, you'll probably have to be doing fixed bid contracts, something that divorces your hours worked from the amount paid - so that you don't run into a "we pay no more than $x/hour" clause, where x is whatever the local lousy body shop charges.
- foobarbazoo 15y ago^^ this. Fixed bid contracts are the ONLY way off of the hourly merry-go-round if you're a contractor/consultant. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.