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This is actually very good advice from personal experience. The best career results (promotions) I have seen came from people who built a prototype of some sor

This is actually very good advice from personal experience. The best career results (promotions) I have seen came from people who built a prototype of some sort then evangelized it, even if it wasn’t necessarily a complete product, often just a good prototype. First example: This guy took the Intel Edison and built a pretty cool project and brought it to our maker faire events. He ended up in conversation with the CEO of some company and ended up landing a $500K exec job. Just from building a skateboard hack and trying to tell people about it. Second: I knew a guy who built this neat prototype of a compute service and then did a keynote talk at a Meetup. It didn’t really work as a product but the website was convincing. It was enough to “get bought” by a major tech co and land him a CTO job. Another time I saw a guy leave a FAANG and build a compelling IoT type project in three months. Again, he ended up with a CTO level job after a few months. My take away is if you want an executive job, build something somewhat cool, even as a prototype, and go try to sell it for real. Even if you don’t raise any money or make it work as a business it is often way better than submitting resumes. There is something much more powerful about creating something that generates a lot of engagement and conversation, even if it is only half baked but looks decent and your storytelling is compelling. This isn’t interviewing it’s auditioning.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
How big are the companies these people landed exec positions at?
- paulluuk 5y ago
  Apparantly they were big enough to offer a 500k executive position to someone who created a hobby project on a discontinued 50 dollar processor.
SenHeng 5y ago
I used to work at one of those body shop contracting places. A few years ago, I heard that the boss managed to sell the company, presenting themselves as developing an in-house blockchain product. I asked around some ex-colleagues and as far as anyone knew, all they had were some fancy PowerPoint decks and a very rough implementation in PHP. After getting bought, everyone still continued doing the same old body work jobs, except now for the parent company’s other subsidiaries. The website still mentions blockchain. Fake it till you make it.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I lol'ed, because around 2017 is what I called the "sprinkle in some blockchain" era. There was so much FOMO from investors that blockchain was "the next big thing", that an easy way to literally double or triple your valuation was to "sprinkle in some blockchain". It wasn't like the investors were really even being scammed, because nobody could succinctly articulate why blockchain was better for these particular use cases in the first place. All I ever heard was some marketing speak that sounded like it was from a markov chain generator, but it apparently had the effect of hypnotizing investors so they'd add a few zeros to the end of their checks.
  - bobsil1 5y ago
    VCs know it’s BS, but also that they can flip it to a mark.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      Wahl or Zucker Berg
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    What do we sprinkle in 2022? Whatever it is, i'll get on it right away and sprinkle some into my projects!
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      Some of the trends that come to mind: - Crypto / Blockchain / NFT / Web3 - Machine Learning / AI - VR / AR / XR / Metaverse - Cloud / Serverless / Microservices - IoT - Big Data - Quantum Computing - SaaS / IaaS / Paas
      - ignoramous 5y ago
        FinTech is absolutely hot at the moment and casts a huge shadow on rest of these trends.
leetwito 5y ago
Fake it until you make it. The best executives are not the most experienced ones, but the most CAN-DOers
floodyberry- 5y ago
"Show off your half baked idea and get a high paying executive job" Yeah, sure, I'll get right on that
moritonal 5y ago
Yeah, building stuff is generally the best way to get noticed. A warning sign should be added however that there's a hard survival-bias here. On top of that, it's idyllic to imagine their tech skills were the only reason these three people got the great job. Did their class and heritage line up at all?
- arthur_sav 5y ago
  > Did their class and heritage line up at all? I really dislike this argument. Surely, the world is not that simple and there are many variables into ones success (and failures). However, what is there to be gained by attributing their success to all the forces that they can't control. Instead, take it as it is. A story, from the perspective of one person, that you may or you may not learn from. We become better by sharing with the collective.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    >what is there to be gained by attributing their success to all the forces that they can't control. Supposing for a moment that there is truth to what the parent comment says, we would gain a better knowledge of how the world actually works instead of perpetuating old myths.
    - dasil003 5y ago
      I believe there is definitely truth to it. I’ve seen first hand how Stanford/MIT or FAANG on your resume can give you a leg up in the hiring committee over many people without the pedigree who turn out to be far better engineers. That said I agree with GP, there is not much to be gained from focusing on systemic biases. Just because a narrative is truthy does not make it definitive; the map is not the territory and all that. As an individual focus on what you can control and you have the possibility of achieving outcomes unique to you.
    - arthur_sav 5y ago
      As a thought experiment, how far down the rabbit hole would you go? What were the factors involved in ones outcomes? - Was it his "class"? - Skin color? - Family connections - Country? - Education? - Genes? - Moon's gravitational pull? - A butterfly flapping's it's wings? Not saying it's not relevant, i'm saying it's not practical. If there's any lesson to be learned from the story, it's definitely not from the X factors that cannot be controlled. The only outcome of such discussions would be to complain. Speaking of perpetuating myths, people attributing the success of other people to anything else other than competence would be up there.
magicalist 5y ago
This reads a bit like that LinkedIn inspiration porn from yesterday[1], honestly. These people may have other qualifications not listed here but working at a company where this is the path to being CTO sounds a bit like my nightmare :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215183

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

How big are the companies these people landed exec positions at?

paulluuk 5y ago
Apparantly they were big enough to offer a 500k executive position to someone who created a hobby project on a discontinued 50 dollar processor.

SenHeng 5y ago

I used to work at one of those body shop contracting places. A few years ago, I heard that the boss managed to sell the company, presenting themselves as developing an in-house blockchain product. I asked around some ex-colleagues and as far as anyone knew, all they had were some fancy PowerPoint decks and a very rough implementation in PHP. After getting bought, everyone still continued doing the same old body work jobs, except now for the parent company’s other subsidiaries. The website still mentions blockchain. Fake it till you make it.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I lol'ed, because around 2017 is what I called the "sprinkle in some blockchain" era. There was so much FOMO from investors that blockchain was "the next big thing", that an easy way to literally double or triple your valuation was to "sprinkle in some blockchain". It wasn't like the investors were really even being scammed, because nobody could succinctly articulate why blockchain was better for these particular use cases in the first place. All I ever heard was some marketing speak that sounded like it was from a markov chain generator, but it apparently had the effect of hypnotizing investors so they'd add a few zeros to the end of their checks.
- bobsil1 5y ago
  VCs know it’s BS, but also that they can flip it to a mark.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Wahl or Zucker Berg
- nebula8804 5y ago
  What do we sprinkle in 2022? Whatever it is, i'll get on it right away and sprinkle some into my projects!
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Some of the trends that come to mind: - Crypto / Blockchain / NFT / Web3 - Machine Learning / AI - VR / AR / XR / Metaverse - Cloud / Serverless / Microservices - IoT - Big Data - Quantum Computing - SaaS / IaaS / Paas
    - ignoramous 5y ago
      FinTech is absolutely hot at the moment and casts a huge shadow on rest of these trends.

leetwito 5y ago

Fake it until you make it. The best executives are not the most experienced ones, but the most CAN-DOers

floodyberry- 5y ago

"Show off your half baked idea and get a high paying executive job" Yeah, sure, I'll get right on that

moritonal 5y ago

Yeah, building stuff is generally the best way to get noticed. A warning sign should be added however that there's a hard survival-bias here. On top of that, it's idyllic to imagine their tech skills were the only reason these three people got the great job. Did their class and heritage line up at all?

arthur_sav 5y ago
> Did their class and heritage line up at all? I really dislike this argument. Surely, the world is not that simple and there are many variables into ones success (and failures). However, what is there to be gained by attributing their success to all the forces that they can't control. Instead, take it as it is. A story, from the perspective of one person, that you may or you may not learn from. We become better by sharing with the collective.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  >what is there to be gained by attributing their success to all the forces that they can't control. Supposing for a moment that there is truth to what the parent comment says, we would gain a better knowledge of how the world actually works instead of perpetuating old myths.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    I believe there is definitely truth to it. I’ve seen first hand how Stanford/MIT or FAANG on your resume can give you a leg up in the hiring committee over many people without the pedigree who turn out to be far better engineers. That said I agree with GP, there is not much to be gained from focusing on systemic biases. Just because a narrative is truthy does not make it definitive; the map is not the territory and all that. As an individual focus on what you can control and you have the possibility of achieving outcomes unique to you.
  - arthur_sav 5y ago
    As a thought experiment, how far down the rabbit hole would you go? What were the factors involved in ones outcomes? - Was it his "class"? - Skin color? - Family connections - Country? - Education? - Genes? - Moon's gravitational pull? - A butterfly flapping's it's wings? Not saying it's not relevant, i'm saying it's not practical. If there's any lesson to be learned from the story, it's definitely not from the X factors that cannot be controlled. The only outcome of such discussions would be to complain. Speaking of perpetuating myths, people attributing the success of other people to anything else other than competence would be up there.

magicalist 5y ago

This reads a bit like that LinkedIn inspiration porn from yesterday[1], honestly. These people may have other qualifications not listed here but working at a company where this is the path to being CTO sounds a bit like my nightmare :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215183