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People say this all the time, but I think it's an arbitrary and self-defeating perspective. First of all, if you want to maximize personal benefit, it's not cl

People say this all the time, but I think it's an arbitrary and self-defeating perspective. First of all, if you want to maximize personal benefit, it's not clear that owning your own business is the way to go. Sure, there's a higher ceiling, but many rank and file engineers at big tech are making $1M+ due to stock appreciation without working particularly hard. By contrast, building a business that you can even pay yourself $100k is non-trivial—either you raise money and take on a whole new level of stress that comes with investor expectations, or you do the bootstrap grind which has a high chance of failure and almost no chance of keeping it to a solid 40 hours/week. Second, if you have equity comp you are in fact an owner. You might not have much direct impact to that number, but at least your interests are aligned. And even if you don't have equity, the quality of your work reflects on both your reputation as well as your actual skill development. Of course you should truly evaluate whether your company is treating you fairly and expectations are realistic, but do so objectively instead of starting from a management-vs-labor ideology.

scarface74 5y ago
Read one of my replies below. I’m not saying you should own your own business to maximize your income as oppose to spending a few months “grinding leetCode (tm) r/cscareerquestions”. Not that I did to get into BigTech. But that’s another story. Equity in a private company is statistically meaningless and any one person being able to move the needle on a 1.6 trillion dollar market cap company is negligible.
- dasil003 5y ago
  You're missing the larger point which is that if you make your money by working for other people, your reputation and your skillset in that environment matters. Yes, you should look out for yourself first, but that doesn't require taking an adversarial stance to management. To the contrary, if you make some effort to understand your manager and the broader business context, you can reap much larger rewards. Obviously that assumes your boss is not a muppet, but in that case you have bigger problems. The idea that you just job hop to promos is currently true for the low end, but there's a glass ceiling there. As a hiring manager, someone who got promoted to staff+ in a reputable company with a high bar is an order of magnitude stronger signal than someone who was hired directly into that level at the same company. Also, the current market and comp for software engineers is a result of the decade bull run of big tech. This will not continue forever. I was around during the dotcom bubble as well, and I can tell you, when the music stops you won't wanna be the guy who has a series of two year stints with progressively higher salaries but no close contacts who will fight to hire you.
  - RussianCow 5y ago
    > Yes, you should look out for yourself first, but that doesn't require taking an adversarial stance to management. I don't think the OP ever suggested this? Unless I'm missing something, here was the original comment: > Unless you own the company, it’s not your business. Act accordingly. "Act accordingly" does not mean "don't ever put any effort in". My interpretation was more along the lines of, "Don't stress yourself out over someone else's company", which is great general advice.
    - dasil003 5y ago
      Well this is a reply to a reply, so it's more to clarify where my point was missed. But to address this directly, I don't think owner/not-owner is the right mental model. Having been on both sides, you don't want to stress yourself out even if you are the owner. What's healthy is to focus on what you can control and try to get the best outcome you can. Using lack of ownership stake or impact as a reason for choosing any behavior just doesn't make sense to me as a first principle. I realize this may not make sense to people who have spent their entire career in giant corporate moral mazes, but for me it's actually pretty important to have some integrity around my work, regardless of any lack of control and corporate bullshit I have to deal with.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        No for profit company is inherently “moral”. Everything is in pursuit of either profit or an “exit”.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    I never said or implied to act adversarial toward management. I have respected my last 5 managers and still meet them for lunch when I get the chance. I became friends with two of my former managers after leaving the company. Let’s talk about the “glass ceiling”. I’ll start off with the corp dev side of the world where most people work. I know a few guys who are in their late 40s (as am I) who eschewed management and have been moving around between various corp dev jobs for 20 years and have kept their skills up. They have never made more than the mid $100s. They have wives that are working. Their wives are making between $70K and mid to high 100s. They live in a major city in the south. Do you know how far that can go making $250K+ in most cities? You are already well within the top decile of households[1]. Now let’s look on the BigTech side. A returning intern I mentored last year, got a return offer making $150K (consulting department). They can live anywhere in the US. They are already earning more than 92% of individuals in the US. On a more personal note, I was a senior corp dev bopping around between unknown companies like the first set of developers until 2020. I fell into a role into the cloud consulting department in BigTech. I still work remotely making about what an SDE2 makes. Guess how much I’m stressing about becoming even a “senior consultant”? Those friends in corp dev could easily get a job as at least an SA working where I work. But they weren’t interested. Once you have “enough” making more money and promotions isn’t that important. As the 74 implies, I was also around during the bubble. It wasn’t that bad working in regular old corp dev where you were just another employee at a profitable company. Even then I was making $70K in 2000 - twice the individual income at the time. [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

scarface74 5y ago

Read one of my replies below. I’m not saying you should own your own business to maximize your income as oppose to spending a few months “grinding leetCode (tm) r/cscareerquestions”. Not that I did to get into BigTech. But that’s another story. Equity in a private company is statistically meaningless and any one person being able to move the needle on a 1.6 trillion dollar market cap company is negligible.

dasil003 5y ago
You're missing the larger point which is that if you make your money by working for other people, your reputation and your skillset in that environment matters. Yes, you should look out for yourself first, but that doesn't require taking an adversarial stance to management. To the contrary, if you make some effort to understand your manager and the broader business context, you can reap much larger rewards. Obviously that assumes your boss is not a muppet, but in that case you have bigger problems. The idea that you just job hop to promos is currently true for the low end, but there's a glass ceiling there. As a hiring manager, someone who got promoted to staff+ in a reputable company with a high bar is an order of magnitude stronger signal than someone who was hired directly into that level at the same company. Also, the current market and comp for software engineers is a result of the decade bull run of big tech. This will not continue forever. I was around during the dotcom bubble as well, and I can tell you, when the music stops you won't wanna be the guy who has a series of two year stints with progressively higher salaries but no close contacts who will fight to hire you.
- RussianCow 5y ago
  > Yes, you should look out for yourself first, but that doesn't require taking an adversarial stance to management. I don't think the OP ever suggested this? Unless I'm missing something, here was the original comment: > Unless you own the company, it’s not your business. Act accordingly. "Act accordingly" does not mean "don't ever put any effort in". My interpretation was more along the lines of, "Don't stress yourself out over someone else's company", which is great general advice.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    Well this is a reply to a reply, so it's more to clarify where my point was missed. But to address this directly, I don't think owner/not-owner is the right mental model. Having been on both sides, you don't want to stress yourself out even if you are the owner. What's healthy is to focus on what you can control and try to get the best outcome you can. Using lack of ownership stake or impact as a reason for choosing any behavior just doesn't make sense to me as a first principle. I realize this may not make sense to people who have spent their entire career in giant corporate moral mazes, but for me it's actually pretty important to have some integrity around my work, regardless of any lack of control and corporate bullshit I have to deal with.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      No for profit company is inherently “moral”. Everything is in pursuit of either profit or an “exit”.
- scarface74 5y ago
  I never said or implied to act adversarial toward management. I have respected my last 5 managers and still meet them for lunch when I get the chance. I became friends with two of my former managers after leaving the company. Let’s talk about the “glass ceiling”. I’ll start off with the corp dev side of the world where most people work. I know a few guys who are in their late 40s (as am I) who eschewed management and have been moving around between various corp dev jobs for 20 years and have kept their skills up. They have never made more than the mid $100s. They have wives that are working. Their wives are making between $70K and mid to high 100s. They live in a major city in the south. Do you know how far that can go making $250K+ in most cities? You are already well within the top decile of households[1]. Now let’s look on the BigTech side. A returning intern I mentored last year, got a return offer making $150K (consulting department). They can live anywhere in the US. They are already earning more than 92% of individuals in the US. On a more personal note, I was a senior corp dev bopping around between unknown companies like the first set of developers until 2020. I fell into a role into the cloud consulting department in BigTech. I still work remotely making about what an SDE2 makes. Guess how much I’m stressing about becoming even a “senior consultant”? Those friends in corp dev could easily get a job as at least an SA working where I work. But they weren’t interested. Once you have “enough” making more money and promotions isn’t that important. As the 74 implies, I was also around during the bubble. It wasn’t that bad working in regular old corp dev where you were just another employee at a profitable company. Even then I was making $70K in 2000 - twice the individual income at the time. [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/