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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

• ekanna 15y ago
  fantastic article...
• jambo 15y ago
  I spend a bit too much time on HN, as evidenced by the timing of this post, and one of the dangers I've noticed is that I can become so fascinated with the interesting things other hackers are doing that I lose perspective on how valuable & relatively rare my combination of skills are. I suspect this is true for others here. Patrick gives insanely valuable advice for hackers who could be both create more value and capture more of it by being aware of the big picture & the motivations of others.
• atarian 15y ago
  This is definitely some of the best advice I've heard. Thank you very much for posting this.
• statictype 15y ago
  Great read. Probably patio11's best yet (TLDR: A summary of pretty much all his comments here on HN). Thanks.
• xarien 15y ago
  Fantastic post. I'd also recommend any "programmers" to invest a couple years in a systems integration engineering role as well. It's generally a great place for picking up some skills many programmers / engineers lack: * Communicating with internal and external customers * Understand systems from a broader (higher level) perspective * Ability to translate wants and needs to technical requirements and specifications that are implementable * Ability to sell yourself as well as the product / service * Give constructive criticism as an internal customer to programmers / software engineers (great chance to view the role @ 180 degrees)
  • viraptor 15y ago
    I'd also add - meet all the influential people in different teams. From my limited experience, even if you're on a low position you suddenly start talking to team leaders and people who they assign to talk to you (usually the ones who have a clue). Great start for networking.
    • xarien 15y ago
      Honestly, for networking purposes, look no further than participating and volunteering in a national non-profit group. It'll give you access to both depth and breadth.
• fanboy123 15y ago
  Enjoyed the post. Do programmers really not know who Peter Drucker is?
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • drivingmenuts 15y ago
    What language did he create?
  • lanstein 15y ago
    Really.
  • drivingmenuts 15y ago
    Allow me to rephrase: Aside from being a guy who played fast and loose with facts and was awarded a medal by a president who couldn't be bothered with facts, what solid contribution did this Drucker guy make to the art and science of programming?
  • greenyoda 15y ago
    It would be sort of sad for programmers to not know who Drucker was, since he's the guy who coined the term "knowledge worker" to name the class of job roles that encompasses programmers (and also a large percentage of the people who use computers and software in the business world). (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker.)
• credo 15y ago
  >>"Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. I call myself as a programmer because I enjoy programming and do a lot of programming as part of my job. It is unlikely that I'll get fired because I run the (tiny) company I work for :). and customers seem to like the products we sell in the app stores. Prior to starting this company, I was a Principal Development Manager,SDE Lead and Software Design Engineer at Microsoft. Describing myself as a programmer or a developer didn't hurt me there either. This is not to say that Patio doesn't make a good case about the need to focus on value created. Regardless of profession, you have to focus on the value you create. A doctor saves lives, a construction worker builds homes, a pilot takes people home etc. It is definitely possible for all of them to use MBA-speak mumbo-jumbo job-titles to describe what they do. Alternately, one could be a bit more of a plain-speaking, straight-talking person and just say that you're a doctor or a programmer or a pilot etc.
  • kennywinker 15y ago
    It's a very business oriented article. E.g. "You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.)" I for one have created more jobs than I've destroyed in my coding career. By building a business, as you've done, you're going in the opposite direction of this kind of sentiment.
    • angusland 15y ago
      I think he was merely responding to the idea of unfairness by pointing out much software automates jobs away.
    • emmett 15y ago
      Don't take this the wrong way, but ... really? I find that hard to believe. Pretty much all programming is in the short term unemployment producing, since pretty much all programming is automation. Automating a job means that no one does it anymore, hence one fewer job. In the long run those people are usually repurposed into productive work, and there are occasional moments where a programmer will create a massive number of jobs (see: whoever implemented adwords, creating an entire industry of professionals to optimize purchasing them). But that's the exception, not the rule.
• mynameishere 15y ago
  Is it okay with you if I call myself a programmer even if I become CEO?
• psykotic 15y ago
  > If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. If you work at a place like that, I feel sorry for you. Even the owner of my company lists himself on Twitter and his blog as just Programmer at RAD Game Tools. Besides being the sounding board for us when we have problems and ideas, he still writes more code than most of us can regularly muster.
  • bryanh 15y ago
    Perhaps taken in context one might have read it as "if you describe your sole value as the ability to write code, someone is already working on a way to get you fired".
    • psykotic 15y ago
      I understand the context. Patrick's formulation is so commonplace as to be cliche. Code is our medium of expression. There's nothing inaccurate or ignominious about describing ourselves as programmers. To say that the code exists to solve problems is to flirt with tautology.
      • cwp 15y ago
        You still miss the point, though. Patrick isn't saying that calling yourself a programmer is inaccurate or ignominious. He's saying that it's not going to have a desirable effect on the listener. He's saying you should talk about the value you create, rather than the effort you expend.
        • beezee 15y ago
          This is marketing 101- the issue is why would you work somewhere that you have to continuously market yourself just to keep your job? That's what the interview is for. Personally in my experience working with startups, everyone at the company knows why I'm there, what I do, and there's no question about the value I bring. What I call myself just doesn't matter. I would wish this type of experience for everyone.
• Finbarr 15y ago
  This post touches on nearly everything. Some interesting snippets - well worth a read if you are a [insert appropriate spin on how you add value as a programmer].
• gfodor 15y ago
  A little cynical, but overall mostly rings true. I also have found that focusing on business/product goals and good communications skills dwarfs the ability to hack when it comes to success.
• mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Okay, I guess as someone with hard-won expertise I'm duty-bound to take slight exception to this line: Put a backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the United States any time you want. First, the nitpicking: Technically you can't get into Harvard's excellent libraries without actually (a) being a Harvard student, or (b) working for Harvard. (And if you're a programmer, I'm not sure which of those options is going to prove more expensive.) But, of course, the rest of Harvard is open to the backpack-wearer, and MIT even opens their libraries (I'm proud to routinely impersonate a graduate of MIT) so this isn't much of an objection. On a slightly more serious note: They also won't let you into the labs with just a backpack. If you'd happily accept a sub-market wage to be taught laboratory research techniques, in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion, by sleep-deprived world experts equipped with state-of-the-artish equipment, engineering graduate school is the game for you. And I did kind of enjoy working in the lab, just not enough to keep that as a career. It's not that great a career; you have to love it to stick with it forever. Now, having said that, I cannot re-emphasize this line enough: After you’ve escaped the mind-warping miasma of academia, you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is really personally or societally significant as opposed to close approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People. All my journal publications mean nothing compared to the stuff I've scrawled in the margins here at HN.
  • cperciva 15y ago
    They also won't let you into the labs with just a backpack. In a literal sense, no, that's not enough. In a practical sense, if you're serious about doing research and have the necessary background to be able to do good research, finding a faculty member who will invite you to join their group as an unpaid "research assistant" is trivial.
    • mechanical_fish 15y ago
      This is literally true. But I come out of experimental physics, semiconductor engineering, and biology, where "the necessary background to be able to do good research" generally translates to "you have the kind of lab skills training that you can only get by getting a Ph.D. in a lab just like ours, plus you know how to write (or at least contribute vital portions of) successful grants to pay for the equipment you'll be using and the reagents and parts and live animals that you'll be consuming as you work". The thing is, lab benches are expensive, outlandishly expensive in many cases, so you'll have to earn your spot at that lab bench by outcompeting whoever else might want it. The net result is that, yes, with a modicum of talent you can probably always be an unpaid research assistant, but the practical difference between that and a full-time career in research is just a few thousand dollars in salary. ;) (Or you can learn to build scientific equipment out of hardware found on the side of the road. This can work well, if you choose your field carefully.) Now, in a field like math or CS where adding you to a research group may require only the occasional spare chair to park you in and a modest 5% increase in the coffee budget: Absolutely, you can dabble in university research as much as you want. This is one of the charms of such fields. Didn't Erdös run his entire career out of spare chairs in other people's offices and apartments? And, of course, MIT is legendary for the excellent work done by people hanging around Tech Square snarfing up spare CPU cycles.
• mk 15y ago
  This article has tons of gold in it besides the "don't call yourself a programmer" part. I actually thought the paragraphs past that were better, especially for the younger crowd. I want to send this post to every kid that's about to graduate college.
• ycapply2011 15y ago
  >> ”What is your previous salary?” is employer-speak for “Please give me reasons to pay you less money.” Answer appropriately. What is the proper approach to answering this question?
  • cperciva 15y ago
    "My previous salary is not relevant to the value I would add to your company." Or just cite an NDA (real or imagined); most employers will back off immediately at that point since (a) they don't want to be accused of inducing you to break a contract, and (b) they probably don't want to hire people who break NDAs lightly.
  • mahyarm 15y ago
    'It was pretty good.' 'High, Whats your salary?' What I said is pretty tongue in cheek, but being vague in a way that hints that it compensated well can work.
  • Sukotto 15y ago
    What the others in this thread said. If that doesn't work, be prepared to give a range of "total comp" where the low end is base salary and the high end is the total cost of all your benefits + salary + bonus
  • patio11 15y ago
    "You're better situated to judge my worth to your company than I am. What do you think I should be paid?" Counter with better offer. My other stock answer: "As a matter of professional courtesy, I decline to comment on specific policies of previous employers. You should appreciate this, after all, someday someone will be asking about yours."
    • bmccormack 15y ago
      EXCELLENT suggestions. I'm 100% positive that being blindsided by the "previous salary" question cost me thousands of dollars when negotiating for a previous job.
  • 15y ago
• kooshball 15y ago
  >Actual grooming is at least moderately important, too, because people are hilariously easy to hack by expedients such as dressing appropriately for the situation, maintaining a professional appearance, speaking in a confident tone of voice, etc. Your business suit will probably cost about as much as a computer monitor. You only need it once in a blue moon, but when you need it you’ll be really, really, really glad that you have it. Take my word for it, if I wear everyday casual when I visit e.g. City Hall I get treated like a hapless awkward twenty-something, if I wear the suit I get treated like the CEO of a multinational company. I’m actually the awkward twenty-something CEO of a multinational company, but I get to pick which side to emphasize when I want favorable treatment from a bureaucrat. is it really expected or even appropriate to wear a suit to an interview in the valley? i remember doing that during for my internship interview and i felt silly sitting next to my interviewer at lunch who was wearing shorts and flip flops.
  • gizmo 15y ago
    The point is to dress appropriately, not to wear a suit every day. Some companies expect you to show up in a suit and some don't. So figure out which and act accordingly. If your interviewer is wearing flip-flops then you clearly overdressed.
  • mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Nowhere in the article did it suggest wearing a suit at an interview at a software company in California. That would go much too far. And it would appear that suits make you overdressed in the software business even here in relatively staid Boston. However, when you're going to meet with Japanese bureaucrats, or perhaps even American investment bankers, the suit might be a good idea.
• freemarketteddy 15y ago
  I think Patrick is missing a niche segment of Hackers who have been making a lot of money in last few years.They are the independent Mobile App Developer(iOS/Android) If you choose this path then you dont even have to start a company,all you need to do is make awesome apps.It might be a little hard to start but in a year you should be making good enough money to go independent and then sky is the limit.It is not only possible but probable that you will write better applications (using services like Parse) than entire megacorps.
  • rodh257 15y ago
    I'd be interested to see the stats on people making apps on HN vs people actually making a lot of money on them
    • freemarketteddy 15y ago
      Search around on HN.You will find a lot threads with Single Founder success stories in recent times.Probably more than Startup Success stories.Two names that come to mind are Instapaper and BigNoggins productions.
      • rodh257 15y ago
        I think that a few posts on HN is hardly enough evidence to say that if you make apps you'll probably be making enough money to support yourself within a year of starting.
  • LVB 15y ago
    I'll just say that based only on reading his post, I'm 100% sure that Patrick wouldn't agree with your career advice.
    • freemarketteddy 15y ago
      Yes I think so too.I think this option was simply not available to Patrick when he started figuring his way out of his corporate soul-crushing job.The path that he took was probably the best under those circumstances. But now (thanks to services like Parse,Twilio,Github and so many others) I think a good hacker has a decent chance of making it to financial independence completely on his own.
• matomesc 15y ago
  Good read, i totally agree with some of the points made.
• agentgt 15y ago
  Networking, networking, networking... "The classic its not what you know but who you know". Also super confidence (even if your wrong). I wish it was different but then again I'm not smart so maybe I'm glad :)
  • wglb 15y ago
    I agree. However, I have begun modifying it slightly to describe what I think to be the true objective of what networking is: "It is not what you know but who knows you".
• Fluxx 15y ago
  I don't agree with everything he said, but in terms of completeness about working as a software developer vs what you learn in school this is spot on.
• daviddaviddavid 15y ago
  How jaded. Sounds rather like a "Guide to Success in High School" written by the guy that graduated with perfect grades but got his ass kicked every day. Well, not everybody gets their ass kicked every day. I absolutely cringe at the idea of a bright-eyed young programmer becoming prematurely jaded based on somebody else's experiences. "This post aspires to be README.txt for your career as a young engineer." Definitely failed in that regard for this young engineer and I hope it fails similarly for my cohorts.
  • mikeknoop 15y ago
    Please back up your claims.
  • angelbob 15y ago
    I'm sorry to hear that. Well, you can become jaded in the normal course of events if you prefer. When that happens, remember that this article exists. It's good for tactics later, when you realize you can use it. I've been programming professionally for 15 years, and programming at all for almost 25 (now I feel old). I'm a fantastically skilled, experienced and versatile programmer, even for that experience level. I am, by any reasonable metric, highly successful. I work on very interesting problems. I work for a cool yet profitable company. I do code and not management, and I otherwise get the computer programmer dream job. I may be jaded by long experience, but I'm not bitter and I have no reason to be bitter. Patrick is totally, completely, 100% on the money with this article. Everything he says is true. Remember where you saw this so you can come back to it in a few years.
    • xpose2000 15y ago
      Not only that, but I am printing this article out and saving it to remind myself of how it really is and not to fool myself into ever thinking otherwise.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    Whether or not a thing is true is orthogonal to whether or not you want the thing to be true. I'm a new programmer but not new to business. He hit the nail right on the head for just about any profession (minus to the programming-specific bits).
• consultutah 15y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. That's how I promote my consulting biz, "More money for your business." It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. And this doesn't just apply to software. It applies to anything and everything. The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it in that one split second when they click "charge my card".
  • jamesbritt 15y ago
    It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. I think most consultants and contractors reach a point where this clicks. At first they think, well this will take me X hours, so it's worth Y dollars. Later they think, this is apparently worth X dollars to the client, so I'll bill Y dollars, where Y is way closer to X than any how-long-it-takes calculation. It's the difference between "hard work should be rewarded" and "value should be rewarded."
• randomdata 15y ago
  On the not calling yourself a programmer part: It may be a local thing, but the term engineer was usurped by government to essentially refer to someone who does things by the book. As such, engineer has come to mean someone who has trouble seeing the bigger picture and won't break some rules to deliver something amazing. Obviously that is not true of many engineers, but the damage to the term is already done (again, perhaps only locally). I find it hard to take programmers who call themselves engineers seriously as a result, even if they are really good at what they do. My advice is not call yourself an engineer if you develop software. You want to use a title that makes people think you do amazing things.
  • lanstein 15y ago
    It's a local thing.
  • theshadow 15y ago
    To be honest I cringe whenever I hear programmers refer to themselves as "engineers". Maybe it's because here in canada engineering is regulated and you are not allowed to call yourself an engineer by law unless you posses an an engineering degree.
• rewind 15y ago
  "Want to get trained on Ruby at a .NET shop? Implement a one-off project in Ruby. Bam, you are now a professional Ruby programmer — you coded Ruby and you took money for it. (You laugh? I did this at a Java shop. The one-off Ruby project made the company $30,000. My boss was, predictably, quite happy and never even asked what produced the deliverable.)" Unless an employee actually gets permission to do this, this makes him incredibly selfish, and is a good way to get fired (and deservedly so), no matter how good he is.
  • andrewflnr 15y ago
    Assuming he had a green light on the project itself, and it creates value, I don't see why that would be selfish.
    • zasz 15y ago
      Suppose the OP leaves. It's going to be hard for the his former coworkers to maintain the Ruby app.
      • tricolon 15y ago
        If the OP did a proper job documenting his work and his former coworkers are competent, it would only be a tiny bit selfish.
        • numeromancer 15y ago
          And it is not unlikely that there is somebody else looking for an opportunity to put Ruby experience on her resume, and will gladly take on the maintenance. In that case you have created value for your co-workers, too.
      • dpritchett 15y ago
        $30,000 hard, or minor annoyance hard?
        • 15y ago
• cloudhead 15y ago
  It seems like the author had a really hard time. If you're a software engineer, work at a software company if you want to be happy. Negotiation isn't what's going to get you the job either, programming is.
  • logn 15y ago
    I agree. Working at a software company makes it more likely you'll enjoy your job as you're around a lot more people that just get it. In an IT dept. you're frequently battling the culture of whatever company you're in to create conditions suitable for building good software. Plus you're a little too close to the customer (the business).
• kamaal 15y ago
  One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has half the difficult work as you do. 'Good work' or something that brings long term financial success and happiness is something that adds value to business you are serving to write software. There are also many academic kind of jobs which involve a lot of algorithms, math and precision science which won't deal with much of flavor business software has today. That's not wrong if you are a academician by profession, but that's a serious problem if you are doing software development for a living. Much large of software development today, has got to deal with learning tools, knowing how to use a programming language to quickly turn idea to code, or fix a bug or add a feature. Apart from this you must also know how to quickly discover solutions to problems, even by searching on the internet. Being able to discover has become more important that being able to invent these days. Additionally you must know how to push long hours, work late nights and may be on weekends. All this has fundamentally nothing to do with software. All passion of working on something interesting, changing the world et al is perfectly acceptable in your early 20's when you relatively have lesser responsibilities. As we grow older our responsibilities will only increase, the bills and expenditure will grow up. For vast majority of people, thinking pragmatically in this case is important(I'm not saying this for everybody, some can. Not all will make it, those how will not have to take the most pragmatic way out). That's probably why start up's are not for everyone. And that's why php et al is still alive. Anything that helps you make those first dollars will win. This is the sad thing about the real world. Learn, but use the most pragmatic tool at the moment to serve your business.
  • nickknw 15y ago
    > "One of the things that I see among hardworking smart people is they somehow tend to use 'difficult work' as a yardstick to measure 'good work'. Difficult work need not necessarily be good work. Unfortunately if you fall for this, you will end up wasting a lot of time, effort and energy over years and at the end wonder why you are not as rich as someone who does has half the difficult work as you do." A connection just went off in my head; this sentiment is echoed in Sirlin's 'Playing to Win' series of posts. "I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves." It's good advice. I mean, enjoy solving difficult problems, but it is important to recognize that it can be... self-indulgent sometimes. There certainly exist hard problems that are also good problems, but they are not measured with the same units.
• bkmontgomery 15y ago
  Personally, I think this is an interesting article, and I got two things out of it: 1. Effective communication with people from various backgrounds is important. This is incredibly hard, and it does require practice. Those that succeed typically communicate very well. 2. I mentally replaced the "don't call yourself a programmer" mantra for "tell people why you're doing what you do - what problem do you solve and how is it valuable". If you work for a business, you also need to have some basic understanding of business. Successful organizations probably have more people that really try to find their role in the "big picture" of the company, and they strive to use their place to create value.
  • dpritchett 15y ago
    I'm going to start reversing my elevator pitch. From now on I help save my company millions of dollars each year by enabling analysts to find and address operational inefficiencies in our national retail operations. Oh, and I do this by leading and implementing a range of business intelligence solutions using a suite of .NET-based BI and data warehousing tools. I think I used to say something about programming web applications to generate numbers for middle managers to review.
• untitledwiz 15y ago
  Best quote -- "He’s now an angel investor (a polite synonym for “rich”)."
• scottschulthess 15y ago
  Does anyone else think that this article is in poor form? On the perils of describing yourself as a programmer: If you're hiring someone to provide a specific skill set (programmer) you want them to be good at programming. Would you hire an accountant if they didn't know accounting? Should lawyers not describe themselves as lawyers? Doctors as doctors? On the perils of selling yourself as an expert in a certain technology: I spend a fair amount of my time learning about the specific technologies I use. I've been doing this for a while and I don't know everything about sql, postgres, mysql, mongodb, javascript, html, css, ruby, rails, unix, chef, capistrano. But I've put thousands of hours into these things and the tools themselves took thousands of hours to create. Either I'm really bad at learning, or there is a lot to learn there and that information makes me more valuable to potential/current companies. Sure, there is a baseline level of skill you can achieve in programming where you can not suck at most stuff but there is still a lot of valuable information that you don't know if you just half assed your way through a Beginning Ruby on Rails book.
  • dpritchett 15y ago
    You're letting other people determine your worth using their limited domain vocabulary and their suboptimal pattern matching abilities. A .NET programmer is a highly paid commodity, but a commodity all the same. A high-tech value creator who thinks and talks in terms of profit drivers and cost sinks is not going to ever be a commodity. Rather than striving to be the top of your class (e.g. Ruby devops guys, which is something HR can use a standardized pay scale for) you can strive to be unique in a one-person class that is more immediately profitable and scalable than a commodity programmer.
    • ryanto 15y ago
      what? your last: - 'you can strive to be unique in a one-person class that is more immediately profitable and scalable than a commodity programmer.' seriously? if this guy wants to become an expert in the technologies he mentioned then why is that so wrong? if he enjoys programming and has the drive to get to the top then he should absolutely go for it. smart employers are going to appreciate and see value in someone that has spent thousands of hours coding.
• mattdeboard 15y ago
  >Many people already successfully employed as senior engineers cannot actually implement FizzBuzz. Just read it and weep. Key takeaway: you probably are good enough to work at that company you think you’re not good enough for. They hire better mortals, but they still hire mortals. This is one of the most important career lessons I've learned first-hand of late.
• xpose2000 15y ago
  I'm new to the startup game, and most of my hunches that Ive formed over the past 6+ months are proved true by this post. This is insanely good advice in this post, one of which involves modesty and confidence. I'm never going to be modest from here on out and will act like a pompous douche when deemed necessary. I see people act this way ALL the time, and I figured people could see right through their bullshit. Apparently not, as it clearly does not matter if they are right - only if their bullshit is passable. Apparently being modest does not work to my advantage. I have no choice but to play the game.
  • patio11 15y ago
    Restrained, professional confidence will work as well or better as "pompous douche", and it won't compromise your principles. Picture a heart surgeon. Given an opening like "Wow, you save people's lives all by yourself" he doesn't say "Oh, it's nothing", he says something like "My team saves people lives. It is a privilege to work with them."
  • mechanical_fish 15y ago
    The opposite of "modest" is not, in fact, "pompous douche". There are alternative ways of showing confidence, many of which actually incorporate substantial amounts of humility. There are better role models, or better coaches. Keep looking. I realize it is hard, because there are a lot of complete poseurs cluttering the landscape, but keep looking.
  • anon1385 15y ago
    I'm never going to be modest from here on out and will act like a pompous douche when deemed necessary. I see people act this way ALL the time, and I figured people could see right through their bullshit. Apparently not, as it clearly does not matter if they are right - only if their bullshit is passable. Apparently being modest does not work to my advantage. I have no choice but to play the game. The question you have to ask yourself is "am I an exceptional software developer?"[1]. If you are at all unsure about that then the answer is probably no (the fact you are even on here at all worrying about these things indicates the answer is no). Given that you are not exceptional, the first thing to do is stop listening to the career advice of exceptional people: they base their advice on their own personal experience[2]. They were able to start their own successful companies, or got well rewarded and promoted/hired for top jobs at the large companies, because they are exceptional. 'Restrained confidence' won't get you very far if you don't have extraordinary skills to make you stand out; you will be competing with many others of similar skill level who are quite happy to play the 'pompous douche' character, to lie about their experience and skills and so on. That problem you solved last week that saved the company X$? Your 'pompous douche' colleague has already taken credit for it. You will be annihilated by these competitors every time unless you play the game because bosses and recruiters won't even realise you exist. Or you could go your own way, if you are happy struggling to pay the rent every month (please don't go this route if you have family/children). The final 'nuclear' option is to quite the entire industry for one that is less psychopathic, but I've yet to identify such an industry; if you find it please let me know. [1] as the article points out, if you are referring to yourself as 'programmer' or 'software developer' then you have already gone wrong [2] this is also why you shouldn't listen to people like Steve Jobs when they give a graduation speech telling you to 'take big risks because it will all work out in the end'. No shit it all works out if you are Steve Jobs, but you aren't Steve Jobs. They don't get people who took huge risks and crashed and burned to give graduation talks.
• losethos 15y ago
  God is just. You'll earn what you are paid. I hear marriages between equals work best. I think one side or the other feels supirior and will dominate. I would guess your boss would treat you badly if you were overpaid, in his mind. This reminds me of cheating in school or affirmative action getting into school -- do you really want to be in over your head? Think a step ahead. Cheating is a bad idea!
• gruseom 15y ago
  Is this article's claim about Google -- that the programmers closest to Adwords revenue have highest status (edit: and/or pay) -- true? It contradicts what I've heard.
  • emmett 15y ago
    I don't think he said they had the highest status...I think he said they were the best paid. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it's a very different claim. (I too have heard differently)
    • haldean 15y ago
      This is not true -- pay is not based on project.
      • dirtyaura 15y ago
        But bonus is.
    • gruseom 15y ago
      I've updated my question to make it more precise. Either way, it would contradict what I've heard.
      • sliverstorm 15y ago
        Please, let's not play this game- what have you heard?
        • gruseom 15y ago
          There's no game. I've simply heard from people who've worked at Google that the revenue-generating groups are far from the highest-respected. So I think the cited example may in fact be a counterexample. (Certainly there are many angel investors among Googlers and former Googlers who worked in all sorts of areas.) Perhaps because Google was started by programmers, programmers don't have to pretend to be something else there. I'm no Google insider, though, which is why I'd like to hear from people who actually know.
• sutro 15y ago
  Back in the day, John Carmack would micro-blog on the finger protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol). finger johnc@idsoftware.com got you Carmack's .plan file, a well-written and, for a time, frequently-updated journal of whatever programming challenges he happened to be facing at the time. finger @idsoftware.com got you the id corporate directory, a simple list of about 20 names and titles. The only titles were CEO, designer, and programmer. In a tech world awash, even then, with countless software engineers, senior software engineers, senior members of technical staff, architects, chief architects, CTOs, rock stars, and ninjas, it was always refreshing for me to see Carmack's humble programmer listing. All of my heroes in the field are programmers.
  • Confusion 15y ago
    When you have become sufficiently well known for your technical expertise, you can once again call yourself a programmer. If you're lucky, you may have gotten there while calling yourself a programmer. Patrick's point is that most people can more easily get there by not calling themselves programmers.
    • eitally 15y ago
      This is because -- with the exception of computer scientific research -- the impact programming parts of one's contributions nearly always pale in comparison to the product or service one has created. Feel free to call yourself a programmer, but be prepared to answer the questions "of what" and "to what end"?
  • goof 15y ago
    I agree with your sentiment and hate the lame titles programmers apply to themselves, but you're missing a key point. Calling yourself a programmer is fine when your company's product is the software you write. If I work at id or at a company that sells iPhone apps and I call myself a programmer, it's obvious what value I create. But for the people making internal business software (90% of programming jobs according to Patrick) a programmer is associated with costs rather than profits, so it's a bad idea to craft an identify as a "programmer".
• LVB 15y ago
  I did appreciate the section about programmer skill and not to underestimate yourself too much, simply because it was a feel-good paragraph. By regularly reading a variety of tech blogs and trying to keep up with software goings-on, I've put myself on a drip feed that constantly reinforces: "Holy crap... every programmer out there is developing mind blowing software in languages you've never heard of in the course of a weekend. Meanwhile, you're dribbling out a few dozen lines of C in a day." Who knows where the truth lies, but for the next few minutes I'll just enjoy the slight buzz from the article.
• Natsu 15y ago
  > Perceptive readers will note that 100 does not actually show up on a d100 or rand(100). It also jumped out at me that the zero case is not handled (it occurs on the rand(100), if not the die). He's got a great point about learning negotiation skills, too, but I've read a lot of things and feel that what I lack most is actual live practice. I think this is similar to the point about meeting people and shaking their hand and how different that is from meeting some person online.
• pixie_ 15y ago
  I have a degree in engineering, but when people ask me what I do, I say I'm a computer programmer because that's what I am and I'm proud of that.
• sliverstorm 15y ago
  At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career. That said, a crappy career can put a serious chokehold on life happiness. You spend close to half your waking hours at it, after all.
• cageface 15y ago
  For example, consider an internal travel expense reporting form. Across a company with 2,000 employees, that might save 5,000 man-hours a year (at an average fully-loaded cost of $50 an hour) versus handling expenses on paper, for a savings of $250,000 a year. I should have demanded a bonus for the in-house purchase req system I wrote to replace the antiquated, pen & paper system we had been using for years. I feel better about the salary I was drawing with this in mind.
• cageface 15y ago
  In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career. I wish more HR/recruiting people understood this.
  • anon1385 15y ago
    I have put in at least a few weeks trying to learn Haskell. I certainly never got to the point of being able to solve real world problems with it. Even after 2 years of coding in C most days of the week I wouldn't claim to know it well, and wouldn't be able to keep up with a 'real' C programmer. I've also spent far more than a few weeks (cumulatively) using Javascript and don't really have a solid grasp of the language (although in that case I have made no effort to actually learn the language). Maybe this just reflects my poor aptitude for programming and I've very much behind the curve, so to speak. In which case it is probably correct that recruiters would do well to avoid recruiting me and to filter out those who are not able to learn new languages in a few weeks.
  • _delirium 15y ago
    It depends on the job, I think. I'm not even a C++ wizard myself, and yet it's pretty easy for me to tell apart the people who've been doing it for 6 months versus 6 years. If they're good, both will know the language in some sense; the main difference is that the one who's been doing it for 6 years will have a much bigger mental database of gotchas to be aware of, idioms to use in common situations, interaction between features, etc. Somewhat true for C also. It's a much smaller language, but there's a fair amount of best-practice and idiom to pick up to be a great C programmer.
• prakash 15y ago
  I recently stumbled across a web-page from the guy whose professional bio is “wrote the backend billing code that 97% of Google’s revenue passes through.” He’s now an angel investor (a polite synonym for “rich”). Any idea who this person is?
• m0th87 15y ago
  > If you really like the atmosphere at universities, that is cool. Put a backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the United States any time you want. Backpacks are a lot cheaper than working in academia. You can lead the life of the mind in industry, too — and enjoy less politics and better pay. You can even get published in journals, if that floats your boat. (After you’ve escaped the mind-warping miasma of academia, you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is really personally or societally significant as opposed to close approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People.) The degree of arrogance in this article is astounding. I've worked at Google, Microsoft, and IBM, and the work I've found most satisfying is in grad school. To each his own. If you let something like this guide your life decisions, you have much bigger issues to deal with than finding a so-called "README.txt for your career as a young engineer".
  • mattmiller 15y ago
    You missed the point of the article. You can do cool thing even at large companies iff you put yourself out there and look for opportunities that interest you. You can also get paid for it if you are smart.
    • kamaal 15y ago
      I think you have put it very well. This is something that I have always wondered. Leave alone some bad places, lets take the example of a good place. Consider a large corporation which is a pretty good place. But you also have a your usual large organisation crowd-control policies. If a person can't make use of good opportunities, experiment and learn in such a place, I doubt whether the same guy will do any good at a reputed place(like big web shops today) or even a start up. Or more appropriately, only people who are capable of doing good in large corporates can do well in a start up. Or vice versa. If you can't do well in big company without any thing stopping you, you are not likely to do well in a start up either. Start up's are not some magical places of congregation which will give you edge over your career without any considerable effort. Wherever you are, you've got take personal interest and steps to learn, work and make your mark.
    • 15y ago
• namank 15y ago
  Well now I can honestly reward myself for picking the University of Waterloo. All of the points made by this article are well understood by second+ years of Waterloo Engineering. How? The coop program i.e. the four month work then four month study program. Except maybe for the startup stuff. That said, there are are overarching initiatives being undertaken by uWaterloo to infuse entrepreneurship and student success. The most popular one? http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/ http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/
• mattmiller 15y ago
  I think this is the best OP has written yet. A lot of people in this thread are fighting with his b/c they make apps or run a small company. Not living in the bay area I see what he is saying, most programmers are not selling apps, or selling small consumer applications. Most make internal apps, and many of those internal apps are more interesting than mobile apps or web apps.
• ajtaylor 15y ago
  Patrick has some great advice. I'll add my own anecdote: earlier this year I had an interview which required taking a plane. I decided to wear my suit on the plane, and it was an entirely new experience. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but the people simply seemed nicer, more pleasant and accommodating. If you want people to think of you as a professional, dressing the part certainly helps.
  • miles_matthias 15y ago
    I hate the fact that people get treated differently because of what they wear. It's ridiculous and unfair, but that is reality. And that's one of the biggest things I took from this piece: Yea, it all sucks and is ridiculous most of the time, but it's the way the game is played. Play it or get left behind.
    • ajtaylor 15y ago
      It's definitely a game. One that's rigged (and not in your favor), but you better do your best or you might not get a second chance.
• mhartl 15y ago
  Strive to help people. It is the right people to do A heads-up for patio11: There is lots of good stuff here, but it needs to be copyedited. There are a bunch of little errors like the one quoted above.
  • finnw 15y ago
    This could be another little error, or it could be intentional. It's hard to tell: It is <%= Date.year %>
    • viraptor 15y ago
      Seems intentional. I find it slightly funny - about the same level as d100. You need to be min. lvl5 nerd to get it.
• motters 15y ago
  Not very good advice. It's basically an accountants view of engineering, which can be summarized as follows: - Only be interested in increasing profit or reducing cost - Don't care about what you do unless it conflicts with the above - Treat people you meet as commodities - Produce cruddy code, because "good enough" is all that matters - Good engineering is not a "profit center" - Don't bother keeping up with new programming languages or new techniques
  • div 15y ago
    You may disagree with those views, but if they are predominant among the people who have final say in hiring you, and at what salary, then the advice is good. The whole point of the article is to force a typical engineer to look at how most of the world perceives him, and work with that. If you have to talk to another engineer as part of a hiring process, talk all the shop you want. If you're talking to business people, try to talk about the business advantages of what you do.
    • _delirium 15y ago
      You may disagree with those views, but if they are predominant among the people who have final say in hiring you, and at what salary, then the advice is good. Are they, though? I can see they might be if you're in consulting (as the author of this post appears to be), but I've never heard of an interview at somewhere like Google or Intel that wants to hear you talk about Providing Value; they want to know your technical skills.
      • miker64 15y ago
        No, the technical interviewers want to know your technical skills, because they advise the people who pull the trigger on your hiring whether you will provide value. Now, it's been a while, but my Google interview involved straight technical interviews and several interviews that were less about technical detail and far more about discerning my longer term value to the company.
  • bfrs 15y ago
• rdl 15y ago
  I'm kind of terrified of "At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career." Hopefully he means that primarily for employees, not for startup founders, and even then, I know a lot of people who work in research, engineering, etc. where career is by far #1.
  • philwelch 15y ago
    Early in life, or as a means to an end, that's not entirely incompatible. Career success can give you a great leg up in terms of attracting a life partner or supporting a family. But the simple, sad fact is that most work that actually needs to get done is just work. There are aspects of it one can enjoy, and aspects of it one merely tolerates as a means to an end--be it the fulfilling parts of the job itself, or just making a living. It's not necessarily a healthy or fulfilling place to focus one's passions and build one's life around. Even Steve Jobs said that having kids was more fulfilling than starting companies and creating products. If you're a startup founder, there's a few ways you can go. You can spend a few years working very hard in the hopes that you get rich. Then you have financial independence, which solves a lot of problems and allows you to focus on doing fulfilling but less lucrative things with your life. If you're not going for a huge liquidity event, you can spend a few years working very hard in the hopes that you can create a successful and sustainable business which, hopefully, you can happily spend a good long time working at in a role you created to suit your own skills and interests, like "CEO". There are always exceptions, and there's a romantic appeal to figures like Erdos, but it's a huge disservice and a huge sense of entitlement to expect a career, of all things, to take a central place in a happy and balanced life.
  • pseale 15y ago
    Hopefully he doesn't mean it just for employees. The Hacker News community has a bent towards "startup = happiness" which I disagree with, but all things considered, is better than the screddit "eSports is important, and it's important to practice Starcraft" bent.
    • kamaal 15y ago
      >>The Hacker News community has a bent towards "startup = happiness" This is something that even I have observed, in some cases I have even seen when people take it like "only startup = happiness".
• blumentopf 15y ago
  Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter. It does matter in so far products come and go and you don't want to accumulate knowledge on a product that's going to disappear from the market. I worked with SGI IRIX from 1991-1996. The company has since gone bankrupt twice and IRIX has disappeared from the market. All the knowledge I accumulated on IRIX is worth nothing because it's no longer in demand. Practically noone still has IRIX machines in production. In 1996, I switched to Linux. It had a vibrant community and you could feel it's growing rapidly. Turns out that knowledge is still valuable. So it's really important for engineers to keep a close eye on the marketplace: If something's getting out of business or out of fashion, stop investing time in it. Instead, be on the lookout for stuff that's growing. In general, open source stuff has a longer lifetime because it can be forked if need be, wheras proprietary stuff is often problematic as companies change their mind on a whim. HP/WebOS is a recent example.
  • div 15y ago
    The programming language or stack does not matter to whoever is hiring you. The fact that you knew IRIX was a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Linux. It's also today a good indicator that you'd be able to pick up Windows if you set your mind to it. Your advice is solid from an engineer to engineer point of view, but Patio's advice takes an egineer to business perspective.
• schiptsov 15y ago
  Nice style, which looks like copied, along with many of sentences, from Spolsky, but that's OK. Most of HN readers don't know who is he. Now show us your code. ^_^
• swah 15y ago
  We must create bacon, not bring it :) Like that pg's rant.
• tokenadult 15y ago
  Does this cause people to read "The Genius and Tragedy of Patrick McKenzie" http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-patrick-mckenzie http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-p... (posted last month by an observer of the author of the submitted post here) with a different reaction?
  • Matti 15y ago
    It was posted in 2010 and generated the following discussion: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244 http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244
• 7952 15y ago
  In most domains engineering is not the biggest challenge. The challenge is in a dozen intersecting domains that have little to do with engineering. Calling yourself a programmer is like a guitar make telling people he is a carpenter.
• reinhardt 15y ago
  71~94: Your equity grant is worth a lump sum of money which makes you about as much money as you gave up working for the startup, instead of working for a megacorp at a higher salary with better benefits. Or phrased differently, you get to work for a startup you believe in and enjoy instead of a soul-crushing megacorp, with (almost) no cost. This counts as a win in my book.
  • kamaal 15y ago
    You are making the assumption that working in a Start up always compensates for the losses through equity. That is true only if the Start up wins and ends making money or sells for good enough amount to money pay you that chunk. But if it doesn't you loose time and money. And have to deal with added frustration of that loss and finding a new job. At the same who is almost as good as you would have never been through all that. Made more money with the same learning experience as yours. Its not about the positive scenario that's the problem here. Its the negative scenario.
    • reinhardt 15y ago
      The "positive" (actually breakeven) scenario is what the "71-94 roll" refers to in the OP. The more common negative scenario is if you "roll 1-70", I didn't dispute that. I simply did a half-full glass rephrasing of the 71-94 case instead of the original half-empty version.
• synnik 15y ago
  I love corporate, boring, "soul-crushing" work. Why? Because I can sit down, whip out a basic CRUD form with a small approval cycle in a day. It saves a company 100K over the year, I am loved by the customers, and because it is so simple, it normally requires no maintenance. Maybe we update the fields once a year or so. At the end of the week, I've already saved the company more than my salary. After a year, I am a critical asset to the company. After 3 years, I've optimized everything, the ROI slows down, and I move on. This pattern is not a tragedy. It doesn't crush your soul. It makes you a prized commodity in the business world, with a chance to make a change in your life every few years. I have usually alternated between 3 years doing this, then 2 years doing startup work. It has given me a much broader base of experience and skill than anyone who stick to one one side of the coin. It also has given me years of experience in large industries (banking, energy, etc.) which I then use to find very real problems to which a startup can be applied. I have led a very satisfying career, doing this for almost 20 years now.
  • michaelochurch 15y ago
    Corporate work has a lot more to do with the relationships than with the work itself. That's the most important take-away. It's not about how much math you know or what data structures you use. It's how you get along with the guys (and gals) you're doing the work for. You want people who are smart enough to understand that what you're doing is important, but humble enough not to think of what you do as "grunt work" that they could do just as well, and decent enough not to try to "trap" you or to browbeat you into doing as much work for as little as possible. I'm also not a fan of the "hostage employer" situation. It's a way to get a steady paycheck, but also a toxic relationship that kills you slowly. Better to do the best work you can so that if your client wants to let you go, he can. If you're doing "boring" corporate work for people you like (and not all "business people" are assholes; it's about half IME) then it can be fun. You do great work for them in a small amount of time, and they pay you well and are happy to have you. I've met a lot of consultants who can make this work really well. When you choose your clients and don't have a manager-as-career-SPOF, you can develop positive relationships like what you described.
    • kamaal 15y ago
• Goladus 15y ago
  The language stuff is only part true. It's true enough, perhaps, that it's not usually the most important thing to emphasize on a resume, especially if you're doing simple CRUD apps, but nevertheless programming languages and their implementations are varied and complex. Yes, you can become productive in a new language after 6 months of using it, but most people will still have a long way to go before they can claim a reasonably high level of proficiency, especially if there's significant dissonance between the languages. Going from Java (or most languages, really) to Python isn't going to be too difficult, but a lot of that is because Python is a very easy language to get started with. But even with Python it will probably be a lot longer before you really understand some of its less obvious features, pitfalls, performance profile, and are comfortable writing idiomatic code. For a more complicated language, like Perl, or a more distant language, like Haskell, it'll probably be a lot longer.
• _delirium 15y ago
  I'm not too into gatekeepers, so I'd like this to be true: you might rightfully question whether Published In A Journal is really personally or societally significant as opposed to close approximations like Wrote A Blog Post And Showed It To Smart People But honestly I have never found a blog post that I could see as replacing journal articles, if your goal is to promote advancement of scientific knowledge. I like blogs, and read them often, but they aren't normally in-depth, with solid scientific evidence for their results, with discussion of how they relate to existing results, etc. The closest is probably in mathematics, where some of the mathematics blogging is quite high-level and results in actual new discoveries--- but those blog posts are mostly written by math professors (e.g. Terence Tao's blog), which doesn't seem to be what this article is proposing. Where on the internet can I find blog posts of the same scientific standard that one finds in, say, http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ ? I read quite a few statistics, data-mining, and machine learning blogs, and while there is a lot of good content, I haven't found anything that I'd say replaces a journal article; it's more along the lines of tutorials and tips and tricks (which are also very valuable, but a different kind of contribution).
• 16s 15y ago
  My employer calls me a programmer. They print it in on my business cards and hang a sign on my door that reads "Senior Systems Programmer"... so I'm a programmer and I'm not ashamed to be called that.
  • TheFuture 15y ago
    Seriously, how dense are you to think this article has to do with the title on your business card? This is about programmers that seem to love to undervalue their skills, and then anonymously bitch in online forums about how stupid everyone else is and underpaid and under appreciated they are.
    • 16s 15y ago
      I only mean to point out that I don't call myself a programmer, but others do.
• fduran 15y ago
  "Your GPA largely doesn’t matter (modulo one high profile exception: a multinational advertising firm)." Nice jab at Google.
• Hrothgar15 15y ago
  "Producing beautiful software is not a goal." Speak for yourself! That is my goal; money is a mere byproduct enabling it.
• invalidOrTaken 15y ago
  One of the takeaways I get from this is that if you can't prove value, you can't demand payment for it. Proving usually involves measuring. How does one go about measuring? They're not about to give a "mere programmer" access to the sales data or whatever.
• forensic 15y ago
  Patio is like a modern day Phillip Greenspun. Trying to turn childish programmer nerds into responsible engineering professionals.
• cool-RR 15y ago
  Thanks for this manifesto patio11! I read it a couple of times and thought how I could apply it to my career. There are 2 parts in it that I have difficulties with, and I'd appreciate clarifications: ----------------------------- "In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career." How can you say that? Sure, an experienced and intelligent programmer can learn to program in Language X in a few weeks, but do you think that after a year he will reach the same level of efficiency of a similarly experienced and intelligent programmer who has 8 years of experience programming? Sure, you'd know most of the important things that the 8-year guy knows, but I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services? ----------------------------- "Profit Centers are the part of an organization that bring in the bacon [...] Cost Centers are, well, everybody else. You really want to be attached to Profit Centers." I don't understand this. Let me see if I got the terms right: Profit Centers are "where the money comes in from", and Cost Center are "where the money comes out of". But of course, Cost Centers do not exist because CEOs are looking for ways to flush money down the tubes-- it's just that Cost Centers bring in money in indirect ways. For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment. So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner? You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is. ----------------------------- Thanks again for the post!
  • barry-cotter 15y ago
    Cost centres are to be minimised as far as possible. This occasionally means they will be minimised more than is wise and there will be an emergency when this shows up and someone has to fix it. Nevertheless a Cost Centre is a kind of janitor, an absolutely necessary thing that should be done, at the minimum cost that lends itself to an acceptable standard. Another concept that might enlighten you in this context is Core Competency. Everything that is not this can in theory be outsourced. In practice it may not be worth outsourcing because it would cost too much in time, money or communications overhead but the company exists to charge money to do its Core Competency and everything else is detail. Don't be detail. If you are hired to work on a cost centre you attempt to make or save money and either get a raise/bonus for doing so, or move to where you can, whether in the company or in another one. Finally, being only "kinda douche-y" makes you vastly less douche-y than just about everybody in the executive suite. Your colleagues are mostly not your friends. Your manager is definitely not your friend. Your manager's manger's job is partly to get as much value (work) out of people like you for the least money possible. If you are ever in a job where you and your (over)manager are directly antagonistic run like hell, but 100% aligned incentives are very, very rare. If you want keywords try "principal agent problem". You are not a sarariman, you will never have either job security or loyalty from above so don't act loyal from below, it just makes you a chump.
• jbwyme 15y ago
  I feel like this article takes a very pessimistic view. To be great or have success in any field, doing anything, you are going to be up against "bad odds". If the odds of success were in everyone's favor then it wouldn't be "success" anymore. If anything this is a very discouraging article for people who may be aspiring to accomplish something great which I feel like the HN community is all about. Perhaps I've misunderstood the authors intentions? The parts about young people in start-ups, and how it becomes a downward spiral if you aren't in the lucky 10% is such a negative view it hurts. Specifically the "odds" of succeeding and the relative unimportance of the connections you make during that time because [paraphrased] "most of the connections you make in the start-up world are with other start-ups who are likely to fail as well". This is just such a losing mindset to have. If the only thing you are concerned about is not failing then you have no chance to do anything of importance. The choice is yours. I apologize if I've missed the point here as I know there were a lot of other parts in the article about adding value to your career and understanding how corporate structures work. I do believe those are great things to understand but the tone of the whole thing really struck a nerve.
• bfrs 15y ago
  90% of programming jobs are in creating Line of Business software: Most software is not sold in boxes, available on the Internet, or downloaded from the App Store. Most software is boring one-off applications in corporations, under-girding every imaginable facet of the global economy. It tracks expenses, it optimizes shipping costs, it assists the accounting department in preparing projections, it helps design new widgets, it prices insurance policies, it flags orders for manual review by the fraud department, etc etc. Software solves business problems. Software often solves business problems despite being soul-crushingly boring and of minimal technical complexity. Wasn't this precisely the insight of the founders of Infosys in the late 80s? Together, the Indian outsourcing giants, Infosys, TCS and Wipro have amassed huge armies of "programmers" to meet these needs. I stay away from CRUD stuff, because 1. I don't expect to be very successful competing with armies. 2. I don't like being a part of a huge army.
  • kamaal 15y ago
    You are not getting the whole point about business. Businesses run on supply-demand scenarios. Only every once in a while something new comes around like iPhone, or Google search or Windows operating system etc etc. And the likeliness of you working on them are as close to negligible. Otherwise what ever you will ever work on, where ever you will ever work at, and its success will often have to often abide by the laws of supply and demand in the market. And the money and long term success flows in the direction where the supply-demand flow is. When you are talking of big IT bellwethers, they are in a business of supplying services at affordable costs. Aren't you seeing the massive potential in this business? today maintenance and services massively outweighs product development and this is time tested truth. Because once you develop something you have to maintain it all the time. Also this is the only business, where you can retain your technical hands on and still climb the corporate management ladder. Combining both parts of the world. This will give you an edge, to add value in both areas. Also these companies, offer massive infrastructure, training and experimenting grounds which a start up in India can never possibly offer. You also get access to great books, and huge network of good people. If you are lucky you get opportunities to travel around the world, doing business,learning and enjoying various cultures around the world. Also their pay is difficult to match. The start up scenario in India is really messed up badly. After so many years we get to see only one flipkart and Infibeam. And from what I have been hearing its no honey and milk there. Its your usual 'safest way to production' route that they take. They are generally Java heavy shops. I wonder if all this trouble is worth. If all you want to work is on Java. After few years if you see you peer in a big IT bellwether(who is/was as good as you) being more successful in terms money and life style. Don't be surprised, he is in a place where there is steady supply of money and opportunities. Its like you will be average among the best. And he will best among the average. Another thing that I have noticed is start up's in India and especially founders are extremely stingy. They tend to see developers as tissues(use and throw entities). And chances of large number of people making into start up's are also lesser. And there aren't too many good start ups. Also these Indian IT companies did a major job of propelling India to global IT forefront. If they were to go away, we will loose massive amounts of employment opportunities, exposure and more importantly confidence to open start ups in the future. Remember they were themselves start up's some time back.
• Brajeshwar 15y ago
  You might like to read this too, "Are you a programmer or a coder?" http://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/ http://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/
• risuliska 15y ago
  Don't Call Yourseld a Businessman, call yourself a charlatan.
• cek 15y ago
  My favorite from this article: Networking: it isn’t just for TCP packets. Seriously, get out there and grow your network. Do it by getting over being shy and smile more. Ask how you can help others. And ask for nothing in return. You will be shocked (over time) by how much you actually get back.
• Ygor 15y ago
  Paul Graham, Computer Programmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_program...
• sampsonjs 15y ago
  Excuse me, but the company decides what the titles for positions are, not the applicants. And I'm sure no one with "Software Engineer" in their title ever got laid off. "But the article is really telling you to pick a job where you'll be considered King Shit!". Thanks for that great advice.
• atomicdog 15y ago
  >If a Python shop was looking for somebody technical to make them a pile of money, the fact that I’ve never written a line of Python would not get held against me. >Much of Fog Creek uses the Microsoft Stack. I can’t even spell ASP.NET and they’d still hire me. A bit presumptuous, perhaps?