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I'm done being an underpaid and mistreated wage slave. I am going out on my own.
- BillyTheMage 4y agoDid I read this correctly? The way I understood, the author realized how evil wage-slavery is, so they went and formed their own company and hired their own wage slave? How could someone miss their own point that hard? I was hoping I was about to read that the author formed a nice co-op or something that actually reflects the lessons they learned. It seems they just said "being a wage slave sucks, so I'll be one of the masters".
- gsibble 4y agoHa. He's paid a percentage (the vast majority) of all the revenue he generates both for himself and anyone else at the company. Much more like a partner. No one I ever hire will just have a "wage". edit: Updated the article to make that clear. I have no intention of hiring wage slaves, taking advantage of workers, or creating a toxic work environment. We've already had a lot of discussions about creating the best work environment for engineers ever.
- v0idzer0 4y agoEveryone has those discussions and then they wake up and have to run their business again. It’s okay to admit that you want to be the one with all the upside this time. You should and you shouldn’t feel bad about that or feel you have to lie about it on the internet
- gsibble 4y agoI think there's a healthy balance. I get a percentage of what he makes and he's fine with that. It's a much more honest relationship.
- UncleEntity 4y agoDevil’s advocate: So his wage is directly tied to how well you can manage contracts and how fast he can churn out the work? Theoretically, on a slow week he can take home zero dollars. My job is paid like that (sort of) and if I don’t work for whatever reason it costs me $0.38 and that’s just because I have health insurance through the VA. Fuck, dude, I’d love to be a “wage slave” and get paid to do nothing for three weeks. —edit— Not $0.38 for health insurance but not having that cost because socialism. Be a couple hundred to pay even if I didn’t earn a dime otherwise.
- gsibble 4y agoHow well we both manage contracts. It's both our jobs to source work. We're essentially business partners.
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- HumanOstrich 4y ago> You want me to go from a cushy $200k maybe 3-4 hour of work and one meeting a week Chief Software Architect job... Can you elaborate on this? Were you hired for 40 hours a week or 3-4?
- gsibble 4y agoI was hired to complete a certain amount of work. I worked from home and was generally able to get it done in about 3-4 hours a week. They were extremely happy and I got great performance reviews and they still give me recommendations for other work.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoYou were not a wage slave.
- ITB 4y agoI'm sorry you've had all these bad experiences. I've had the opposite. Every time I made a decision that followed my interests and long term potential, as opposed to my immediate term paycheck, I've come out on top. In my experience, excellent people who latch on to the idea that they are being exploited, end up becoming bitter and ultimately having a less satisfying career. Transactional relationships, in which neither party adds an ounce of extra value unless they receive immediate benefit, are less than the sum of their parts. Whereas relationships where everyone contributes more than their fair share of value, tend to make everyone richer, at least per my humble observational powers.
- gsibble 4y agoEveryone has different experiences in startups for sure. I know mine is unique and different but it is what it is.
- nrb 4y agoContributing factors: - Equity from 12 jobs in 15 years(?!) - Heavy weighting toward early stage companies How often is this person jumping ship?? Seemingly right when they’d be positioned for merit increases, too. I think there’s a real lesson in here somewhere about company selection, and honestly: overall attitude. 200k+ salary is _wage slavery_? Come on.
- gsibble 4y agoHow do you send 3 kids to private school and college on $200k?
- nrb 4y agoEh, justify it however you need to. Being more selective about which companies you choose, and contributing meaningfully to those companies, would have blown past that 200k after just a few years even as a staff engineer at any company paying in the top quartile (well outside of the maddening environment of FAANG)
- gsibble 4y agoI built a bank that directly raised a company's valuation by $800 million, and they wouldn't give me a raise.
- digi59404 4y agoAt the executive level, that high up. You don’t get paid in salary. You get paid in equity. Your negotiations should be around equity and its valuations. You should be arguing for compensation packages of “if I grow x by y. You give me Z in equity.” I am not an executive. I am cashing out over 500k in equity, and a yearly salary of 250k+ per year as an independent contributor. Last year my income cleared 400k. Your focus on salary; and not on VALUE, negotiations, equity, vesting, growth, and goals are what’s holding you back. Once you hit that, then you need to change how you use money. Such as negotiating that equity be deposited in a self-directed IRA to sell it, and invest it with little tax penalty. At 200k in most areas of the United States you could have paid off a house in a year. If you’ve made 200k a year for 10 years; banking 50k of that in an index fund would have paid big dividends. Let alone using 50k on a construction loan to build a multi family house. Then rent that out providing affordable housing to folks. Or even, just pledging your equity as collateral to get the loan. You’re not a wage slave. But you’re acting like you are one. Stop, you have access to more resources than the probably 5% of America. Use those tools, change your mindset, get a proper accountant, and do some personal planning and growth.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago4 hours a week for $200k and you're a wage slave? This is the most ridiculous bullshit I've heard in a while. Insane, entitled, douchebag
- readthenotes1 4y agoi was expecting some rant from an entitled high school dropout who can't even cook french fries right and instead saw a rant from a person who never seemed to actually work a full-time job, preferring side hustles over commitment. And I will say as a former wage slave that is a pretty sweet gig if the wage is right and the co-workers are good.
- __turbobrew__ 4y agoI look forward to the blog post in a years time when you divulge how much more than $200k you made.
- gsibble 4y agoThanks!!!
- SoftTalker 4y agoJust shaking my head at the hubris of anyone making $200k and calling himself a wage slave. Get a clue and look at what a real wage slave life is like.
- jurassic 4y agoFor real. If you're voluntarily exchanging your labor for what is probably a top 5% income in the US, you're not a slave.
- jacknews 4y agoOTOH, if we ignore this specific instance where the salary is rather plump, the fact that you have to exchange your labor for money, in order to feed yourself, means that it's not really a labor 'market' at all. salary = slavery
- jurassic 4y agoThis is absurd. Slavery is horrible. Being a slave means having all of your choices in life stripped away to optimize for the financial outcome of your “owner”. If you resist, you or people you care about may be tortured or killed. A person working for a wage, even a poor one, has way more options than that. If you quit your job at McDonalds, nobody is going to come and murder your family. There’s no penalty for telling your manager to get fucked and starting a new job at Taco Bell the next week. And for those who are truly in hardship, there are social programs like Medicaid, SNAP, etc to look after many of their most basic needs.
- samplethetample 4y agoThis read like satire, but then I realized he was serious. At the authors claimed skill level, they should be focused on adding value and growing the org vs. putting so much emphasis on a number. A “what can the company do for me” mentality can only get you so far in a C level role.
- digi59404 4y agoIf you have/apply for a CTO title, and you’re writing code without equity. You’re not a CTO. You’re a software architect with a fancy title. That’s not saying anything negative about you. But the business will not see you as a CTO. They will see you as a fancy IC or Architect. If you have/apply for a CTO Title and an organization will not give you equity at a great valuation, for the purposes of growth. They don’t value your input, respect your leadership, and won’t give you the tools needed to succeed. A CTOs job is not to produce code. It is to lead, it is to be accountable to the board and the CEO. It is to be the person who sets the tone and pace for technical decisions and is the ultimate decision maker for technical things. Part of a CTOs job is to be able to shrink delivery times, increase security posture, increase efficiency within development, and overall improve the entire department through measurable goals and metrics. A CTO should be able to explain the exact dollar amount their department has increased and saved the organization. They should be able to showcase improved velocity and delivery metrics to the board that have outward visible justification. In many cases a CTO might also be over support. In which case customer retention and happiness is also a factor and must be measured and considered. This is all in addition to the people management aspect of holding a budget, being responsible for report’s growth and improvements, and ensuring the department is healthy from a personnel standpoint. Any company that thinks a CTO can do all of that effectively and push effective source code is both delusional and going to fail.
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- tmikaeld 4y agoI'm curious to see what apps you'll churn out that will earn you more than those 200K + the employees salary.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoChatGPT wrappers??? lol
- shalmanese 4y agoOP looked back on his 15 year career and discovered the one thing he was uniquely bad at was negotiating fair and equitable compensation for his efforts and decided to switch into making that his full time job.