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1) I think there's only a couple of hundred billionaires in the world. 2) 120K is a lot of money for an average American. 3) I don't think 'crazy revenue' is

1) I think there's only a couple of hundred billionaires in the world. 2) 120K is a lot of money for an average American. 3) I don't think 'crazy revenue' is built by the merit and efficiency at which you can complete your tech stack. Case in point, FB during year 1 of its PHP stack; or Digg or Reddit year 1. Personally I think luck has a lot to do with it. Which brings me to my assertion: There is no superstar programmer. Just a delusion sold by capitalists to get the proletariat to consume more information on an advertising-driven business model. I just want to be a ramen-sustainable programmer (but not ramen-sustainable startup).

GFischer 13y ago
I'm with noname on this one. 99.99% of those excellent engineers are NOT going to be billionaires. They'll be lucky to be millionaires (and I'll envy them if I can't join them). For those marvelous engineers to become millionaires, they need to have the luck to be paired with an excellent business team, build the right product and have a large dose of luck. I'd rather have a not-so-brilliant engineer and an excellent team, vision and execution (as in build the right thing at the right time and produce value), for most products (very especially for your AirBnB or Facebook examples) you don't need top-tier talent to build it (you do need some to scale). Edit: some of these marvelous people, which have actually built a succesful startup, tried again and FAILED. So it's not just the person, the idea must be right, the timing must be right and luck has to be on his side.
geebee 13y ago
Is 120K a year a lot of money in a city where the median price for a 3br house is 1.1 million? (check zillow and us news money magazine for figures). According to sfgate, the average application developer in SF earns 110K a year, the average dental hygenist earns 106k a year, the average RN earns 112K a year. Software devs earn fine salaries, and I'm very pleased that dental hygienists and nurses are well paid, they should be! But let's not start acting like software devs in high cost areas like SF (where many of the companies claiming a shortage are located) are an exceptionally well paid group compared to other professions in high cost areas. They earn enough that in a two income family with both parents working full time (say, a dental hygenist and software developer), they can afford a house in a reasonable school district, moderate but not exceptional vacations, and so forth.

GFischer 13y ago

I'm with noname on this one. 99.99% of those excellent engineers are NOT going to be billionaires. They'll be lucky to be millionaires (and I'll envy them if I can't join them). For those marvelous engineers to become millionaires, they need to have the luck to be paired with an excellent business team, build the right product and have a large dose of luck. I'd rather have a not-so-brilliant engineer and an excellent team, vision and execution (as in build the right thing at the right time and produce value), for most products (very especially for your AirBnB or Facebook examples) you don't need top-tier talent to build it (you do need some to scale). Edit: some of these marvelous people, which have actually built a succesful startup, tried again and FAILED. So it's not just the person, the idea must be right, the timing must be right and luck has to be on his side.

geebee 13y ago

Is 120K a year a lot of money in a city where the median price for a 3br house is 1.1 million? (check zillow and us news money magazine for figures). According to sfgate, the average application developer in SF earns 110K a year, the average dental hygenist earns 106k a year, the average RN earns 112K a year. Software devs earn fine salaries, and I'm very pleased that dental hygienists and nurses are well paid, they should be! But let's not start acting like software devs in high cost areas like SF (where many of the companies claiming a shortage are located) are an exceptionally well paid group compared to other professions in high cost areas. They earn enough that in a two income family with both parents working full time (say, a dental hygenist and software developer), they can afford a house in a reasonable school district, moderate but not exceptional vacations, and so forth.