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You can become a millionaire CEO if you are intelligent with at least a 10-20% success rate. Get 5 years work experience, ace the GMAT, go to a top 5 MBA, do c

You can become a millionaire CEO if you are intelligent with at least a 10-20% success rate. Get 5 years work experience, ace the GMAT, go to a top 5 MBA, do consulting at 250-500k/year for 10 years for a company like Bain or McKinsey, then get hired as CFO of one of the companies you work for, 5 years later get promoted to CEO. Even if you don't make CEO, you can get to several multiples of an engineer's salary with a 100% success rate with this plan. Let's face it, a software engineer is far from a top tier occupation, and for good reason. You can hire very high quality people with 10 years of experience in eastern Europe for $30/hour.

hatu 12y ago
Too bad the work is the polar opposite of a programmer so it's kind of a pointless thing to say in the article that programmers rarely become CEOs. Most people don't want to become CEO's, they're programmers because they love what they do.
netcan 12y ago
This is a pretty distant perspective. It's like saying 'you can become a millionaire startup founder if you are intelligent. Go to MIT, Get a job at a young tech company. Get Funded by YC. Sell the company to your former employer.' Obviously, it's not impossible to become a millionaire CEO. People do it. There The requisite work, skill, risk, talent and luck just isn't comparable to 'become a programmer.' Becoming a programmer requires one to learn to program, at university or some other way and get a job programming which isn't to hard if you can program. At neither step are you competing to get through gatekeepers and bottlenecks in a most-will-fail situation. You easy steps to becoming a CEO require you to go through several of these competitive bottlenecks. In any case my point was just to point out how silly it is to say 'most programmers don't become millionaire CEOs, it's a dead end job.'
Swizec 12y ago
As one of those people - you can live like a king on that kind of money in eastern Europe. As a freelance programmer I can afford to pay rent for a flat in Ljubljana that puts most SF apartments to shame both in size, comfort, and location. What's better, I can do that _while_ actually living in the Bay Area. Just because I can and I like moving back and forth between here and home.
- _random_ 12y ago
  Kings tend to buy houses not rent flats. Ljubljana seems nice though.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    Eh, I'd much rather live in a nice flat than a house. And I guess it might be nice to actually own one eventually, I actually prefer renting. Much less of a hassle.
    - smsm42 12y ago
      Wait till you get a family, your ideas on merits of moving around may change drastically.
- turnip1979 12y ago
  Are you a us citizen or on a work visa? Genuinely curious?
pmoriarty 12y ago
Programming wasn't very well paid even when there was no competition from abroad.

hatu 12y ago

Too bad the work is the polar opposite of a programmer so it's kind of a pointless thing to say in the article that programmers rarely become CEOs. Most people don't want to become CEO's, they're programmers because they love what they do.

netcan 12y ago

This is a pretty distant perspective. It's like saying 'you can become a millionaire startup founder if you are intelligent. Go to MIT, Get a job at a young tech company. Get Funded by YC. Sell the company to your former employer.' Obviously, it's not impossible to become a millionaire CEO. People do it. There The requisite work, skill, risk, talent and luck just isn't comparable to 'become a programmer.' Becoming a programmer requires one to learn to program, at university or some other way and get a job programming which isn't to hard if you can program. At neither step are you competing to get through gatekeepers and bottlenecks in a most-will-fail situation. You easy steps to becoming a CEO require you to go through several of these competitive bottlenecks. In any case my point was just to point out how silly it is to say 'most programmers don't become millionaire CEOs, it's a dead end job.'

Swizec 12y ago

As one of those people - you can live like a king on that kind of money in eastern Europe. As a freelance programmer I can afford to pay rent for a flat in Ljubljana that puts most SF apartments to shame both in size, comfort, and location. What's better, I can do that _while_ actually living in the Bay Area. Just because I can and I like moving back and forth between here and home.

_random_ 12y ago
Kings tend to buy houses not rent flats. Ljubljana seems nice though.
- Swizec 12y ago
  Eh, I'd much rather live in a nice flat than a house. And I guess it might be nice to actually own one eventually, I actually prefer renting. Much less of a hassle.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    Wait till you get a family, your ideas on merits of moving around may change drastically.
turnip1979 12y ago
Are you a us citizen or on a work visa? Genuinely curious?

pmoriarty 12y ago

Programming wasn't very well paid even when there was no competition from abroad.