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Great programmers move up the chain as well. If your skills are not being valued by your company as it is setup in a way that it needs only average engineers,

by ardit33 12y ago

Great programmers move up the chain as well. If your skills are not being valued by your company as it is setup in a way that it needs only average engineers, you can move on and create your own company now. If you are a great engineer, then you are a walking capital by yourself. If somebody with an idea, and no skills, hires you, then it probably needs at least 300-500k (even for a smallish prototype) to make it happen. If you are a full stack engineer, and pair up with a buddy, you can make it happen, with a lot less. If you are a great engineer, you are the capital!

watwut 12y ago
Programming talent and skills do not translated into business talent and skills. And vice versa. It does not even translate into an idea doable by just two guys that can sell well and is not easily doable by other two guys. How many such products does exist?
jjoonathan 12y ago
> If you are a great engineer, you are the capital! It only seems that way because engineering is currently the most capital-heavy part of bringing a softwarebusiness to market. Once that ceases to be the case (which may take a while, but it's the future SG was gushing about) then as long as there is a single scarce or mutually-exclusive commodity necessary for success its price will ratchet upwards until it is out of reach for most engineers (after risk-adjustment). Pertinent example: the implosion of the indie app dev market that's been all over HN this past week.
- mdda 12y ago
  But once the Engineering component has been hammered down as much as server costs were in the previous generation ('Sun pizza boxes with Oracle' turned into AWS on OSS), what's the next largest expense line? If the next most expensive thing is the marketing spend, so that the company gets the required exposure in overcrowded app stores (for example), then the VCs are painting themselves into a Hollywood hit role - at best.

by ardit33 12y ago

watwut 12y ago

Programming talent and skills do not translated into business talent and skills. And vice versa. It does not even translate into an idea doable by just two guys that can sell well and is not easily doable by other two guys. How many such products does exist?

jjoonathan 12y ago

> If you are a great engineer, you are the capital! It only seems that way because engineering is currently the most capital-heavy part of bringing a softwarebusiness to market. Once that ceases to be the case (which may take a while, but it's the future SG was gushing about) then as long as there is a single scarce or mutually-exclusive commodity necessary for success its price will ratchet upwards until it is out of reach for most engineers (after risk-adjustment). Pertinent example: the implosion of the indie app dev market that's been all over HN this past week.

mdda 12y ago
But once the Engineering component has been hammered down as much as server costs were in the previous generation ('Sun pizza boxes with Oracle' turned into AWS on OSS), what's the next largest expense line? If the next most expensive thing is the marketing spend, so that the company gets the required exposure in overcrowded app stores (for example), then the VCs are painting themselves into a Hollywood hit role - at best.