Comment by novok
6 years ago
Eh. The same person can dig for oil in north dakota, or they can go dig for oil in nebraska. You'll get a lot more oil in dakota (big tech) than you would be getting at nebraska.
Go do the best thing you can do right now. Expenses don't matter, the total gross profit is what does.
Except tech is nothing like oil. It's a knowledge based industry and the pace of innovation rapidly keeps breaking barriers to entry. It effectively enables a lot of other industries to move swiftly and get a lot done with fewer resources [0]. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Instagram scaled to 30M users with 13 engs [1], and WhatsApp to half a billion with 32 [2]. Oculus was started by a then 17yr old Palmer Luckey [3] for who, later, the great Jon Carmack would go on to work for.
[0] https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world...
[1] https://time.com/4299297/instagram-facebook-revenue/
[2] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/four-numbers-that-explain
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey#Oculus_Rift
Yay you're citing lottery winners, the most engineer efficient unicorns in the world, in a lottery that you can only buy 5-8 tickets in for your lifetime.
What I mean by 'go do the best thing you can do now', doesn't exclude working for yourself or starting that company that becomes your biggest thing also.
But if $500k/yr as a staff eng at bigco (north dakota) is your best thing, there is no shame in it. It's doubtful you can reproduce that although working for yourself in 'nebraska'.
> Yay you're citing lottery winners
You do realise that I can only cite lottery winners to make my point?
> What I mean by 'go do the best thing you can do now', doesn't exclude working for yourself or starting that company that becomes your biggest thing also.
I guess, then, we are on the same boat and agree with each other?
The salaries in the US are significant [0]... but the barrier to entry is lower than before, that it doesn't hurt to try. If one is a staff eng at BigTech, they probably are worth more money than what they get paid.
[0] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/