Comment by ignoramous
6 years ago
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
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/