[HilbertSpace]

Here's the real story:

First, the 'suits' want only 'fungible', 'compliant' workers.

Second, the 'suits' do NOT want any workers who might have some technical qualifications that might be powerful, compete with the suits, and scare the suits.

Third, likely highly experienced, older programmers can get good work via 'body shops' around DC.

Fourth, one common tech personnel policy is to hire people as young as possible, promote 1% into management, and fire the rest by 35. In this case, the person 35 would have been better off starting a grass mowing service at age 18 so that by age 35 they have had 17 years in the business, expanded to landscape architecture, have 12 employees, etc. Or generally a Ph.D. in EE will be better off at age 35 having just gotten an electrician's license and built a nice collection of local customers.

Generally, in a technical field, it's important to need a LICENSE.

Generally the big, secret economic opportunity now in the US is to exploit a 'geographical barrier to entry'. So do well in a Main Street business where anyone more than 100 miles away can't be a competitor and do well.

It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for.

Fifth, a good programmer should start and own their own business. E.g., really good at Web site design and construction? Fine: Do such sites for companies in a radius of 50 miles. There, of course, need to meet face to face with the customer and, thus, have a geographical barrier to entry.

Sixth, have some deep technical qualifications, say, from grad school? Fine: There's nearly NO WAY anyone else will construct a good job for you. So, start and run your own business based on the deep knowledge you have.

[sanj]

Go find a better company to work for.

All of those issues are company-specific. Sadly, most companies have at least some of the problems.

And I find your McDonald's story insulting: talk to me after you run one a single McD's by yourself and then you'll be able to convince me that a programmer should get paid more.

Dealing with people is hard. Dealing with short term employees is harder. Dealing with people who don't have skills to work higher up the employment chain is even harder. Doing it through two levels of surly middle management would give me an ulcer.

So are there multi-McD's owning entrepreneurs who make more money than me? Hell yes. And they deserve every penny. It's a harder than sitting down in an Aeron chair, staring at 30" monitor and trying not to drip the condensation from your iced coffee on your MacBook Pro.

[dstorrs]

You do realize that the two of you are in violent agreement, right?

You're both saying that the owner of the McD's will earn more money than the programmer, and that this is absolutely fair and reasonable.

[HilbertSpace]

When I was an MBA prof, one of my students was running a Wendy's, in Columbus! He explained some of the opportunity: Watch staffing CAREFULLY. To do this, more than once a day, watch the weather, various public events, say, a high school football game, or anything and everything else that can affect traffic, Then staff accordingly.

If are one person short on a shift, then lose revenue. One person long, then waste money. Getting the staffing right, for each shift, for the year, is a LOT of money -- add it up yourself.

Net, there's a LOT of difference between running a good fast food restaurant and not. So, someone who knows how to run 10 such restaurants can be getting annual cash income over $1 million a year, with a VERY stable job, where they can't be fired and where they can bring their children into the business. Go to a yacht club, and it is mostly such people you will find.

The blunt point is, in the US, some of the best opportunities remain just doing well in a Main Street business.

Then, if some computing expertise can help, still better. But, generally in the US, getting away from just owning a Main Street business is a risky career direction.

[nostrademons]

That's an information problem, though, right? A McD's manager uses information and domain knowledge they have to lever up efficiencies in the business. They're every bit as much of a knowledge worker as a software engineer.

Now imagine that you partner one of those with someone who has technical skills in data mining, expert systems, and real-time data feeds. They build a system that watches local events, checks the weather feed, looks at traffic, etc, and predicts likely sales and staffing needs. Heck, it could even call the employees in to work while the manager sits on his yacht.

This lets several marginally profitable McDonalds owners suddenly start living the high life on $1M/year. The software might cost say $100K, quite a reasonable price if it saves at least that much on employee costs. There are 12,000 McDonalds in the U.S. The software engineer and his McD's partner are now head of a company doing roughly $1.2B/year in revenue, and there are maybe 10,000 newly-minted millionaires out there.

Any experienced McDonald's managers looking for a technical cofounder?

[HilbertSpace]

Nice. Then sell to Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's, and Pizza Hut.

Buried in the middle should be a little integer linear programming for the scheduling!

The 'qualitative' stuff about the impact of weather, high school events, etc. would be more difficult, and it may be that something like an expert system would work -- typically there's not enough data for some clean statistical attack so that some expert judgment might be essential.

Uh, the $1 million a year would be for someone owning 10 McD's, not just one!

Cute.

One potentially nice part of this could be the point of sales terminals: They may have been recording data on each Big Mack, fry, etc. along with time and date. Good data to have.

[jimbokun]

"It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for."

Is this easier or harder than founding a successful software business?

[HilbertSpace]

Software is a big, HUGE advantage.

But my advice is still own your own business. So, have a Main Street software business or some other software business but OWN it yourself.

If you don't own it yourself, then you may be better off working your way up to owning 1, 2, ..., McD's yourself.