[jondubois]

>> Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.

The author has experience on the networking side of the fence and it's interesting to hear their point of view.

As someone who has experience on the value creation side of the fence (I created a popular open source project), as much as I wish the previous statement were true, it's not.

The problem is that wealthy investors don't know the difference between apparent value and real value. It's just too complex for them to understand and they just don't have the time. Also, investors expect talent to come to them not the other way round. Another factor is that things that only appear valuable tend deliver faster exits so they may be optimizing for smooth-talkers with a sleek pitch deck rather than long term value creation.

I've worked in many companies where the manager doesn't know the difference between a good engineer and a bad one. It's extremely frustrating. You would think that these kinds of companies would go bankrupt eventually but no; they have a monopoly over their niche/sector so engineering quality does not matter at all. They can hire 100 times more people than they need and produce horrible complex code which requires constant maintenance and it will only represent a tiny dent in their budget.

If most engineering managers don't know what a good software engineer is, how can a VC or investor know? Just because they worked at Google and can solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle using recursion does not make them a good engineer