[aripickar]

I’ll push back on that.

I currently work as an SDE at a FAANG company known for being pretty demanding. My boss is phenomenal, pretty much everything you could ask for. Shielding us from other teams requesting stuff in an unreasonable time frame, not putting too much pressure to get things done in an unreasonable way, setting us up with mentors in different areas, building out explicit plans to grow to the next level, helping people plan breaks in the day to mentally recoup, the whole nine yards.

Despite all that, I still am looking to leave and start my own thing. And it’s mainly because that “I want to be my own boss mentality”. I don’t think that I’m alone in that.

[DenisM]

I can't pick your brain remotely, alas, but there might be something to reconcile our differences.

It is of course not just the boss, it's also the entire business structure. Do you believe in the cause you are serving? Do you feel like you contribute well to that cause?

[aripickar]

I think that’s the crux of it. It’s hard to give a shit about making someone else’s product. I like what I’m working on, think it’ll help people at scale, but it’s not my product, so I’m long term ambivalent

[deckard1]

Outside of one-man projects, it's never going to be your product. If you start a company, you're going to want to scale. Now you have sales, product, and marketing to deal with. Not to mention more engineers, many of which you will not agree with. If your software turns into a slow buggy mess, you only have high level buttons to mash (or you turn into the micromanaging jerk). These buttons are laggy. Tell upper management that your website is slow dogshit and you might see improvements 6 months from now. Maybe. Assuming the product weenies don't ruin it all with a dozen A/B darts they throw at the wall in the meantime.

[bananaface]

Doesn't matter. If I got a large chunk of the long-term payoff, I'd care about tackling those problems. The issue is incentive, not the difficulty of the work.

[DenisM]

Would you feel different working at SpaceX?

[aripickar]

That’s an interesting question. I think I would. But at the same time, I think that I would be more interested in building the next spacex than working at the current one.

[ozim]

I vote up the push back because having even a good boss is about working and filling in demand for what corporation/company wants.

When you are your own boss you can say "I have enough" and stop making new features, stop getting new customers. One probably still needs to have profitable customer base before saying so but I am working for profitable company as SDE and they look how to grow more all the time.

[jlokier]

> When you are your own boss you can say "I have enough" and stop making new features, stop getting new customers

In that sense, I guess you have the feeling of being your own boss as an employee too, as long as you believe you can say "I have enough" and stop working there whenever you feel like it.