[Animats]

At Stripe and each of my jobs before that, I had had a short commute to a beautiful office, and got to experience the instant gratification associated with developing purely software-based products. Now, I was stuck taking a crowded train to a dark office littered with hardware parts, working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing and road safety.

This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed different.

He may also have felt out of place with people who know computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. If all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in a robotics company.

[vowelless]

> This is after he went to a robotics company because it seemed different.

> He may also have felt out of place with people who know computers, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. If all you know is webcrap, you may feel way over your head in a robotics company.

I agree with you, but that is worded really harshly. I was surprised to see it come from you, of all people. I usually love to read your comments.

[carlineng]

"working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing and road safety."

I know that sentence was probably meant to be humorous and not taken too seriously, but it comes off as smug and disdainful. Manufacturing is very difficult, and road safety is anything but trivial.

He joined the company because he believed in the mission, but then decided the lifestyle tradeoff wasn't worth it? His conviction must not have been very strong to begin with.

[dilyevsky]

Speaking from experience leaving a successful company with huge revenue and profitability(?) to a non-critical path role (I assume he didn’t join perception team there or something) in a company that has no real customers beyond some PoCs can be a huge culture shock.

The comment about safety is obviously tongue in cheek

[dilyevsky]

Pretty rude. I know a few folks at stripe and I actually interviewed the author for another robitics company (which he passed on =)) and i can assure you he doesn’t “just know webcrap”

[ramraj07]

It's likely this person is good technically, and there might be a place for them in large corps where software engineers are just cogs, but their attitude and their resume suggests some issues: their resume is listed with year long stints in every major company, and their attitude suggests that apparently nothing can keep them happy. And also not interested in solving the most important problems (as evidenced by the knock on what sounds like a reasonable promotion deal), just the ones they might (or might not, even they don't know apparently) be interested in. Sounds elitist as hell and doesn't reflect someone who's genuinely seeking growth in their career.

Which is fine, compared to twitch streamers making millions for doing squats this is still a great career, but if anyone's looking at all for constructive criticism then they should introspect how priviliged all this stuff sounds like and whether it's healthy for their own development to live in such a bubble for too long.

[dilyevsky]

As a both embedded and softbank venture (two separate companies in my case) survivor this could be a double whammy - ultra long hw development cycles with no pressure to be anywhere (softbank billions) so it can actually be a cush job compared to “webcrap”. So if that’s the case then I don’t see anything “elitist” about wanting to be in a more dynamic environment. Also this word is thrown around way too much lately

[ramraj07]

The word is thrown around too much because a lot of people are acting deservedly so? By definition if someone's called elitist, the target audience probably disagrees with that judgement. But again, if self reflection is being considered, the target audience should try to think if there's any base to the accusation.

In this case I or others are not alleging this person owes the company much. They should feel free to move as soon as possible if they don't like the commute or the work. It does look like the hardware place looks like a crappy deal. I'm just curious if the OP is truly doing whats in their interest or if they're overindulging their cushy position (being an in demand engineer) to their own long term detriment.

[microtherion]

Apart from "webcrap", this seems an entirely apt comment to me. If you join a hardware company, you should expect to get some grease on you.

[bhyolken]

Author here. Just a few clarifications:

1. I have a ton of respect for people who do robotics work. I was trying to be a little humorous/cheeky in my descriptions here. Apologies if it comes across as flippant, that was not what I intended.

2. My undergrad was in EECS, so I know a little about the hardware side of the world (although, to be fair, I've never done it for work).

3. There's a bit more to the story than what I wrote about in my post. For reasons around confidentiality, etc. I had to focus on the things that were safe to talk about openly, some of which I agree are kind of petty. Ditto for the reasons about leaving Stripe.

[goodpoint]

This person in the article is whining because hardware is difficult and software is easy in comparison. And calls it as "littered with hardware parts"

And HN responds by upvoting the article and downvoting @Animats!