[aantix]

If you're working for someone else's dream, what else is there?

"TC" gives me and my family options to do other big things in the world.

Yes, I want to take two big family vacations a year, live in a great neighborhood/ school district, and give my kids extra opportunities.

Optimizing for "TC" makes sense.

[davewritescode]

This is nihilistic and short sighted way to see the world.

Being highly visible inside and outside my company has opened up more opportunity long term in terms of being offered consulting roles and opportunities in early stage startups then being a worker bee at Amazon for 2 years until you burnout. I know many people who have taken that route and it's one of many paths.

If you're a good engineer and can sell your work, contribute visibly to open source projects in your area of expertise and can present at conferences you'll have more opportunities than a worker bee at FAANG.

Someone out there is building the next big thing and if you're focusing just on getting the biggest paycheck you'll be watching from the outside.

[ativzzz]

The reality is most of us do not have the skills, talent, drive or whichever other attributes needed to identify the next big thing or meaningfully contribute.

> If you're a good engineer and can sell your work, contribute visibly to open source projects in your area of expertise and can present at conferences

You are describing the top 1-5% of engineers here. Yes if you are in the top, you can literally do anything you want. For the rest of us who are writing software to make a living, we might as well maximize the money we earn as easily as we can

[cm42]

Since we're speaking loosely and broadly here, I want to throw in that "80-90% is just showing up" notion, which I've found to be more-or-less true.

A while back, I estimated myself around 7-15%, based on an average of "average ___" searches (not remotely rigorous). I was shocked, given that I'm an essentially-average software developer in an essentially-average developer role. I would have been impressed with a "top 30%", given all the talented people in the industry who are paid much more than I. I tried a few more things, and eventually felt pretty confident in a "top 10%", but it still didn't feel right.

To me (and I'm not disagreeing with you here), a "top 1-5%" engineer is one of those mysterious dragons that codes with toggle switches in octal deep inside of a lair of some kind, has invented or described an entire domain of knowledge, language, and/or operating system, etc. - and I certainly don't feel 2-5% away from that, lemme tell ya.

It was kind of like waking up to find out that my name and email address had been entered into an archive of humanity's most important code - all the critical stuff we would need to start over if a meteor struck and brought the dinosaurs back or whatever. It was burned, IIRC, into a golden USB drive, a platinum LaserDisc, and that special paper librarians like, stored forever in a super-sekret vault deep in the Arctic, next to the seeds, I assume.

Certainly, the handful of miscellaneous patches, like un-hard-coding a variable here-and-there, in relatively minor projects, and on features nobody was really using anyway, doesn't make me or my code that important (or even necessary, in most cases). And yet, when the future archeologists knock over a seed pot and discover the Ancient Golden USB Drive of GitHub Commits, I'll be on that list.

I especially like the thought of it being displayed, context-free, in some alien museum, a la Linear B, with a note that says "We have no idea what this means", or maybe "developer complains about security vs. business priorities in comment about encryption". Anyone else get the Arctic Code Vault Contributor badge?

Anyway, as I rationalize it, the Top 20% are the ones already here, doing it, making my Top 7% more in line with my gut feeling of "a little above average sometimes, but by no means exceptional". The 80% are those people merely thinking about learning to code, only considering contributing to open source, abandoning starter kits and tutorials 3/4s of the way through, etc. Maybe they'll join us one day soon.

This also demystifies the dragon: we're making that same error that saw Bernie Sanders' "Top 1% of The 1%" (The 0.01%, or 0.0001) diluted into Bill O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson's "Top 1%" and, eventually, "Top 10%" (a thing I especially resent as a self-described 7%-er).

These errors are so common - hopefully I didn't do it in that parenthetical - that Google's on-site prep material included a handout specifically on this topic.

Google, I said! Have you heard it's 10x harder to get into Google than Harvard? They only accept something like 0.2 (or was it 0.2%?) of candidates.

Harvard! That most selective of institutions, whose discrimination is only surpassed by the most exclusive of exclusive organizations, like Google and Wal-Mart.

Only some exceedingly-small percentage of candidates, with the denominator being every half-assed application of every entirely-unqualified candidate ever submitted, even get invited to an on-site interview. What an exclusive club!

I haven't been admitted to any of them, of course - I blame it on answering the steal-the-pen question wrong on the WalMart kiosk when I was 17 and it ending up on my Permanent Record - but it might also be because I never even applied to Harvard. Carlin was right: it's a big club, and [we] ain't in it.

So, by some metrics, I guess I am in the top 1-5% of developers, but those metrics are sketch.

So, as one of humanity's most important top 1-5% developers, I can say with great authority that, if you're already out here reading this and have typed "git push" at any point in the past week, you're much closer to that "top 1-5%" than you think. You CAN do anything* you want! (Including enjoying your weekends!) The Magic, I'm told, is in the work one has been avoiding.

P.S. If you do it this weekend on just about any open source project, you'll officially, definitionally, be an open source contributor! (And I promise the recruiter bots will find your email and you'll have more (interview) offers than gift card scams in your inbox in no time)

[ativzzz]

> 80-90% is just showing up

They key is, showing up consistently over time for years and years. That's the key, and that's the hard part

> If you do it this weekend on just about any open source project, you'll officially, definitionally, be an open source contributor!

Nobody cares if you made some 1 line change to some OSS project. Any meaningful change requires more work and effort

[cm42]

Yep and yep, but the latter just illustrates the point.

On the spectrum of unemployed fry cook to 6-figure tech job, "attracting recruiter spam bots" and "attracting overly-clever recruiters" isn't far from actually Getting There and/or Making It - so long as you keep showing up and making an effort. Definitely not a quick life hack.

Long-ish term career moves are really the only reason I check on that stuff anyway, and get more value from the relative rankings of, say, language popularity and jobs, than any number I come to. I work in a job I like, in an industry I like, in a language I like at a very fair rate, so I'm not too concerned about it, but part of that is from figuring out what were dead-ends/non-starters for me, identifying niches, etc. (+1 for the ikigai thing, too).

> Nobody cares if you made some 1 line change to some OSS project. Any meaningful change requires more work and effort

For sure, if you're presenting yourself as "a [project name here] developer", but the conversation in interviews I've had has tended to center around, say, how we used to use [that horrible old thing] until we found [shiny new thing].

I'm pretty sure I've never impressed anyone with my OSS contributions, save maybe one person who somehow remembered an exact bug and considered fixing it, but I think we were more impressed we both remembered the bug than the handful of lines of code it took to replace `insecureConnections: true` with `insecureConnections: $insecureConnections` and add a `caCerts` property to be passed in to a constructor somewhere.

So I guess again, it was the pattern of making minor fixes ("just showing up") rather than being some super l33t hax04 genius or major project maintainer or whatever that got me the credit that mattered.

[mataug]

If optimizing for TC is a nihilistic way to see the world, your take is naïve.

The reality is that even if someone is a good engineer, they may not always have the right opportunities, they may struggle to sell their work, or they may have other challenges that we cannot foresee.

With such unpredictability in mind, all advice here on HN is anecdotal, and everyone has to optimize for their specific situation. Optimizing for TC isn't necessarily bad, it may be the only option at a better life for some people.

[uoaei]

My concern is also the social dynamics that "TC or bust" people engender around them. There is an obvious mentality that goes along with that approach, and more often than not this turns what should be a collective, holistic approach to social well-being into a quasi-zero-sum game where everyone is just trying to extract value from everyone else.

It is deleterious to community per se. Islands of nuclear families does not a community make.

It's true there are people who straddle both worlds -- those who use TC to improve and embolden their community. But I would bet a lot of money that it's mostly people who spend frivolously and selfishly so that their kids go to good schools and have good opportunities, but that others' kids don't get access to the same kinds of on-ramps to success.

[Our_Benefactors]

> But I would bet a lot of money that it's mostly people who spend frivolously and selfishly so that their kids go to good schools and have good opportunities, but that others' kids don't get access to the same kinds of on-ramps to success.

Getting a higher TC does not take opportunities away from other people. What kind of communist thought is this? Line employees at these companies aren’t the ones appealed to in “The Gospel of Wealth”.

[uoaei]

Getting a higher TC does not take opportunities away from other people. Spending those earnings on things that do not improve the commonwealth is what is being discussed in this thread.

It really is remarkable how, every time this subject comes up, reactionaries can swing only at straw men. It demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the arguments of their supposed opponents, which makes them seem naive at best.

In fact, seeing opposition where there is room for discussion is part and parcel of the same phenomenon of self-centeredness that I discuss above.

[Our_Benefactors]

Convenient excuse to claim your opponent doesn’t understand your argument. I do - you are advocating against people being able to spend as they see fit, by placing the “commonwealth” above the individual. It’s communism.

[uoaei]

Communism is when the threat of violence is used to enforce such a rule. I see it as a culture problem but do not wish to use violence to correct it. I think your boogeyman radar is off.

[ng12]

> If you're a good engineer and can sell your work, contribute visibly to open source projects in your area of expertise and can present at conferences you'll have more opportunities than a worker bee at FAANG.

That's way more work, though. It's really TC over time investment that they talk about on Blind. Nothing will beat FAANG or the hedge funds in that respect.

[tayo42]

there is no way most people do anything that is worth being visible. most work i did was unrelatable to anyone

[KallDrexx]

> "TC" gives me and my family options to do other big things in the world.

TC is tangential to all of that. If getting a higher TC decreases work life balance, then it actually doesn't give you and your family options to do other things in the world, it literally detracts from it. If a higher TC means a longer commute, you are losing out on time that you could be doing things with your family. Having more stress for more TC lowers your health (mental and physical) and can significantly strain family life.

TC is literally only one dimension that should be optimized for. There are many other factors that should be taken into consideration with a job, because burning yourself out before you are 50 just so you can maybe hope to retire early isn't always worth it, and isn't guaranteed to even actually work out.

[UncleMeat]

A problem is that people are often optimizing to compensation literally right now. This leads to the following common scenario on blind or other similar communities:

Person 1. "I'm a junior engineer and two senior engineers just left my team, now I'm being asked to do do a bunch of work that they used to handle."

Person 2. "If they aren't bumping your pay immediately you should leave. Never do senior work for junior pay."

Now this person is missing out on a huge opportunity to get a ton of experience and prove themselves to be invaluable.

[krisoft]

> Now this person is missing out on a huge opportunity to get a ton of experience and prove themselves to be invaluable.

I pay my mortage with opportunities, exposure and experience too.

[UncleMeat]

I'm not saying work for nothing. I'm saying that immediately fleeing every time you are asked to stretch because it isn't in your current job role is going to limit your career growth rather than enable it.

[krisoft]

Obviously don’t flee. Negotiate a rise. And if they don’t take you seriously get a better job, because they don’t appreciate you at your current place.

[UncleMeat]

But if you look at popular advice on blind, cscareerquestions, or from various youtube influencers they'll absolutely tell you to leave immediately.

[karamanolev]

Being an IC doesn't inherently conflict with enjoying your work. Yes, TC is important and as you pointed out, it gives you options to do other things. OTOH, thinking that "someone else's dream" must necessarily be an awful daily grind is a folly - many people enjoy software engineering and it doesn't bother them that it's "someone else's dream". Being technically challenged brings them joy. Going one step further, you can actually enjoy the mission and the impact of your work, so not only is the process nice, but the result as well.

[trasz]

If you have no problem knowingly wasting 30% of your life making useless shit in exchange for money then… well, enjoy, I’m not judging, but please realize many people don’t feel this way.

[DesiLurker]

btw its not 30% its close to 50% if you count waking hours. I have never understood this single minded drive for Moar money. I mean I get upto a point but after that it sort of becomes a game in itself. OTOH you have basically extinguished your own 'signal' for resources that may have some dubious utility in future.

[ryandrake]

To me it’s about gaining back time at the end, when I may be unable to work. Every additional $N/yr translates into one less year I need to work before I can retire. Even once all your needs are met, it still makes sense to further optimize TC because you save it and that translates into earlier retirement. I have a sign above my monitor that reads “The Goal Is To Not Have To Work”

[trasz]

So you got a shit job to shield yourself from a shit job in the future?

Are you aware of other options, such as non-shit jobs?

[DesiLurker]

I doubt this will be seen as there is no notification in HN but this is kind of what I was saying in my comment. the problem is a bit subtle if you think about it, in order to get paid more (& I mean significantly more) you'd have to be much better than others or hit some kind of a niche. issue is that if you are good then you don't necessarily want to stop working (maybe just stop on somebody else's schedule). Now that is fine but our ability to enjoy life or even enjoy work goes down significantly with age almost akin to a 1/x curve. so you are really trading your best years for some money that you may enjoy in later years, because trust me unless you hit some startup jackpot you arn't early retiring under 40. Plus you'd want a family before that at some point.

So then I say a better strategy is to do work that pays above market but you still enjoy instead of something significantly higher paying job that you dont enjoy. Just 2c from a middle aged techie.

[ryandrake]

It's probably the youngish HN demographic, but I'm not sure where this idea comes from that old people don't enjoy life as much as young people do. It's kind of--insulting I guess, like my brain's ability to feel joy has gotten attenuated at some 1/x curve??? Who told you that's what happens?

The one thing you probably can't 100% count on having the ability to do when you get old is work, which is why it's so important to "make hay while the sun shines" as they say--max that salary while you can. Especially in the tech industry where there's already so much ageism. I am not counting on my ability to pass an interview or actual physical do work, beyond like 60 or so, but still need to financially prepare to live to 90. I think some people on HN just assume they'll be capable of working up until their final day, so why save?