[chr15m]

"the greatest at what you do" is by definition a zero sum framing that will lead 99.999% of participants to view their lives as a failure. It is literally madness to make this your goal.

The alternative is to choose to be very good at what you do, which has a good chance of success if you try hard at something you care about.

[kaiwenwang]

I feel like very good isn't enough as employers want the best candidates but not the average candidates, and if you're sort of in the middle then the so-so companies don't want you either because they think you'll leave.

Something about the increased social stratification of our times, which also has to do with increased transportation and communication.

Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be better than SWE in Texas.

[chr15m]

Hiring is not a zero sum game (growth of the company/economy through good hiring means more positions are created). I've hired software developers before and what I was looking for was somebody who commits code that works and is good quality. I don't care about their ranking on some imaginary programmer hierarchy. You probably don't want to work at a company where they do.

[raddan]

Not to mention that motivated humans are amazing learning machines. The supposed trend of replacing entry-level programmers with AI is pure insanity. Sure, code of indeterminate quality (let’s assume for a moment that it is good) will get written. But a company is its people, and you are shutting the door to new ideas. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the neophyte, who was maybe considered a bit of a dope after they were hired, in their second or third year stumble on a great idea that energizes everybody. People can change. A good organization recognizes this and nurtures them so that both change for the better.

[chr15m]

Good point. Good hires have the potential to become even better.

[kaiwenwang]

No, not a fan of Leetcode either, nor imaginary measures of social prestige.

We may not necessarily disagree with any of each other's points, but lack of mutual context and having different lived experience makes our words have different meaning.

[chr15m]

Yeah true. Thank you.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

>employers want the best candidates but not the average candidates,

This is just flatly false. Employers want candidates at all ability levels given a competitive price.

You can be pretty bad at your job and still have a steady stream of work if you're cheap, for example. The Hacker News crowd loves to poop on these guys because we are almost by definition a quasi-professional platform, but we are far from the median take on this.

>Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be better than SWE in Texas.

If you truly believe this, and think the difference is substantial, make a 5 year plan and move to Germany. Talk is cheap.

[kaiwenwang]

Added you on LinkedIn if you'd like to chat about your experiences moving to Finland. Yes, I might've been too non-specific with my wording. My communication style tends to link disparate topics together, which seems too hyperbole when people read into the words themselves.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

I'm always happy to talk about it.

For the benefit of future readers with less context, you can model my move to Finland and Europe more generally to a first approximation as a trade. I gave up somewhere in the ballpark of $500,000 in expected post-tax income over the first ~5 years of my career by moving away from the US right after graduating from college. In exchange I married the love of my life a few years earlier than I would have otherwise, and we got our little family started a few years earlier too.

To me this was and is a fantastic way to spend $500,000. To most other people their heads would explode merely by realizing such a trade could be on the table, and so they never get serious enough about either money or love to face it head on.