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by jeffbee 320 days ago
An HTML jockey who gets to call himself "full-stack" because they let him run the mysql server doesn't have the experience necessary to deride the careers of the roughly quarter million technical staff at the large companies as "fake work".
1 comments
alephnerd 320 days ago
No offense, but as a SWE turned PM turned VC, you're all code monkeys to me anyhow.

Dissing someone as a "HTML jockey" is just rude. People need to start somewhere, and the class of 20 and 21 had a horrid job market because of early COVID hiring freezes - it recovered for class of 22 but tanked immediately afterwards.

I don't deny that I dislike his opinion on "fake work", but you are falling into the same trap as well. All work is equally important, but wages are a result of a skills arbitrage, so demeaning any kind of work is just plain dumb.

And luck does play a role - class of 08 never recovered financially, unlike class of 07 and class of 09. If you miss the train, it sucks.

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jeffbee 320 days ago
Really, you don't think anyone from the class of '08 got hired at Nvidia or whatever? Give me a break. Anyway the author doesn't make the case for this in his post, it's just stuff he made up in his head.
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alephnerd 320 days ago
I'm not taking offense to your dislike of the author's argument (I agree with you - it's not a strong argument), I'm just taking offense to your tone.

> you don't think anyone from the class of '08 got hired at Nvidia or whatever

1. I'm not saying no person from 08 would have been hired at NVDA. I'm saying statistically, it would have been harder simply because new and early career unemployment in all majors was at it's highest. If you miss the train or fall out (eg. layoffs or getting fired) it's very difficult to hop back on.

2. NVDA only became hot recently. I myself passed on an NVDA offer in the mid-2010s because their stock was essentially a penny stock and base salary was low by Bay Area standards. I kick myself to this day for that decision :') - and that gets to the crux of the failure of the author's argument.

Tech employment only became "hot" for barely a decade. The rest of the time, salaries weren't much different from other white collar roles. It was BigTech that made SWE salaries enticing.

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