[ryandrake]

Is it really that much of a mystery? Here's how to succeed in tech. Sorry for the cynicism, but it's pretty obvious if you open your eyes and look around the Valley:

1. Have rich, preferably white parents who can get you into Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.

2. Found a company that does whatever (it doesn't really matter as long as it involves whatever's hot in technology in some way), and use your family/school connections to get funding.

3. IPO or get acquired by SuperUltraMegaCorp.

OR

4. Luck into being employee 2-10 at such a company.

Notice, there's nothing about working hard, impressing your boss, company loyalty, etc. You can find exceptions, but I don't think you can argue against this being a common, almost default formula these days.

[mattgreenrocks]

The cardinal sin: there's nothing there involving R&D, or furthering the state of the art. This is why software lost it's way: it's too timid. We all use the same set of tools ("best practices"), same languages ("traction"), and target the same saturated demographic.

The consequence: every software job requires 5 years experience in $TRENDY_FRAMEWORK rather than 10 years of generalist experience. But, hey, we'll quiz you on hash table implementation to pretend we're on the cutting edge!

We're making our day-to-day jobs worse. Stop it.