Depends, I've come across plenty of people who act like what you say there, probably because it's a variant on the natural human tendency to cast blame on something besides ourselves, but... these days, things move so fast and we lean on so many amateur part-time projects, that bugs or shortcomings in the libraries etc. we use are not uncommon. The fine art is partially in knowing when it's extremely unlikely you hit a bug (gcc), vs. very likely (JS library with five stars on Github).
But more importantly, in digging in -- to me, that's a big part that's missing in leveling up the next generation -- like hey, there's a stack trace, let's go look at the lines of code in our source libraries and think about them instead of flailing around randomly like most people seem to.
I've been musing lately as well that a challenging part of the job is not just "coding", it's working with other software engineers. Each cat to herd has their own quirks, differences, stylistic choices etc. that sometimes make other cats cringe. I also think there's a big mental shift from "working harder == more output" that's very difficult for a lot of people to adapt to.
Yeah that's one of the best things about them for me. And then I go to the website and often it's some janky UI with content buried super deep. Or it's like Reddit and I immediately get slammed with login walls and a million annoying pop ups. So I'm quite grateful to have an ability to cut through the noise and non-consistency of the wild west web. I agree the idea that we're somewhat killing traffic to the organic web is kind of sad. But at the same time I still go to the source material a lot, and it enables me to bounce more easily when the website is a bit hostile.
I wonder if it would be slightly less sad if we all had our own decentralized crawlers that simply functioned as extensions of ourselves.
> I wonder if it would be slightly less sad if we all had our own decentralized crawlers that simply functioned as extensions of ourselves.
This is something I'm (slowly) working on myself. I have a local language model server and 30 tb usable storage ready to go, just working on the software :)
If I want to relax a bit, no more than 5mg of an edible. I've taken way more at various bits in life, letting it become waaay too much of a habit, and I think it causes little but trouble. It often resulted in a bad loop of increased tolerance, being really tired the next day, slamming caffeine to over-compensate, having more anxiety to deal with, repeat...
CBD, cliche as it is to say, is actually pretty underrated as an in-between. With 1mg THC, 20mg CBD, it's very soothing without being impairing.
I think with smoking and vaping it's exceedingly easy to consume way too much. I'd recommend not more than a couple puffs, to be honest. Weed is way too strong now. My kingdom for a return to the 60's situation of weak weed and strong acid.
Compensation wise, that’s a great startup job, especially with such an insanely generous exercise window. Where I think you maybe went wrong is, if you are building everything, it’s not a collaboration with the founders, which is half of the fun of everything.
I suspect it’s more about the culture than the numbers. You say on one hand, oh I’d probably stay for 3% more, yet, you don’t see the point to earn another 1%. Your salary is pretty good man. Meanwhile they are burning $250K every month into smoke
10% is not realistic. That’s the whole employee options pool. I mean imagine if at your current job, someone worked there for a year before you, then walked away with more than your entire current equity grant, never to be heard from again. That’s what you’re describing.
The ideal reason to be engineer number one tbh is if you want a playground (for lack of a better way of putting it) to build the system out the way you want. That will be of high value to specific people (Architects, not the LinkedIn kind) and low value to most of the population who just sees a job as a means to an end.
But for some people, direct access to an AWS account and license to build as they please is intoxicating.
Getting to leave is so underrated. Nothing keeps your head above the doom and gloom like knowing you aren’t shackled to the thing, and the world’s your oyster if you need to move on. We live in a weird world if people don’t think a gig with $160K salary, 2% of the company, where you can work hard but not 24/7, and _leave any time you want_ is a bad gig. That 0.25-0.5% after one year that you get is PERMANENTLY gone for them even if you just fuck off after a year. Years later it could be worth millions.
But anyway, as founding engineer you get to set the systems, culture, language etc. maybe some people don’t want the responsibility but for others it’s an opportunity to build things out in our own image and learn a lot.
Even if you don’t see the cap table, any company you talk to should be clear and consistent in disclosure of facts like number of shares outstanding, including viewing it in tools like Carta. You are basically describing the abusive version of a startup and then saying all startups are bad.
I actually think going to a Series C or D is not the ideal play. It’s better to join an early company, with good leadership, reasonable if not mind blowing salary and cheap shares. Then, work hard, but not brutally hard. Somewhere that you enjoy the people, the work/product, and you can level up a lot. The options are cheap, and you can bail to FAANG at any time if you burn out. Realistically, that’s your shot at making 1% of $Xmm without completely hating your life. It will be a rare company so, yeah- be picky. I don’t know why all startups get lumped into one when there’s a lot out there for the discerning employee.
people already do a variant of “earlier gets more, later gets less” that’s a lot smoother/linear than your scheme and can be customized and adjusted to roles (engineers get more than salespeople as an example). With what you describe, offering some exec down the line 0.5% or whatever is impossible.
You need flexibility because at any moment some killer candidate might come along that you need to juice the grant for. Just being earlier doesn’t mean they contribute more to the company
But you can leave easily. and in 2024 I think people should insist on getting a decent salary (FAANG is impossible, but for most of the country, “even just” $170K is eye watering), and work life balance (sure, you will have to put in extra hours sometimes, but if it’s a 12 hours a day shop, don’t join). Founder should work a lot more aggressively, live a lot more spartan, and obviously is shackled to the damn thing with no optionality.
But more importantly, in digging in -- to me, that's a big part that's missing in leveling up the next generation -- like hey, there's a stack trace, let's go look at the lines of code in our source libraries and think about them instead of flailing around randomly like most people seem to.